D&D General No Fixed Location -- dynamically rearranging items, monsters, and other game elements in the interests of storytelling

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not going to hold the DM to lower standards than anyone else, and I'm not going to tolerate meta-gaming when I see it. If you don't care about that sort of thing at your own table, then that's on you, but airing your dirty laundry in public is asking people to call you out on it.

Dirty laundry? Hah....okay, dude.

I think the cardinal rule of any RPG is: player's choices should matter. If the DM is changing things up so that any choice they make leads to the same outcome it completely undermines that principle.

And while you can get away with this once or twice on the sly, I think it is something that smart players are going to catch on to fairly quickly. I'm sure lots of players wouldn't have an issue with this but it is not the sort of game that would interest me personally. Honestly, if the DM is just going to railroad the party to an encounter with PC X, I'd personally prefer that they were upfront about it rather than pretending to give us a choice of where to go and - what a surprise - PC X just happens to be there.

Moreover psychology 101 says people value the things more if they worked harder to get them. So I don't think it is a bad thing if players occasionally spin their wheels or follow false leads; the short term frustration will mean that the ultimate success is more satisfying. Conversely, if the PCs always seem to get the clue that they need just when they need it it provides immediate gratification at the cost of their victories being less meaningful.

I don’t think that anyone is advocating for railroading, really. I don’t think that the DM changing some details during play must always be railroading. I don’t railroad my players, and I almost never undermine their choices.

The OP is about making decisions based on storytelling reasons. Pacing, drama, tension....things like that. I think those elements are equally important to the game experience, if not more so, than slavishly adhering to what’s been set before play begins.

For me, what I’m advocating is changing things as necessary not to force an outcome, but to maintain fun play.

I mean....what if you create a 6 room dungeon and after 2 rooms you realize it’s a cake walk? And the first 2 rooms were the ones you thought would be hard? Do you just go through the motions for the final 4 rooms?

I’d hope any DM I’d be playing with would be able to adapt a bit to try and make the game more challenging and fun.

 

[Blue]

I fudged a dice roll the other night and the player liked the game better. The thief was fighting a displacer beast by himself waiting for help and the NPC I had with the party cast a +2 to AC spell on him to help. The player was like "Yeah, my AC is now 17." A few rolls later I rolled an 18 and knew I would hit him, but was all, "Does a 16 hit you." He had a big smile when he said it missed.

I'm with you.

Last campaign, had a big dramatic battle vs. a character's nemesis. After a satisfying battle, that character critted their nemesis, and the damage ... left them with 3 HPs.

My response: "Tell us how you killed him."

And phooey on everyone who says that I'm invalidating player agency in doing that.

 

[Monayuris]

Personally, I wouldn't fudge things like hit points or attack rolls. I run my games fair with dice in the open.

In the example of the character nemesis that was crit down to 3 hit points... I would keep that as is. Maybe the nemesis survives to make its attack and crits the character and maybe that kills the character.

It would be an unfavorable outcome, but it would be unexpected and memorable.

In my opinion, if you are constantly manipulating the game to coax out the outcomes that are preferable to you, you are only ever going to get preferable and predictable outcomes.

I prefer to let the rules and procedures of the game drive the outcomes of the game. It can lead the story in unexpected directions. I think there is a lot of challenge and fun to be had with this approach.

 

[Blue]

Personally, I wouldn't fudge things like hit points or attack rolls. I run my games fair with dice in the open.

I roll all my dice in the open as a DM as well.

In the example of the character nemesis that was crit down to 3 hit points... I would keep that as is. Maybe the nemesis survives to make its attack and crits the character and maybe that kills the character.

That wasn't happening. Multiple characters acting before then. The question was: did it end on the memorable crit where the player got to kill his personal nemesis, or did someone else with an ordinary hit get to finish it.

In my opinion, if you are constantly manipulating the game to coax out the outcomes that are preferable to you, you are only ever going to get preferable and predictable outcomes.

I brought up this example because it was a noteworthy place to make a change.

I have to say, between the "example" with the nemesis crit killing the character not knowing anything about the state of the battle, and with you assuming I do this often, it's coming across that you are having to make up things to make your point. I'm sure that's not how it's intended, so maybe a little more care to address the points made instead of assuming what makes a good sound bite.

I prefer to let the rules and procedures of the game drive the outcomes of the game. It can lead the story in unexpected directions. I think there is a lot of challenge and fun to be had with this approach.

I do to. And that's a perfectly valid DMing style. One I usually follow. I'm not condemning any style.

For myself, I prefer to keep many tools at the ready and use those most appropriate for enhancing fun for the specific table and situation at hand.

 

[Umbran]

No, the burden is on you to try and defend meta-gaming.

Mod Note:
No.

Seeing as you have yet to quote the DMG, or any other core rule, that says what the OP was talking about was breaking rules, you don't get to lay about with "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". You haven't given any evidence at all.

