What the heck is "Unfun"?

[Jedi_Solo]

I think the spectre of death can add to the tension and drama of the game but it has to be done in a way that does not suck all the fun out of the game.

I am fully anti-Save-or-Die and agree with this statement 100%. I have no qualms about my PC dying from being beaten repeatedly by an oversized weapon; but I definately hate getting the ax on a roll where the only way I could fail was if I rolled a 1.

My issues with Save or Die come from the fact that in most games I have played in combat is a large portion of the session. There have been games with little or no combat but those are the exception. What I don't want is to go into a comabt, get killed before I get to take an action and then have to sit out for who knows how long.

If my PC is going to become a bloody smear on the ground I want it to be because of something I did in combat and not because I rolled a 1 on a die before I got to take an action.

I don't like dying from a 1 near the end of comabt either, but it's at the start of combat when it really [bleep]s me off. I don't particularly care for hitting -10 hp at all but if it takes multiple sword hits to take me there I'm fine with it (and if there is a good heroic death to be had I'll be the first in line to offer up my PC - rolling a one because a critter looked at him funny doesn't strike me as being heroic).

I don't mind getting killed so much early on in the character's career. In those first few sessions I have a sheet of paper with number on it but I don't have a Character. I know their name, race and class but I don't know who they are; I don't know what their personality is yet. But after months of play and many adventures I don't want all of the accumulated back story to be for naught because a single die roll.

My DM has said "death means the PC stops suffering". I'm a player and I stand behind that statement. I absolutely adore the story options that can arise when the DM threatens my PC's friends, the PC's family (or the PC's friend's family); their home, their home town or their home country; I have no qualms about my character being captured, jailed or stripped naked and left for dead in the middle of nowhere. I would love for 4e to remove Save-or-Die so that the suffering can continue.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In the games I play in there is a lot of non combat encounters and this is where you see how the fighter type playes sitting around bored stacking their dice. I hope that 4E address some of this as well.

I hope so, too.
Though I wonder if there aren't sometimes just player types that will never enjoy social encounters because it doesn't involve killing people and taking their stuff. But maybe there aren't such people, and there are actually just people that want that their characters ability determine the outcome of the game, not their skills as actor or psychologist...

I probably belong a little bit to them. I like coming up with good ideas and understanding the motivation of NPCs*. But I wouldn't like it if I had to put my ideas into fine-tuned words to convince the DM. I want to use my clever idea to formulate the basic idea of what my character says to the NPC and then let the dice roll to see if my character gets my point across.

I typically dislike pure puzzles/riddles, especially when they are not related to the story of the adventure or linked somehow to NPCs or PCs. It has nothing to do with my character, and I (and the rest of my group) usually end up thinking to complicated.


*) I am not saying I am actually good at this I just like when it happens...

 

[Raven Crowking]

Technically true, but a good term to describe that kind of behavior is "annoying."

Another is "conversational".

Lots of times, in normal conversations, people state what they feel without expecting to meet a burden of proof. Burden of proof is reserved for when you are trying to convince others that your view is right. Attempting to force burden of proof into normal conversation is annoying.

Example:

Person 1: X is Y.
Person 2: I don't think so.

Barring Person 1 then trying to convince Person 2, there is no burden of proof. This is a large part of normal conversation. Indeed, in some cases Person 2 is even able to discuss Person 1's belief that X is Y without accepting it to be true, requiring proof, or ridiculing Person 1 for his belief.

Or, maybe that's just some unique quality of the people I hang out with. YMMV.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

That should actually be considered a logical fallacy.

"Extraordinary claims" means nothing more than "claims which go against other things that I have accepted as true, and therefore which would require me to alter my belief system should I accept them" whereas "extraordinary evidence" means "evidence that meets a burden of proof far greater that that which I apply to the things I currently believe."

It justifies a "no amount of evidence will change my mind" attitude all too often, though perhaps not in this case.


RC

 

[Elf Witch]

I hope so, too.
Though I wonder if there aren't sometimes just player types that will never enjoy social encounters because it doesn't involve killing people and taking their stuff. But maybe there aren't such people, and there are actually just people that want that their characters ability determine the outcome of the game, not their skills as actor or psychologist...

I probably belong a little bit to them. I like coming up with good ideas and understanding the motivation of NPCs*. But I wouldn't like it if I had to put my ideas into fine-tuned words to convince the DM. I want to use my clever idea to formulate the basic idea of what my character says to the NPC and then let the dice roll to see if my character gets my point across.

