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<blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 5394501" data-attributes="member: 726">I hear what you're saying... but there has to be a limit to the enemy's power, or what's the point, right?&nbsp; I control all the dials.&nbsp; I could have the enemies &quot;win&quot; any time I want, for any reason.&nbsp; My job is to craft a campaign where the enemies don't have the wherewithal to arbitrarily thwart players' plans, or what's the point in playing?Perhaps the problem was this:&nbsp; there's an unspoken agreement hanging over almost every aspect of the campaign, that when I present a challenge, and the players are both clever and thorough about taking it on, that there should be some way to allow them a victory.&nbsp; Otherwise, why did I give them the challenge in the first place?The answer, perhaps, lies in how granular one wants to be about it.&nbsp; If one considers the challenge to be:&nbsp; &quot;Save Praska by performing the ritual on Mokad,&quot; then I certainly did make victory possible.&nbsp;&nbsp; But the sub-challenge of &quot;prevent the Black Circle from finding out what we're doing&quot; turned out to be too difficult, despite clever and through solutions from the players.&nbsp; And the players don't really know (and have no way of knowing) what &quot;zoom-level&quot; they should be considering. I certainly didn't feel at the time that my players were being petulant or unreasonable.&nbsp; I felt more like:&nbsp; &quot;Oops.&nbsp; Yeah, I sure set the party up to fail at this sub-challenge, as a part of making the main challenge appropriately difficult.&nbsp; I'd be upset too.&quot;As a side-note, I have no business throwing first-stones here.&nbsp; I nitpick at Piratecat all the time (in a good-natured way, of course!&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) looking for angles, things he's missed, and &quot;wondering out loud&quot; how the bad guys managed to hose us so badly again.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Sagiro, post: 5394501, member: 726"] I hear what you're saying... but there has to be a limit to the enemy's power, or what's the point, right? I control all the dials. I could have the enemies "win" any time I want, for any reason. My job is to craft a campaign where the enemies [i]don't[/i] have the wherewithal to arbitrarily thwart players' plans, or what's the point in playing? Perhaps the problem was this: there's an unspoken agreement hanging over almost every aspect of the campaign, that when I present a challenge, and the players are both clever and thorough about taking it on, that there should be some way to allow them a victory. Otherwise, why did I give them the challenge in the first place? The answer, perhaps, lies in how granular one wants to be about it. If one considers the challenge to be: "Save Praska by performing the ritual on Mokad," then I certainly did make victory possible. But the sub-challenge of "prevent the Black Circle from finding out what we're doing" turned out to be too difficult, [i]despite[/i] clever and through solutions from the players. And the players don't really know (and have no way of knowing) what "zoom-level" they should be considering. I certainly didn't feel at the time that my players were being petulant or unreasonable. I felt more like: "Oops. Yeah, I sure set the party up to fail at this sub-challenge, as a [i]part[/i] of making the main challenge appropriately difficult. I'd be upset too." As a side-note, I have no business throwing first-stones here. I nitpick at Piratecat all the time (in a good-natured way, of course! ;)) looking for angles, things he's missed, and "wondering out loud" how the bad guys managed to hose us so badly again. [/QUOTE]

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