Suspension of Disbelief

[WizarDru]

One thing that breaks my suspension of disbelief sometimes is when monsters always, always, always fight to the death.

Sometimes it ought to be more like-

"Oh crap!" says the dire tiger to herself upon reach 10 hp. "I better get outta here!"

Caveat: this is my preference, not necessarily yours.

Unfortunately, D&D generally doesn't encourage this action. Once a creature gets low enough that they should flee, they're generally screwed, unless they're really fast, and they can get cover immediately. Often, their only hope is to kill their attacker.

That said, I don't like that either, and there are plenty of cases in my games where the villains get out of Dodge, when possible. Usually, only the spellcasters with transport magic actually make it.

 

[the Jester]

[regarding bad guys fleeing] ...Usually, only the spellcasters with transport magic actually make it.

Well, the other alternative for bad guys is to yield. I find it is far more likely that pcs will accept surrender if you let them know up front that that still counts as 'defeating' their foes- for instance, not long ago in my low-magic game, the party fought a group of bandits. Seven of them ended up surrendering after the rest were cut down, and I gave full xp for the whole group.

Another thing that bugs me is traps that make no sense. Why would you trap your bedroom with crushing walls? Sheesh.

 

[Rel]

You know, sometimes I wonder if a combination chase/fight sequence would be more interesting. You know, as in somebody fighting to get away. You'd probably have to houserule things a lot, though. To keep the chase from being a series of 5-foot backward steps.

Don't forget that as long as the critter doing the fleeing only moves and does not run the space they start in does not count as threatened. This won't always save them but it will most likely prevent a Full Attack by any pursuers and in most cases the PC's can only catch them and still attack with a Charge.

I've just recently been running a section of my campaign where the PC's are hunting a tribe of Lizard Men in a swamp. The Lizard Men are quick to flee into the safety of the water if hard pressed and last session one of them outright surrendered when trapped in a Web spell placed by one of the PC's.

 

[Harmon]

i ran a whole 8 hour session in Klingon for my group of 10 players.

we had a blast.

That is the.... most geek thing I have ever read. I am floored :\

 

[Orius]

Re magic missile - there are times the player needs to speak OOC, like whenever they're describing their PCs' actions to the GM. So yup, I definitely think the player ought to be saying "I cast magic missile", not obfuscating the issue. If the player or GM wishes to then insert some descriptive flavour text, then great - I often do this as GM, describing th glowing darts striking the enemy or whatever.

And the way I see it, every wizard and sorcerer ever created has the damn spell anyway, so why bother beating around the bush?

 

[Orius]

Worlds with a richly detailed history streching back longer than 3,000-4,000 years that still haven't developed past a hodge-podge of dark ages to renissance level technology or social conventions.

That bother me a bit too, campaigns with long histories in which nothing happens. I can possibly take a world under constant warfare or chaos to have little or no tech development. Even that stretchs things a bit too, since even the Middle Ages saw advances in weaponry. More plausible would be a world dominated by powerful supernatural forces which suppress progress for one reason or other. But campaign histories which have long period of peace lasting centuries during which nothing happens and nothing is developed, or histories where the same dynasty has been in power for millenia don't really make sense to me.

 

[S'mon]

But campaign histories which have long period of peace lasting centuries during which nothing happens and nothing is developed, or histories where the same dynasty has been in power for millenia don't really make sense to me.

There are plenty of real-world examples of this - Egypt, even China for long periods. I find the idea of the inevitabitility of progress much harder to grasp. IMC there are periods of technological growth, periods of stability, and rapid declines usually brought about by the collapse of civilisations. There has been a general upward trend in technology over the past few thousand years, at roughly half the real-world rate from 500 BC to 1500 AD. Recent developments include full plate armour and the arbalest heavy winch crossbow.

 

[Eosin the Red]

I read a great example today that I will share to illustrate the point.

In Hidden Lands published by Hero Games, the Atlanteans have had a contigious period of peace where basically nothing changed for more than 40,000 years. This includes clothing, style, culture, art, language, and warfare.

Another great example would be Middle Earth where each age encompassed 35,000 to 65,000 year (IIRC) - these guys still haven't developed indoor plumbing yet?

There are some good points - a society that experienced a catastrophic even will likely regress but if a soceity experiences these massive disruptions every 400-500 years then their oral tradition should clue them in on the need to move. I don't really have difficulty with marginal cultures who take 8,000 years to go from writing to renissance but there are a number of worlds that take this to an absurd extreem. YMMV

 

[James Heard]

A point on obviously modern/incompatible puzzles: One way to handle it that I've done is to just move those puzzles outside the game entirely when I want them to happen. I mean the point is to give people that like puzzles their fun and to hand out some xp, right? So whenever I feel obligated to do something like that I just write out my crossword puzzles, anagram doodads, and flat out tests and give them to everyone ahead of time. Now, I DO try to make things like that revolve around things in the campaign ("Guys, do you remember how to spell our porter's name from Welmington? I think that's four across.") but that's mostly a rationalization. Framing the puzzles so that they outline answers to the inquisitive is also sort of fun ("Gosh, that porter guy's name comes up a lot. Maybe he's important? Why?") but mostly it's just an excuse for people to do puzzle stuff that just won't come up in my games most of the time. Anyways, if I told people to read On War for extra xp and so that they can answer questions as a group that lead them to metagame clues it's pretty easy for them to start the game thinking up ways those "audience rumor" bits flitted into their character's heads.

 

[fusangite]

Another great example would be Middle Earth where each age encompassed 35,000 to 65,000 year (IIRC) - these guys still haven't developed indoor plumbing yet?

A few problems here:
(a) while the First Age may have been as long as you say, Tolkien's books make it abundantly clear that the second and third ages were ca. 3000 years long
(b) Tolkien's historical narrative is one of diminishment and loss from an initial golden age to the age of men
(c) why is it inevitable that any civilization will develop indoor plumbing?
(d) look at Australia: tens of thousands of years of continuous human habitation without any of the technological changes you see as inevitable

There are some good points - a society that experienced a catastrophic even will likely regress but if a soceity experiences these massive disruptions every 400-500 years then their oral tradition should clue them in on the need to move.

You are defining regress and progress by the standards and definitions of the society in which you live. There is something basically hubristic about seeing what happened to our particular civilizations as the inevitable way all history is programmed to unfold.

Secondly, civilizations don't "move" because they don't like local environmental conditions; they adapt to them. And if civilizations better adapted to their local conditions come along, they move in to the region. Civilizations all over the world have grown up in the shadow of potential recurrent disaster.

I don't really have difficulty with marginal cultures who take 8,000 years to go from writing to renissance but there are a number of worlds that take this to an absurd extreem.

Now, this strikes me as really strange. Why would a highly specific regional artistic and intellectual movement that occurred in Europe be part of some kind of laid-in teleological program of how all civilizations develop?