"He's beyond my healing ability..."

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Hey you (the DM) already picked up your ball to go home.

But we play at my house!

I'm just suggsting there's no need to reconvene. My players from the past 30+ years would probably agree. [/puts away "rod of camparison"]

As such, my "to each their own" and "win-win"comments.

I'm a big advocate for using the tool suited to the job at hand.

I've never thought of any RPG as a rigid tool. More a set of guidelines to mold into the game my players and I want to run.

Just like I don't hammer screws into a wall,

Stepping away from the anology to real life, I've probably hammered a screw into a wall at some point. Not a tool guy, literally or figuritively, I guess.

I pick a RPG system that supports the genre I wish to explore. Then I design situations that the system supports well -- why fight the game if the game was chosen purposefully? It is likely that if I'm fighting the game system, I am fighting the tropes and expectations of the genre (or the game was a poor choice as it doesn't cover the chosen genre well but that's what house ruling is for).

I don't think D&D has any tropes. Going back to the 1E DMG you even had suggestions for Wild West (Boot Hill conversions) and Sci-Fi (Gamma World conversions). And I don't like picking systems that only support one genre unless I really like the overall system. I like D&D and make adjucations that help it fit the tropes I'm mashing together to create a fun game.

 

[Janx]

It's not about winning. It's about getting to use my powers. If I wanted to go along with the story, I'd go rent a movie or read a book. I want to write the story. If I can't do anything, fine, but if I can, I don't want to be stopped because of the story.

Apparently, the GM also wants to write the story.

I reckon, y'all are gonna have to take turns or learn to cooperate.

Ideally, a GM is using story telling elements to smooth out what happens into a cool story. That shouldn't be intrusive or obstructive.

Players got to realize though, you may want to play a successful bank robber, but when you make mistakes and get caught, that ain't the kind of story you get to tell.

And ultimately, the when it comes to the guy lying next to the tree, the GM could have just made the bastard dead. Is it so wrong that instead he made him wait to die until you showed up? Is that really a group destroying problem?

 

[Quickleaf]

I say this with full respect, but I can't help but see a lot of cognitive dissonance in those claims.

It's interesting to get your criticism because I can tell you're coming from a very cohesive approach to your games. I love your cultural approaches to resurrection, and it's something I've used in a warrior culture worshipping ancestors where the number of relatives dead in battle was a source of prestige. But that's probably a discussion for entirely different thread.

Back to the topic.... by your definition, a DM who has a preconceived story/plot idea, or uses DM fiat because they haven't written a specific ruling it into the house rules up front, is doing so to the detriment of the game and player choice? Is that right?

In my particular example, the PCs learned about an invading force headed toward a northern keep with limited defenses run by an NPC they'd shared drinks at the tavern with before. This happened right when they had a window of opportunity to enter a portal to a mystic isle that only appeared on the new moon to consult an oracle. They decided the oracle was more important and took the risk that the NPC could stave off the invasion long enough for the PCs to get there. (a polticial situation was tying up aid from any knights or militias)

So when they arrived to find the keep overrun, the players didn't feel screwed over, they felt they had made the right choice but there was a steep consequence. They fought their way through the small occupying force and came upon the staked bodies and heads of the NPC's court and soldiers. The NPC was mortally wounded and left to bleed out but had dragged himself to this warning beacon to light it.

The PCs followed the blood trail and found him. Now I could have had him already dead, and that worked fine. IMO having him alive to recount what happened, request the PCs save his captured family, and die with a gruff joke on his lips had a certain emotional impact (maybe drama is the wrong word?) that saving his life or finding him dead would t have IMO.

AFAIK this particular option is impossible in D&D (without house rules); either he's dead or he's saved - provided there's a healer with spells/powers left - there's no in between. Whereas I find value in that in between.

It's not a make or break it thing with my group, we all enjoy D&D, the player and I are great friends and this was more of a speed bump than anything. It did make me stop and reflect though.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[Janx]

(OTOH, I am never invested in "how things should go" either. If an NPC I thought would probably die instead lives and gives the PCs more information.....great! The players have simply chosen to take the game in a different direction.

There isn't any "story", for me, until after the fact.)

so would you ever set up this situation? PCs come back to area, to find NPC they know dying, about ready to give his last words?

Note, I'm not talking about what happens next. Merely that you've set up a dramatic moment because it hopefully makes sense to what has gone on before.

