D&D General Kobayashi Maru: Should the fate of the character always be in the player's hands? POLL

[jmartkdr2]

Sounds like you might not be compatable with the group at your table.

Oh no, this was on reddit.

 

[Reynard]

Oh no, this was on reddit.

Well, there's your problem right there.

It is possible to have a fruitful, reasonable discussion on reddit, but it is far more likely for extreme viewpoints and straight up trolls to drown out decent discussion.

 

[Jaegermonstrous]

I voted "somewhat fair". I don't believe in throwing overpowered stuff at my players in the name of randomness or the "it's a harsh world" viewpoint, but I do believe in letting their actions dictate the consequences.

For example, I do my best to balance random encounters to give my players a challenge while still giving them the option to avoid or retreat if they decide it's too much for them. If a wyvern does a flyover of the area my low-level PCs are in, they should have the option to find cover. If they decide to engage it, they should have the option to run if the wyvern chomps their cleric into itty-bitty holy morsels.

That said, I once had a group walk into the ocean during a literal hurricane in search of a sahuagin nest. They wandered around on the bottom of the ocean accruing points of exhaustion until they ran into the sahuagin. They died. They died a lot. I felt terrible, but they also ignored every single warning I gave them both in- and out of game. It was awful, but I'd given them every chance to not do the thing. And they did it anyway.

 

[clearstream]

Great question! Personally, I am more interested in the different ways that people perceive the issue and the way in which they frame their responses to what they perceive the question to be.

Take an example- imagine you are playing an old-school version of D&D, and the party encounters a "classic" Banshee with a save or death wail. A player rolls a 1 and dies. Did the player have no control over it?

Arguably, yes. But some might say that the players (the party) could have done a number of things prior to the encounter- they could have scouted the area better. Done research. They could have contingencies for Banshees (earplugs? silence spells?).

You can go round and round on the issue; it's like the young guy who says, "I was late for the job interview and lost the job." And the old grumpy guy says, "That was your fault." And the young guy says, "No, it wasn't. There was an accident and traffic." And the old grumpy guy says, "Well, if you really wanted it, you would have left a few hours earlier." Etc. Is either of them right? Are both of them wrong? It really depends on your perspective.

In framing this, I would say that arguably there might be situations beyond a player's control; sometimes, no matter how well you plan, no matter how "skilled" your play, no matter how imaginative you are, you're just unlucky. You can try and stack the odds in your favor, but sometimes you just get that 1 (or succession of 1s) and you're S to the O to the L.

For some people, that's exciting- that's why we have dice. Best laid plans and all that. For others, it's infuriating- that no matter what you do, you can still get the shaft.

I think that the way that people approach the question is actually more interesting that the final answer that they give.

What I am curious about is whether or why you conflated lack of control, lack of a possibility of success, and chance? Hopefully we'll agree that the three are distinct?

Lack of control - the DM tells me that my character attacks the frost giant even though I had no intention of doing so and am not under magical mind control. The giant wins initiative and crits, one-shotting my character, who dies "due to events over which they have no control".

Lack of possibility of success - we're fighting frost giants, and the DM ignores our damage to them and grants them whatever extra attacks and movement they need to TPK us. This is the "Kobayashi Maru".

Chance - we decide to attack the frost giants having taken care to go in with relevant buffs and a decent plan. We are doing okay, when a chain of crits by a giant kills our bard. The DM is rolling in the open... this is just how the dice fell. Here I believe we feel that we did have control, but we were unlucky - "sometimes, you just roll a 1" (or your foe rolls multiple 20s, as happened here).

Reading the way you arrange the poll questions, it feels like you conflate chance with one or both of the top two - "players, not dice, should control". Is that right? Or if not, what was your intended meaning?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think I said something similar upthread. It might help if I gave some examples of what I would consider Kobayashi Maru type scenarios:

1) In Rime of the Frostmaiden Chapter 4 if you consider success as "save the Ten Towns from the dragon" then its pretty much impossible to achieve more than a partial success, especially if you are RAW about movement speeds. My players saved 3/10, and I used more realistic speeds.

