Fantastic mysteries vs. DM cheating

[Umbran]

Re: Re: Fantastic mysteries vs. DM cheating

Hmm can't agree with you on that point. The nature of D&D perhaps with it codified spell lists, and magic item catalogs, etc. but many other RPG's are much more flexible.

Good point. White Wolf's Mage:The Ascension is another such game. By comparison, there's very little codification in it's magic system. Very open and fluid.

Now, RPGs have some codes and rules (for the sake of consistency, if nothing else). At times this is used to simplify matters - keep the DM and players from wondering "why?". But it's hardly the case that everything is codified, so that nobody ever has to wonder about anything.

Heck, I'm running a game right now where, from the players point of view, wondering how and why things work is a major reason for playing the game.

 

[Psion]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that everything has to be codified. But for me, everything has to make sense and not just be plucked out of thin air.

For example, lets say I needed to open a gate to the abyss that lets 1000 demons to issue through the fissure. An artifact, an epic spell, or a true ritual (per R&R) are all things that could accomplish it in my game. I might never actually write up the spell or item, just so long as I know why it would work within the assumptions of the system.

 

[Mark]

If the DM decides to do something, and leave it a mystery, he may be accused of "cheating" of doing things for arbitrary reasons, for ignoring the rules, for breaking even his own rules.

...and that player will be bringing the snacks for the next four... No... Five sessions...

I have spoken.

 

[The Serge]

I'm talking more about things that are mysterious
mechanically. A vast spell that summons hordes of demons, for example.
There's no such spell in the books, and you don't make any rules for it;
it's just something that is.

I don't do this unless I know that I already have an idea germinating
in my head but haven't bothered to write it down.

I think if you're going to do something like this, with no rationale
and no game-mechanic, then you may be treading troubled water.

IMC, the PCs can eventually acquire anything other mortal characters
can acquire and most of the things Undead, Dragons, Outsiders, etc. can
acquire. I always give players information that their characters should
know (due to their background) or allow them the means to acquire this
knowledge. I've one character who is playing a homebrew PrC that hasn't
been around for thousands of game years because he took the time to
research it.

But, I still think maturity is the main element here. Players who
expect to know everything about a fantasy world when they don't know
everything about the world in which they live are not being sensible and
are going into the game with the wrong idea.

 

[DungeonKeeperUK]

Re: Re: Fantastic mysteries vs. DM cheating

void main ()
{
object oPC= GetLastAttacker();
if (GetIsMunchkin(oPC) == TRUE)
{
DestoryObject(oPC);
}
}

hehehe
Does that code work in Never Winter Nights then?

 

[StalkingBlue]

There are things in my campaign world that even I don't know.

... /snip/ ...

I haven't decided.

Same here.


I agree with both the trust and the maturity argument. I have been lucky enough to gain the trust of my first three players over time. I talk to them a lot and try to get feedback. It helped that all of them were friends of mine before we gamed together.
Still, one of them had a tendency to argue and talk back for quite a while. At 27, he's the youngest. He had a tendency to feel cheated - but even he has settled down.

(On the other hand, they have also learnt not to trust everything my NPCs say at face value ... ... but that doesn't prevent them from trusting the consistency of my world.)

Three new players have recently joined the group and it is fascinating to see how they take their clues from the "older" group. They are coming to trust me much more quickly than the first three players did. Then again you could argue that I've been learning how to be a better GM over time. - I'd hope that's true!

A couple of months ago I had a guest player at my table, a GM of ten years standing or more (Rolemaster system). Now that guy was gobbling up all the spotlight and screaming for more - and kept whining for me change the rules to help him out. Up to then, I'd thought those guys lived only in ENBoards posts ...

I had sat in on one of his games and sure as hell he didn't tolerate that kind of behaviour when he GMed. Neither did I, but nevertheless we all let out a breath when he left at the end of the session. Needless to say, he'll not be invited to my table again.

