D&D General How to work with players who wont accept any setbacks/defeat?

[overgeeked]

"Wait - let's check it out anyway and see if they missed anything."

“They softened it up for us. Let’s go!”

 

[Vaalingrade]

"Wait - let's check it out anyway and see if they missed anything."

"Guys, found a doppelganger! Get an ax!"

 

[Nefermandias]

So some more examples from 5e.
1) party gets ambushed by bandits who outnumber them, are told by the merchant theyre gaurding to stand down welll cover any costs rather then have you die, fight anyways, lose and rather then kill them the bandits demand 50 gp and let them live. Later party tracks down the bandit camp and attacks them outnumbered 2 to 1. When asked to surrender refused and were killed.

2) party had an NPC companion. Fought someone trying to kidnap them (who explicitly was not going to harm them and was trying to incapacitate but not kill the party). Someone straps thier restrained character to the wheel of a car to try and kill the kidnapper and themselves in a fiery explosion.

3) party is given a choice between an expidition to gain more knowledge about their enemy or saving a characters mentor. Both are long distances and time constricted. Party decides to split up and ends up with multiple character deaths (which i warned them was very likely).

I have started to talk to the party but i think the greater discussion needs to take place face to face. Looking it over it is mostly one person with a little from a couple others, so at this point i just have to figure out how to approach it without seeming to single him out.

Your party seems very enjoyable to slaughter. I would be having a kick out of killing them every other session. You should consider investing on a paper shredder for their character sheets.

 

[jtylerk]

Maybe off track a bit, but I do not see any correlation between generations of gamers and a preference for sandbox or rails. I guess I'm technically a somewhat older gamer having started back late 70s/early 80s, but looking at published adventures, many had rails BITD (A series in particular), and there were also sandbox style (B2, D1-3 was pretty sand-boxy). New adventures like the 5e Princes of the Apocalypse is surprisingly very sand box. Of course there are some rails in there (the opening bits of the whatever-the-5e-dragon-adventure-is). I think the adventures reflect the players in that folks will generally play whatever is out there. I can't say I played with anyone recently (ever?) who was insistent one way or the other, they just wanted to have fun regardless of age. Maybe it's more reflective of the types I hang out with--laid back?

 

[nevin]

"Wait - let's check it out anyway and see if they missed anything."

Especially since other adventures have killesd all the monsters. Should be easy.

 

[Oofta]

Maybe off track a bit, but I do not see any correlation between generations of gamers and a preference for sandbox or rails. I guess I'm technically a somewhat older gamer having started back late 70s/early 80s, but looking at published adventures, many had rails BITD (A series in particular), and there were also sandbox style (B2, D1-3 was pretty sand-boxy). New adventures like the 5e Princes of the Apocalypse is surprisingly very sand box. Of course there are some rails in there (the opening bits of the whatever-the-5e-dragon-adventure-is). I think the adventures reflect the players in that folks will generally play whatever is out there. I can't say I played with anyone recently (ever?) who was insistent one way or the other, they just wanted to have fun regardless of age. Maybe it's more reflective of the types I hang out with--laid back?

Same here. I think people see generational groupings because it's what they expect to see. There might be slightly more of one type of player than another, but individuals will always differ.

 

[dave2008]

To clarify we werent actually playing 5e. We were in 13th age in which the flight mechanic is at any time you can declare you flee and you suffer a campaign loss (something bad happens). They wanted to run so i told them what the campaign loss would be (potion ingredients). They were unwilling to accept this so everyone else fled into the sewers and the last guy got captured by the dragon.

You should update the OP to add this information. Your getting a lot of response that are not entirely relevant because this information was not provided.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I really wonder how many people play Curse of Strahd and have the party go check out Strahd's castle immediately instead of gaining levels and looking for allies to help.

That works both ways. In Curse of Strahd, we didn’t go have dinner with Strahd because that seemed like an inordinately stupid idea. As a consequence, we missed out on a bunch of backstory.

Edit. To echo some of the other posts here: “How were we supposed to know that THIS time, we were supposed to do something stupid!”

 

[FrozenNorth]

Now hold on a second, I'm a Language Arts teacher and love me some books, but are you honestly trying to say that games like Outer Wilds, Breath of the Wild, or any number of open world games are somehow less linear than words on a page? Where every sentence is read front to back and the order doesn't change? This feels very "in my day we were better at critical thinking and these kids need their hands held or they go crazy!"

I know! Games these days are all about holding the players’ hands. Not like Darkest Dungeon, Dark Souls, XCOM 2 which all came out ehrn I was a kid…

 

[GrahamWills]

But in my experience younger players expect thier D&D games to be like thier video games.

I am little curious to know about what you mean by "younger players". I've run yearlong + campaigns for players averaging 10-12, and then in decades 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. When you say you ahed experience with "younger players" can you tell us what age group you've run long campaigns for that gives you that experience?

I'm asking because I haven't really seen it myself, and wonder what ages we're talking about ...