Do you "save" the PCs?

[Mallus]

...much less to "save" players by fiat when they play poorly.

How does a DM determine when players are 'playing poorly'?

I'm not being facetious. It's a question I've wrestled with over 25 years of playing D&D, the majority of which I spent running games.

From observing other people DM I've noticed that what constitutes good play varies. A lot. What one DM considers logical or tactically sound another considers inane and suicidal. So it goes.

From attempting to observe myself while DM'ing, I've noticed 'good play' is usually synonymous with 'player doing things that entertain me'.

It's fairly easy to determine what playing chess poorly looks like. RPG's... well, it's a bit thornier. Then again, the chess isn't built around the concept of a fallible human arbiter who enforces and oversees (or discards and re-invents) the rules during course of play...

... so bringing this around to the actual topic... I can see why a DM might be tempted to fudge from time to time, as EGG himself suggested. DM's are fallible. Their ability to accurately judge good/smart/clever play might break down sometimes.

Acknowledging this is wise. Repeatedly invoking player's 'poor play' without also mentioning even a good DM's occasional 'poor adjudicating' is not.

 

[Nagol]

How does a DM determine when players are 'playing poorly'?

<snip>

Acknowledging this is wise. Repeatedly invoking player's 'poor play' without also mentioning even a good DM's occasional 'poor adjudicating' is not.

I don't think the DM should be making that form of tactical judgement at all. I've seen enough off-the-wall manoeuvres / insane situations work out for different groups that prior to a TPK being complete, I don't consider it a foregone conclusion.

 

[Doug McCrae]

From attempting to observe myself while DM'ing, I've noticed 'good play' is usually synonymous with 'player doing things that entertain me'.

I'm the same. To me interesting play is always superior to boring play. There's a (yet another - sorry Janx) quote from the 1e DMG where Gary seems to agree with you.

Assume that your players are continually wasting time (thus making the
so-called adventure drag out into a boring session of dice rolling and
delay) if they are checking endlessly for traps and listening at every door.
If this persists, despite the obvious displeasure you express, the requirement
that helmets be doffed and mail coifs removed to listen at a door,
and then be carefully replaced, the warnings about ear seekers, and
frequent checking for wandering monsters (q.v.), then you will have to
take more direct part in things. Mocking their over-cautious behavior as
near cowardice, rolling huge handfuls of dice and then telling them the
results are negative, and statements to the effect that: "You detect
nothing, and nothing has detected YOU so far - ", might suffice. If the
problem should continue, then rooms full with silent monsters will turn the
tide, but that is the stuff of later adventures.

I have a feeling Gary's solutions to the problem of boring players wouldn't be the same as yours, mind. What he suggests is passive-aggression, rather than just coming out straight and saying, "Guys, please speed things up, you're boring the arse off me here."

It also is rather at odds with all the times PC failure is blamed on the players, the criticism usually being insufficient caution or planning. *Not* listening at doors, *not* checking for traps, etc.

My feeling is that these accusations are just excuses to get the DM off the hook. When something goes wrong, no matter what it is, it's the players to blame - "You should've done this, you should've done that." - It does seem odd that the players should be at fault so often when it's the DM that has most of the power. Power = responsibility.

It's like JFK said, "Victory has a THOUSAND fathers, but defeat is an orphan."

 

[pawsplay]

I don't think it's passive-aggressive. He seems to be saying he is offering fair warning before dilly-dallying becomes fatal according to the terrible and inevitible logic of dungeon settings.

 

[Ariosto]

... so bringing this around to the actual topic... I can see why a DM might be tempted to fudge from time to time, as EGG himself suggested.

He did not "suggest". He mentioned that possibility. What he in fact advised (in precisely these words) was to "let the dice fall as they may".

One more time:

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time.

How does a DM determine when players are 'playing poorly'?

Well, if you are going to appeal to Gygax in the DMG as your authority, as in

It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for player character when they have played well. When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!