 

[StalkingBlue]

Dang. Forgot to reply to the "mysterious mechanically" part.

I tend to keep to the rules - tons of mysteries there for players who after a year and a half of playing still haven't got round to reading through the PHB, much less look at other material ...
Lucky me.

Before I go outside the rules, I consider: would this mystery thingie break my game if the PCs could do the same thing? Because I want to be sure that sooner or later, if they are persistent and powerful enough, I can give them access to the mystery information / magic / item / whatever.

I have to feel that my world is consistent, or will be consistent once I have decided on what the currently rule-less mystery should be.
If I can trust the consistency of my own world, I guess I can communicate that to my players. I don't have to decide everything right away, but I need to trust that I can do that later.

Yeah. Wouldn't make a successful salesman. I'm just broken that way.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I guess I'm lucky. I've been playing with the same three people for about 10 years now. We've had other players in the group from time to time, but the core group of four has remained constant.

I've been DM for most of that time. One of the other group members will DM on occassion, when I feel like taking a break and playing. The other two players never DM, don't know all of the rules and don't really care to learn them -- they just want to have fun. If I or the other DM tell them a rule, they don't question it; they basically believe whatever we tell them. So as long as I or the other DM don't give them any reason to mistrust us, they don't.

I remember one adventure I was running. The players were out in the forest, searching for the hidden altar and worship site of an evil cult. I had just seen the movie "The Blair Witch Project," and I thought it would be cool if unexplained events like those in the movie were happening to the players. So they did.

There were no "rules" to what was happening to them -- strange voices they heard at night, the sound of children laughing, getting lost and apparently walking in circles when they took every precaution to stick to a straight route. The players were frustrated, but they just assumed it was the evil cult messing with them.

They questioned me about how all this was happening, whether it was magic or not -- I dropped some vague hints that led them to believe it was psionics. We have never used psionics in any of our games, at least not as a power that the PCs have. I didn't know how psionics worked, and the players didn't know how psionics worked. But it didn't matter, it was still fun. The players were unnerved by the strange things happening, but were having a good time.

Finally, they started treating what was happening as like an illusion, so they came up with a method to counteract what was happening by not trusting their senses of sight and hearing. I rewarded them by allowing them to find the evil cult's hideout this way. Everyone was satisfied with the way things turned out.

I guess I would have been in real trouble if afterwards, the PCs had tried to investigate the strange power further so they could use it themselves. Then I probably would have had to learn how psionics really work.

 

[Desdichado]

I think Barsoomscore expressed my own opinion very well. Mysteries come in lots of flavors, and some of them, by design (as Tolkien said) are never meant to be solved. "How did Nagash "invent" Necromancy several millenia ago, and how come no necromancer since has been as powerful?" Can a PC really figure that out? I dunno. Maybe he shouldn't. Most likely, he shouldn't even try.

I really don't think it's a consistency thing either. There are lots of things that happen in our own world that we (collectively) can't explain, not to mention the things that any smaller subset of we can't explain. Does that make the real world inconsistent? No, our understanding of it is just limited.

 

[John Crichton]

I think Barsoomscore expressed my own opinion very well. Mysteries come in lots of flavors, and some of them, by design (as Tolkien said) are never meant to be solved. "How did Nagash "invent" Necromancy several millenia ago, and how come no necromancer since has been as powerful?" Can a PC really figure that out? I dunno. Maybe he shouldn't. Most likely, he shouldn't even try.

I really don't think it's a consistency thing either. There are lots of things that happen in our own world that we (collectively) can't explain, not to mention the things that any smaller subset of we can't explain. Does that make the real world inconsistent? No, our understanding of it is just limited.

Agreed. As long as it's not overused, mysterious things (no stats, not in books, unexplainable with rules) are great. Gives things just a little X-Files/Twilight Zone kind of feel. Now if the players become fixated (read: obscessed to the point of madness) on solving this mystery I may feel inclined to throw them a bone and flesh a bit of it out. All depends on the situation at hand.