Save My Game - Goes off like a bomb!

[Glyfair]

Here's a puzzle. To solve it, you have to figure out the answer. If you can't figure out the answer, you have to go a different way.

Puzzles are absolutely fine, provided they don't block the characters' progress. You solve a puzzle, then you get a reward, but you can complete the adventure/save the damsel in distress/prevent the Evil Wizard from Blowing Up The World/stop the Mad Cultists from Summoning the Elder Horror or whatever else without solving the puzzles.

Of course, this can vary among campaign styles. What you are saying is accurate for an "adventure driven" campaign. By that I mean something like the adventure paths, where you are expected to go from adventure A to adventure B (with possible side treks).

However, in more free form campaigns this isn't necessarily a problem. If the players can't solve the puzzle that allows them to enter the "Lost Tomb of Martek" then they find other places to adventure. Even if the tomb contains the bane weapon to their archenemy they will be able to face him without it (or they can try other options for weapon to fight their enemy).

Of course, even in those campaigns it can be a problem when done badly. If the players have been working towards a goal for months and then encounter a puzzle they can't solve, that can kill the campaign. If they had to spend a session arranging transport to Xen'drik, a session travelling to Stormreach, then spend a session finding a guide to the tomb, then spent sessions getting to the tomb with multiple encounters, then spent a couple of sessions exploring to tomb, they'll have problems if they find the last room has a "unsolvable" puzzle. If they don't work out that the way in the room is to say "friend" because the hieroglyphics say "Speak friend and enter" then they will be frustrated.

 

[Jhaelen]

(Or as I put it awhile back: the beauty of pen & paper is being able to ad-lib a cocktail party. The beauty of a CRPG is having a hundred-monster fight take fifteen very exciting minutes instead of twenty exciting minutes over the course of four hours.)

Well put

And the horribly designed game that I mentioned above, regarding the Hand of Plot that wouldn't allow us to get past the portcullis? That was Speaker in Dreams... which I've been told is actually a wonderfully reactive and nonlinear adventure when run by a good DM.

I happen to own that module, too, though I never played it - as written.
I liked the event-based nature of the adventure but the plot development didn't work for me (A mind-flayer opening the gates to hell? Hmm.). But I used the central idea (mind-flayer taking over a city), maps and a couple of encounters to create my own adventure, so it was still useful.

But I'd really like to know, where that portcullis was?! And why did you have to go to the temple before the DM would let you past it?

I guess what you're really saying is, it was the DM's 'fault' you couldn't get past, not the module's design(er)'s, right? Please correct me, if I'm wrong.

 

[takyris]

But I'd really like to know, where that portcullis was?! And why did you have to go to the temple before the DM would let you past it?

I guess what you're really saying is, it was the DM's 'fault' you couldn't get past, not the module's design(er)'s, right? Please correct me, if I'm wrong.

Exactly. The portcullis was blocking us from getting into the mayor's manor. According to the module itself, there's no reason why the player couldn't go to the mayor's manor immediately after things start going all pear-shaped.

But our DM wanted us to do the temple, so we had to go do the temple.

My point isn't that CRPGs can't be open and reactive. They aren't, usually, because it takes more work to code 'em that way, but they have the capability (and it's something we're working on in one game in particular in a really cool way). My point is that a DM can be just as closeminded as a CRPG -- and in a more frustrating way. When I see a door marked, "This door has a lock too complex to pick and is warded against simple enchantments. You will need to get the key," I at least KNOW that the door is plot-locked, and I can accept it and move on. We wasted half an hour outside the dang portcullis before our DM finally flipped out and held up the Hand of Plot.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I give up. I'll say it. Computers are better than people at every last freakin' thing on the planet. Everybody happy now?

That was not my point, nor my intended goal. In fact, my previous post was in no way meant as a specific arguement against your thoughts, and was not closely related to other debates in this thread, but was rather a general attack on the use of the term "videogame mentality". So no, I'm not happy now.

I never once said that computers are better than DMs, because that is absurd and untrue. There is a certain flexibility D&D has that videogames will never have. I am merely commenting on the fact that good videogames come closer than anything else, and that the level of flexibility of videogames far exceeds other common media. Again, why not complain about a "book mentality" when discussing railroading, rather than a "videogame mentality"?

Saying that good videogame designers and good adventure designers are on the same level and do similar things is closer to being my main point. After all, the CPU is not the thing that controls the players game experience in a videogame, since it is too dumb to even do that. It is the videogame designer who creates the experience, and he is put in a similar role to an adventure designer or a DM doing prep work for a campaign.

In fact, my arguement is more that DMs could learn a lot from the way some things work in certain videogames, and that videogames are a perfectly valid thing to use as a game style and as inspiration for a D&D game.

 

[molonel]

I give up. I'll say it. Computers are better than people at every last freakin' thing on the planet. Everybody happy now?

Or you could simply admit that there might not be as much traction in using "like a video game" as a negative comparison that requires no justification.

Just a thought.

 

[Ourph]

Or you could simply admit that there might not be as much traction in using "like a video game" as a negative comparison that requires no justification.

Nope. Computers are better than people in every single way. This thread has completely convinced me of that. Humans suck. Computers rule. Bring on the Matrix!

 

[molonel]

Nope. Computers are better than people in every single way. This thread has completely convinced me of that.

Then you evidently weren't reading very carefully, if at all.

 

[Ourph]

Then you evidently weren't reading very carefully, if at all.

I didn't say anyone was taking that position. It's just the lesson I'm walking away from the thread with. Sometimes insight isn't about agreeing with someone, it's about having their comments open up new ways of thinking.

 

[molonel]

I didn't say anyone was taking that position. It's just the lesson I'm walking away from the thread with. Sometimes insight isn't about agreeing with someone, it's about having their comments open up new ways of thinking. Like, computers rule; humans drool.

Is admitting that a comparison between two forms of entertainment may be more complex and nuanced than a flippant comment allows really THAT difficult for you?

 

[Ourph]

Is admitting that a comparison between two forms of entertainment may be more complex and nuanced than a flippant comment allows really THAT difficult for you?

Not at all. In fact, I believe my original comments were fairly nuanced in and of themselves. What does that have to do with the numerous disparate opinions and observations expressed in the thread converging to provoke a point-of-view changing moment of epiphany on my part?