Then I guess you could take the same source as informative as to what it means.

As Mrs. Gump says, "stupid is as stupid does". If one doesn't know it when one sees it, then what does one know? If one's "ability to accurately judge good/smart/clever play might break down sometimes", then what of judging anything else? If fallibility is such a problem, then how does compounding an error correct it?

It seems to me most sensible that, if one truly had so little confidence in somebody's judgment, then one would rather prefer to leave less, not more, up to it!

Fortunately, it is not even an issue for me and my friends.

We also play a very DM/story-driven "game" that I put in quotes because, when it does not matter whether one plays well or poorly, I call it a "game" only in the sense of pulling the lever on a slot machine (only this one is rigged). It's a form of entertainment, and has the trappings of AD&D, but it's not really that any more than wiggling the joystick of a Ms Pac-man machine on automatic, "insert coin" mode is actually playing the game.

 

[Piratecat]

I've left a warning on the previous page. Back off the aggression, please. The thread has improved in the last day, but I don't want to see a reoccurrence.

 

[Umbran]

It does not seem to me that Mr. Gygax was writing work that was intended for the legalese-level scrutiny it is receiving here.

The guy was cool, and good with a turn of phrase, but I think trying to parse him down to every little nuance seems foolhardy. Do we all agree that the man had some sense in his head, and was not a raving egomaniac? Then we should probably accept that he knew darned well he couldn't lay out Ultimate Rules about how the game should be played.

That means that beating each other over the head with the Book of Gary in attempts to prove our own way is somehow more "correct" or more "in the original intent" is attempting to do something that original author knew wasn't going to work in the long run. Correctness is irrelevant. Original intent is interesting, maybe informative, but ultimately academic.

Please allow me to remind you that your playstyle (whoever you are, and whatever the style) is not a damsel in distress that needs defending.

 

[Janx]

to follow up on Doug's point with the quote form Gary, it's clear that even gary had this problem.

Players not being cautious enough, or players being too cautious.

given some anecdotes about killer DMs and killer dungeons and it always being the player's fault, I suspect that over-cautious play by players is due to having it ingrained into them by stickler DMs who are looking for the slightest flaw to nail their players on.

Given critters like Cloakers, mimics, and those stalactite things, they were clearly meant to further blindside the player as something inobtrusive being a very direct danger.

In short, Gary made his own bed, and then seemed to blame the players for slow play in that quote of his.

And its not to say Gary didn't have some good observations and ideas, but outside of actual game mechanic rules, his words are just ideas on how to run things.


One of the business communication seminars my work group got sent to awhile back, had a segment on how to have the "difficult conversation" about a topic with someone. usually of the kind where you're not happy with what or how they did something. Part of the script included a section where you are to talk about "for my part, I could have done XYZ better."

The real lesson in that is that for darn near EVERY problem barring a criminal inflicting harm on you, you most likely have contributed to it.

Therefore, both sides of the screen have culpability in the death of a PC. What could the player have done differently?
What could the GM have done differently?
What did the player do that made things worse?
What did the GM do that made things worse?

it is arrrogant and blind to assume that the GM had no part in the death of a PC, and could have done something different to resolve it better.

That doesn't just mean "don't kill the PC". It is very likely that the best points to prevent it occurred rounds or minutes before the death.

it also doesn't mean NOT stocking the game area with things beyond the party's level. Even in my "I don't put mega big monsters in the area for 1st levels" game, there's still dangerous people, like some of the good citizens of the starting town where I don't assume the party of good PCs will attack.

Odds are good, setting expectations about the letlhality and cautiousness level, communicating about difficulty levels (and perhaps allowing for retreat) would help prevent having to fix things inside the encounter on the fly.

 

[Doug McCrae]

the terrible and inevitible logic of dungeon settings.

