DM Expectations = One Solution?

[Bullgrit]

Not for campaign play round these parts.

DMs don’t usually expect PCs to make it through the encounters he makes? So you don’t make more than one encounter at a time (or maybe a small handful on the off chance they do make it through the first)? Or are you just being contrarian?

Do not prepare battle encounters. Prepare stats, agendas, and motivations. Battle happens when it happens. Once you have a decent grasp of the site conditions and the overall objective of the inhabitants then you don't need to drive yourself nuts planning for what the PC's might do.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that you don’t ever make encounters that you know will be battles.

ExploderWizard, I’ve read a lot of what you write about your play style and D&D preferences, and I agree with a lot of them. But I think now you’re just putting on airs of being a zen master DM. You don’t have expectations, nothing the PCs do can throw you off, and you just go with the flow, baby?

So, just to let you know, I don’t believe anything else you say about your DMing style, at least in this thread.

For that particular example, it doesn't look to me like a failure of expectation so much as a failure of player situational awareness.

See, in my example in the other thread, (which I didn’t want to bring into this thread), I wasn’t laying blame for the failed campaign on anyone – DM or Player. I was offering it as an example of “naughty word happens.” Someone else wanted to analyze the scenario and identify who did what wrong, and give unsolicited advice.

Bullgrit

 

[Nagol]

I tend to make the scenarios using only the party knowledge that the opposition knows; i.e., if the scenario is a hundred-year old dungeon, I ignore party composition and attitudes. If the scenario is an enemy ambush, I'll use their resources to counter known tactics and abilities demonstrated by the party previously.

However, one of the things I'll do after designing a scenario is determine if there is any 'winning' tactic for the party with the expected abilities. I don't necessarily expect the players to choose that tactic; I just like to know that a solution to the problem does exist.

I may, depending on time and gut feel, look at the typical party tactics and see what level of success thy are likely to achieve and see if there are points requiring special adjudication or thought so that I can be prepared for typical party action.

About 50% of my scenarios never get run as the group can be particular as to what they do and changes its mind at the last minute a fair bit.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The problem with this may be illustrated using an example. In this post (http://www.enworld.org/forum/3525275-post4.html) we have a room from an adventure site that I have used with more than one group, with no overlap in players.

Running the encounter area requires understanding the goals of the dread ghoul mice and the waiting ghoul. What I expected was that the PCs would fight the ghoul, ignore the mice, and locate the treasures.

This is not the sequence of events that happened in each case of play, however. I have had players decide to simply leave. I have had players slaughter the mice (which meant that the ghoul could then flee when severely injured). I have had players do exactly what I thought they might do.

The important thing, though, is that none of these player groups was right, and none was wrong. Right and wrong simply do not factor into it.

Likewise, the grick here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/1639647-post4.html) can be read as an encounter that must occur one specific way. But this is simply not so -- if the players choose to do something that causes a change in the way the encounter was envisioned, that is a good thing. Not a right thing or a wrong thing, just a good thing. Flight would have worked. Based on the map, even not using the piton so thoughtfully provided could have worked.

The Three Heads in a Well encounter that starts here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/1573280-post27.html) might seem like it could go only one way, but I have heard that it has gone several ways for other groups who have since used the encounter. And if you look at this encounter in the same thread (http://www.enworld.org/forum/1583273-post41.html), you will see that I am all for anticipating what is likely to happen in an encounter.

However, anticipating what is likely =/= expecting that what you anticipate will, in fact, happen. Nor does it mean that you must (or should) kludge the players into the sequence of events which you envisioned.


RC

 

[Ariosto]

Bullgrit, do you see any range of possibilities in between 'one solution' and not having 'any expectation' at all?

What do you think is the dm's job?

If the dm's job is to create a fun game for players to play, then the single-solution puzzle has very well established problems that are why it is a deprecated approach. If your first reaction to best practices established over generations by thoughtful and skilled practitioners of an art is ' This is absurd.', then perhaps it is your understanding that needs reassessment.

Game design is a very different undertaking from, for instance, script writing. It is not incumbent on the players to accommodate your vision of what should happen. It is incumbent on you to make the environment one in which their choices have interesting and appropriate results.

On the other hand, players expecting a real challenge must expect some frustration. It is because some things do not work as well as other things that we can talk of 'tactics'.

Having a narrowly defined expected outcome is not very interesting. If satisfaction comes only from following a set program without deviation, then what is the point of playing it as a supposed game? It might be more entertaining simply to press 'play' and watch a recorded performance.

 

[Ariosto]

My thoughts on the encounter and campaign start was that the PCs would close on the enemy ship to fight man-to-man, and then have a fun battle with the enemy grunts. We’d get all the PCs involved in a grand battle. Then the PCs would capture the enemy vessel. When they got to Bral, they could pool their ship and the captured ship together and then buy a really cool ship that they chose for themselves.

