Do you "save" the PCs?

[Raven Crowking]

You don't get to retcon an encounter that was actually run. This isn't theory - this is discussing an actual factual event.

We know that this is what happened; we are saying it should not have happened. The error was made prior to having to make a decision about whether to fudge or not to fudge.

Hussar's fudging in this case is an attempt to cover/undo an earlier error. However, it compounds the problem rather than resolves it. In media res, as soon as he had realized the error that he had made ("Whoa! Susy's not ready for the WLD yet!") he should have dealt with the reality of that error.

Had he been upfront about that error, Susy wouldn't be left with any illusions about what decisions will be rewarded in future games. Instead, Hussar made up some other "new facts" that fit his theory better, as you say.

In the actual circumstances described by the poster, the hard-ass approach would be to stop the game, admit that you made an error, and then deal with the fallout of that.

If you disagree, I do indeed think we do judge "success" by different standards!


RC

 

[Reynard]

OTOH, splatting newbie PC's teaches players to not bother engaging in any role play at all, since, well, your character is only going to die anyway, so, why bother? Backstory? Pfft. If I'm changing characters every three sessions (or more often) then my backstory is going to be a sentence, if that. Talk to people in the setting, build relationships? Again, pfft. Why bother? Any relationship I build is only going to vanish when I have to bring in yet another PC.

I have to strongly disagree. I started with the Red Box. That starter dungeon killed me and my two brothers (dad was DMing) a half dozen times each. Twenty five years later I am still playing and running D&D, creating meaningful characters no matter which side of the screen I am on.

Show newbies what's fun about D&D and they'll come back. And one of the things that is fun about D&D is getting eaten by a carrion crawler under the old fallen gate.

 

[pemerton]

Susy wants to learn how to play D&D, you teach her using a kinder, gentler location with real decisions and real consequences for those decisions.

<snip>

The DM could have said, once he saw how things were going, "Susy, that was my fault for throwing you into deep water. I should know better. Let me set up a game just for you, where you can get your feet wet before swimming with the sharks. How does that sound?"

There a whole lot of assumptions being made here about what is involved in "learning how to play D&D". One of them is that Susy and the GM both have the time and inclination to turn up for a solo session, as opposed to have Susy play at the same time as all their other mutual RPGing friends.

I'd be surprised if that assumption holds for most adult (or even many teenaged) new players. I think most would want to be part of a social event with friends - the niceties of the game that is part of that social event would be secondary, and something in which an interest is developed over time (if at all - if not, Susy either continues on as a Watcher, to use the 4e DMG's terminology, or leaves the gaming group and socialises with her friends out of gaming time).

 

[Hussar]

I have to strongly disagree. I started with the Red Box. That starter dungeon killed me and my two brothers (dad was DMing) a half dozen times each. Twenty five years later I am still playing and running D&D, creating meaningful characters no matter which side of the screen I am on.

Show newbies what's fun about D&D and they'll come back. And one of the things that is fun about D&D is getting eaten by a carrion crawler under the old fallen gate.

Y'know, I had pretty much the exact same experience. For me it was a friend of my brother's and myself running four magic users into the cave in the Keep on the Borderlands that had stirges. Died in like 30 seconds. And I came back for more.

My brother's friend? Never played again.

To me, I see no difference between softballing a dungeon or just running a special softball dungeon. The player is going to learn pretty much exactly the same thing - after all, in a softball dungeon, the PC shouldn't really be threatened by anything other than blinding stupidity. (which, unfortunately, does come up rather often. )

So, the player learns that his character can take on all comers and is Superman. Then he goes off to a "real" dungeon, and gets smoked in the first five minutes and we're right back where we started.

Me, I'd rather just gloss over a bit, and let the player learn as we go. For one, I don't have the time to run special sessions to teach newbies. I barely have enough time to run the games that I do run. For a second, like I said, I'd much rather the player learn good role playing, rather than roll playing, skills - like talking to people, making relationships, engaging with the other players and NPC's. Learning the meta-gaming skill of "player skill" can come later.

And, just to be clear, I'm not saying you should fudge everything. Like Steel Wind said, it's fudging a few times, or perhaps only once, just to smooth out the bumps. If it's every time, well, then it's time to have an out of game conversation with the player. But, through no fault of the player, if the dice gods declare the player dead in the first five minutes of the first session ever?

DON'T DO IT.