Would you have this planned out in your notes (ex. when the party comes back, Bob is dying or if the party comes back too late, Bob is laying there dying)?

what it takes to help prevent PC interference is the same kind of thinking a GM has to deal with to counter Flying over the big problem, or Speak With Dead on the murder victim. Important, but requiring a certain carefull balance between reasonable and appropriate versus blocking for the sake of getting your way.

 

[Celebrim]

It's interesting to get your criticism because I can tell you're coming from a very cohesive approach to your games. I love your cultural approaches to resurrection, and it's something I've used in a warrior culture worshipping ancestors where the number of relatives dead in battle was a source of prestige. But that's probably a discussion for entirely different thread.

Could be a cool one.

Back to the topic.... by your definition, a DM who has a preconceived story/plot idea, or uses DM fiat...is doing so to the detriment of the game

No, I'm not evaluating the rightness or wrongess of the approach. However, by any reasonable definition, a DM who has a preconceived story/plot or idea which is not mutable by player action and who uses DM fiat to ensure that the story/plot is not mutable is railroading. And not only railroading in a small way, but railroading like a conductor.

This may or may not be a good thing, and I'm not entirely opposed to lay rails occasionally, but if you see your self on the open sandbox-ish end of the spectrum, then how you see yourself seems to me to be highly at odds with how you are defining yourself. Moreover, while I don't think that anyone is a bad DM for laying rails, one of the worst crimes you can commit as a DM is laying obvious rails.

(As for how I define railroading, go here. Feel free to disagree with my definition.)

...and player choice? Is that right?

Well, pretty obviously and by definition you are limiting player choice by a fiat ruling that something, which normally works under the rules, doesn't work here. Whether that is good or bad, I'm not judging, but it is railroading.

So when they arrived to find the keep overrun, the players didn't feel screwed over, they felt they had made the right choice but there was a steep consequence.

So far so good. Even if there was rails here, you've successfully hid them.

They fought their way through the small occupying force and came upon the staked bodies and heads of the NPC's court and soldiers. The NPC was mortally wounded and left to bleed out but had dragged himself to this warning beacon to light it.

The PCs followed the blood trail and found him. Now I could have had him already dead, and that worked fine. IMO having him alive to recount what happened, request the PCs save his captured family, and die with a gruff joke on his lips had a certain emotional impact (maybe drama is the wrong word?) that saving his life or finding him dead would t have IMO.

Yeah, but now you are wanting to have your cake and eat it too. You want him to be dead, but you also want him to around to provide an RP oppurtunity. And you could probably get away with both in some games, except in D&D that PC's aren't ordinary mortals - they have superpowers. If they find a situation, they usually have the power to alter it.

With some creativity, you probably could have managed both without saying, "No." You could have set it up so that the baddies left him to be found with some sort of problem that the PC's would have a hard time figuring out/dealing with before he died. You could have had him dead, but in some defiant/courageous way he'd managed to leave a message for the PC's.

Or you could do what I do, which is look at the silence of the rules in certain area and go: "There is no obvious way under the rules for their to be a one legged pirate, or for someone's arm to get cut off by his father. We must do something about that, because if we don't, it will be a hinderance not only to my story telling, but to the sort of interesting happenstance that leads to stories I could not have foreseen."

AFAIK this particular option is impossible in D&D (without house rules); either he's dead or he's saved - provided there's a healer with spells/powers left - there's no in between. Whereas I find value in that in between.

I'm not questioning the value. I'm questioning first, the method, and second the claim that you are on the sandboxy end of the spectrum. I mean, I'm fairly middle of the road I think on this question, and you see clearly more 'adventure path/pro-railroading' than I am. To me you seem to have pretty clear rails, they just branch a bit. When Lex Luther puts Superman in a delimma, you want him to actually be in a delimma, and not go, "Wait a minute, I'm Superman. This isn't really a problem for me."

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Back to the topic.... by your definition, a DM who has a preconceived story/plot idea, or uses DM fiat because they haven't written a specific ruling it into the house rules up front, is doing so to the detriment of the game and player choice? Is that right?

