D&D thread
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
The sword of summoning geese, however, is a cursed item and does it randomly.
Hell hath no fury like mother goose approached too closely.
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@Zerosquare said in D&D thread:
It's way worse than that. If you pick it up, it causes all of your other belongings to develop
rRust as well.There's a thread for that
.Filed under: Cursed item, indeed!
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@HardwareGeek Reminds me that I do have encountered rust monsters. And yes, they tend to make most useful items useless if getting too close.
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Saw the D&D movie yesterday. Uhh... 5/10, I suppose. A short review, if you care, follows:
First of all, frantically rushed pacing. The story they wanted to tell, with all the places they wanted us to see, done properly, would have to run for, shall we say, 6x 50 min episodes minimum.
Second, lore droppings on every chance and then some, so that even the uninitiated like me would see something and go "yep, that there's definitely D&D". And not just some action trash B-movie borne of someone's fanfic.
Third, the DM is nowhere to be seen! I guess having a narrator is a tired trope, but it's irremovable part of D&D and many other tabletop experiences.
Four, reviews mention Hugh Grant's character Forge (who could have been the DM mentioned above, I might add) being ruined by silly jokes and Monty Python-esque performance. Obviously I liked that bit, but more than that it was about the only one with any unconstipated emotion.
Five, the soundtrack was absolutely... where was it, actually? Even the uninspired bog-standard forgettable action movie crap made by Zimmer's third assistant from the leftovers was lost in the mix.
Six, the... hell, I'm really giving far too much fuck about this.The only arguably fun quality (on a technicality) is that
LettyMichelle Rodriguez had apparently admitted to growing armpit hairs for her Barbarian role. Method acting if I've ever heard of one.So, that said, I'm not a kino snob. It does a good impression of what to expect from your average tabletop game (except with a Tropic Thunder cast) - poor characters, exposition dumps, bare-bones story, over-the-top shenanigans winning the day by being on the right side of the table, so to speak. You had to be there. It does that and therefore it wears the name bestowed upon it. For three fiddy I don't regret a thing, I guess.
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The "
puns" thread is
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@Mason_Wheeler It's tricky to find the balance between "this is threatening, so it's exactly the kind of thing adventurers like you are made for" and "you should not be doing this; here, I'll make it sound really threatening so that you turn around and find something else to do!"
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@PotatoEngineer I always liked how Shadowrun had a meta solution to this. Characters could take a Feat (or whatever Shadowrun called it) called Common Sense, where the GM would say "this doesn't seem like a good idea; are you sure you want to do that?" if they decide to do something particularly stupid or suicidal.
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@Mason_Wheeler I genuinely dislike that kind of thing. GURPS has it, too. If the GM wants to tell you something, they should tell you something.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in D&D thread:
a Feat (or whatever Shadowrun called it)
An edge.
called Common Sense where the GM would say "this doesn't seem like a good idea; are you sure you want to do that?" if they decide to do something particularly stupid or suicidal.
IMHO, it’s especially a good edge for players new to the game to take for their first character. It’s been my observation that they’re often the ones to try things that the setting or the rules would probably come down on like a ton of bricks, because a new player won’t really know how they work yet. To have a simple thing like this, that will almost force the GM to ask them if they really want to do this, works wonders, IME.
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
If the GM wants to tell you something, they should tell you something.
My GMing philosophy is that if the players want to try stupid things, they should go ahead and do it — and then we’ll see where the chips fall. Memorable events are often the result of this kind of behaviour, after all. However, like I said above, a Common Sense edge helps the GM to step in if it seems necessary, without coming across as if you’re trying to spoil all the fun.
That said, I also do it without, but only if the players are doing something to monumentally stupid that nobody in their right minds would seriously consider it, and when they seem to be losing the plot too much (though that’s not Common Sense, of course).
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
If the GM wants to tell you something, they should tell you something.