 

[pemerton]

I think this is why I've moved away from GMing D&D (I'll play it or run one off's, but I can't see myself developing a serious campaign for it in any edition for the foreseeable future) into systems which place the fate of the PC in the hands of the players. Systems where the player can decide for himself if it's important enough or not to risk the life of his or her character by upping the stakes.

I can't really see myself running a serious campaign in D&D. The fact that D&D relies on the idea of disposable characters just breaks it for me.

Hussar, what games are you playing instead?

I agree with you that disposable characters undermine serious campaigns. For a long time (2 campaigns of 9+ years each) that was why I played Rolemaster as my regular game rather than D&D - it has a system that produces very flavourful characters, and although it doesn't have relationship or similar mechanics, the intricacies of the skill development system come close to guaranteeing that a backstory about relationships will be part of every PC, which is then available to call on in the game.

The problem with Rolemaster is that at low levels (and mid-levels for some parties) the combat system is just too deadly without a bit of friendly GM fudging of crit rolls. Only at mid to high levels do PCs have the mechanical ability to mitigate those effects. Therefore, when I GM low level Rolemaster I am a cheating cheater of a GM!

My group has now moved to D&D 4e, which also has flavourful PCs (not quite as flavourful as RM, but pretty good) and even at low levels hasn't required me to cheat to avoid PC deaths. I'm hoping that the campaign will develop to be as serious as those RM campaigns.

 

[catsclaw227]

OK... I want to open this post with the MAJOR DISCLAIMER that this is not a value judgement about what is better or not, what is correct or not.

I cheated more dice rolls in 1e, 2e and 3e than I ever have had with 4e. I actually roll fully out in the open now with 4e. But, I had to fudge sometimes in 3e (and lower) when I had a PC that a player really liked, and the dice screwed him for not even making bad decisions... just arbitrarily. Sorry, but it's the truth in my experience.

 

[pemerton]

Catsclaw227, agreed - except that my fudging was in low level RM rather than 3E. The mechanical robustness of 4e to deliver the sort of play experience me and my players want is a big part of what attracts me to it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There a whole lot of assumptions being made here about what is involved in "learning how to play D&D". One of them is that Susy and the GM both have the time and inclination to turn up for a solo session, as opposed to have Susy play at the same time as all their other mutual RPGing friends.

Really?

How does "It is best to learn how to read when you are young" assume that you have the time or inclination to do so?

How does "It is best to be a good GM" assume that you have the time or inclination to do so?

"I have no time or inclination" may be a reason for suboptimal performance, but that reason doesn't somehow make that performance optimal. Choosing the lesser of two evils is better than choosing the greater, but it is still not as good as choosing no evil at all.


RC

 

[pemerton]

Raven Crowking, "best" doesn't always mean "most conducive to optimal performance at a fundamentally complex task". I think when Hussar and others are saying it is best to pull punches for a new player, they mean "most conducive to success at the social endeavour of having that player become a continuing participant in RPGs".

Furthermore, even if "best" did mean "most conducive to optimal performance", there is a whole lot of what is at stake in RPGing - cooperation and interaction with fellow players, mechanical integration of PCs, etc - that Susy is not going to get in a solo training session but that (as Hussar has pointed out) she will get in a session in which some mechanical punches are also pulled.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Again, disagree. There is no reason that other players cannot help the prospective GM by taking the roles of NPC supporters, so long as they are on the same page. The other players give advice, but never direct the action. They also get to (possibly) die dramatically as red shirts.

What is "most conducive to success at the social endeavour of having that player become a continuing participant in RPGs" is not "pulling punches" in the sense of giving the player a false sense of accomplishment, but rather "pulling punches" in the setup itself, so that the framework is relatively easy to deal with, but any accomplishment is real.

That is what "optimal performance" in this sense is: the performance most conducive to success at the social endeavour of having that player become a continuing participant in RPGs.

(There is also a body of evidence which suggests that intermittant reinforcement is very effective -- people do not become addicted to gambling because they win all of the time, nor is it necessary [or even desireable] for players to expect to win all of the time in an RPG. In fact, I would go so far that, if the outcome [win] is known and the rules change [fudging] over the course of the activity to accomodate that outcome, then what you have is not a game at all [although it is a pastime, hobby, whatever].)

I strongly disagree that fudging the results helps the new player, or anyone. AFAICT, all it does in the case cited is help the GM avoid acknowledging an error in judgment.

This is, of course, IMO, IME, and all that jazz.



RC