2) In Sleeping Dragon's Wake (one of the included DDB modules with the Essentials Kit) the party is pretty much required to fail in order to set up the next adventure. I quote "Ideally, it concludes with the adventurers witnessing Claugiyliamatar’s body becoming possessed by Chardansearavitriol’s spirit".

3) Not D&D, but in Avengers: Infinity War one feels Avengers cannot beat Thanos because the writers won't let them. Failure is contrived. They need Thanos to win in order to set up Endgame.

 

[bloodtide]

What I am curious about is whether or why you conflated lack of control, lack of a possibility of success, and chance? Hopefully we'll agree that the three are distinct?

Lack of control - the DM tells me that my character attacks the frost giant even though I had no intention of doing so and am not under magical mind control. The giant wins initiative and crits, one-shotting my character, who dies "due to events over which they have no control".

Lack of possibility of success - we're fighting frost giants, and the DM ignores our damage to them and grants them whatever extra attacks and movement they need to TPK us. This is the "Kobayashi Maru".

Chance - we decide to attack the frost giants having taken care to go in with relevant buffs and a decent plan. We are doing okay, when a chain of crits by a giant kills our bard. The DM is rolling in the open... this is just how the dice fell. Here I believe we feel that we did have control, but we were unlucky - "sometimes, you just roll a 1" (or your foe rolls multiple 20s, as happened here).

Reading the way you arrange the poll questions, it feels like you conflate chance with one or both of the top two - "players, not dice, should control". Is that right? Or if not, what was your intended meaning?

Wait "lack of control" is just the Dm playing the game by themself? Where they just say "oh the characters do stuff" and the players....go home?

Lack of possibility of success is where the players "bite off more then they can chew". If your group is weak, when you charge at a dragon, your will have a TPK.

The Kobayashi Maru is the players cheating. For example the player snickers as they DON'T record damage their character takes. Or ignores having used a power once a day or encounter. Or just adds up the damage from an attack and "adds 20".

 

[clearstream]

Wait "lack of control" is just the Dm playing the game by themself? Where they just say "oh the characters do stuff" and the players....go home?

Yes, albeit that could be scalable.

Lack of possibility of success is where the players "bite off more then they can chew". If your group is weak, when you charge at a dragon, your will have a TPK.

Yes, that is one case. In this category are scenarios that the players cannot win; agnostic on the reasons for said guaranteed failure.

The Kobayashi Maru is the players cheating. For example the player snickers as they DON'T record damage their character takes. Or ignores having used a power once a day or encounter. Or just adds up the damage from an attack and "adds 20".

Here, I am not conflating solution with scenario. The Kobayashi Maru is unwinnable. The game that Kirk wins is that of overcoming whatever security or lack thereof prevents hacking of the institution's servers.

 

[rmcoen]

I voted "Other"; I mostly think "Sometimes you roll a 1", but 5e has so many ways to mitigate that. And then the house rules in my own game give every PC at least 1 reroll per session (if they show up on time for the game!) plus one "change the world" rewrite (Fate Point) per level. And if they still die - as a PC did two sessions ago after spending both his reroll and his Fate Point, and still pushed ahead by himself - then they die.

My issue with the question is "that they have no control of". If I decide lava flows over the town while they sleep (ala Pompeii)... I better have made sure they knew the town was at the base of a volcano. If assassins sneak into the inn to kill them... they probably should know they've pissed off someone who might send assassins. And get a perception check. And had the opportunity to set magical and nonmagical alarms. If the dragon swoops over their camp and fries them all... well d@mn, guys, I put the dragon ON THE FREAKING MAP, why did you go into those mountains? If a PC intentionally shoots the glowing gem to cause a distraction - not knowing it is the spell focus maintaining the demiplane's "bubble" holding out the Elemental Plane of Fire - then instead of "you all die as the flames rush in, the end", I can change the story such that it becomes the Bambi-run-from-forest-fire mad dash as friend and foe rush for the exit portal.

If the death cleric stands his ground against the diving white dragon (and the frost giant king riding it) in order to cast slay living on the dragon (who rolls a "1"!)... and then gets hacked apart by the giant... well, he knew what he was doing.

(These are all examples from campaigns I've run or played.)