My GMing philosophy is that if the players want to try stupid things, they should go ahead and do it — and then we’ll see where the chips fall. Memorable events are often the result of this kind of behaviour, after all. However, like I said above, a Common Sense edge helps the GM to step in if it seems necessary, without coming across as if you’re trying to spoil all the fun.
My reasoning is that the characters know things that the players don't know. So if the idea is stupid because (guards/defenses/alarms/that's not how the jester would react to being stabbed), the player should be informed about it.
My other reasoning is that you shouldn't have to spend scarce character resources to get that kind of thing. Forcing a character to spend an Edge/character points/squid on that is an invitation for the GM to laugh at the players rather than with the players.
That said: you warn your players, and if they properly acknowledge the warning and then ignore it, it's time to see what happens when a zany plan hits reality: it'll never be what's actually planned, but it can be a good time for all involved anyway.
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
My reasoning is that the characters know things that the players don't know.
Agreed, but IMHO that’s what their skills are (partly) for, as well as their having lived in the game world in general, of course. However, I don’t think the Common Sense edge was intended for those situations. Rather, my idea is that the point of it is for players who want to be warned when they’re about to do something that could have major (negative) consequences when they should know better.
From the third-edition Shadowrun Companion:
Foolish is not the same as nobody in the setting would do that.
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We did have that situation pop up a couple meetings ago. We came to a village being raided by a minor army of evildoers (~100). The situation was very obvious “this village is fucked, we can do nothing”. And then the ranger goes “I charge towards the village to save anyone I can!” The rest of the group was “We others are just gonna quietly pull back before they notice us, because we got no chance to take them all on.” and even the DM told her flat out “You are going to die if you do that, you are one person against an army of 100.” And then she begrudgingly went “Fine.” and did not proceed with her “heroic” action.
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@Atazhaia There have been situations where I had my character do things I knew were stupid and potentially fatal, because I saw no plausible explanation why my character wouldn't have done that thing.
Conversely, as a DM I have had situations where I'd let them go right ahead with their stupid plans (after calling for intelligence checks which they all failed), because it fit their characters. That said, I'd do my best to continue providing them with ways out and avoid any permanent character deaths.
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I'm confused. Are we still talking about DMing RPGs, or has the conversation switched to supporting users at work?
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@Zerosquare said in D&D thread:
I'm confused. Are we still talking about DMing RPGs, or has the conversation switched to supporting users at work
:same_picture.png:
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@Zerosquare said in D&D thread:
I'm confused. Are we still talking about DMing RPGs, or has the conversation switched to supporting users at work?
Obviously still DMing RPGs. If you're supporting users, you should let them stampede off the cliff
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@ixvedeusi said in D&D thread:
I'd let them go right ahead with their stupid plans (after calling for intelligence checks which they all failed)
My story about this, or really my son's story, which I may have told before, involved a failed perception check.
My son was a fairly new player; I think it was his first or second campaign. He persuaded the party to enter Hell to retrieve the soul of a dead companion. He was playing a Tiefling, and he also wanted a nightmare for a mount, which the DM had agreed to give him, but he'd have to earn it. Retrieving the dead companion's soul was the opportunity to do that.
They entered Hell. DM said, roll perception. My son rolled nat-1. "La de da. I see nothing, certainly not any demons about to kill us all.
" Demons who were much more powerful than the low-level party. I don't remember how many were killed, nor how the survivors escaped, but it was nearly a TPK.I probably have some details wrong. My son may correct me later, when he's awake and I show this to him. I may or may not post errata/corrigenda, depending on how significant the errors are to the central point — making very poor choices based on failed rolls.
Corrections, none particularly pertinent to the central point.
- The nightmare was intended to be a side quest to get them into Hell, but the wizard said, Oh, I can just open a portal (which is not how that spell really works, but the DM went with it anyway).
- There was only one demon, who launched some kind of kamikaze attack that only killed one party member. I assume it killed itself in the process, so posed no further immediate danger.
- The party was no longer unaware of the dangers, and proceeded much more carefully from that point.
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@HardwareGeek That raises some questions (that I shall withhold until all the facts are in).
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There were a couple of cases where, as DM, I flat-out said to the group "guys, please don't do that, this is just going to ruin the fun." One case I remember was when they were spending the whole session on some sort of ultra-minor not-even-a-plot-point thing that they'd decided was more fun than the main quest -- sometimes when they did that I ditched the whole campaign and went with them, but in that case I just told them how I wanted them to play the rest rather than improvise on the fly.
They complied without any grumbling, but I think it was in a large part because we'd been playing together for very long and they trusted me, and knew I wasn't going to abuse this type of meta-gaming, and I also knew that once in a while, they wouldn't mind it.
Definitely dependent on the group, some other groups might take "please don't do that" as an incentive to continue...
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The group I'm in as a player has a few faults along these lines. Including
- Boneheaded "it's what my character would do" syndrome, coupled with boneheaded characters (foolhardy to a fault, unable to take a hint, inflexible once started)
- Focused on the side details to the point it derails the narrative. I mean, I'm all for roleplay. But the game is more fun if we're actually going places, doing things.
- Totally capable and willing to ignore obvious "please don't" warnings.
As a result, we've done...basically nothing of use so far. And may have (in the last session) hastened the end of the world by ~100 years (as in, it was ~100 years away, now it's more or less imminent) and gotten a whole bunch of villains of other arcs all involved. While wasting most of a session faffing about.
The DM's pacing and ability to provide meaningful plot hooks is lacking, to be sure. Great worldbuilding, great descriptions...poor pacing (combat and narrative) and lots of things thrown in for the worldbuilding but not really interactable and not clearly flagged as such. So we spend lots of time interacting with tiny details and basically "pixel-bitching" looking for what we're supposed to be doing. Combine that with unhelpful NPCs...Overall, not the best campaign I've ever been in. But as a forever DM with a touch of ADHD (ok, more just a total lack of patience and ability to focus when things get boring), my standards may be slightly skewed.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
As a result, we've done...basically nothing of use so far.
Kneeling Warthog: The RPG
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@Zerosquare I've played idlerpg. It was boring.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
Boneheaded "it's what my character would do" syndrome
Honestly, I don't believe in this "syndrome." I'd heard about it many times, and seen the arguments... but then I watched the first Critical Role campaign. And it had Grog.
Grog has his own way of doing things. To call him dumb as a brick would be an insult to bricks. He's easily distractible, he wears his emotions on his sleeve, and he frequently runs off on some weird tangent or finds some bizarre way to get himself and/or the party in trouble, simply because that is what the character would do, and Travis is scrupulous about staying in character. And he's hands down the most entertaining character in the entire campaign.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
Boneheaded "it's what my character would do" syndrome
Honestly, I don't believe in this "syndrome." I'd heard about it many times, and seen the arguments... but then I watched the first Critical Role campaign. And it had Grog.
Grog has his own way of doing things. To call him dumb as a brick would be an insult to bricks. He's easily distractible, he wears his emotions on his sleeve, and he frequently runs off on some weird tangent or finds some bizarre way to get himself and/or the party in trouble, simply because that is what the character would do, and Travis is scrupulous about staying in character. And he's hands down the most entertaining character in the entire campaign.
And that's great...as entertainment with professional actors (which is exactly what Critical Role is. It's long since ceased to be a "real" campaign). But in a real campaign, it hijacks the entire campaign to be about one person's stupidity. Unless everyone is on board with it explicitly, in detail. In which case it's just the campaign.
The key here is that the characters don't exist. Only the players do. "It's what my character would do" is, fundamentally, an excuse for unfriendly to the game behavior. Because if the whole party is in on it...it never needs to be said! And blaming a fictional character for the actions of the one controlling them is not just stupid, it's manipulative. It's an attempt to avert blame for your own fun-unfriendly choices. You built the character, you decide what is "in character" or not. So choose differently. Because it is extremely rare that there is only one option "in character." And real people don't have such rigidly defined characters!
