Pain-in-the-a** Players

[maddman75]

4. I am a bit too self-centered about the idea of "adapting the campaign so that the PCs fit into it, interacting and/or meddling with NPC people and activities" rather than their "adapt the campaign so that the world revolves around me" that they want.

This is the heart of the matter IMO. Sounds like a difference in style. You want to run a game with a lot of verisimilitude, where the players interact with it as if it were a real place. They want to be the stars of an action movie. Probably even a martial arts movie.

Either you or they are going to have to be flexible on this, or pass the reins. Otherwise no one is going to have any fun.

 

[Mystery Man]

Train.
Wreck.

 

[Desdichado]

Geez, I wouldn't want to run for your group or play in your campaign.

Group problems: Whiny. Inconsistent in what they're asking for. Want to tell the DM what to do all the time, and dictate the campaign. As a GM, I can only run what I'm interested in running. Does this make me an inferior GM? Probably. But when I do run, and I'm doing something I want to run, the results are certainly much better. It's great to have some feedback from the players, but some demands and caveats before we even start is a bad sign.

DM problems: It's the DMs job to make the game fun for the players too, and not punish them for not adhering to his style. I'd get ticked off real quick at a DM that said something like "it's not my fault you didn't get caltrops and alcemical equipment before this adventure started" as if it's a given that all parties would wander around with caltrops and alchemical equipment (note: I've never been in a group that had either) or "It's not my fault that you don't have a rogue, 'coz I'm gonna give you challenges that you need a rogue to solve anyway" or even worse, "well, since you don't have a rogue, and you need one to overcome the challenges I'm putting in front of you, I'll just run the rogue, and he'll do all the roguish stuff boring everyone else who's playing in the meantime."

Sorry, but the whole situation sounds like a recipe for a disaster. If it were me, I'd get out of the group right away and start from scratch.

 

[Kid Socrates]

Is your group smaller than most? My core group is just myself and two players -- we lost one and are lucky enough to be gaining another one, but until we can either get someone else interested in gaming or advertise for a few new faces in the OPK area, it's just the three of us. We've been playing more Mage and homebrew stuff lately, but we've tended to have an NPC along in the party just for balance, and in anything D&D-ish, healing and all those other skills needed in a standard game. We've done this well (the last two games) and poorly (the first game I ran about four years ago). If you really want (or need) to have an NPC in the group, have him be valuable but not TOO valuable, bail the party out once and then get bailed out once himself, have them more or less accept him as one of the party -- and then have him turn on them and become the new bad guy for the foreseeable future. If done well, it's very effective.

If you like running the swashbuckling stuff, you could easily speed through it. Open the next session with "It took three weeks and featured more than a few close calls, but you've traversed the Hordelands and you now find yourself in the city of Whateveritis." Getting there isn't always half the fun. Or you could take them to Kara-Tur. Ask them to pick one, and then just go with it. They'll have more fun, and games are much more fun when the players are having fun. Sure, having them go away from some of your ideas hurts -- I believe that somewhere there are modrons marching, but no one seems to care about that. Work with the setting they want, and then incorporate some of the stuff you want to do in it.

People who know more about the Forgotten Realms can probably help you more than I can with the exact settings and ideas and all, just thought I'd toss a thought in. Hope it works out for you.

 

[Insight]

I would like to add something to this discussion that is overlooked far too often.

While I was going to write something long and boring about what the players do and what the DM does and what each gets for the efforts, this is the bottom line: the ONLY reason to play is to have fun.

Once the players realize how much work the DM puts into preparing for and running the game, and once the DM realizes that he is running the game at the whim of the players, things make much more sense to both sides. It is a give-and-take, just like most things in life. Both sides need to work together to make the game fun and if its not fun, then why bother?

I would highly recommend dumping a group in which you feel discouraged as opposed to trudging through and being miserable. I have been in groups where I felt pressured to put forth far more effort than was worth it, and I can tell you that you are better off not playing when faced with such opposition to your efforts.

 

[takyris]

1. While I can certainly go with them telling me *exactly* what they want, in this case - "swashbuckling adventures" - they specifically said "pirates and stuff."

Aha. Different from just plain swashbuckling. Got it. Others have offered some good suggestions on ways to work that in with the specific geography. My only suggestion would be "If the part about them getting to the area with the inland sea is dull, just fast-forward to it with the little red line moving from one part of the map to the other."

2. Two of the players are apathetic about realmslore and another trashes it as "too real-world."

I know you took this campaign over, but why the heck were you guys playing in the Realms, then? The reason to play in the Forgotten Realms is that you like the Forgotten Realms. Even if the main reason you're doing it is "No time to make a homebrew", there are other campaign settings with different flavors. Not a you-issue at all -- just a group playing in the wrong setting.

3. A few of them pretend to want roleplaying and tactical combat, but the moment the DM (me or anyone else) uses tactics to counter the PC's, one specific player whines like a little girl. They really want a hackfest - but not even that - they just want carboard enemies so they can rack up xp and loot.

Based on the disdain I'm getting here, I don't really feel qualified to comment on this without hearing the other side of things. It's possible that you're right, that they do want to just rack up XP and loot. It's possible that they just want to easily win combats and advance what they see as a fun story. It's possible that they are doing some major tactical work that just keeps not working -- either because of bad luck ("Our tactics will make you Bill here the of sneak attacks!" they say, not knowing that you're about to ambush them with a combined ooze/construct/undead horde...) or possibly because you're listening to them and subconsciously nerfing their plans.

I've caught myself doing this a few times -- I don't want the PCs to have too easy a time of it, so I subconsciously have bad guys react and adapt to the PCs' plans far faster than they should. It's a bad habit that I've trained myself out of, because it's really DM metagaming -- those monsters don't know about the party's tactics, so I shouldn't play them as though they do. (The one notable exception is when I'm playing a super-genius spellcaster enemy and don't have a lot of time to prepare, at which point I mentally say, "Okay, he used scry and divinations and is prepared for anything the PCs do for the first five rounds of combat -- elemental protection as needed, negative energy protection, whatever would make the most sense at the time, he does that, through round five.")

Maybe the next time they're planning for a fight, you should leave the room (or have them do so) so that you don't hear their plan. Then see how it goes.

4. I am a bit too self-centered about the idea of "adapting the campaign so that the PCs fit into it, interacting and/or meddling with NPC people and activities" rather than their "adapt the campaign so that the world revolves around me" that they want.

Well, yeah, this is a problem. If you don't wanna change the campaign, and they aren't happy in the campaign, that's bad. No solution there. It's give and take, and if you don't give, they're gonna get tired of you taking, and nobody's gonna have fun.

5. While I can understand (and even agree with) the idea of not using my PC as an NPC, I know that the only thing that'll do is allow me more time to get into the heads of the other NPCs and play them more intelligently (see #3, above.) The issue with this is the *fact* that we chose to model our party as a Cormyrean military unit involved in commando-style missions, so even if I don't play my PC as an NPC, the party is left without the "Scout/Security" guy.

Are they still happy with that style of play? If so, tell them that it's their problem. They should hire a cohort or something. If not, you should allow things to change.

As for playing things more intelligently if you have more time... this is not a real problem. This is you making threats to get your way. "Well, you could go visit the temple, even though I don't want you to, but if you do, I wouldn't have time to prepare something fun, so I'd just have to fill it full of spectres with improved turn resistance, and I know you don't have any ghost-touch weapons."

I guess the hardest part of this for me is trying to deal with the fact that I can't bring myself to "dumb down" an encounter (monster, trap, NPC interaction) to spoon-feed them an easy solution with a massive award.

That does sound like a hard problem. You're feeling like you're competing with your players and, well, guess what? You win. You always win. You, the DM, can always beat your players. You get to hear their plans, you know their stats and weaknesses, and you can throw as much or as little at them as you like. You always win. Spending hours minmaxing the combat tactics of an ogre with an Int of 7 does not make you a better tactician than the party. It means that you're making the entire world smarter than it should be in order to defeat the PCs. Ogres with Ints of 7 shouldn't have good tactics. Lousy tactics are part of their CR. Sure, they can generally follow orders that somebody else gives, but with an Int of 7, they will probably forget most of the plan once they start hitting things. Playing an ogre this way isn't "spoon-feeding" them anything. It's playing something as it should be played.

Sounds like you would have more fun playing a tactical wargame than serving as DM. And it sounds like the game isn't going to be fun for everybody under the current plan.

 

[3catcircus]

Aha. Different from just plain swashbuckling. Got it. Others have offered some good suggestions on ways to work that in with the specific geography. My only suggestion would be "If the part about them getting to the area with the inland sea is dull, just fast-forward to it with the little red line moving from one part of the map to the other."

Thats probably what I'll have to do - I'm in the unfortunate position of not having time to home-brew everything, so I tend to take stock 1st/2nd edition adventures and convert the pieces from them I want to use. The issue in this case is that they *already* are at the inland sea - in FR, Telflamm is right on the Inner Sea...

I know you took this campaign over, but why the heck were you guys playing in the Realms, then? The reason to play in the Forgotten Realms is that you like the Forgotten Realms. Even if the main reason you're doing it is "No time to make a homebrew", there are other campaign settings with different flavors. Not a you-issue at all -- just a group playing in the wrong setting.

Couple reasons - most of us already had bought some of the books - I'd have loved to do a Kalamar setting, or a Midnight setting, or a Ravenloft setting.

Based on the disdain I'm getting here, I don't really feel qualified to comment on this without hearing the other side of things. It's possible that you're right, that they do want to just rack up XP and loot. It's possible that they just want to easily win combats and advance what they see as a fun story. It's possible that they are doing some major tactical work that just keeps not working -- either because of bad luck ("Our tactics will make you Bill here the of sneak attacks!" they say, not knowing that you're about to ambush them with a combined ooze/construct/undead horde...) or possibly because you're listening to them and subconsciously nerfing their plans.

I've caught myself doing this a few times -- I don't want the PCs to have too easy a time of it, so I subconsciously have bad guys react and adapt to the PCs' plans far faster than they should. It's a bad habit that I've trained myself out of, because it's really DM metagaming -- those monsters don't know about the party's tactics, so I shouldn't play them as though they do. (The one notable exception is when I'm playing a super-genius spellcaster enemy and don't have a lot of time to prepare, at which point I mentally say, "Okay, he used scry and divinations and is prepared for anything the PCs do for the first five rounds of combat -- elemental protection as needed, negative energy protection, whatever would make the most sense at the time, he does that, through round five.")

Maybe the next time they're planning for a fight, you should leave the room (or have them do so) so that you don't hear their plan. Then see how it goes.


As for playing things more intelligently if you have more time... this is not a real problem. This is you making threats to get your way. "Well, you could go visit the temple, even though I don't want you to, but if you do, I wouldn't have time to prepare something fun, so I'd just have to fill it full of spectres with improved turn resistance, and I know you don't have any ghost-touch weapons."



That does sound like a hard problem. You're feeling like you're competing with your players and, well, guess what? You win. You always win. You, the DM, can always beat your players. You get to hear their plans, you know their stats and weaknesses, and you can throw as much or as little at them as you like. You always win. Spending hours minmaxing the combat tactics of an ogre with an Int of 7 does not make you a better tactician than the party. It means that you're making the entire world smarter than it should be in order to defeat the PCs. Ogres with Ints of 7 shouldn't have good tactics. Lousy tactics are part of their CR. Sure, they can generally follow orders that somebody else gives, but with an Int of 7, they will probably forget most of the plan once they start hitting things. Playing an ogre this way isn't "spoon-feeding" them anything. It's playing something as it should be played.

