When Adventure Designers Cheat

[pemerton]

What does plot have to do with this? Aren't we talking essentially about what constitutes legitimate puzzle/challenge design?

<snip>

"Should all in-game challenges be resolvable through the mechanics presented in the RAW?"

"If so, what are the drawbacks, if any?"

"Does that place too much emphasis on resource management, at the expense of other forms of problem-solving?"

Do you think there's any room in the game for challenges/obstacles that cannot be overcome by the use of the proper spell (or character ability)?

I'm no fan of the kind of design that was commonplace in the old AD&D tournament modules, but neither am I comfortable with the solution becoming a matter of pulling the right magical ability out of your... umm... pointy hat.

Mallus, I like your points. The play preferences of different groups obviously will differ, but I can't see any in-principle objection to challenges that aren't about resource management/application.

Nor is this contrary to D&D tradition - the 1st Ed DMG emphasised this sort of thing frequently, and you can see it in the Starship Warden campaign logs in the early Dragon magazines.

Allowing only one solution is not my definition of "forcing players to think outside the box." At that point, it stops being a matter of trying to be clever and use your resources and starts being a guessing game.

I think this contrast between "resource use" and "guessing games" leaves some things out. For example, what if the "guessing game" has been seeded by earlier clues given, or has an answer which is a natural (or plausible) inference from earlier events in the campaign, or from known facts of the campaign world?

Having a quick look over Lost Temple of Tharizdun, it doesn't seem outrageous. First, the robes are magic (radiating Abjuration); second, as others have said, the cold is that radiated by a being of utter entropy and destruction - it is perhaps not even a real cold, but more like the chilling touch of the Undead or negative energy; third, the idea of a magical effect or trap having a key or password that gets around it is hardly non-standard - in this case, the "password" is the ceremonial robes.

Moving from rules logic to play logic, what is the point of a game that encourages players to have their characters don Tharizdun's robes if they are to safely enter his temple? On the roleplaying front, it forces them (especially clerics and paladins) to make a choice about how far they are prepared to go in becoming like the enemy they are there to combat. On the flavour front, it gives the GM a lot of scope to talk up the eeriness of the robes, the rustling they create in the temple, the way temple inhabitants respond to them, etc. This may reinforce the roleplaying challenge, or just be fun in its own right.

Whatever the overall merits of WG4 - and I know a lot of people think of it as mediocre rather than great - to characterise this sort of adventure design as simply "guessing games" or "rail-roading" is unfair. It ignores the real contributions to the play experience - at least for some groups, who are looking for that sort of experience - that can result from it.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think people mind specific counters to their abilities. Remeber Bastion of Broken Souls? The ban of the unborn made high-level divinations useless for getting the straight dope on what was going on straight from the diety's mouth. That was cool.

<snip>

Absolute non-use of abilities either make players feel like they made suboptimal choices or you're deliberately blunting their most potent tools. Look at the difference in damage reduction between 3.0 and 3.5. It's a good thing to make things tougher for specific approaches, not impossible for specific approaches. In the campaigns I've seen, players don't start "thinking outside the box" when you take their abilities away, they start entering spectator mode and wait to see what they can do when the current challenge is bypassed. This is essentially an attempt to railroad your players into a specific play style through rules considerations.

I'm not saying to make every problem a nail when the players love hammers. But the game should be challenging without limiting options to either/or solutions.

I don't fully follow this. Any game system can be characterise as an attempt to railroad the players into a specific play style through rules considerations. That is the point of rules: they support particular styles of play. For example, there are all sorts of ways that D&D supports and encourages combat as a principal character activity, from it character building rules through to its XP system. And it also encourages a certain approach to combat - broadly, player-directed and tactical - through various aspects of both character design and combat mechanics.

The contrast with a system like Dying Earth is very great. Dying Earth mechanics actively discourage combat in favour of repartee, and even when combat is an issue it is not tactical combat of the D&D sort that is encouraged, but quite a different play experience.

Now, if players have signed up for the D&D experience, and a particular module purports to take that away (eg by stipulating that "in this world, none of the PH special combat actions work") that would be grounds for complaint. But thwarting particular spells and abilities needn't cause the same sort of response. Provided it happens to everyone from time-to-time, it needn't make anyone feel they made a sub-optimal choice, either.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Whatever the overall merits of WG4 - and I know a lot of people think of it as mediocre rather than great - to characterise this sort of adventure design as simply "guessing games" or "rail-roading" is unfair. It ignores the real contributions to the play experience - at least for some groups, who are looking for that sort of experience - that can result from it.

Excellent point and I'm in totally agreement with this statement, especially in terms of the actual play experience.

 

[Mouseferatu]

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.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm generally opposed to DM 'cheating', but the examples you describe are rather borderline and not that outrageous. There is no particular reason to think that there are not 'epic' or 'divine' effects which are beyond the ability of ordinary magic to alter. In fact, I dare say that in order for a module to have an 'epic' feel to me, it must eventually place the characters in a place where there ordinarily overpowering abilities and bag of ruetine super-skills cannot be relied on.

One has to remember that particularly in 1st edition, there just weren't many 'fair' challenges to a party of characters of 9th level or above. By 12th level, there wasn't anything in the Monster Manual's that a well played PC party couldn't handle, and often handle with ease. In first edition, 'epic' started around 10th level (and you could play for years without getting there).

I do dislike having that all the time though. I've seen DM's lean too hard on taking away abilities by fiat. Super-powered characters shouldn't feel like the world has scaled up in difficulty just to give them a hard time. But if the PC's start poking around in things beyond mortal ken, then they should expect to find things which defy thier comprehension.

