D&D General "It's not fun when..."

[overgeeked]

Player, "HEY YES TWO NAT 20S Tiamat is going down. That beeep."
Player," WHAT Tiamat hit me with TWO NAT 20s the DM is a BEEP."
Monk, "YEs Key and fail save. He prone and stunned. In your face." Does victory dance.
Monk, "I move 40! why does cost me 20 to stand up from prone. It should only be 15 like when I was 1st level." {Actual quote} Gives DM sad puppy eyes.
Player "YES The monster is (charmed, stunned, banished)! This is a great game."
Player, "WAH! My pc is (charmed, stunned, banished)! This game sucks!"
Players always love it when the fight goes their way, but a minor setback is cause to rewrite the rules more in their favor.

Exactly.

 

[Lanefan]

Speaking of fleeing: I was in a game the other day where the DM had our base of operations (a school of sorts in a large tower) attacked by some bad guys which included an adult red dragon. We are all around 5th to 7th level. My cleric, Wanda Curelight, was able to blast some of the invaders with a fireball and others slowed them down and finished them off, but we knew the red dragon wasn't anything we could handle, so we fled. As it turns out, this was the DM's expectation - we were meant to flee out a tower window and climb down a few floors to escape the immediate problem then head down the stairs and out of there. Only the tower was described as something like 200 feet tall, so falling was just as deadly as the dragon's fire, and not everyone - including my cleric - were willing to take the chance that the DM would call for a Strength (Athletics) check that would likely fail.

Thus far, this sounds like a hell of a good set-up!

So two of us tried to get away in a mazelike library in hopes that the dragon would go after someone else. The other 3 characters climbed out the window. The dragon went after the two that went into the library. As soon as the dragon got within breath weapon range, my character was toast. The other fell shortly after that. The three that went out the window had some problems too and one of them died. This was 30 minutes into the session.

There were two survivors, though - right?

If yes, there's no good reason for the DM to do anything other than carry on with those two, for now, being the party. Do they recruit replacements for the fallen (meaning you other three players bang out new characters) or do they try to recover and revive the corpses?

What was initially hailed as a shake-up to the campaign ended up being retconned after a 5-minute break of DM reflection. The DM's intention was to have us flee out the window to witness the destruction of our base presumably to set up a revenge arc or whatever. That didn't work out, so corpses were recovered and resurrected, and we were back in business. This was a dissatisfying moment, and the result of a DM who should have known better trying to push a particular outcome.

Yes, this is a bi-ig mistake on the DM's part: the DM needs to roll with the punches of what happened, just as the players do. It's rare that a DM manages to throw a curveball at him(?)self, but that's what seems to have happened here, and he(?) needs to be able to hit it.

The chase mechanics may have helped here (my cleric actually has a good Dex and Inspiration banked), but what would have also helped is not pointing a gun at something you're not willing to shoot, and not trying to force a particular resolution. I definitely find that sort of thing to be unfun.

Personally, I'd very likely have found it great fun until the moment the DM suggested a retcon, at which point fun ends.

 

[Scribe]

Player, "HEY YES TWO NAT 20S Tiamat is going down. That beeep."
Player," WHAT Tiamat hit me with TWO NAT 20s the DM is a BEEP."
Monk, "YEs Key and fail save. He prone and stunned. In your face." Does victory dance.
Monk, "I move 40! why does cost me 20 to stand up from prone. It should only be 15 like when I was 1st level." {Actual quote} Gives DM sad puppy eyes.
Player "YES The monster is (charmed, stunned, banished)! This is a great game."
Player, "WAH! My pc is (charmed, stunned, banished)! This game sucks!"
Players always love it when the fight goes their way, but a minor setback is cause to rewrite the rules more in their favor.

In every scenario here, the player is obnoxious. Its a game, its not life or death. lol

 

[iserith]

There were two survivors, though - right?

If yes, there's no good reason for the DM to do anything other than carry on with those two, for now, being the party. Do they recruit replacements for the fallen (meaning you other three players bang out new characters) or do they try to recover and revive the corpses?

The latter is what happened, effectively. It wouldn't have been practical to make new characters.

Yes, this is a bi-ig mistake on the DM's part: the DM needs to roll with the punches of what happened, just as the players do. It's rare that a DM manages to throw a curveball at him(?)self, but that's what seems to have happened here, and he(?) needs to be able to hit it.

Personally, I'd very likely have found it great fun until the moment the DM suggested a retcon, at which point fun ends.