Yikes! That reminds me of Nintendo games of which one can actually tell the story that simply must result from following a complete path from the first screen to the last. 'And then the player does x' on schedule is to my mind a pretty poor concept for a game deploying real, live intelligence -- a game master -- to handle the environment dynamically.

How is it interesting for the gm, to whom the limited program is plain? I can't see myself moderating a game in which getting surprised would be a problem.

'Expectations' this extensive seem to me to go out of the domain of game design proper and cross the border into 'scripting' territory. It's just not right effectively to plan the players' moves for them like that. Making their own moves is what makes it a game.

 

[MortonStromgal]

For instance, if I put a dozen orcs in a room, guarding a treasure chest, my expectation

STOP!!!!! go ahead put the orcs in the room guarding a treasure. You created the situation. That is awesome! Don't solve the problem, let the PCs do that. Let them try things, throw stuff out there. Then if they reach a reasonable way to solve the problem let it work.

Steve D once said something about the job of a GM over on rpg.net that hit home with me. It was something like my job is to let my players be awesome. If you solved the puzzle for them ahead of time that is not letting the players be awesome, that is forcing them to think like you. Video games typically have very few (sometimes only one) solution to any given problem. That is why table top still brings people together. Computers just can't handle everything players can come up with yet.

[Edit]

Let me add something like what I'm suggesting. Shadowrun is the perfect example. You design the building, the guards, rotations, what the PCs are trying to steal, etc then just let them loose. They decide how they are going to get the item. They may come up with a way you didn't count on. They may go in guns blazing and end up in a TPK. That is their choice, all you did was present the problem and the opposition, not the solution. The trick is picking "reasonable" opposition and that just takes time and practice.

 

[maddman75]

I think we all agree that having one solution is bad, but I try to avoid expectations as well.

GMs can find themselves not outright banning alternate solutions, but adjucating in such a manner than only one solution is feasable. This may not come from a desire to railroad, but from his own expectations.

Take the example in the OP - group of orcs in a room, guarding a treasure chest. The GM assumes the PCs will attack, because he's assuming that's the best way to deal with the situation. Doing something other than 'attack' is going to require a lot of doing, in his mind.

So the PCs see all these orcs and decide they need a way past them. They spy and wait for them to fall asleep and try to sneak past. "Okay, I'll need Stealth from everyone" and sets the DC at 18, for the fifth level party. If any of them fails, the orcs spring up and attack. Unless they are a party of ninjas, it is almost certain that someone will fail.

Maybe they decide to talk the orcs into giving them the treasure. The GM demands a Diplomacy roll, and makes the DC 30. The orcs aren't going to give up their treasure that easily.

Or Intimidate - DC 30 again. The orcs outnumber them 2 to 1!

Or they try to create a distraction. Okay one of them goes to check it out and the other 9 are on high alert.

In all these cases, the GM might as well have said 'no screw that you guys have to fight them.' Like I said this isn't out of maliciousness, but in having a predetermined expectation, the GM is implicitly saying that other solutions are suboptimal and almost certainly won't work.

And its impossible to have no expectations. As Exploder Wizard said, just set up the orcs, why they are there and what they are doing, and react to what the players do. If they charge in, give them a fight. If they try to talk - well what are the PCs saying? Why are the orcs here, and what are they guarding? That might be the best solution. Just remain open, and don't worry about them 'skipping' your encounter. As long as something fun and cool happens, its all good.

 

[Umbran]

(Odhanan, I don't intend this to be personal - you're merely the first clear example of what I was talking about that I saw here.)

Yes, the DM fails in that example.

This is part of what I mean about going to polarized ends. "The DM fails." Not, "The DM could have handled it better." Not, "That's not how I prefer to do it." There is no spectrum of performance, only success and failure. Digital: on/off, correct/incorrect, myway or the highway...

If the DM is putting some kind of encounter that result in choices, die rolls and thus, a variety of outcomes from success to failure, and doesn't at least have an idea of the natural consequences of failure if it occurs, then he's not doing his job.

And again, rather than note that he could do his job better, we're told he isn't doing it at all.

I just hope nobody around here has a manger that writes performance reviews or critiques this way.

 

[Ariosto]

How many DMs create a battle encounter and then actually prepare for a dozen different options the PCs might take?

The answer is 'all dms creating dungeons in accordance with the instructions in the original Dungeon Masters Guide, The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, and so on.'

Put simply, one creates an environment and lets the players and the dice select paths through it. There are ways to constrain possibilities far, far short of requiring a particular set!

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted