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

[Lanefan]

Take for example the overly curious wizard with no wisdom who keeps notes on everything that happens and experiments with everything he encounters.

So when we see signs of something truly nasty that we havne't encountered before I'm actively looking to observe it with no sense of caution.

I'm pretty sure this character was the DM's best friend because any plot he wanted to give us we had a good chance of rushing straight at it.

But this also means that in a typical DM as referee situation - my character isn't worried as much about living and completing the mission as he is about what he can observe and experiment with along the way. Which ultimately bodes for a quick death because dungeons aren't created with character like this in mind.

Yet as both player and DM I love characters like these! Entertainment on the hoof! Fun for all!

And sometimes these characters last in spite of themselves. There's a wizard in my current game whose player rolled horrible starting stats (I think in 3e/5e terms his net total bonus might have been +0 or -1), the worst of which was a 6 that got stuck into Wisdom. And he's played that low Wisdom to the hilt over the years...and yes, I said "over the years" because despite everything he's now one of the longest-serving characters in the game!

My own arguably-best-ever character was another such: a 3e wizard (illusionist) who started with Wisdom 7 and who I played for most of her career* as a bubbleheaded blonde with spells - kinda smart and dumb at the same time - and despite herself she lasted for ages!

* - late in her career when she realized she'd become the highest-seniority member of the party, everyone older having died off or retired, she started acting like a mother hen looking after her brood...

 

[Lanefan]

Being a fan of the characters is important, I think. Being a fan doesn’t mean that their lives will be easy, though.

Note that you can still be a fan of the characters and cheer for them internally, while still acting as a neutral arbiter of events. It's only if-when your cheering for the characters affects how you DM the game and-or resolve events that problems arise.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yet as both player and DM I love characters like these! Entertainment on the hoof! Fun for all!

And sometimes these characters last in spite of themselves. There's a wizard in my current game whose player rolled horrible starting stats (I think in 3e/5e terms his net total bonus might have been +0 or -1), the worst of which was a 6 that got stuck into Wisdom. And he's played that low Wisdom to the hilt over the years...and yes, I said "over the years" because despite everything he's now one of the longest-serving characters in the game!

My own arguably-best-ever character was another such: a 3e wizard (illusionist) who started with Wisdom 7 and who I played for most of her career* as a bubbleheaded blonde with spells - kinda smart and dumb at the same time - and despite herself she lasted for ages!

* - late in her career when she realized she'd become the highest-seniority member of the party, everyone older having died off or retired, she started acting like a mother hen looking after her brood...

I think your DM may have the wool pulled over your eyes if you can play characters like that in a purely referee style game.

 

[Imaculata]

Note that you can still be a fan of the characters and cheer for them internally, while still acting as a neutral arbiter of events. It's only if-when your cheering for the characters affects how you DM the game and-or resolve events that problems arise.

I have played with many DM's that were too much a fan of the players. As a player, I want to feel like my victories are earned. I don't want the DM shielding any of our characters, and I don't want him handing us clues in far fetched articial ways, just to help us along. When my character is hurting, I don't want opponents to suddenly back off because the DM came to the realization that this character of mine may die.

Likewise, I also don't want to notice that the DM is moving things in our path to force us to interact with it. I can say from experience that sometimes you notice when the DM wants the players to succeed too much, and it hurts the suspense. I can also notice the opposite: When the DM is perfectly willing to let us fail, and it is a fantastic feeling. It puts you on the edge of your seat.

To give an example of the latter: I played with a great DM (and one of my best friends irl) who had us explore a sunken wizards tower from which some sort of magical contagion was spilling. We were down in the bottom of the tower, and realized that we might be ill prepared to complete our mission. However, we were all aware that traveling back to town would take many days of travel and the DM would absolutely escalate the situation if we did (the contagion was spreading in all directions at a reasonable speed). And so we pushed on, knowing that the stakes were real. We succeeded against all odds, despite knowing our DM would not spare us, and it was fantastic. Its those victories that I cherish as a player.

Its such a shame when the DM is not willing to let you fail and you notice he's doing it.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that unless one has the whole campaign planned from day 1 then there's no way to be truly impartial as a DM. Consider what happens when you are planning your next sessions dungeon. Are you taking into account the PC's and their abilities when designing the dungeon - if so then you aren't actually impartial.

Only in the most general of terms, that being my rough guess as to average party level.

What specific characters they decide to take in I probably won't know until they get there - they each have several, and cycle them in and out sometimes unpredictably.

What you are actually trying to do is set up a dungeon that will challenge the players you have - ie being partial and making decisions based on the party you are DM'ing for.

Again, only in terms of vague party level. If they decide to take in an all-warrior party they're going to get the same dungeon as if they'd taken in an all-cleric party, or an all-Dwarf party, or a more typical mix.

Now fast forward to mid-session. You PC's are struggling to get through the dungeon you thought would be a cakewalk for them. You are the one that engineered the dungeon taking into account their abilities but apparently you failed at designing this dungeon to your specifications. IMO at this point it's your failing and not theirs and the whole campaign would be best served for you to take action due to your improperly engineered dungeon.

In 3e or maybe 4e I'd buy this, as the power curve is so steep there that misguessing the party's abilities by even a level or two can be catastrophic. But 1e (a variant of which I run), 2e and 5e are much more forgiving - the power curve is flat enough that missing by a level or two isn't (usually) the end of the world, or the party.

And once in a while I'll put something in their way that really is (in theory) well above their pay grade, just to see what they do with it; and often they surprise me and sail through it with little trouble!

It's more often the "easy" ones where they come to grief. And it's mostly due to sheer luck of the dice, which is somewhat reflective of how things might go in reality.

The only TPK I've DMed in my life came in large part through bad luck: the party - already weakened by prior encounters - had their main warrior dominated against them on entering a room that held a nasty foe; by the time they'd dealt with their own guy (who, in fairness, was a handful!) they had basically nothing left, and the enemy just rolled up the line. I couldn't legitimately use morale as an out; the foe had 65 hit points and the party managed to put a collective total of three (3) points of damage into it - they just couldn't roll worth a tinker's damn. Negotiation was out of the question for a number of reasons

And it was on paper a reasonably winnable encounter even for a weakened group (and thoroughly winnable had they been at full pop), as are most fights where a party can in theory gang up on a single foe. Their bad luck in having their main Fighter turn against them is mostly what did them in.

The design flaw in the overall adventure, if there was one, is that the adventure put the PCs on a tiny demiplane and then forced the party to get through a certain set of foes (of which this was one) in order to get out and home; this was a canned module from the 3e/d20 era that I'd converted. The problem wasn't so much the forcing-through-the-foes, it was the demiplane aspect meaning they had no way to get back to any kind of home base to restock, resupply and recruit.

 

[Lanefan]

I think your DM may have the wool pulled over your eyes if you can play characters like that in a purely referee style game.

In one case (the Wisdom-6 guy) I am the DM.

But yes, any character can be played in any style as long as its luck holds out; of which these two are prime examples.

 

[FrogReaver]

In one case (the Wisdom-6 guy) I am the DM.

But yes, any character can be played in any style as long as its luck holds out; of which these two are prime examples.

But was it actually luck, or pesky DM interventionism? How, could you ever be certain?

 

[Lanefan]

But was it actually luck, or pesky DM interventionism? How, could you ever be certain?

Er...when I'm the DM I'm certain...maybe...er...can we have a definition of certain, please...

As for the character I played, the DM was (and I think still is) probably more LN about these things than I am.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So what do you do? Do you not throw a random encounter at the party when they are weakened? Do you give them an easy victory when the fight with the random encounter goes bad? How would you handle it?

• Hit points of monsters might change by a couple points (IE a monster who has 15 HP remaining gets hit for 14 HP by the rogue, and I remove the mini saying it's dead.)
• A Monster or two may run away (probably coincides with a CHA-based morale roll I make for it-- but in case you are wondering, no I don't have any set established "morale rules" and instead just select DCs as I feel appropriate at the time.)
• If it is obvious the party is overmatched and a couple PCs have dropped and there's no obvious way for them to defeat the creatures as they currently stand, I let them grab their wounded and try to escape without being overly aggressive in hunting them down as they run away.

Here's the thing about D&D that is really at an antithesis to any semblance of "real life"... in D&D (and indeed in all games and video games and movies of this sort)... people get into more "combat" scenarios minute after minute, day after day than anyone has ever actually done in real life, and creatures fight to the death an insane amount of time with little to no self-preservation. I mean it makes sense from a game point of view... we need a new repetitive challenge every few minutes just to give us something to do... but nobody has ever fought to the death the number of times these character we have do. Really, it's stupid. And in fact, we are all stupid that this is our only way we seemingly know how to create drama... just keep fighting and fighting and fighting until everything is dead.

So to think that any encounter requires both sides to fight til the last man standing-- an encounter that really shouldn't even happen in the first place (I mean really, why the hell is that Giant Constrictor Snake still hanging around attacking people after it's been chopped with a battleaxe three times, and set on fire?)-- I find to be silly. So silly in fact, that I have no need or desire to be some "Neutral Arbiter". Because it's being a neutral arbiter to some that in point of fact is pretty dumb. And thus I have no issue whatsoever in not being neutral, and try and mitigate the dumb when it gets TOO dumb. Because let's face it... most D&D combat is pretty dumb.

 

[aco175]

How much of play is 'giving' things to the PCs or moving things to allow them to find the clue based off of the DM not explaining the environment as much as needed. The players hear my description and react to things I describe. Sometimes they ask for more information or to clarify something before going to explore what I highlighted (since being told that there is a book on the desk with strange runes on it must mean something), but most of the time only know what I tell them.

Part of me thinks that moving clues or setting the DC lower to what they rolled may be filling in the blanks of what I do not explain. Is there some balance between giving enough description and not just giving away the clue vs. describing the environment enough to allow the players to catch the clues.