D&D General It's not a video game.

[Reynard]

This thread is not about aesthetics.

This thread is based on some weird stuff I see on Facebook, Reddit and even here: new players asking for specific strategy help with published 5E adventures. Not "help me build a cool character" or "how do I optimize versus devils" but literal, "how do I get past the cultists in Baldur's Gate?" or "Which Ten Towns adventures give the best loot?"

It is crazy to me that people would ask questions like that for a tabletop RPG. First, it is inefficient because you have NO IDEA how the GM might change the adventure. But moreover it is basically cheating. You can't cheat in a single player CRPG because it is just you, but there are other people at your D&D table.

Anyway, like I said, I have seen it popping up with an increasing frequency and I found it baffling.

Has anyone experienced this in real life? Have you ever had a player cheat at the table in this manner (reading the module beforehand or whatever)? Is it new or am I just noticing it now?

 

[payn]

I ran into this on occasion at Pathfinder Society Tables with scenarios. Thats tends to happen when lots of people play them at tables all the time and are a community. Also, the GM is/was somewhat limited on what they can change in the scenarios.

As for modules and/or adventure paths, I've heard of this kind of thing but never experienced it. Most folks I game with would consider that spoiling the adventure.

 

[Mort]

This thread is not about aesthetics.

This thread is based on some weird stuff I see on Facebook, Reddit and even here: new players asking for specific strategy help with published 5E adventures. Not "help me build a cool character" or "how do I optimize versus devils" but literal, "how do I get past the cultists in Baldur's Gate?" or "Which Ten Towns adventures give the best loot?"

It is crazy to me that people would ask questions like that for a tabletop RPG. First, it is inefficient because you have NO IDEA how the GM might change the adventure. But moreover it is basically cheating. You can't cheat in a single player CRPG because it is just you, but there are other people at your D&D table.

Anyway, like I said, I have seen it popping up with an increasing frequency and I found it baffling.

Has anyone experienced this in real life? Have you ever had a player cheat at the table in this manner (reading the module beforehand or whatever)? Is it new or am I just noticing it now?

I rarely run published modules and when I do I change A LOT - so it doesn't really happen at my table (though our current campaign is the adventures from the Yawning Portal - which we are doing mostly for nostalgia, so I wouldn't care much if they DID have the module - but I don't think any of my players would).

But I just saw this very thing with my son's group. He's 13 and running for a group of friends (currently over zoom). He decided to run a published module (Rise of Tiamat - I think he just liked the cover). One of his players. literally, had the module up AS my son was running it.

He asked me about it, I told him to not say anything about "cheating" just say that it won't be nearly as fun if he (the player) knows what will happen. I also offered to help my son change the adventure significantly (frankly the module could use it anyway!).

We'll see what happens.

 

[Retreater]

I read a lot of DM advice about how to run specific adventures. For Rime of the Frostmaiden I downloaded a DM "Strategy Guide" to help me present it the best way, to help organize the campaign, and to not TPK the party in the first encounter (which I did anyway, sadly).

I think reading the adventures beforehand has always been a problem. I've seen it since I started DMing in the 1990s. However, players who do that don't last long at my tables if they act on that information.

Now sometimes it happens that a player has already read an adventure (or even played through it once, when we're talking about classics especially). In those cases, I ask that they try to avoid acting on that information. In practice, they usually "dumb down" their characters, purposefully missing obvious clues and making bad decisions, over-correcting out of concern they might look like cheaters.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

This thread is not about aesthetics.

This thread is based on some weird stuff I see on Facebook, Reddit and even here: new players asking for specific strategy help with published 5E adventures. Not "help me build a cool character" or "how do I optimize versus devils" but literal, "how do I get past the cultists in Baldur's Gate?" or "Which Ten Towns adventures give the best loot?"

It is crazy to me that people would ask questions like that for a tabletop RPG. First, it is inefficient because you have NO IDEA how the GM might change the adventure. But moreover it is basically cheating. You can't cheat in a single player CRPG because it is just you, but there are other people at your D&D table.

Anyway, like I said, I have seen it popping up with an increasing frequency and I found it baffling.

Has anyone experienced this in real life? Have you ever had a player cheat at the table in this manner (reading the module beforehand or whatever)? Is it new or am I just noticing it now?

