When Adventure Designers Cheat

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I have no problems with it at all. The Tharizdun thing is fine and my players figured it out easily, and didn't seem to think it was "cheating" in any sense, nor did I. The situation was not a standard one and a non-standard ruling was fine.


P.S. RttTOEE is the worst module of all time.

 

[Crysmalon]

The word 'cheat' is the wrong word to use in an RPG IMO. Rules are what you make of them. There is likely a huge difference between 'sloppy' design (not understanding RAW) and taking liberty with RAW where/when needed. DMs do it all the time.

 

[Mark CMG]

Despite what some seem to put forth in this thread, I do not believe that a design needs to include enough clues so that every mystery be solved and every puzzle's solution be found by the players. I do believe, however, that good design needs to include the option of failure on the part of the PCs.

 

[Jubilee]

i was once playing in a game that we knew was loosely based on tomb of horrors (Our GM insists he doesn't use modules, but he uses the text and pictures/maps from them, in any case) - we ran into a lich in a room with an anti-magic fog that affected everyone but him, and he had DR 20/keen and vorpal weapons. He wouldn't leave his room, though, so after he soul-sucked our fighter, we let him be. I thought the GM just didn't want us to kill it, but maybe it was the module's stupid idea afterall.

We showed that lich, though - stole all his money and striped his mithril vault of mithril so we had the money for a true ressurection for the fighter.

/ali

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Would you be willing to name the adventures you're talking about? You're talking about published ones, correct?

A few years back, I attended a d20 design seminar at GenCon done by The Game Mechanics. They made specific comment about designers doing stuff like this and rightfully called it out as B.S.

It's one thing to come up with new rule elements in a product; it's another to negate established parts of the system because you couldn't think of a more creative way to ram your plot down the user's throat.

Thats generally my beef with adventures (particularly mysteries) that are written where divinations are useless. Now and then, it can be ok, but its like they couldnt be bothered to actually write an adventure for a fantasy setting, and instead just wrote it fro 1200 AD England. Lazy, lazy writing.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Tomb of Horrors[/i] is another such offender.

That's what always annoyed me about ToH. The module was written by Gygax specifically to thwart people who "thought" they understood the rules. No duh, when you dont follow them, its easy to kill characters. Its like holding a monopoly tournament, starting it, then declaring that theres an aforementioned house rule: that you, the banker, get all the money. "IN YOUR FACE NOOBS! You know jack about Monopoly!"

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Meh. It doesn't bother me all that much. If there is something in a module that doesn't make sense to me, I usually just use the rules I am familiar with (Frostburn for cold environments, for example). Otherwise, life is too short to get worked up over the minor nitpicks.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Regarding spells like knock and comprehend languages...

I'd like to see 4E change those spells to work more like, say, jump. That is, they add a bonus--maybe even a hefty bonus--to the relevent skill. But the roll is still required.

Open Doors in AE is already like that. You make an Open Lock roll with your caster level added. My magister player groused until I pointed out it was a level lower than knock (1st), and he eventually made a magic item from a thieve's finger bones that granted a small bonus. We did the same thing w comprehend languages grantign a bonus to decipher script.

 

[Lanefan]

Wishes and even miracles are not the absolute limit of power in the game.

Count me as a grognard, perhaps, but as far as I'm concerned "Wish" should be able to trump anything short of the explicit will and actions of a god...assuming, of course, it's worded properly...

Lastly, there is in 3rd edition never any reason for old skool 1st edition absolute claims like, "nothing can harm the widget" or "no force can resist the irresitable object". Any 3rd edition designer worth his salt, wishing to enforce his puzzle or challenge and take away the obvious short cut need only set the DC of solving the challenge in that fashion above what is reasonable for a character of that level to solve. For example, DC's 30 or more above effective character level are impervious to all but the most narrowly created specialists. A hardness of 30 or more and a decent amount of hit points will prove immune to the brute efforts of all but very high level characters, especially with other defences in place to discourage that approach (for example, a level shocking grasp is triggered whenever the object is damaged, and the object has 50 such charges). You want a door that always shuts? Instead of saying, "It always shuts and no force can stop it", point out that it is a gargantuan object and has an effective strength of 60.

You know, you may have just stumbled on to the biggest single flavour difference between 1e and 3e: in 3e, everything has to have a number attached. In 1e, things *could* be designed as absolute - "the Door of Wonders will not and can not open unless the word GROGNARD is spoken loudly enough that the speaker can hear their own echo from the door" - wonderfully flavourful, gets the point across, and not a number in sight. In 3e, the door would have to have an Open Locks DC, a hardness value, a hit point value, a size, a specific range within which the password will work; never mind its EL...lots of numbers, much less flavour, same result for the players and DM. So why not just keep the flavour?

As for WG4 Lost Temple of Tharizdun, I've run it twice now and both times it's been more than memorable; I could tell stories all day, but suffice it to say things do not end well when the party wakes Tharidzun up as one group of mine did long ago. Wonderful module! (and gaining entry to the temple is the best set-piece battle I've ever seen in a published adventure) The only glitch is that on the lower main level there's a passage that leads off "to the outside", which implies a back door, but the exit is not noted on any map; if you're a DM planning to run this and have PC's capable of using high-powered divinations (e.g. Commune, Find the Path, etc.) you need to place this exit ahead of time.

Lanefan

 

[lukelightning]

Thats generally my beef with adventures (particularly mysteries) that are written where divinations are useless.

I've always found divinations to be useless. Normally the DM just gives a cryptic answer that is no help at all, or information that is just plot exposition.