Smart vs. Intelligence and Combatless Roleplaying Sessions

[DonTadow]

Several things...

First, if your players are taking the time to give you feedback and tell you what they like and don't like, that is NOT the time to argue with them. thats valuable feedback, listen, ponder and consider it carefully. it sounds like they aren't telling you to "do no puzzles" or to "do nothing but combat" but to not center and entrie run around a puzzle and provide some combat.

if that will help them enjoy the run... why not do it? it doesn't have to be a big combat, maybe they interrupt a mugging o a rape in order to meet the important NPC. Maybe the NPC then brings them to his/her home for a reward or to stay as guests of honor or to be the guests at a grand party.

A little 20 minute combat can spur an entire series of role playing moments without taking an entire session.

Second, i tend to view puzzles as something to be used in great moderation and **never**
as the center of a plot. I have just found that they only produce lots of fun once in a great while and never if they run on long, like say requiring multiple gathering of info and such.

as for the smarts vs int and such, sounds like not a definition parsing i would take. make the puzzles relative to the campaign world, not the real world.

here is the key... i think... if you want the puzzle to be represented by more than just a die roll, then craft a puzzle that requires more than just a die roll but which is still solvable by CHARACTERS. maybe a knowledge nobility check is required to recognize the play off the name of a noble house known for hosting a pumpkin festival and that leads to the pumpkin carving which in turn leads to a knowledge religion check to recognize the sacred symbol which leads to... ideally, all these "clues" (or most of them) have already been introduced, so a player who recalls the significance of the noble house-pumpkin-religion-etc can solve it without rolling but the CHARACTERS might also be able to without one-die-rolling it.

Using your combat resolution analogy, you don't require your players to know swordplay to resolve a combayt encounter, neither should you expect your players to be gifted at puzzles to solve your puzzles.

I wasn't arguying with them, I have 7 players in my group, and only 2o complained. Three left feedback saying they enjoyed the change of pace. The last 8 adventures have been one large dungeon crawl with a minium of 2 battles per session and two pc deaths. I felt the time was needed for an interactive town and some light hearted fun. Whereas the large town contained npcs whom needed things done it wasn't a giant rubicks cube. The puzzle came in that certain pcs had items needed to complete other npcs items so it was trying to figure out whom to help, how to help them and how to use what they gave for the other npc. I saw this as a much needed break and so did the majority of the pcs. I think that one of the pcs whom wrote me in dissent probably liked it too but was siding with her hubby (whom happens to be the big staunch fighter) (kill everything role playing type) .

 

[DonTadow]

I don't have a Webster's handy, but I expect it says more than that.

Computers are fast data processors, right? Well, all they ever do is apply specific rules of logic to data. By your definition, a comupter "reasons", and the faster it does so the better.



The occasional disjoin between test scores and school performance is highly complicated, andrequires a whole lot more than "some kids are faster thinkers than others" to explain.



Again, I feel that premise is flawed. You are applying your personal definitions to game stats that you did not define.

The game is intended to model the character's innate personal traits in six stats. It is designed to model everything in those six stats. In the real world, full body coordination and grace, manual dexterity, and hand-eye coordination are three different things, but they are all covered by one stat - Dexterity.

Philosophically, you don't require that any player match his character's physical abilities. Why, then do you require that his mental abilities must be strongly tied to the player's?



Puzzles are things one can solve by thinking. The weak spot of a Bodak is not a puzzle - it is a fact or datum about a creature. One cannot be expected to reason out that a bodak is vulnerable to sunlight or cold iron just by looking at it. But, if one has studied bodaks, one should know this, just as if one has studied human medicine, one knows that a kidney-punch is nasty. It'll be covered by a Knowledge skill, which is Intelligence-based.

But that's neither here nor there. This is a role playing game, which means that the player should be able to take on a role that is not himself. Which means he shoudl not be limited to playing with his own "smarts", as you put it. You allow players to play people unlike themselves in other ways. Why not in this way?

But the thing is, a player DOEs roleplay with his own smarts. My thesis (which is based on definitions at dictionary.com is that characters are built to use their players smarts. The problem is, when this argument comes up, people always refer to the intelligence of a player vs the intellignece of a character, and then cross class it with the example (well i dont lift weights to play my fighter). Problem is, that you use your own personal smarts of d and d to know which tactics to best use vs which monster. Why shouldn't these same smarts be used when trying to decipher how to get the crystal out of the chasis. It's a double standard. When I think of dungeons and dragons i think the dragons = the combat part of the game and the dungeons equals toe mental part. I dont believe the creators wanted to s sum up the mental part of the game with intelligence and knowledge rolls. .

Also, computers do reason. In the early 90s and late 70s some reffered to them as reasoning machines. The faster they process the data the better than computer, but the sped of the computer has little to do with their designed reasoning. It also has little to do with how much data the computer holds .

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I like puzzles, but I tend to use them in a limited way in D&D. While they I've found over the years that they can be a lot of fun in play, if used incorrectly they can bring a session to a halt. Here's how I use then:

Tactical puzzles are my favorite, as in we ring the alarm bell here with magic, the guards rush there, we hit the weakened guard at this side door here and come at the main group by surprise from behind over there.

A puzzle must make sense in context. A riddle door that can easily be answered by anyone of a certain race or someone with Knowledge[Race] makes a certain amount of sense on a non-critical (from the builder's POV) location. It keeps the riffraff out while letting your own people in when you cannot or do not want to tell them all the answer. A puzzle trap that allows someone who know the trick to pass quickly while hurting or slowing pursuit makes sense. A puzzle lock makes sense if it can be passed in a reasonable amount of time by the owner. A puzzle requiring knowledge from several people can make sense if you want your heirs to be able to accomplish something together but not separately. Puzzles guarding treasure or tombs can make sense. Doing a crossword to open a guarded castle gate, as an example, does not make sense. The only reason to do this is if you fear your own guards would lock you out, and in that case the entry method should be quicker (since you'll probably be under fire), the puzzle would require specific information that noone but the owner would know, and you wouldn't want to provide clues to the questions by linking the words.

Two places where otherwise inappropriate puzzles would work are artificial situations where an NPC is testing the PC's mettle, or the often use though trite "mad wizard" adventure. Outside of this I don't think I'd ever use a crossword, word find, or maze (aside from the type you walk through)

Prophecies make neat riddles. I've never been much good at this, but check out Piratecat's and Sagiro's storyhours for good esamples of how to use them.

Solving a riddle should not be critical to an adventure. If the the PCs must solve a riddle to enter The Lair of the Creature and all of your prepared material is inside said Lair, then there had better be alternate ways in because the players and/or PCs may fail to solve the puzzle. If players know that they'll just continue to receive more and more clues untill they solve the puzzle it detracts from the perceptipon of challenge, and hence from the fun. Puzzles are better used for such things as guarding treasure that would help the party with the BBEG but are not critical to success.

Know your players. Some players like puzzles, some don't. If your players don't like puzzles and you want to include them anyway, either allow a skill check for Knowledge[Puzzles] or Knowledge[Race] (for some riddles), or make the puzzles of a tactical nature.

 

[painandgreed]

I. Hate. Puzzles.

That's not totally true. But, here's the catch. If I can't solve a puzzle in 10 minutes, I'm done. And, that's a long time. If there were multiple puzzles in game, and I'm spending the majority of the session wracking my brain trying to figure out puzzles, then that's just frustrating. I can do that on my own with a puzzle book. Figuring out puzzles generally involves the players sitting around thinking, not interacting with anyone. If I'm spending even 25% of your session doing this, I'm not having fun. It's called being bored.

That pretty well sums up my feelings on the subject. I especially hate it when it's a situation in game where hours or days go on in game to think about such problems while only a few minutes go by in RL.

 

[adwyn]

Combat allows for a whole host of responses and solutions and not all of them necessarily end up with a dead monster. Puzzles usually don't, the DM expects the party to play along exactly as anticipated which is frustrating.

A good puzzle should have multiple ways to tackle the problem, ways to garner hints, and even ways to bypass it. DM's all too often forget this and punish or ignore gordian solutions, which in turn ignores players.

 

[Umbran]

The problem is, when this argument comes up, people always refer to the intelligence of a player vs the intellignece of a character, and then cross class it with the example (well i dont lift weights to play my fighter). Problem is, that you use your own personal smarts of d and d to know which tactics to best use vs which monster. Why shouldn't these same smarts be used when trying to decipher how to get the crystal out of the chasis. [/uqote]

You say this is a problem. But it isn't.

I have players who haven't mastered the rules of D&D. So, they tend to be poor tacticians in combat. If they are playing a characters who should be good tacticians (with the feats, Intelligence/Wisdom, and skills to show for it), I give the players tactical hints just as I'd give the high-intelligence character hints on puzzles.

It is the DM's job to model the universe for the players. That means giving them all the information that the character would have that the player doesn't. This is not limited to the content of rooms in a dungeon.

It's a double standard.

Only if you don't do as I describe above. There's no double standard if I cover all the different knowledges the players may lack

I dont believe the creators wanted to s sum up the mental part of the game with intelligence and knowledge rolls. .

Since when is "giving hints" equal to "sum up the mental part of the game with rolls"? Don't overstate my case, please.

Also, computers do reason. In the early 90s and late 70s some reffered to them as reasoning machines. The faster they process the data the better than computer, but the sped of the computer has little to do with their designed reasoning. It also has little to do with how much data the computer holds .

The faster they process has everything to do with it - because the root logic (reasoning) that they apply has not changed at all from the 1970s. The logic gates ahve gotten smaller and faster, but the logic operatiosn they perform are the same. If they've gotten better at reason, it is only because they've become fast enough to do more calculations in the same amount of time, and thus can build up those simple logics into more complex structures. It does not matter how much data they can store if they cannot process it quickly.

 

[DonTadow]

The problem is, when this argument comes up, people always refer to the intelligence of a player vs the intellignece of a character, and then cross class it with the example (well i dont lift weights to play my fighter). Problem is, that you use your own personal smarts of d and d to know which tactics to best use vs which monster. Why shouldn't these same smarts be used when trying to decipher how to get the crystal out of the chasis. [/uqote]

You say this is a problem. But it isn't.

I have players who haven't mastered the rules of D&D. So, they tend to be poor tacticians in combat. If they are playing a characters who should be good tacticians (with the feats, Intelligence/Wisdom, and skills to show for it), I give the players tactical hints just as I'd give the high-intelligence character hints on puzzles.

It is the DM's job to model the universe for the players. That means giving them all the information that the character would have that the player doesn't. This is not limited to the content of rooms in a dungeon.



Only if you don't do as I describe above. There's no double standard if I cover all the different knowledges the players may lack



Since when is "giving hints" equal to "sum up the mental part of the game with rolls"? Don't overstate my case, please.



Ah, but if you gave a computer with a clock speed of 3 hertz a whole lot of data, in order to give you a good result...

Speed has nothing to do with a computer's ability to reason. Your point is to equivilate speed and reasoning. Speed is how fast something happens. Reasoning is the something that happens. Because someone thinks fast (definition of smart) does not mean he comes to logical conclusions (reasoning).

 

[ThirdWizard]

I suspect it's just semantics I'm arguing, so I'll shut it.

Yep. I almost actually wrote "challenge Players through their PCs" but I thought it would be understood.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you make your players figure out the puzzles themselves in the game, that's like making your players run a race to find out who wins the race in the game. Or making them actually bench press weights to figure out if they can lift the gate. Or actually stabbing them when the goblin stabs them.

Puzzles have their place, but I don't think that place is nessecarily in a game where you're playing a role. The role should be challenged. The player's involvement should be in playing the role, and in figuring out the role's reaction to the challenges presented. Combat is an obvious challenge to the role -- it can cancel the role. But other things, can, too, from rumors of townsfolk to the royal dinner.

Puzzles can break the verismilitude VERY easily, just like riddles can, if the players themselves are expected to solve them. Like I said, that's just like forcing them to get up and run a race in the middle of a chase scene. Or actually playing a game of chess to figure out the outcome of a game of chess. It becomes a game-within-a-game, and almost by definition, that is a metagame.

ML gives the best advice on how to use puzzles that aren't really puzzles -- that challenge the characters, not the players. The reader never had to figure out how to get into Moria. The characters did. In D&D, this can be a significant problem -- if the players have to figure out a riddle, it's not part of the story anymore.

My thesis (which is based on definitions at dictionary.com is that characters are built to use their players smarts.

This is like saying my thesis (which is based on definitions used at the Jeffrey Dahmer Trial) is that we should all eat humans.

Look, your definitions are largely inadmissible, because they're not formed within the context of the game in front of you. You're arguing semantics when the real problem is at the table. The game is in the playing of the role, not in the using of smarts. It's more of a dramatic test, more of an improvosational game, closer to Whose Line Is It Anyway than a crossword puzzle. Combat is just another way to play a role (and a very action-packed and edge-of-your seat way to play that role). The moment I start demanding my players figure out the puzzles as players, and not as characters, I'm also going to demand they show me that they can lift a real sword when they say "My barbarian hefts the sword."

And if I'm demanding that they figure out the puzzle as characters, it's entirely applicable to have them roll for the results. And if they don't find it...hell, that's where the challenge of improvosation comes in. Is there a sage? Is there an ally? Are there explosives? There are many ways around the obstacle as there are logical ways to interact with the world, after all.

 

[DonTadow]

If you make your players figure out the puzzles themselves in the game, that's like making your players run a race to find out who wins the race in the game. Or making them actually bench press weights to figure out if they can lift the gate. Or actually stabbing them when the goblin stabs them.

Puzzles have their place, but I don't think that place is nessecarily in a game where you're playing a role. The role should be challenged. The player's involvement should be in playing the role, and in figuring out the role's reaction to the challenges presented. Combat is an obvious challenge to the role -- it can cancel the role. But other things, can, too, from rumors of townsfolk to the royal dinner.

Puzzles can break the verismilitude VERY easily, just like riddles can, if the players themselves are expected to solve them. Like I said, that's just like forcing them to get up and run a race in the middle of a chase scene. Or actually playing a game of chess to figure out the outcome of a game of chess. It becomes a game-within-a-game, and almost by definition, that is a metagame.

ML gives the best advice on how to use puzzles that aren't really puzzles -- that challenge the characters, not the players. The reader never had to figure out how to get into Moria. The characters did. In D&D, this can be a significant problem -- if the players have to figure out a riddle, it's not part of the story anymore.



This is like saying my thesis (which is based on definitions used at the Jeffrey Dahmer Trial) is that we should all eat humans.

Look, your definitions are largely inadmissible, because they're not formed within the context of the game in front of you. You're arguing semantics when the real problem is at the table. The game is in the playing of the role, not in the using of smarts. It's more of a dramatic test, more of an improvosational game, closer to Whose Line Is It Anyway than a crossword puzzle. Combat is just another way to play a role (and a very action-packed and edge-of-your seat way to play that role). The moment I start demanding my players figure out the puzzles as players, and not as characters, I'm also going to demand they show me that they can lift a real sword when they say "My barbarian hefts the sword."

And if I'm demanding that they figure out the puzzle as characters, it's entirely applicable to have them roll for the results. And if they don't find it...hell, that's where the challenge of improvosation comes in. Is there a sage? Is there an ally? Are there explosives? There are many ways around the obstacle as there are logical ways to interact with the world, after all.

So the player picks the right armor, figures out the right spells and selects when to bullrush, but we "pretend" its the character despite the fact that no roll nor skill attribute to these tactics. However, whenever someone mentions some type of puzzle people scream its the players doing it. Despite the fact that the puzzle is a legit puzzle conserning the dungeon. Despite the fact that the characters receive clues on the puzzles previously. Despite the fact that the characters are in the room with the puzzle, riddle or clue and theres no realistic stat to equivilate a character realy solving the puzzle. Again, tis the same of settling killing a monster to one roll. Dungeons= puzzles/ Dragons= monsters

Kamikaze. You claim my thesis has no merit, and is not based on the context of teh game. But the game relys on literal meanings of all words it does not define within its context. There is no context for being smart. It can be derived from the use of devising tactics that the character's smarts is the players smarts. There are alraedy instances in the game where you use your smarts because you could not possibly use a characters.

Your statement is kind of silly. I presented a fact from a non-fictinonal reference material used to determine the meaning of words and you equivilated it to an assumption based on a series of fictional horror movies.