Those characters like that? Yeah, they're flat as a board. And horribly uninteresting. Real people, real complex characters have many, often contradictory motivations and decision loops. The one note "heh I'm dumb" characters (as well as any other one-note characters) drive me nuts because they're just a bad stereotype. And there's no reason the rest of the characters would keep that idiot around except metagaming.
Now there's nothing wrong with having characters whose OOC role is to keep things moving, by pushing the big red button or biting on the obvious plot hook when things have ground to a halt. But that should be OOC decided. Not "I decided to play an annoying character, so you all have to shut up and let me." No. Choose differently. The fun of the table is the entire point. Your "staying in character" is way less important. If it gets in the way of the table, there are three options.
- You can leave the table.
- You can change your character so it doesn't have that annoying feature.
- You can break character.
Not listed is "you force everyone else to put up with your annoying behavior because it's what my guy would do."
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Not listed is "you force everyone else to put up with your annoying behavior because it's what my guy would do."
In real life there are plenty of people who do act like that and do pull their friends into stupid shit all the time. Had a friend in HS who was known for doing stuff like that.
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@Dragoon said in D&D thread:
Not listed is "you force everyone else to put up with your annoying behavior because it's what my guy would do."
In real life there are plenty of people who do act like that and do pull their friends into stupid shit all the time. Had a friend in HS who was known for doing stuff like that.
Sure. But frankly, life is too short for that. You want to be annoying (above a certain threshold)? And the rest of the table/group is going to be indulgent? Well, I can always find another table/group. Or run one.
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@Dragoon said in D&D thread:
HS
Well there's your problem. That age group is not known for their high Wis bonuses.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@Dragoon said in D&D thread:
HS
Well there's your problem. That age group is not known for their high Wis bonuses.
Or high ability to consider other people's interests.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
unable to take a hint, inflexible once started
Hey, I resemble that remark
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
the DM told her flat out “You are going to die if you do that, you are one person against an army of 100.”
I gather the DM is type 20:
The 28 Types of Game Master
by Scott Butler and J.D. Frazer, updated 4-25-89
- Munchkin - "Having slain the hordes of Azoth single-handedly, without even unsheathing the Sword of Universal Destruction, your half grey elven/half gold dragon 50th-level paladin/MU/Cleric/Monk/Bard gazes down upon the pitiful Cthulhu who grovels at his feet..."
- Monty Haul (variation on the Munchkin, but characters tend to be lower level) - "You are each granted one wish." "I wish to have the hand and eye of Vecna." "I wish to have the flask of Teurny the Merciless." "I wish to have..." "Poof, they appear in front of you. Now what do you do?" (This actually happened, years ago, when we first started playing.)
- Whining Munchkin - "But, but, you guys CAN'T do that! It's my only dungeon! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaail!"
- Killer Munchkin - "You guys are dead."
- Killer - "As you pull aside the tapestry, a green slime jumps upon you from behind it, killing you... nope, no `to hit' or saving throw allowed, it says so right here."
- Executioner - "A hidden blade slides down the doorway, mincing the two fighters and the cleric. The thief gets nine crossbow bolts in his back, and the magic user is hit by an intense beam of light, burning a hole through his head."
- Troublemaker - singles out one player and continually hands him/her notes which read "Don't let anyone know there is nothing on this note."
- Cheater - "I don't care if you hit on an 18 LAST time, THIS time you missed, and I don't want to hear another thing about it."
- Die Modifier - "Yeah, yeah, so you rolled a 20. You missed. Secret modifiers, you know."
- Enforcer - "A blue bolt from heaven strikes Harold the Whiner, reducing him to one hit point. Anybody else got a problem with this campaign?"
- Novice - "You rolled a 2 on your `to hit' roll. Did you want high or low?"
