DM Expectations = One Solution?

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Step 1: Do not prepare battle encounters. Prepare stats, agendas, and motivations.

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

ExploderWizard's advice and making encounters that you expect to turn into battles are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, sometimes a creature's agenda could be as simple as "kill all living things that come into view." But that isn't typically going to be the agenda of living creatures. Even animals have an agenda of "get food without getting killed." And the craziest of goblins will still want to protect their tribe, not usually fighting to the death of every last member.

An encounter can start as a fight and take a turn away from combat midstream if the agendas and motivations or the creatures and the characters coincide.

 

[Ariosto]

Here is an important distinction in modes of play:

In a Nintendo game, or a scenario like Tomb of Horrors, exploration is significantly via repetition. One revisits situation x and tries new plan y. Failure means a chance to try again.

If that's the way players are going to explore your game environment, then you can afford more dead-end or 'lost but don't know it yet' states.

If the set-up instead involves visiting each situation just once, then you'll want to make it harder to hit an uninteresting exit. Note, however, that 'interesting' is not necessarily synonymous with 'victorious'. It does mean that, somehow, the game goes on.

 

[maddman75]

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!

Um, no. Stuff from AD&D really means nothing to my style of gaming personally, so there's at least one GM that falls outside of that 'all'. I generally don't create environments so much as conflicts and situations.

 

[Ariosto]

Um, no. Stuff from AD&D really means nothing to my style of gaming personally, so there's at least one GM that falls outside of that 'all'.

Um, no. You have just defined yourself as not meeting the criterion for membership in the set. In that case, you simply are not part of the set.

As what you have said about your state is that it is not-x, how you imagine that any statement concerning x -- other than the claim that you are it, which has not been made -- is thereby falsified is quite mysterious.

 

[Odhanan]

(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.)

It's fine. Just don't take my rebuttal too personally either, then.

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...

From where I'm standing, people just need to grow a thick skin. Failure is not some sort of irredeemable trait that dooms you for eternity. When I say "the DM fails", it means just that: it's a failure. Learn from your failure, use it to your advantage to change your habits, and you'll get better at it.

To me, the offense, if there ever was one, is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

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.

I'm sorry. I'm don't want to live in a world dominated by my fear of rubbing some person the wrong way, somehow, because that person just can't take a diagnostic of failure in any other way than a personal insult. That, to me, is pure politically correct rhetoric. Failure, as I said above, can be an asset, and is not necessarily a final condition one cannot overcome. The beholder is making this choice. Accept your failure, overcome it. Or you could get offended, reject the point, and not gain anything from it. Your choice.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I would say most DMs have expectations. If they didn't they why spend any time preparing anything? Having an expectation does not automatically mean they have only one solution. What it means is they have prepared for what they believe to be the most likely solution.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that unless they find themselves completely unprepared for anything other than their expectation, and are unable to handle the situation when it veers from the expected path.

 

[maddman75]

I would say most DMs have expectations. If they didn't they why spend any time preparing anything?

This one approaches the Tao of GMing.

 

[Haltherrion]

No.
The dungeon still exists; it can still be used at a later date. And the players are engaged with the world, which is, IMHO at least, the real goal.

And, thank you for calling me a good DM.



RC

I heartily agree.

I once worked up a really elaborate set of castle plans (5' scale, all floors mapped, many pages of maps and notes.) The players managed to avoid it by going in some other direction. They knew I had been working on it so we ended up with a running gag about the "distant sound of the castle thumping behind you in an attempt to catch up to you."

There's almost always a way to use the material later and usually always worth defering to free choice rather than ref-prep. Now, the players need to understand that if they depart from what you had prepared they get ad lib'd material but most are understanding about that.

 

[Haltherrion]

Thakn you for the example.

For that particular example, it doesn't look to me like a failure of expectation so much as a failure of player situational awareness. The players had various tactical options open to them, chose a poor one, didn't vary from it, and got stomped.

If I understand correctly, the players were outgunned at range, but were more impressive in close action. The DM knew this. Somehow the players thought otherwise. Either the players did not 'get' the relative strengths of ship armament and that ramaining at range was a poor tactical choice or the players did not expect to be so relatively powerful in close combat.

As a DM, it can be tricky to 'read' the play group's take on the situation and to offer correction when their assumptions/expectations are incorrect and the character should know it is incorrect. This is an area of weakness for me actually. I believe I've explained the situation clearly, but the players occasionally get a very different read on the environment than I thought I provided.

Thinking about this, while I may have chosen to flee, I'm not sure I would have chosen to try boarding the enemy ships without some indication that we were a superior force in some ways. Additionally, once our ship was blasted to little bits, we probably would have a boarding action anyway, wouldn't we? May the enemy would try to board from both ships simultaneously but that can be hard to time given D&D turns are so quick and we could probably still deal with one ship at a time.

 

[Haltherrion]

fails[/I]." 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...

There are expectations and then there are EXPECTATIONS. Meaning, we (almost) all try to predict a little about where the game heading to we can prepare appropriate material if it doesn't already exist. Where the problem arises is if our expectations limit the freedom of the players.

Thinking, "I expect the players to solve this by force which will make faction X hostile which means I need to prepare some faction X NPCs at a level necessary for combat" is not the same as "I expect them to solve this with a battle and they will have to make a really good case for solving it any other way."

Most ref's being human probably fall somewhere in the middle. I won't claim that some level of expectation doesn't skew my responses many times but I do try to be flexible and allow something the players did that I did not consider even if it means tossing my prepared material. I might ask for a break while I make some hasty notes sometimes but on we go and the game is usually more interesting for it.

So, I agree we should avoid the extremes. Reality is in the middle. My original post that seems to have led to this thread was in response to something that appeared to have indicated expectations that were too confining to the players but as Bull has said, it was a quick little campaign synopsys; there was no doubt more to it.