DM'ing is a skill, not an art.

[billd91]

We had brought in a new girl to our group and she had been playing with us for a few months. She was use to a style where whatever was in the dungeon was obviously apart of solving the dungeon. Over the few months, I had clearly demonstratd that my design style was not like that, and that everything i describe is not a peg on the linear path to solving the puzzle.

I wonder if she played a lot of computerized adventure/puzzle games like the Indiana Jones, Zork, or Gabriel Knight ones. In those just about anything that you can interact with really is something you will need to solve a puzzle in the course of the game.

 

[jmucchiello]

The problem with saying Chekov's Gun applies to RPGs is the difference in medium. If you go to an Improv show and they show you a gun in the first scene, they can easily forget about it by the third act. Chekov was talking to playwrights. For all that RPGs are similar to theater, they lack a playwright. The DM is not an author. He is an improvisational actor. A playwright can accidentally place a meaningless "gun" in act one and the actors, the director, heck the stagehands all have the opportunity to ask "Hey, why is this gun here?" before the curtain rises on the first night.

The DM has no such opportunity for editing. Even when working from a prepared adventure, you never know what minor detail, improvised or not, is going to catch the ear of one of the 4-5 players sitting around the table. If the player is charismatic, he can easily send the party off on a wild goose chase.

"The statue is pointing east? Let's go to Eastgate City 200 miles away right now instead of going through the door to the next room."
"What's the phase of the moon?"
"No one wears red cloaks! He's wearing a red cloak?"

 

[CharlesRyan]

The problem with saying Chekov's Gun applies to RPGs is the difference in medium.

OK, but go back to my original point. It's not that GMs must slavishly adhere to the rules of storytelling.

It's that the rules of storytelling inevitably influence player perceptions. The players thought the pipe mattered because of Chekhov's Gun. Because the GM didn't account for that reaction, everyone had a bad time.

That's not the same as saying the GM must deliberately employ Chekhov's Gun. Even if the GM meant for the pipe to be relevant, it might not come into play, as you say. That's fine, but it's not my point.

 

[lin_fusan]

Personally, I'd give Varis a little more credit. He attempted to make the climb up the pipe interesting for the two piping PCs with a Skill Challenge, including XP awards for surviving the challenge. That's not punishing players, in my opinion.

Whether or not he should have put in something more is a different matter that I am not ready to comment on.

The mistake Varis did make was allowing the Take 10 rule, which turned what might have been a dramatic moment into a boring non-issue.

So I will restate that the two real problems in this situation was the splitting of the party (which is always an additional load on the DM) and the accidental turning of a possible dramatic event into a non-event with a mistaken ruling.

That said, I feel that Varis did as much as he could to entertain his players within his own personal philosophy concerning Chekhov's Gun. His mistakes were honest mistakes and not of a DM trying to screw the players.

 

[Cadfan]

His mistakes were honest mistakes and not of a DM trying to screw the players.

I do agree with that.

I also agree that the party shouldn't have split up. That's their bad.

I just don't think that the DM did a very good job of communicating what he meant to communicate to his players, and I also don't think that you can really use simulationism to justify events outside of the player's meaningful control that lead to a bad play session.

If I have incredibly good simulationist reasons for having a dangerous high level dragon in a particular region, but the players don't know enough about the situation not to blunder into the dragon and get their characters killed before they can retreat, that's still my fault. Their actions led them there, but their actions were made based on the information available to them. And assuming that my players didn't actually WANT to get killed by a dragon, that suggests that I didn't give them the information they needed.

The scenario in this thread is about a hundred times less serious than that since all it cost was a few moments of time. But its a similar principle.

 

[Ydars]

Hi Cadfan!

I agree with you, up to a point, but would like to ask if you have never had inept players who refuse to take notice of blatant danger flags? I have certainly gamed with people who just have an odd set of assumptions about how the game functions and often refused to respond to gentle prompting.

And gentle prompting is ALL you have as a DM; unless you want to go down the route of pushing your players into the "right" answer all the time. I sometimes prod a bit harder if the Players have misinterpreted something, putting 2 and 2 together to make 5, but the rest of the time, you really have to accept that some people just think differently.

The one thing I do sometimes do if I sense that the players are tired or if one particular player is in a certain mood, is use description extremely carefully to slant and make safer options more attractive, but I don't like to do this too much. It is just that I have one player who can make a TPK out of anything when he is in a certain, completely fearless and foolhardy mood.

