When Adventure Designers Cheat

[lukelightning]

The frictionless floor in White Plume is a possible example, and Keraptos could certainly throw wishes...

Actually it was a cleaning-woman with a broom of luck. Little did she know it had a wish, and she was cleaning that floor and said "I wish this floor was perfectly buffed."

(buffed as in polished, btw).

 

[pemerton]

Actually it was a cleaning-woman with a broom of luck. Little did she know it had a wish, and she was cleaning that floor and said "I wish this floor was perfectly buffed."

Good stuff!

 

[Psion]

Actually it was a cleaning-woman with a broom of luck. Little did she know it had a wish, and she was cleaning that floor and said "I wish this floor was perfectly buffed."

 

[Crothian]

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.

That's the DM making divinations worthless. Divinations though are hard to use and it does seem that some DMs don't do well by them.

 

[lukelightning]

That's the DM making divinations worthless. Divinations though are hard to use and it does seem that some DMs don't do well by them.

I also think DMs do this by accident. There is pressure on them to say something witty and sagely and cryptic, like is found in literature. But it's hard to think of some mystic sounding way to describe "trolls will try to eat your head if you go into that cave" or whatever on the spur of the moment.

I'd just say "your divination is mystic metaphorical symbols that reveals there are trolls in the cave, oh and it rhymes too..."

 

[gizmo33]

But third edition attempts to make the DM's judgement and experience somewhat superfluous. All those numbers are thier so that the DM won't, in theory at least, have to decide what happens. The designers of 3rd edition seemed to want to render the DM into a 'game engine' rather than a 'game master'.

Why did NPC orcs in 1E have hitpoints? Why not just let the DM use his "judgement and experience" in deciding when the orc dies? In fact, why do PCs have hitpoints? If the DM is such a "Master" of the game, why not just decide when a PC is dead?

IMO the facts show that DnD has always had a strong element of simulation to it and DMs have always been part game engine (otherwise - explain the purpose of dice in an RPG? Just for show?). The focus of 1E DnD on combat (and rather hazy treatment of skills and such) I think stems from DnD's roots as a wargame.

It's only the standard established by the rules and adhered to by the DM that allows the players to feel that their decisions have meaning and that there is some point to managing resources. As a player, I know that "+3 to hit and damage" is a cool thing to have because I have a rough idea of the AC/hitpoints etc. of my typical foe. If a DM were allowed to just decide when a monster got killed during a battle, then my +3/+3 would probably not count for much. Telling me that my PC is "better at climbing" is useless if success or failure in climbing is based on DM fiat. (LukeLightning's problems with divination in the game stem from the same basic issue.)

However, I think many 3E people go too far on this issue on two ways. First - the 3E rules aren't meant to describe everything in the world, so it's not "wrong" to say that a darkness effect is a unique permanent 9th level spell - even if there's no such thing in the SRD. The DM creates the world. If the "cold" is so cold that it overrides cold spells, then that's the way it is. Granted it's probably better form to invent some quasi-gamey type term like "uber-cold" and assign it special rules. I think it's lazy (and bad design) to say stuff like "it's too cold and no spell can counter-act this damage, period." (Granted, it's debateable whether or not a rule like this ever existed in any published module.)

Secondly - saving throw DCs and other game elements are so trivially easy to assign to the various features of classic modules that complaining about Tomb of Horrors, et. al. makes no sense. Seems like there's really something else going on with that. Maybe ToH killed someone's puppy. In any case I don't see the point in ignoring the genius of the classic modules because of a bunch of relatively trivial mechanical issues - but then who cares anyway, it's not really my loss.

 

[gizmo33]

That's the DM making divinations worthless. Divinations though are hard to use and it does seem that some DMs don't do well by them.

IMO, by far, the most significant issue with regards to divination is that it is too open-ended. Knowledge/information and people's access to it shapes events, decisions, and even whole cultures. Allowing characters access to relatively infallible sources of information at relatively low cost creates a situation, IMO, that has no parallel in reality, legend, or fantasy literature.

Of course I expect most DMs to just keep their heads down, make some on-the-spot rulings and get by on a lot of blustering and fiat - the way skills were handled in 1E. And much like 1E, it will work for most people but I wouldn't be surprised if something better came along in the future.

 

[pemerton]

It's only the standard established by the rules and adhered to by the DM that allows the players to feel that their decisions have meaning and that there is some point to managing resources.

I enjoyed your post, but particularly wanted to call out this paragraph because it once again raises the issue of play styles supported by D&D.

Until we know what the goals of D&D play are, I don't see how we can work out what counts as good or poor module design. But D&D has a tendency to fudge this issue - it asserts that any of a wide range of play styles is supported, but I suspect, and many of the posts on this thread (including the paragraph quoted above) suggest that in fact it supports primarily a resource acquisition/management style of play.

If a game's play style is quite different - eg if it's aimed at producing a certain emotional response in the players, as in much CofC play - then the players may very well feel that their decisions have meaning, although there is not the rules structure to support resource management. It is not a criticism of a CofC module that there are no stats for the Great Old One who turns up at the end, because if the game has been played in the expect fashion the point of this climax is not to allow the players to overcome a challenge, but rather to allow them to experience a certain type of emotional or thematic response.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I think this is really underlining the futility of mapping out a "right" solution to challenges you present the party with. It's much better to simply set the scene, and let things happen [...]

Well said, sir.

= = = = =

I think a lot of the design flaws in high-level adventures stem from fear.

"Huh? What the... ?" I can hear you saying. Yes, fear. Fear in the adventure designer that his challenges will be too difficult for the party. Fear that the PCs will do something unexpected and mess up the adventure.

Let go of your fear, as Yoda would say. When the party is high level, that's the time you should take off the kid gloves and throw extremely difficult challenges at them. Make the PCs use those high-level spells and abilities -- they exist for a reason!

(To paraphrase Sagiro from his story hour: I don't know what the PCs would have done if [particular magic item X] hadn't worked. But it's not my job to solve the problems, just to create them.)

And if the PCs take things in an unexpected direction, roll with it. Some of the best D&D sessions come out of a DM's desperate ad-libbing after the party goes off the map, so to speak. (Of course, in a published adventure, this is a lot more difficult; but that just reinforces the notion that nothing can substitute for a good DM.)

 

[Imagicka]

the 3E rules aren't meant to describe everything in the world, so it's not "wrong" to say that a darkness effect is a unique permanent 9th level spell - even if there's no such thing in the SRD. The DM creates the world.

So, how hard is it for the DM to say, upfront... "this is the way it is... "? Problem is players come to the table thinking that the physics and reality of the world should be defined by the books. If they aren't, what the heck is in all those darn books? Only with experience do you realize that the books don't cover everything, and you pretty much have to get comfortable with the way your own DM runs his/her game.

But if you look at any given setting put out by WotC, you do get the sense that the magick and the setting are all that are there in the world. There is no 'places that have magick that even wizards and clerics are unable to fathom'. It would be easy enough to say: 'Lots of magick has been lost to the ages because of war, (or whatever). So much so that you will occationallly encounter places that still have remainates of these old and forgotten magicks. Darkness so powerful, not even daylight spells by a 20th level wizard can penetrate. Places that make it impossible to use certain spells, like Fly or Levitate'