The sort of cheating which really bothers me is when a DM allows NPC's to do things which he would not allow the PC's to do were they the same level as the NPC. One of the worst examples of this is the special archery rules for 'massed goblins' in Axe of the Dwarven lords. I'm a big fan of 'the NPC's are people too'. Whatever a PC of equivalent skill and level should be allowed to do, NPC's should also be allowed to do - and nothing more than what a PC could do.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

+20 to each would be effectively the same at the level one can first cast them, but it would certainly preserve the ability to make them not an auto-win as well.

That's a pretty good change. I may houserule that.

 

[Mouseferatu]

+20 to each would be effectively the same at the level one can first cast them, but it would certainly preserve the ability to make them not an auto-win as well.

That's a pretty good change. I may houserule that.

I'd be more inclined to have it scale by level, honestly, but that's a topic for another day (thread).

 

[Stalker0]

The sort of cheating which really bothers me is when a DM allows NPC's to do things which he would not allow the PC's to do were they the same level as the NPC. One of the worst examples of this is the special archery rules for 'massed goblins' in Axe of the Dwarven lords. I'm a big fan of 'the NPC's are people too'. Whatever a PC of equivalent skill and level should be allowed to do, NPC's should also be allowed to do - and nothing more than what a PC could do.

I'm in disagreement with this. As both a player and a DM, I have no problems with npcs cutting corners, I just like there to be a good reason.

Player: So, the npc is immune to fire, um why?
DM: Because he was sacrificed in a pyre to a fire god, but the fire god recognized his worth and allowed him to live, granted him immunity to fire and a few other benefits.
Player: Oh, cool.

To me, the most memorable villians are those that are out of the box, that have abiilties you just normally can't get, which define them in interesting ways. As long as there's a "logical reason" (which in fantasy doesn't have to be that logical) then I'm all for it. However, I definately think it can get overboard. Its fine for a BBEG to get some of this, but I don't think any old kobold should get special treatment just because.

 

[Psion]

I think this contrast between "resource use" and "guessing games" leaves some things out.

Indeed it does, since you quoted me out of context and hacked off the preceding sentence in your quote. Which taken in context I am trying to spell out that challenges without painfully specific solutions are not, for the most part, what I perceive anyone talking about.

Pretending that the other side is only arguing the extreme position does nothing to advance the discussion.

For example, what if the "guessing game" has been seeded by earlier clues given, or has an answer which is a natural (or plausible) inference from earlier events in the campaign, or from known facts of the campaign world?

I think those are excellent puzzles, with the caveat that I've learned that often players cannot be expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game world. I think the 3e take on knowledge and bardic abilities help bridge the gap in this regard.

I am suddenly reminded of two puzzles that I ran in my own game world. While I won't claim they are the height of puzzle challenges, I think they both avoid the "pixelbitchy" nature that I refer to as being the problem here.

The first puzzle involved putting statues of deities in an array of 5 depressions in a pedestal. The statues had to be selected from a collection of statues of the whole pantheon. The combinations that could be had here was immense.

The clue here involved a title that each deity had which belonged on the pedestal. The players weren't that familiar with their formal titles, but were able to suss out all but one of them. Only having to fill one slot, the players were able to proceed by trial and error.

A second puzzle I ran was a logic puzzle of the sort you find in one of those logic puzzle magazines (in fact that's where I got it.) A dragon who had challenged the PCs told them certain known facts about some turned over cards which, though logic and deduction, could be used to tell them where ALL the cards were. The catch? The cards were all deck of many things cards. Turning over the wrong card had bad results.

I TOTALLY overestimated my players' ability to solve a puzzle like this. But they managed by "taking the hit", and flipping over a few cards until they had enough knowledge that they could suss out the rest without too much brain sweat.

In short, the point here is that I think if you bank too much on the players being able to solve a problem requiring a very specific and obscure solution, you are asking for trouble in the form of a log-jammed adventure. But if you allow gradiated levels of success, more and less optimal solutions, or don't make solving the most difficult puzzles mandatory for progress (just helpful), you can have these puzzles but not bowl your players over with them.

Having a quick look over Lost Temple of Tharizdun, it doesn't seem outrageous. First, the robes are magic (radiating Abjuration); second, as others have said, the cold is that radiated by a being of utter entropy and destruction - it is perhaps not even a real cold, but more like the chilling touch of the Undead or negative energy; third, the idea of a magical effect or trap having a key or password that gets around it is hardly non-standard - in this case, the "password" is the ceremonial robes.

Moving from rules logic to play logic, what is the point of a game that encourages players to have their characters don Tharizdun's robes if they are to safely enter his temple? On the roleplaying front, it forces them (especially clerics and paladins) to make a choice about how far they are prepared to go in becoming like the enemy they are there to combat. On the flavour front, it gives the GM a lot of scope to talk up the eeriness of the robes, the rustling they create in the temple, the way temple inhabitants respond to them, etc. This may reinforce the roleplaying challenge, or just be fun in its own right.

I really had no idea what WG4 (the original) involved as I never owned, ran, or played in it. I only had to go on what I was told here. It sounds like, from what you are saying, Piratecat had it right... it needed a better update.

 

[Psion]

I'd be more inclined to have it scale by level, honestly, but that's a topic for another day (thread).

My house rule with Comprehend Languages splits the difference... flat bonus, plus a scaled bonus.