- Verbose - "The door is solid oak, bound with 4 iron bands of roughly equal width, spaced equidistant along its width, and the wood is polished smooth, stained a dark brown, except for a small patch near the bottom which is blacker. The hinges are not visible from this side, but you notice the exquisite design of the lock, the faceplate of which is a starburst design, edged in gold or maybe polished copper or brass, it's kind of hard to tell with the torchlight, but the knocker is definitely cast iron and you see..." (sounds of snoring from party members)
- Poker Face - "The slave you rescued courteously accepts your offer to accompany you and thanks you for your trust in her..."
- No Poker Face - "The slave you rescued, hee hee, courteously accepts your offer, snort, to accompany you and thanks you for your trust in her, hah hah... boy are you gonna get it now... giggle..."
- Timid - "The orc hits you for 4 points of damage, if that's OK with you, Steve. Really, you've got 17 hit points left and he has only 2, so you'll be okay, OK?"
- DePalma school of blood and gore - "Your magic drill cleaves the demon's skull in twain and it literally explodes, spattering everyone with blood and brains. An unsightly green ichor drips from your face as you watch the smoldering corpse churn before you like a baby in a blender and finally settle into a puddle of vomit and excrement..."
- Gibson school of writing graduate - "The view in the crystal ball was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel."
- Vengeful - "You won't go out with me Saturday? Okay, all of the were-rats attack Christine."
- AD&D'er - "The 100 peasants beat at your fighter ineffectually with their sticks and pitchforks until you have slain them all. A heroic effort on your part."
- Anti-AD&D'er - "The 100 peasants overbear your fighter with their great numbers and, unable to move under the weight of their hordes, you squirm helplessly as they pry open your field plate and skewer you like a lobster. You die an ignoble death."
- Stickler For Detail - "Taking into account atmospheric conditions, the acceleration due to gravity, the low drag coefficient of your greased plate mail, your high dexterity, the gold in your backpack, your associated credit rating, the eggs you had for breakfast... and the average number of chickens who would remain inside the coop on a warm day, you have to roll 13 or better to survive the fall..."
- No Originality - "It's a quest, see, you're trying to take this ring to Mordor, to drop it into a volcano to destroy it. No, no, honest, I thought of this campaign myself..."
- Leading and Overbearing - "You pump the bartender for information and he tells you about a red dragon's lair to the west." "Too risky. We go to hear rumours somewhere else." "A man offers to hire you to clean out a red dragon's lair for him." "We say `no, thank you' and leave for the next village." "On the way to the village you stumble onto a red dragon's lair..."
- Schmuck - "Oh. Can someone really do that? Okay, I'll let you have a 50% chance. Oh. Okay, 75% then."
- Ghoul - "That's the 17th character you rolled tonight? Mouahahahahahahahahahah!"
- Absolute Monarch - "The huge Red Dragon CAN fit through the little hole, 'cause I SAID SO!"
- Unimaginative - "You walk into the bar and see thirty mercenaries all wearing scalemail and carrying longswords. They all sit at seperate tables."
- Design Zealot - "I just need another 15 minutes. I only have 3 more levels to populate."
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@remi said in D&D thread:
There were a couple of cases where, as DM, I flat-out said to the group "guys, please don't do that, this is just going to ruin the fun."
I had to do something similar last session, not because it wouldn’t be fun but because they were totally forgetting their reasons for going to the place they were at.
In our Shadowrun campaign, they need to get hold of something that they’ve determined is in the possession of a terrorist group that wants to resurrect the USA, and is known to be racist to some degree towards anything and anyone that isn’t both human and white. They found the hotel that this cell is supposed to be staying at, so now their plan is to try and make contact with the group, in hopes of finding out where the thing they want, is now. Unfortunately, the group consists of two elves and an ork; luckily one of the elves is white, so they figure he might be able to pass for human, or at least, won’t cause too much offense to the terrorists if he pretends to be a pro-USAsian too.
So they go to the hotel, where the white elf takes a seat in the restaurant. The other two enter a bit later and deliberately try to make a nuisance of themselves by being foreign and metahumans. The elf is Japanese-American and the ork is Chinese and has bright, red skin, so they’ve decided to play up the foreignness: the ork will speak mainly Chinese, the elf pretends to speak it by making Chinese-sounding noises. The idea is that will give the white elf something to be obviously racist towards, in the hopes of drawing the attention of the irredentists.