The issue was really the DM expecting the game to proceed in a specific direction then giving the players freedom to decide on something in the opposite direction.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Player, "HEY YES TWO NAT 20S Tiamat is going down. That beeep."
Player," WHAT Tiamat hit me with TWO NAT 20s the DM is a BEEP."
Monk, "YEs Key and fail save. He prone and stunned. In your face." Does victory dance.
Monk, "I move 40! why does cost me 20 to stand up from prone. It should only be 15 like when I was 1st level." {Actual quote} Gives DM sad puppy eyes.
Player "YES The monster is (charmed, stunned, banished)! This is a great game."
Player, "WAH! My pc is (charmed, stunned, banished)! This game sucks!"
Players always love it when the fight goes their way, but a minor setback is cause to rewrite the rules more in their favor.

Found the answer to the thread.

Not the dialogue, the attitude that fostered writing it.

 

[Lanefan]

The latter is what happened, effectively. It wouldn't have been practical to make new characters.

Though by retcon rather than organic play, it seems, which outright kills the funfor me.

The issue was really the DM expecting the game to proceed in a specific direction then giving the players freedom to decide on something in the opposite direction.

Or giving the dice that freedom.

I mean, hell, for all the DM knew you lot might have got lucky and wasted that ol' Red without ever needing to flee - did the DM have a fallback plan for that eventuality (my guess would be 'no')?

 

[Reynard]

Though by retcon rather than organic play, it seems, which outright kills the funfor me.

Or giving the dice that freedom.

I mean, hell, for all the DM knew you lot might have got lucky and wasted that ol' Red without ever needing to flee - did the DM have a fallback plan for that eventuality (my guess would be 'no')?

Prep situations, not plans.

 

[pukunui]

The chase mechanics may have helped here ...

Probably not because the chase mechanics in the DMG are rubbish. Not that anyone knows that since no one reads the DMG (except for me).

Define fun.

I'm playing Jedi: Fallen Order right now.

Is it fun to die? No, it's usually annoying.

But it would be even less fun to not die. Indeed, one of the most fun parts of the game is when I had to take like six tries to beat the 9th sister, and a lot of the time when I'm playing I'm thinking "I'm not playing well enough to be beating the game this easily."

Is it fun when you fail? No, it's usually annoying.

But it's even less fun when you can't fail. The complaint to me feels like, "I made my best attack, but I missed!" The possibility of "rolling a 1" is always there. Something can always negate your action. It's frustrating, but it would be even more frustrating if it couldn't.

The main difference here is that Jedi: Fallen Order is a single player game, and when you fail, you get to try again immediately. In a cooperative team-based game where you're all constructing the narrative together as you play, when you fail, you can't just try again. What happened is generally set in stone, and you have to just accept it and move on, which is fine.

For me, it's not failure in and of itself that's frustrating or unfun. It's when I have a repeated run of failures due to poor dice rolls / bad luck / etc. It's when I spend the better part of an hour or more not actually getting to contribute to the game in a meaningful way (and get teased about it on top of that).

The party fighting a heroic, effective, but losing, battle until the wizard drops a fireball on them is awesome.

Dropping that fireball and killing them all in the first round... is an issue of encounter design. When the party wizard has Fireball, how did you make an encounter that could be defeated by a single use of the spell? They're all low hit points and bunched up to start? What was the GM thinking?

Or, to put it in this thread's idiom - It is not fun when the encounters are not well-designed for the party.

Exactly. In my last session, we were fighting some warforged in the Mournland when an oni and its gnoll minions ambushed us. The oni's cone of cold took out the remaining warforged for us, so we were able to quickly shift our focus to the gnolls and the oni. We took out the gnolls and then beat on the oni. As it tried to flee invisibly, the artificer PC cast sleep, hoping to roll well enough against the wounded oni's reduced hit points. It worked! It was a brilliant end to a tough fight.

If, however, the artificer had cast sleep right at the start and had somehow managed to knock the oni out right away, while we undoubtedly would've felt relieved, I don't think it would have been as fun/satisfying.

 

[Oofta]

In every scenario here, the player is obnoxious. Its a game, its not life or death. lol

Maybe not in your game. Some people want the game to have real stakes.

 

[iserith]

Or giving the dice that freedom.

I mean, hell, for all the DM knew you lot might have got lucky and wasted that ol' Red without ever needing to flee - did the DM have a fallback plan for that eventuality (my guess would be 'no')?

I'm not sure. It couldn't have been fun for the DM here either.