I typically dislike pure puzzles/riddles, especially when they are not related to the story of the adventure or linked somehow to NPCs or PCs. It has nothing to do with my character, and I (and the rest of my group) usually end up thinking to complicated.


*) I am not saying I am actually good at this I just like when it happens...

There are players who get bored if they are not killing something and it does not matter what class they are playing.

I believe in using dice for social encounters because not everyone can be as glib and just brimming with charisma like their characters.

I usually find fighters boring to play sure they rock in combat but oustide they get nothing sure they climb and jump but not well in the earlier levels because they have not gotten past their armor penalties. And if you are going with a standard 25-29 point buy you need to put your points in the physical stats.

The only time I found playing a fighter fun was in a Kalamar game where I rolled what would be a 44 point buy character and my DM let me use the courtier class from Rokugan so I had what I envisioned as a noble knight. I had high intellegence and high charisma so between the levels I took in courtier and a two feats from the Kalamar setting to make a fighter who was also educated and good in social settings.

Fantasy is full of charasmatic educated fighters but it is almost impossible to make one in DnD. That is something I find unfun.

 

[hong]

Attempting to force burden of proof into normal conversation is annoying.

But character building.

 

[Raven Crowking]

When people respond directly to such a statement of preference with "Well, if you don't want to have any risk of losing, maybe you should be reading a novel / I don't like to play games on God Mode / winning is meaningless if you can't lose" I'm not going to say "Gee, this person inexplicably started talking about something else, oh well, not my problem." Because they are not talking about something else, they are talking inaccurately about a group I am a part of.

Have you ever said, of any sort of DM, that they should be writing a novel instead, or fanfic? Because, AFAICT, that's a pretty common charge levelled against DMs whose worlds don't bend to the players' every whim........

 

[Elf Witch]

I find that in the VAST majority of games combat is about 80% of the game. Sometimes one session will have a lot of social interaction and non-combat encounters, but it will be the rare one.

In nearly every Living Greyhawk, Xen'drik Expeditions, and other RPGA campaign mod, there are 3 combat encounters in a 4-5 hour long adventure. Each combat encounter in 3.5e tends to take between 45 minutes to 120 minutes depending. So, at the very minimum, it is using up over half the time in the game with combat.

The same holds true for the pacing of nearly every published adventure.

So, if you're going to sit down for a 5 hour session and spend at least 2 and a half hours of it in combat, it's nice to have something that you consider "fun" to do during that time.

Non-combat encounters don't have AS MUCH of this issue. If the rogue is searching for traps, it should only take 5 minutes to find and disarm them. Generally, no longer than waiting for your turn to come around in a battle. So your "downtime" isn't the same.

The place where it could use some more "fun" rules and abilities is long social encounters where you spend an hour or so talking to NPCs, gathering information, making contacts, etc. The fighters need to be able to get involved in the same way that everyone else does.

One way to improve this as well is make combat go faster. If combat could be resolved faster then I am not sure how much an issue this would be.

In the games I have played in I would not say that combat happens every session so saying 80% for us way off. And this has become an issue with people not wanting to play fighter types. In our group getting some one to play a straight fighter is as hard as it was to get someone to play a cleric in 2 edition.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Right, right. Now keep doing that. And after the fight, work out the following: all arrows which hit are destroyed. Half of the arrows which missed are destroyed under normal circumstances. Double check with your DM whether you are in abnormal circumstances, like shooting at a sea serpent, that would cause your arrows to become lost at a higher rate. The remaining arrows may be salvaged. Replace them in your quiver. Then go to your larger backup storage of arrows and top off your quiver. Mark down how much your backup storage has diminished. You DO have one, right? You didn't go adventuring into the Underdark with just 60 arrows, right? Of course you didn't. So mark off how many of the nearly 2000 arrows in your backup have been used.

That's what you have to do.

No....All you have to do is say to the DM "I scavenge whatever arrows I can find on the battlefield. How many do I get back?"

RC

 

[Sun Knight]

I can't be the only person amazed that the bulk of 4e's more strident naysayers got their PHB a year early, and that the design team produced a risk-free game despite all evidence to the contrary. Damn alternate reality time machines!

Its called SWSE and reading the designer blogs. It doesn't take much to figure out what WotC is doing.