Some people absolutely play D&D like they would a digital RPG. It's a valid way to play and can be a ton of fun.

My longest 4E campaign was like that. I introduced a group of friends to D&D, and their references were games like Diablo. It became clear to me that even though they enjoyed social interactions and investigating, they were driven by challenging encounters, tactics and obtaining loot.

I started building my campaign with few encounters (sometimes as little as one between long rests) but have them really push the party to its limit. They really enjoyed standing around the game mat and deciding together what were the best moves and making plans "if you do enough damage and he's bloodied, I can do this next turn".

It's definitely different. I tend to reprimand my players if they do too much backseat decision taking for others or try to control what other players do. But in this playstyle its almost encouraged.

Obviously, optimizing comes with it. Optimizing a character always seemed silly to me. But optimizing a party totally make sense. They would discuss and say stuff like "I'm thinking of picking this power next level that will allow me to push back enemies", and then they'd try and create synergy with their build choices.

I've ran something similar in 5E once, but it didn't last as long because of unrelated reasons.

 

[jayoungr]

I also offered to help my son change the adventure significantly

Tell your son to check out this thread:

D&D 5E - Enhancing "Rise of Tiamat" (Practical stuff to try at your table!)

(A companion to the similar thread for Hoard of the Dragon Queen.) My players just gave me Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat for an early Christmas present, on the understanding that I'll run the adventures for them. I've seen comments around the net saying these modules can use...

www.enworld.org

@GuardianLurker has some excellent suggestions for changing up and adding to the adventure. The "Frozen Castle" supplement would also be fun to check out, especially if the group didn't play Hoard of the Dragon Queen first.

Frozen Castle - Expanding Tyranny of Dragons - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Frozen Castle - Expanding Tyranny of Dragons - Tyranny Expanded: A Return to Skyreach Castle! The loss of Skyreach Castle in Hoard of the Dragon Queen was a major s

www.dmsguild.com

 

[R_J_K75]

Has anyone experienced this in real life? Have you ever had a player cheat at the table in this manner (reading the module beforehand or whatever)? Is it new or am I just noticing it now?

Yes. I had a player read an adventure that I ran once. It was Castle Spulzeer. I realized not long into the first session when he kept commenting on how things were supposed to play out but didn't because I changed so much. In the end him reading the adventure did no good and his character died after the party ended up in Ravenloft.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Pre-written adventures are great to use and, as I've found, a great place to start for customizing things for your players. It's so easy for a DM to say "The monster in room 4B doesn't thematically so I'm going to change it". or to change an encounter to play into a character's background.

@Mort I'd start by having your son move the loot around at the very least. If the fancy magic sword is supposed to be in the library and it's not, then it will be fun to watch the "cheaters" panic.

 

[TwoSix]

It's an open source game with a large community. It's not surprising that new modes of play have opened up over time.

It's not that different than watching a Youtube video about boss strategies for raids in Warcraft, and no one considers that cheating. It's not like most encounters in a module can be skipped, you still need to execute the plan and be ready for unexpected complications.

 

[dave2008]

Some people absolutely play D&D like they would a digital RPG. It's a valid way to play and can be a ton of fun.

My longest 4E campaign was like that. I introduced a group of friends to D&D, and their references were games like Diablo. It became clear to me that even though they enjoyed social interactions and investigating, they were driven by challenging encounters, tactics and obtaining loot.

I started building my campaign with few encounters (sometimes as little as one between long rests) but have them really push the party to its limit. They really enjoyed standing around the game mat and deciding together what were the best moves and making plans "if you do enough damage and he's bloodied, I can do this next turn".

It's definitely different. I tend to reprimand my players if they do too much backseat decision taking for others or try to control what other players do. But in this playstyle its almost encouraged.

Obviously, optimizing comes with it. Optimizing a character always seemed silly to me. But optimizing a party totally make sense. They would discuss and say stuff like "I'm thinking of picking this power next level that will allow me to push back enemies", and then they'd try and create synergy with their build choices.

I've ran something similar in 5E once, but it didn't last as long because of unrelated reasons.

That is not exactly what the OP is talking about. The OP mentioned the Player trying to find out what actually happens later in the adventure so they can use that knowledge to beat it.