D&D 5E Lurking players

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Hey. A random one for you.
Most of the posters here seem to be DMs - which is perfectly sensible. I wonder though how many players lurk and pick up tips, and have any of you DMs out there noticed it?
Only reason I ask is because I have read several accounts of LMoP where the PCs behead the Bugbear and use it to intimidate the goblins. Including my group at the weekend*. I first read that and thought, wow, cool idea. But it appears to be almost standard issue from forums both here and elsewhere I have seen. Are all players naturally inclined to behead the bad guys or do lurking players pick up tips to deploy in session? Just a thought.

* in my group's case, they went one step further. They not only walked in carrying the head to frighten the goblins, but then decided, nah, sod it, waded in halfway through hearing the underboss goblin's demands and ended up killing him by throwing the head at him as a weapon.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Multiple parties I have played in or DMed for have used the "behead the boss/scary thing and use it to intimidate others", and some parties have used it more than once. I think it's just the most obvious way to 'prove' that you've killed something nasty.

 

[Cernor]

I was running LMoP and I killed and beheaded Cyanwrath: after beating him the first time I let him withdraw, the second time he got no mercy. It didn't help us out (either in intimidating cultists or negotiating for a bigger reward), so a couple days later I tossed it in our camp latrine.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I was running LMoP and I killed and beheaded Cyanwrath: after beating him the first time I let him withdraw, the second time he got no mercy. It didn't help us out (either in intimidating cultists or negotiating for a bigger reward), so a couple days later I tossed it in our camp latrine.

Did that scare away any Otyugh's in hiding?

 

[transtemporal]

I think players are just naturally psychotic, myself.

Having said that, our party has started a disturbing trend of talking to the bad guys and resolving our issues with words. It feels weird and unnatural.

 

[SirAntoine]

Hey. A random one for you.
Most of the posters here seem to be DMs - which is perfectly sensible. I wonder though how many players lurk and pick up tips, and have any of you DMs out there noticed it?
Only reason I ask is because I have read several accounts of LMoP where the PCs behead the Bugbear and use it to intimidate the goblins. Including my group at the weekend*. I first read that and thought, wow, cool idea. But it appears to be almost standard issue from forums both here and elsewhere I have seen. Are all players naturally inclined to behead the bad guys or do lurking players pick up tips to deploy in session? Just a thought.

* in my group's case, they went one step further. They not only walked in carrying the head to frighten the goblins, but then decided, nah, sod it, waded in halfway through hearing the underboss goblin's demands and ended up killing him by throwing the head at him as a weapon.

Smart players will learn from DM's and other players, for sure. The Internet has changed everything.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

I think players are just naturally psychotic, myself.

Having said that, our party has started a disturbing trend of talking to the bad guys and resolving our issues with words. It feels weird and unnatural.

Unclean! Unclean! (frantically rings handbell) Burn the witch!

 

[was]

Most of the posters here seem to be DMs - which is perfectly sensible. I wonder though how many players lurk and pick up tips, and have any of you DMs out there noticed it?

...I think that most of the posters here both DM and play, depending on what's going on in their real lives. It just seems disproportionate because, IME, DM's ask for more advice building adventures than most players do when building their characters.

...I haven't seen anything from the site come into play. I have, however, seen people use tactics they heard from others around the table when they were telling 'old war stories' from their past gaming days.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

Smart players will learn from DM's and other players, for sure. The Internet has changed everything.

The level of communication and story sharing we have nowadays would have been inconceivable to groups twenty years ago. By reading forums like this one as a player in any kind of RPG, you basically get to learn from other online people's experiences, not just people you meet in person. That means you have dozens upon dozens of stories to pull from instead of only the anecdotal accounts that other gamers have told you across the table. It's truly quite remarkable.

Also, about the beheading thing. I had a player with a half-orc barbarian whose modus operandi was pretty much to behead anything 'tough' that he killed. In LMoP, he did indeed take Klarg the bugbear's head when the party finished clearing out Cragmaw Cave. I guess carrying around heads as trophies is more common than we think.

 

[Sadras]

Tis' true, beheading the boss to instil fear has become quite popular.

The idea might have originated with Theseus although, the bastard one-upped us and used it for petrification. Then of course there is the biblical Salome and her mother who whimsically requested the head of John the Baptist, the infamous decapitation of Marie Antoinette to signify a political/social change, the daily beheadings of the virgin queens to ensure fidelity until Scheherazade cunningly put a stop to that tradition and this is ignoring the middle-eastern punishment & current use of beheadings.

Given our myths, fairy tales, religions and histories we are up to our necks in beheadings...