The chief problem here, adventure-wise, is that none of those guys are at the hotel at all when they go and do this … But, of course, they don’t know that. After a while, though, they seem to be getting so engrossed in their own “obnoxious foreigners” act that they were forgetting what the point of the whole thing even was in the first place. Eventually, I reminded them that there was a reason for all of this, which they replied to with a somewhat sheepish, “Oh yeah, that’s right …”
I mean, it was fun and all, but as a GM, I do kind of want them to go somewhere in this adventure I’ve thought up :) (My idea was that they would do something like slip some money to the staff to find out which rooms the terrorists were staying at. Maybe I should get them to watch more detective and crime movies, though.)
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@Applied-Mediocrity Corrections posted. Ask your questions.
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
We did have that situation pop up a couple meetings ago. We came to a village being raided by a minor army of evildoers (~100). The situation was very obvious “this village is fucked, we can do nothing”. And then the ranger goes “I charge towards the village to save anyone I can!” The rest of the group was “We others are just gonna quietly pull back before they notice us, because we got no chance to take them all on.” and even the DM told her flat out “You are going to die if you do that, you are one person against an army of 100.” And then she begrudgingly went “Fine.” and did not proceed with her “heroic” action.
That's a situation that could work, in a limited way: if the raiders have split into tiny groups to loot and pillage, and the villagers have scattered, there could be a few moments of heroism to save a few individuals, especially if the villagers don't have to run too far to get under the cover of the woods. But if the army is still organized, then they'll likely be able to bring a lot of force to bear in a pretty short time, and trying to rescue anyone is a fool's errand.
You need the GM to help you pick out which situation you're in.
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@PleegWat said in D&D thread:
@Zerosquare I've played idlerpg. It was boring.
Progress Quest is similarly boring, but funny for the joke it's making about grindy RPGs.
(That said: I hardly know what the computer RPG genre is anymore, because the edges of that genre are very fuzzy, and lots of other games have deep story. I think inventory management is the one feature that signifies a computer RPG; if it doesn't have that, it's more likely to be a visual novel or a tactics game.)
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
I mean, it was fun and all, but as a GM, I do kind of want them to go somewhere in this adventure I’ve thought up :) (My idea was that they would do something like slip some money to the staff to find out which rooms the terrorists were staying at. Maybe I should get them to watch more detective and crime movies, though.)
If you only have one (or two) solutions to a game problem, the players will think of three things that aren't your solution(s). Whether you "yes-and" them or stick to your script depends on the rigidity of your plot. I prefer the yes-and.
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
We did have that situation pop up a couple meetings ago. We came to a village being raided by a minor army of evildoers (~100). The situation was very obvious “this village is fucked, we can do nothing”. And then the ranger goes “I charge towards the village to save anyone I can!” The rest of the group was “We others are just gonna quietly pull back before they notice us, because we got no chance to take them all on.” and even the DM told her flat out “You are going to die if you do that, you are one person against an army of 100.” And then she begrudgingly went “Fine.” and did not proceed with her “heroic” action.
I think having them roll for a hard deception check and if they succeed allowing them to enter (and possibly find) some scarred kids in a dark corner and get them out is valid way to handle this without needing to break the 4th wall.
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This post is deleted!
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
That said: I hardly know what the computer RPG genre is anymore, because the edges of that genre are very fuzzy, and lots of other games have deep story.
It dates back to the early days of video gaming. Back when computers and consoles had extremely limited hardware, you could only really fit stuff like an involved story and stat-based progression into specialized games designed for it. But ever since the late 90s we've become more and more aware that these are just good game design elements in general, and so "RPG as such" is becoming a less and less distinct genre.