There's an interesting parallel between ear-seekers, rooms full of silent monsters and the like and the belief that in d20 D&D, the PCs only meet monsters that will provide a level-appropriate challenge. In both cases the environment is changing, in fairly implausible ways, to fit the PCs. The environment seems to know about the PCs and warps in strange ways so as to always challenge them. There's a really clear example of this from Dragon #26, Notes From A Very Successful D&D Moderator (sorry Janx) -

One of my favorite devices is the pit. However, my players, after
having several promising players impaled at the bottom of one, got
together and brainstormed on a solution to the problem. Their solution:
tie everyone together in mountain climber fashion so that when a player
fell into a pit he would be saved by a safety line. My countermove: I
decided to have a weight (1 ton) drop from above the pit when it was
sprung, which would carry the player and all his confederates into the
pit, crushing or impaling (take your pick) them all.
But never underestimate the player! They again brainstormed on a
solution and came up with another award winning idea: since my traps
were sprung by weights they would take a small cart with them, loaded
with lead, which they would push in front of them. They also would
bring several pairs of wheels and a carpenter, so they could continually
reuse the same cart. My countermove: I decided that when a player
reached a trap it would not only activate but would also activate several
other previously-unactivated traps that would lie along the player’s approach
paths. Not only did this prevent the players from using their cart
idea, it also deterred them from ever trying to weasel around my pits
again!
Another of my favorite devices is making things appear to be something
that they really aren’t. One good example of this is the Gelatinious
Cube. In my initial dungeon the players were treated to several encounters
with them and thereafter stayed away from any large meetings with
the cubes. Knowing this, one of the evil magicians made several large
jello molds and made about 10 large cubes of jello in his main treasure
room. When my players blunderd into this room one day they asked
what they saw-to which I replied that they saw 10 large jello-like cubes.
Needless to say, the magician’s treasure room is still unsacked!

The old crazy dungeon with its traps arms race, and the new tailored encounters are both examples of gamism. Encounters are always a challenge, no matter what counter-measures the PCs employ or what level they are, relative to where they go. Both are criticised for a lack of verisimilitude. The counter to this is simulationism - ear seekers don't exist, traps don't escalate, encounters aren't tailored.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

I won't "save" the PCs in the sense of fudging rolls or Deus Ex Machina, and my monsters make a sincere attempt to kill the PCs. However, I'm a DM who is naturally inclined to reward creativity, and this trait gets ratcheted up to 11 in "near-TPK" situations, such that if the players can hit upon a creative way to save their asses that is even remotely within the rules/what would be plausible, I'll almost always let it work, in a way that I perhaps wouldn't in less dire situations.

For example, I once ran in a campaign set in an evil empire, in which the PCs ran afoul of the secret police who answered directly to the empire. I mean "directly" completely literally--each member of the secret police had a constant enchantment on him that allowed the emperor to deliver orders to him directly, as though he were talking right into their ear.

In a fight with said secret police, my PCs were getting their asses kicked, such that a TPK seemed innocent. The party wizard asked if he could use ghost sound to whisper a command into one of the secret police's ear, pretending to be the emperor, and call them off by saying "leave them for now, I have future plans for these ones, return to my side at once."

Now, normally I wouldn't let that fly. It's somewhat creative, but its also an encounter breaker if done before the start of a fight, and seems like far too great an effect for a cantrip. If the PCs were about to ambush the secret police and wanted to use that trick, I'd probably have ruled that the secret police knew their emperor's voice too well, and didn't fall for it.

But with the part on the brink of a TPK, I okayed it. The wizard used ghost sound, succeeded on his bluff check, and the secret police left. Afterwards, I ruled that the emperor was outraged by what had occured, and had established a system of daily passwords to prevent anyone from impersonating him again. So it worked one time, but could never be tried again, but that one time it worked saved the party's bacon.

Thats how I generally handle TPKs. If you can come up with a creative way to save your asses, I'll let it work, even if I normally wouldn't.