Calling people cheaters. Demanding evidence without giving any. You are done in this conversation.

 

[uzirath]

Player hat: If it feels like the DM is changing the world willy-nilly so that things aren't consistent and there aren't any real challenges, then boo. I don't want magic amulets to fall out of every chimney my character happens to walk by. I want to be able to miss clues and smack my forehead later when I realize my mistake. I also want the game to be engaging and fun. If the adventure becomes a boring slog, then the DM sure-as-heck should make on-the-fly adjustments. My leisure hours are precious and I don't have time to count the grains of sand in the least interesting corner of the DM's precious sandbox. As a player, I will be as helpful as possible. I have plenty of character hooks. I am a team player. I'm curious about the world. I won't roll my eyes at flimsy genre assumptions. But I expect the DM to recognize when their adventure isn't working as planned and inject some fun into it. I could care less if it's what they "originally planned on." It's not part of the world until my PC sees it. So up until that point, you can burn your notes and just make it up and I don't care at all.

DM hat: My primary responsibility is to facilitate a rewarding roleplaying experience for my players. As such, every session should feature tension and conflict and choices that matter. Ideally, I design things in advance so that such things happen naturally and the game flows in interesting directions (ideally, in directions that surprise me, too). Sometimes, however, I screw up and the session doesn't ignite. In that case, I try to figure out what I can do to help make something meaningful happen before our gaming time is up. Since the entire world beyond the PCs is my domain, it shouldn't be too difficult. After the game, I may need to revise my notes to account for whatever inspiration struck me at the time.

When I run one-shot dungeons (basically railroads) on the clock, I design them with this in mind. I determine which scenes are essential and which are not. If the players are efficient, they get the full map. If they lose a lot of time debating things, then they get a smaller dungeon. They still reach the climactic battle (or whatever) and go home hoping for more.

 

[Prakriti]

When I run one-shot dungeons (railroads) on the clock, I design them with this in mind. I determine which scenes are essential and which are not. If the players are efficient, they get the full map. If they lose a lot of time debating things, then they get a smaller dungeon. They still reach the climactic battle (or whatever) and go home hoping for more.

This is how I design one-shots too. I usually include 4 encounters, with the third being "optional," meaning that I can remove it on the fly, if need be, for time considerations. If we're past the three-hour mark when the party reaches it, then it's gone. I move on to the final encounter instead.

 

[Arilyn]

I don't think anyone is advocating for GMs to have players skip through adventures finding loot wherever they look, and casually defeating all risks because of fudged dice rolls. Improvising is simply one tool which can be employed by the GM to make sure the game doesn't grind to a halt while players knock their heads against a wall. It can be used to make sure the vital clue is found, in case players do something wholly unexpected. It can be used to shift pacing or undo an error made during prep. Or maybe one of the PCs makes a brilliant deduction about the villain that's wrong, but it's so perfect you have to change your original idea.

This is a useful tool.

 

[Coroc]

Last year, I ran a group of friends through "The Lost Mines of Phandelver," because everyone wanted to play and I didn't have time to write an adventure of my own. The players all insisted they had never read or played it before, so I figured it would be a fun way to spend 3-4 gaming sessions.

During the first gaming session, it became clear that one person had read the entire thing. Which is fine, I didn't mind as long as he kept it under his hat and didn't spoil it for anyone else. But this was a guy who enjoys knowing stuff that others don't, and likes to make a big show of it. He warned them of the first ambush, warned everyone about the water trap, coached them on what to ask Agatha and predicted what she would say, that sort of thing.

I asked him about this clairvoyance between each gaming session, and he maintained that he had never read or played this adventure before. I didn't believe him, so I moved a few things around and added a couple of monsters to certain places in Wave Echo Cave.

During the game, after his character spent several minutes searching a certain place for a certain thing and not finding it, he accused me of cheating. Then he got really quiet and pouted for the last two gaming sessions, rarely contributing at all except to mumble his attack rolls. Everyone else at the table sensed the tension, and it really squelched their enthusiasm at the table.

I'm still not sure if I made the right call.

Sounds like a very immature player to me. I play in a campaign atm (another system but that is unimportant for this issue) where one of the others has played the whole campaign already. I never felt spoiled, and if his character tried something which could eventually come from his previous knowledge but also would have been a reasonable decision if he would not have this, the DM if in doubt did not permit it.

 

[Lanefan]

As amusing as this argument always is at first, it is almost never worth it and is absolutely never, ever, productive.

Disagree.

Someone has to bang this drum - good on Saelorn for doing so.

Metagaming from the player side doesn't make for a better game in any way. Sometimes the opposite might appear to be true at first glance, but on closer review there's almost certain to have been some very avoidable mistake made in order to get to that point.

Metagaming from the DM side doesn't often make for a better game, but can in unusual and-or infrequent circumstances.