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@Mason_Wheeler It did start like that, but I would say it's not so much any kind of awareness that happened but a dishonest marketing push. RPG appears to have come to mean that the mechanics will provide stats, specializations and skill trees. Some may even put RPCs and dialogue choices, and tout about some schmonsequences. However, in a videogame where you control any given character you're invariably playing a role, so the label is at best tautological, and always has been.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@Applied-Mediocrity Corrections posted. Ask your questions.
What I'm thinking is whether your son's poor roll and funny RP was the deciding factor for the demon ambush. First off, critical failures on Perception don't really work. You either notice something or you don't. If then it turns out to be something there, you can RP that you foolishly mistook the horns sticking out from behind a boulder for stalagmites or something ("la-la-la, I don't see any demons"), and that's perfectly fine.
However, if the DM decided on the spot "yeah, let's have big bad demon(s) waiting" post rollum, that's not fine.It was poor planning, yes. If the party is keen on bashing heads, entering Hell with low levels (as in, before about 10, as far as I've cared to read) is foolish indeed. What I have this small issue with is the precise manner how the punishment for being fools was executed.
Or am I missing my own Perception checks here regarding what's described in the post?
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
If you only have one (or two) solutions to a game problem, the players will think of three things that aren't your solution(s). Whether you "yes-and" them or stick to your script depends on the rigidity of your plot. I prefer the yes-and.
You seem to be confusing me for the kind of GM who wants players to stick to the script religiously :) It’s an RPG, not a play — I give them a problem and let them try to solve it. However, my experience is that if they lose the plot and don’t know what else to do, enjoyment soon takes a nosedive, so I do generally try to keep them heading in the overall direction of the story’s conclusion.
What my comment was meant to illustrate was that there are lots of ways in which they could find out the whereabouts of the people they’re after, but one I did not think of at all, was pretending to want to become part of their club. Probably because, if you ask me, this is not generally a very effective way to do it if you want quick results. Yes, it’s what you might do if you want to infiltrate the terrorist group for any reason, but not if you just want something that the terrorists have in their possession.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
However, if the DM decided on the spot
That's something only the DM can answer. Even my son has no idea what the DM was thinking at the time.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
my experience is that if they lose the plot and don’t know what else to do, enjoyment soon takes a nosedive, so I do generally try to keep them heading in the overall direction of the story’s conclusion.
Yeah, that's sometimes a good reason to do a bit of meta-gaming. When you spend half the session (or more) just stumbling around because you've missed what the GM thought was an obvious clue, it's not a lot of fun. And if the GM at that point bluntly says "um, did you forget that X told you that hint hint hint?" it can be better for everyone.
When that happens nobody feels very happy about it (the players feel railroaded and/or dumb to have missed it, the GM feels annoyed that the players didn't get it) but it's still better than entirely wasting a session doing absolutely nothing.
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In my case it was the DM’s girlfriend being foolish, and considering she’s not the sharpest knife in the box she does sometimes have to be told things rather explicitly. You’d think she by this time would have learnt that her boyfriend has absolutely no problems killing off characters, including hers. (No DM’s GF plot shields here!) But sometimes you have to state the obvious to her regardless, and methinks the DM very much prefers characters not being killed senselessly. He does allow quite a lot of (potentially) foolish things to be done, though. I’m just waiting for my master plan to backfire in a spectacular way (as soon as he has given me what I need to do, as I did go into unplanned territory).
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@remi said in D&D thread:
When you spend half the session (or more) just stumbling around because you've missed what the GM thought was an obvious clue, it's not a lot of fun.
Even worse, from the GM’s POV, is when you listen to the players talking through what they know, and they keep turning back just before the conclusion they are supposed to reach. I’ve seen this happen several times, they go through all the clues they have, add up some of them to draw the correct conclusion, and then, just before that one last step that will open their eyes to what’s really going on … they decide they’re on the wrong track and try again. To end up at the same point and again decide this can’t be right.
Part of it, of course, is that as the GM you already have all the information, so the conclusion is obvious to you. But still, to sit there thinking, “Now combine that with the thing you were talking about earlier and you’re there” several times in a row, seeing the players get frustrated because they don’t see the way to go on …
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