Stop being so paranoid

[Ktulu]

I had/have one player who has always been known to pick his "paranoia" of the campaign. Whatever thing affects him more than once, he always becomes overly cautious.
For example, in one campaign, the party suffered from two different water hazards. One was crossing a river, the other was being attacked by a water elemental in a dungeon. The player jotted down water as a favored enemy in his notes, and made sure to dangerously suspect every liquid they ever crossed again. He was a highly intelligent elf.

He did this with a number of things. I believe it's two equal parts. One, the humor of the situation. All the players laugh about the "Dangerous water, oooooo". The other side is the age old DM vs Players. Some people view that as a truth and always think the DM is out to get them and will kill them in any number of insulting and cruel ways.

For my part, I think it's stupid. However, even I have fell to the lure of paranoia in some games. I think it's just a thing we all do.

 

[Oni]

It only takes one or two experiences to shape the way a gaming group operates. As I was reading the first post I was reminded of when I first started playing dnd as a freshman in college. In our first or second game the DM described a glint in a hollow of a tree. The fellow playing the ranger immediately says he'll reach in and find out what it is, and then kind of adds an after thought, "Oh, slowly and carefully." I don't remember what horrible thing it was he avoided, but those extra few words caused the DM to decide a more favorable outcome. For the rest of that year just about any action of note undertaken by anyone in that campaign was followed by the words "slowly and carefully" with conviction I might add.

If only I had added them when I tried to steal rings from an Arcane...





Now I feel all nostalgic and want to play 2e.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

We were playing Tunnels & Trolls, for a change of pace. Which actually kind of sucks, because the combats are too simple and the traps are even more numerous and complex than D&D's traps.
We were in an obviously-trapped room, and found a pressure plate, and the other players took well over a half hour real time trying to figure out how to get around it, which was extremely boring. Finally, one of the other players' boredom got the better of him, and he sprung the trap intentionally, which killed my character, and injured everyone else but his character. Then my next character had much worse stats.

I hate traps.

Except attack traps, those are fun, but no one ever uses those.

I was runnning an Iron Heroes game, and none of the players gave their characters any social skills, because they knew I mostly liked the grid and the combats. Needless to say, they couldn't get any information about what was going on in this little village, but they were suspiscious of everything and everyone, except one girl, the mayor's daughter, from whom they were trying to get some info. (she was actually a sorcerer enslaving the whole village and had all the spells and social skills to do so). The party just kind of hung out in the town for pretty much a month of game time waiting for something to happen because there had to be a plot hook in there somewhere, but no one had the skills to find it.
I finally had to give them a subplot McGuffin to go find, and subsequently be betrayed, just to get them out of the village so they could arrive back there just in time to stop the ritual outer realms portal opening shindig.
It was originally supposed to happen during an upcoming festival, but the players decided that something was wrong anyway, despite failing all their info gathering checks, and stayed around town, so I had to improvise and actually do mean things to them to get the story back on track.

Then they just slaughtered 3/4 of the village to 'save' it.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I made it clear that my game is a 'heroic' campaign when we started.

I explained that I far as I was concerned, being active & courageous was the best way forwards. Being paranoid is not going to get you far - it's just going to slow the game down.

Plus, I'm not a big fan of the "CSI:Greyhawk" school of adventuring - I remember the article by Tracey Hickman in Dragon a few years ago railing against the same thing. See a door? Open it! See a table? Jump on it!

I think the key to his argument (and it's even more true in 4e than 3e) was this:

What are the stats of a minotaur, when you crash through a door and are surprised to see it?
What are the stats of a minotaur, when you spend half an hour of game time listening at and searching the same door?

They're exactly the same!

 

[Rechan]

I forget who's sig it is, but it's great for this topic:

DM: The barmaid waves and says, "Good evening."
Player: I roll sense motive.

I ran a game a few months ago that was like this. The party literally wanted to check every rock, nook and cranny. They spent 30 minutes Real time arguing what they should do with a shrine dedicated to an evil god sitting all by its lonesome. I left a bag of tricks as treasure in one area, and they spent five minutes investigating it, thinking it was a trap.

This was an online group I wasn't familiar with, so it was a stunning experience. I'd much rather the barbarian charge head-long through the door, then to act like a SWAT team, because I wasn't running the SWAT type of game, nor intended to reward their behavior. I like cinematics and general mind-screwery like "Roll fort saves. Okay, you vomit. The vomit stands up and attacks you, roll initative."

My current group is much more relaxed, fortunately, although one player is obsessed with details. Of the "give me the elemental composition of the rock we're standing on" variety.

 

[Rechan]

In addition, I think I have found a solution to deal with this to a small extent:

Impose a limit of time on reaction.

"You look through the door and see a bunch of guys conducting a ritual. They're chanting. You can tell it's almost finished, and whatever they're going to do, it's going to be bad.

Everyone at the table, you have ten seconds to decide what you're doing."

I had to impose a 'count to ten' situation when one PC wanted to run away, one wanted to stay and fight, and one was wishywashy, in a situation like this, and no one at the table would agree what to do.

 

[Starbuck_II]

I think the key to his argument (and it's even more true in 4e than 3e) was this:

What are the stats of a minotaur, when you crash through a door and are surprised to see it?
What are the stats of a minotaur, when you spend half an hour of game time listening at and searching the same door?

They're exactly the same!

Nope. The minotaur when are surprised might have you all flat foot (hitting you better).
Really, there are too many DMs who make things get you if you aren't paranoid.

I mean the food might be poisoned (who poisons food in a dungeon...don't they eat there?, the door will be trapped, and sometimes DMs don't mention something unless you mention the ceiling. That was one of the rooms we went into in one of my last adventures in 3rd edition.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I love springing surprises on the player characters (and the players). But if they constantly check for traps, they obviously won't be surprised by them, even if they miss one. So different approaches are needed...

 

[GlaziusF]

It may also not be paranoia so much as making a "strictly good" decision. I mean, if you don't search for traps, you might get nailed by one. If you do, then either you find a trap, or don't, and if you don't you're just as badly off as you were before.

Introducing random encounters is a bad way to add consequences to that decision. Then you weigh the trap you don't know against the fight you don't know.

I generally either incorporate traps into combat encounters or make them full-power encounters in their own right.

 

[Delta]

Introducing random encounters is a bad way to add consequences to that decision. Then you weigh the trap you don't know against the fight you don't know.

I agree, that's a great key game decision to make the players decide.

Uh, what did you say?