Your argument reminds me of the modern fad of always blaming teachers for poor school results, when in fact, the student is the person who is often at least as much to blame.

The modern trend is for players to want more and more power and I am fine with this, but with power comes responsibility.

 

[Mallus]

And gentle prompting is ALL you have as a DM...

When gentle prompting fails you have people kick in the door and start shooting. And thus we move from Chekov's advice to Raymond Chandler's (if I'm remembering this right...).

note: to make this more appropriate for D&D, replace 'people' with 'orcs' and 'shooting' with 'chopping with their axes'.

 

[Cadfan]

Ydars- The reason to focus on DMs is because yelling BE LESS DUMB at your players is a failure as a plan. I'm the DM. I can learn to communicate more effectively, provide more comprehensible clues, focus the game session in entertaining directions, and in general do a better job. I can't wave a magic wand and make my players understand Basic Principles of Mountain Citadel Plumbing 101 well enough to make logical decisions based upon it. I can, however, use things like foreshadowing, character knowledge, glossing over of unexciting details, and other techniques to make sure that my players know what they need to know to grasp what's going on.

The teacher issue is actually very illustrative. There's a certain drive to assign blame, and people who are blame-oriented want to blame lazy and inattentive students. People who are solution-oriented tend to look around for the best lever available to them to fix the problem, and that tends to be teachers. Because, as mentioned above, yelling BE LESS DUMB is not a plan. Educating teachers about how to instill interest or work ethic in lazy and inattentive students, is. Amongst the many factors that affect a student's achievement (the student, the student's parents, the student's classmates, the student's teachers), ONLY ONE is actually in our control.

So... how does that apply to the discussion?

Lets assume that this guy's players are genuine morons. Not only are they incapable of making even the simplest logical deducation, they don't even pay much attention to what he's saying. They probably aren't, but lets assume.

So what are his options?

1. Get new players.
2. Run crappy gaming sessions because he refuses to learn to DM for inattentive morons.
3. Learn to DM for inattentive morons.

Even in this, the most extreme and ridiculous scenario, he's the one who's going to have to step up to the plate. Because he can't wave a magic wand and make everyone less dumb. The blame may lie with the players for being inattentive morons, but what good does that do anybody?

 

[Reynard]

I also don't think that you can really use simulationism to justify events outside of the player's meaningful control that lead to a bad play session.

Nothing of the described situation makes this applicable. What happened was completely in the hands of the players -- they had absolutely meaningful control.

If I have incredibly good simulationist reasons for having a dangerous high level dragon in a particular region, but the players don't know enough about the situation not to blunder into the dragon and get their characters killed before they can retreat, that's still my fault. Their actions led them there, but their actions were made based on the information available to them. And assuming that my players didn't actually WANT to get killed by a dragon, that suggests that I didn't give them the information they needed.

Right, but your failure is not being very good at simulation and/or verisimilitude, not placing the dragon. A massive, ancient predator like a dragon has an impact on a region. It's presence isn't going to go unnoticed. And if the players "blunder" into the dragon -- meaning, most likely, that they wandered off in the general direction of the dragon without bothering to find out how powerful it was, just assuming it must be a Level Appropriate encounter because that's how the game "works" then it is the players' fault. On the upside, they got to make a meaningful choice.

And the question of whether the players didn't "want" their characters to get killed by a dragon is sort of irrelevent. Did they want to go on an adventure, in an area in which a dragon might be found? Did they want to have the opportunity to gain treasure, XP and fame? If so (and the answer would seem to be "yes" given they are playing D&D) then they also know that there is *always* a possibility of "blundering" into an encounter with a deadly dragon (or liche, or demon or whatever).

Let's take the example of the good old fashioned Random Encounter Chart, something that seems to have fallen out of favor in the modern era. A random encounter chart (for, say, a wood haunted by dark fae) serves both a play purpose and a setting purpose. It provides potential interesting things during an otherwise rote activity (travel and/or exploration), as well as describing the micro-cosm of the fae haunted wood. The DM need not spend thousands of words describing the wood (though he still can) if he has a well developed random encounter chart for the place. In addition, the random encounter chart for the wood provides information to the players -- assuming the bother to ask or look. While the DM might not give the players the chart to read, he can (and should) relate its general contents and various probabilities through NPCs to inquiring players.

For example, the PCs arrive at a little town on the edge of the Wytchwood and need to follow the road through the wood to get to their next destination. While having a few ales in the inn that night, the locals regale them with "ghost stories" about the wood and warn them to stick to the path, etc... Intrigued, the PCs ask why. At this point, the DM looks at the encounter chart for the wood --

likelihood of encounter:
Day one road: 1 in 12 per 4 hours
Night on road: 1 in 6 per 4 hours
Day off road: 1 in 6 per 2 hours
Night off road: 1 in 4 per hour

roll 1d12
1-4 Goblins (2d4+2)
5-7 Forest Gnomes (1d4+1)
8-9 Pixies (evil (1d4)
10 Treant (evil)
11 Dryad (good)
12 Green dragon (roll 1d4 for age category)

-- and has an NPC, for the price of an ale, tell how goblins haunt the woods, hunting the poor gnomes, but the real dangers are the unseelie fey and angry trees, but there's hear-tell of a helpful forest spirit. And there's this story of a green dragon laying her clutch of eggs in the forst some genrations back... Travelers on the road don't usually have much trouble during the day, but those who venture into the forest day or night sometimes never return... Etc.

Now the PCs have information. With this information they can do whatever they like. They might do the "sensible" thing and wait till morning and make a hard push to get through the forest by nightfall. They might go in straight away, hoping to kill themselves a dragon. That choice is the players' and whether the woods constitutes a "Chekov's Gun" or not doesn't matter at all. The DM's job is to adjudicate the choices the PCs make and answer the questions they ask.

If the PCs have more pressing issues at hand but decide to go dragon hunting (or looking to help the gnomes, or whatever) instead, that's there business. if they do so because they "assume" everything is an adventure hook, they have been playing with railroady DMs for far too long and should get used to the wonderful feeling freedom and stretch their wings a bit.

 

[merelycompetent]

Lets assume that this guy's players are genuine morons. Not only are they incapable of making even the simplest logical deducation, they don't even pay much attention to what he's saying. They probably aren't, but lets assume.

So what are his options?

1. Get new players.
2. Run crappy gaming sessions because he refuses to learn to DM for inattentive morons.
3. Learn to DM for inattentive morons.

Aside from this assumption being unforgivably insulting to the players in question, the assumption doesn't work from the start - they have already proven that they are not genuine morons. Genuine morons would have succeeded in opening the drain plug just as the other three members of the party crossed the washout area on the trail, resulting in a TPK. Even then, only two of the players decided to split off from the party - leaving the others marked as somewhat more intelligent.

Even given this aberrant assumption, I am concerned that you offer only three options, all of which are demeaning to either the players, the DM, or both. Life's too short to spend it gaming with... we all know the rest.

What's the real critical point here, in the situation described by Kzach and Varis?

Player expectations?
Players splitting the party?
DM not giving enough description?
One or more players having an off day?
The DM having an off day?
Something else?

All of these have been addressed (with the possible exception of Something else). None of us were there (with the possible exception of Kzach or the players), so we don't know what the player expectations were. They split the party, in or near enemy territory - that's a big screwup right there. I don't have the module, so I'm going from the description the DM has given here - If the entire party had taken the side-trip, it would be no big deal. "Guys, you all take 10 on the climb checks and help eachother? OK. You come to this really big drain plug at the end..." Then move on with the adventure. Seems to me that there was certainly enough description, and the Players should NOT have split the party. Problem solved. One or more players having an off day? Two of them certainly did. Maybe all five - they still split the party, and three of them went on under-strength in enemy territory. DM having an off day? Possibly. Various posters have covered alternative, more efficient, and more fun ways of handling an awkward situation - including talking with the players afterwards to help clear up misunderstandings. Something else? We've gone into literary mystery analysis.

Frankly, I like sprinkling in a few out-of-place items here and there to see what the players do with them. Other DMs don't. It adds to the fun for the groups I DM, provides plothooks I didn't see before (The Duke has a secret lover in this city?! Cool!), sometimes gives the players another way to interact with the game world, or comes to nothing other than an interesting dungeon feature. Sometimes the PCs spend ten minutes exploring a dead end corridor for a secret door. Sometimes I have to drop in a major clue (Are you SURE you want to do this?) because I don't think a player really groks how suicidal, dangerous, or time-wasting his character's actions are.