In my particular example, the PCs learned about an invading force headed toward a northern keep with limited defenses run by an NPC they'd shared drinks at the tavern with before. This happened right when they had a window of opportunity to enter a portal to a mystic isle that only appeared on the new moon to consult an oracle. {DM fiat} They decided the oracle was more important and took the risk that the NPC could stave off the invasion long enough for the PCs to get there. (a polticial situation was tying up aid from any knights or militias)

So when they arrived to find the keep overrun {DM fiat}, the players didn't feel screwed over, they felt they had made the right choice but there was a steep consequence. They fought their way through the small occupying force and came upon the staked bodies and heads of the NPC's court and soldiers. {DM fiat} The NPC was mortally wounded and left to bleed out but had dragged himself to this warning beacon to light it. {DM fiat}

The PCs followed the blood trail and found him. Now I could have had him already dead, and that worked fine. IMO having him alive to recount what happened, request the PCs save his captured family, and die with a gruff joke on his lips had a certain emotional impact (maybe drama is the wrong word?) that saving his life or finding him dead would t have IMO. {DM fiat}

The weird thing to me is that most things a DM does off-screen are DM fiat and no one normally complains. But then you use it for an on-screen death scene and people are up in arms.

But, OTOH, not every injury need be expressed in hit point damage, nor healed by spells that recover hit point damage.

Exactly! But if my players would like me to introduce a system of mortal wounds so they can be just like the NPCs in my game I guess I can add that. No? You don't want crits that shatter your leg or leave your guts on the floor that no simple cure spell can restore? You'd rather be like Bruce Willis in Die Hard? That's what I thought. (NO - I'm not tryng to say that no one would enjoy a game where lasting grievous injuries occur!) Hit points are abstract and I see nothing wrong with injuries that are beyond the hit point restorative powers of player characters.

 

[Celebrim]

I'd point out that, if you are going to allow NPC children to break their arms falling out of trees...

Not only am I fine with it, but I'm fine with PC's breaking their arms falling out of trees.

Damage from a fall in my game is 1d20/10' divided by 1d6. Average damage is slightly under 3.5, but maximum damage is 20 per 10' of fall.

Damage from a fall that reduces you to 0 hit points or less is traumatic. That provokes a DC 15 Fortitude save.

If failed, one possible result is a broken arm:

Crippled Arm: The character’s arm has been smashed or amputated (in the case of slashing damage). The character gains the ‘one arm’ disadvantage until the limb is restored, and the character takes 1d6 permanent strength damage. If the limb is amputated, this strength damage cannot be restored without the application of a regeneration spell. If there is a question as to which arm has been crippled, 60% of the time it is the character’s primary arm.
The character takes no additional damage, but is bleeding until stabilized.

I don't do this primarily to be realistic. But I do enjoy the theoretical possibility.

And there is the additional niceness that conditions like the one described above are generally replacements for the condition 'Death', so its a win/win. The players get to play characters 'John McClane' characters that are more capable and durable, and I get 'dramatic' situations - either engineered off stage or incidently occuring on stage.

Exception-based design is your friend. Use it.

I played with exception based design for more than 10 years, and eventually we had an ugly separation. I couldn't take it anymore.

I think that exception based design is often used to mean a lot of things.

If by 'exception based design' you mean that you can customize monsters or DC's or materials or magic items or anything else about the setting however you want, then yeah, I'm pretty much for that.

But I don't consider those 'rules' per se.

On the other hand, 'exception based design' where you mean, "At a given time, I have no idea how the rules will interact with the game environment outside of a narrowly defined framework" is a terrible head ache for both players and DM's. Cleaning up exception based design of the spells will present me a headache likely for years to come, to say nothing of the many arguments its produced in 1e. The last thing I want as a DM is to be unable to give a clear answer about what happens when a player offers a proposition. Being forced to resort to DM fiat is more trouble than knowing the rules.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Theoretically I loath that sort of thing as total railroading. Practically I've gone along with it the few times it has come up. I've even done it once myself, and played the healing Cleric at least once. But, as I've said numerous times before, I've been very lucky in playing with really cool groups who are willing to 'go along with the gag' because we trusted one another.

The conversation would usually go something like this:

GM: "The badly wounded guy gasps out..."
Cleric Player: "Cure Light Wounds!"
GM: "He gasps out 'whatever' and dies, your healing has no effect."
Cleric Player: "Why not?"
GM" "Because I'm using the old 'guy gasps out cryptic clue with his dying breath' bit."
Cleric Player (rolling eyes): "Oh, ok. But can I have my Cure Light back?"
GM: Uh, sure. Now what do you do?"