Sounds like you would have more fun playing a tactical wargame than serving as DM. And it sounds like the game isn't going to be fun for everybody under the current plan.

Hmm - well it is kinda hard to nerf them beforehand when I *never* customize my non-adversary NPCs (e.g. when fighting a tribe of gnolls, I'll only customize the Chieftain and the Shaman and leave all of the rest of them as the standard MM gnoll.) The only time I'll nerf them is *in* combat, and as a direct result of them attempting some kind of tactic that is blatantly asking to get whacked (e.g. drinking a potion when within 5' of an enemy during combat.)

As to the example of them complaining about my use of tactics or impossible encounters: I was running an adaptation of UK2 and UK3, set in The Moonshae Isles. I specifically set the Moonshaes to have a very Celtic/Welsh-conflicting-with-Vikings flavor and intentionally modelled them after Britain, since most of the canon (Ed's original vision of the Moonshaes in his unpublished version of FR notwithstanding.) Now - using flavor text from the 2nd edition Celts sourcebook and some historical texts, I decided that the majority of the weapons that could be found would be bronze and that you couldn't just walk into a shop and buy full plate or magic weapons - in a small village several days ride from the nearest large town. When they fought the perytons, they didn't have magic weapons. The tactical situation is an open courtyard with several doorways. The peryton tactics are to zoom-and-boom for a few rounds before going to ground. Instead of fighting from doorways or using a net or setting a tree on fire (there were two of them to chose from) for concealment, they stood out in the open. I took pity on one of them who, due to the luck of the dice, should have been dead. Now, why should I have changed these tactics to suit their tactics? Regardless of how intelligent or unintelligent an enemy is, even animals exhibit deviousness when attacking.

As to playing the monsters more intelligently - I was referring to my tendency to sometimes lose focus of the tactics *during* a combat - i.e. not using all of the monsters' attack forms, special abilities, etc.

 

[LostSoul]

As to the example of them complaining about my use of tactics or impossible encounters:

It is possible that the Players didn't realize what the terrain looked like (don't know if you play with minis or not). Sometimes what's obvious to the DM isn't obvious to the Players. Usually in situations like that, where the Players are making what I consider to be very odd choices, I point out some things that could give them a tactical advantage. For example, in the encounter with pteryons, I would have asked them why they don't run into a doorway, or ask them if they want to move into cover.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

I deeply sympathise with your plight; I appear to have a group with a similar playing style. Some are excellent tacticians, role players and creative, but sadly are in the minority (we have a gaming group of 7). The majority sit there and expect to be spoon-fed plot and storyline and whine when their combat tactics fall flat or intelligent opponents use intelligent combat tactics against them. Getting a new group isn't easy, for two reasons. First, we're all good friends, so "dumping" the group is just dumping a whole heap of friends; and dumping the "bad" players and keeping the "good" players is just not going to happen. Second, there don't seem to be too many other D&D groups where I live looking for new members. I don't have any pearls of wisdom for you, I just wanted to let you know you're not the only one...

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Al'Kelhar]

... I'd get ticked off real quick at a DM that said something like "it's not my fault you didn't get caltrops and alcemical equipment before this adventure started" as if it's a given that all parties would wander around with caltrops and alchemical equipment (note: I've never been in a group that had either)...

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario... Party is spoon-fed information by DM (because they're too lazy and unimaginative to work it out for themelves) that they will be encountering yuan-ti and associated hordes of venomous beasties. Said party does not purchase alchemical antitoxin, nor magic items to delay or neutralise poison or restore ability points lost to poison. Said party then whinges to DM that the only cleric in the party has to use all of his spells on delaying and neutralising the poison, and restoring lost ability points, and hence has no spells left to do anything else with (like contribute to combat).

A DM forcing a party to carry around an entire alchemical and magic shop with them to cater for any eventuality is one thing, a DM giving fair warning about the dangers ahead and then being criticised for the players' failing to properly prepare for those dangers is another.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar