Was I unfair?

[tylermalan]

What consequances? My only guess is that you feel that since they didn't read the subtle clues to not go into the sewers you feel death is the consequances of that. It almost seems to me that you introduced an enemy you knew they couldn't defeat (but they didn't know this) and are shocked becasue they did what practically any gamer would do: they went towards the danger.

No way jose! I wrote the entire campaign before I even knew what characters they were playing, so I didn't fudge a thing. I knew it was a little tough, and I thought I told them so. Am I wrong? They chased it and died, so yeah, those are the consequences of not listening when I told them it was dangerous! But I really didn't fudge a thing.

 

[Rackhir]

A personal story by way of example.

Once a lady I knew who DMed told us about this boneheaded group in Call of Cthulhu that had snuck into the badguy's house at night, despite the fact that "obviously" this was the wrong thing to do since nasty evil things are at their strongest and most active at night.

Now several months later, she's running us through a CoC adventure and what do we do? Yes you guessed it! We sneak into the badguy's house at night! We did manage to get out of there with out a TPK. Now I'm not sure if we even lost anyone then (My character did quite memorably die later though), but she later excoriated us for doing the same dumb thing as the previous group. Which brings me to my point.

You know exactly what you intend to happen, you've plotted things out on the basis of what you assume they'd do. However, obviously their perceptions of what were going on and what they could expect didn't match yours. Any time this is the case, you have the potential for things going spectacularly wrong as they did in this case.

The solution is to talk to them and make sure that their expectations match what your's are. The TPK is in a sense a "good" first step, since it does make an unmistakable point that the PCs can and will be wiped out if they do something you deem as "stupid".

One thing that I think is a bad idea is "backstories" for the characters. If this is a campaign where you will be killing characters at the drop of a hat, then there is little point in investing effort in background for what are going to be disposable characters. Save that which grows naturally as the campaign does. This is the flip side of the kind of campaign you have chosen to run.

If you watch any slasher flicks, it's the monsters not the disposable victims that get the backstory.

 

[tylermalan]

1. I don't understand your problem with the party make-up; you have a combat cleric, a sorcerer with skillpoints and an ability to use Cure wands, a gish, and a paladin.

Considering how you labeled that the superlative "Worst. Party. Ever." on the merits of the class combinations alone, I have to view this:

I won’t even mention the horrible backstories.​

With some skepticisim.

2.
Isn't adventuring dangerous? So what's suprising about PCs doing something dangerous?

3.
This sounds like you wanted them to ask you what they should do. IE, you wanted them to do what you think they should have done.

4.
CRs are static, but EL's are not; if a CR creature fights the PCs in an environment higly beneficial to the creature, then the EL is not equal to the CR, but rather higher than the CR.

I'm not suggesting that it's unfair to throw a high EL at the party, just that you should know that you're doing it. I feel that a burrowing creature encountered in an underground environment may very well rate this; I suspect a large, burrowing giant with a template represents more than an EL 4, and likely more than a CR 4.

5.
I would like to say that the players will never know when they reach the, "we can survive this encounter" threshold, and expecting them to wait until they reach it is unrealistic.

---

Nothing you did in particular was unfair; you had a challenge lined up for them and they went after it early, and were killed. But your tone had something of a, "they weren't playing correctly" element, which can be troublesome in a DM. Remember that you have much more information than they do, and so their decisions can seem foolish when you look at it with the benefit of knowledge.

Ok...

1) No one can cast level 2 spells, and extra skills don't make up for that.

2) Nothing surprising about that! What's surprising is being surprised when you die because you acted stupid.

3) Incorrect! I would have liked them to use their heads as opposed to NOT using their heads. I gave them the option to go or not go - if I wanted to railroad them, I would have never given them the option to go into the sewers in the first place.

4) I agree.

5) Truth, they may not ever know, but I was confident that if they used some caution and intelligence they would be able to either learn more about it and fight it on their terms, or avoid it entirely, or, when forced to fight it, would be able to take it no problem.

 

[Crothian]

No way jose! I wrote the entire campaign before I even knew what characters they were playing, so I didn't fudge a thing. I knew it was a little tough, and I thought I told them so. Am I wrong? They chased it and died, so yeah, those are the consequences of not listening when I told them it was dangerous! But I really didn't fudge a thing.

I'm not saying you fudged anything. You say that you warned them it was too dangerious. They went anyway. So, either you didn't warn them enough, they didn't fully understand the warning, or they just ignored you and went ahead with it anyway. And so you choose to have them all die. Instead addition to discussing ih here on EN World I hope you are discussing it with your players. If not I foresee this happening again.

 

[tylermalan]

Nicely put Rackhir, I see your points. The only thing is that I didn't know what they were going to do - I just identified ahead of time some possible actions, and wrote results. Like in life, the worst choices yield the worst results (sometimes).

I hate you Crothian, I hate you. Remember, the original question was "Was I unfair?" - I know they just ignored the warnings, but was I unfair when I let the world unfold as created when they made a bad choice?

 

[Corsair]

I'd contend that you seem to be putting too much of the onus on the players for doing something which seems completely reasonable to any adventurer.

 

[Crothian]

I hate you Crothian, I hate you.

That reminds me of a certain gnome....

Remember, the original question was "Was I unfair?" - I know they just ignored the warnings, but was I unfair when I let the world unfold as created when they made a bad choice?

I know, and as I said I didn't think it was unfair. So, I moved beyond that into the "your expectations might have been a little unrealistic."

 

[tylermalan]

I wouldn't call it reasonable. They were warned! I understand that adventurers are heroic, but you guys seriously wouldn't call that a bad move? After the warning? After the "this is a horror campaign" setup?

 

[jdrakeh]

As for the characters themselves, the classes aren't optimized, but that's not what I think makes them bad - its the fact that they seem to be perfectly NOT optimized. The spellcasting classes, for instance, have a second class added that not only doesn't compliment (except maybe the cleric/barbarian), but it also prevents them from getting 2nd level spells. Add that to the fact that the backstories don't even really explain the reasons for the multiclass, and you get a party of lifeless, poorly thought out adventurers with no common sense.

Sometimes (IME, most of the time) people just want to play what they find to be cool, not necessarily what makes the most sense from a metagame (i.e., mechanical) standpoint. Punishing players for this (i.e., not re-tooling adventures to play to their characters' strong points) can get you the rep of a being a bad GM. YMMV, of course.

 

[tylermalan]

That reminds me of a certain gnome....



I know, and as I said I didn't think it was unfair. So, I moved beyond that into the "your expectations might have been a little unrealistic."

Crothian, if you don't watch the lip I swear I'll turn that Gamemaster's Paradise into a Gamemaster's Hell so fast...

So what would you have done differently, since you already know what I was trying to accomplish?