We've been playing D&D (hey, I don't pick 'em) on and off a bit now with several different DMs, but we've just switched back to the DM who was originally the regular DM for the group.

That DM ran a game for a long while which eventually broke down, with some objection from the players. The main source of the objection from the players was that, well, the enemies were being far too sensible. Another player was calling high frustration at "They always run away, and then go somewhere where there's loads of their mates and they're all set up and stuff".

I've felt the same thing numerous times. In one player I was playing a Thief, who disarmed traps and snuck around and did the general stuff that a D&D Thief does - but also got humiliated by a much lower-level thief who managed to lead the entire party a merry dance through a "haunted" mansion in which everything was set up in advance for them to use. This included using the Disguise skill to appear as several different people, taking in the party completely, while my PC's own Disguise skill had lain unused for sessions on end because you can't exactly get hold of the stuff you need to disguise yourself when you're constantly on the move adventuring.

And I thought about what was causing this, and it comes down to - yes - abuse of the need for players to have fun. Players have to have fun, and therefore some courses of action for their PCs are ruled out, because they wouldn't be fun.

Want to guard the vehicle you came here in? Sure, you can, but you won't be doing any playing that session while your PC just stands by the cart. Most non-confrontational players are going to choose to not have their PC guard the cart, but to head off with the group. Which is why it's incredibly frustrating when our cart gets raided, but if we try to do the same to the enemy, they have major characters guarding the cart because NPCs don't have players who need to have fun.

It happens in combat too, where the PCs have to walk into ambush after ambush after ambush. Monsters can run from combat to more favourable situations, but PCs can't; the monsters just won't follow, so while the PCs are technically safe, the players still need to have fun - which involves playing the dungeon, which involves going in and fighting the monsters no matter how tilted the situation is against the PCs.

"Hi, I'm stock NPC guy! I traded between town A and town B to make a fortune and buy this huge gilded palace and huge amounts of stuff. There's still a great market out there, but you can't use it, because it wouldn't be fun to play!"

When I ran D&D, I didn't have the monsters acting as "smart" as this because I considered that doing so was an abuse of this type, but the same DM then wound up criticising me and obliquely criticising the players for liking that type of thing ("well, since it seems you just want adventures where the monsters just stand there and wait to be killed...") so I don't know which way to go now.

This is a serious Social Contract issue, but not in the way you might think.

It is perfectly possible for the players not to get nailed in the way you describe -- but the reason players are making choices about which courses of action are "off limits" is because they don't believe the GM will make that course of action fun and interesting for them.

Guarding the cart can be a blast...if the GM's in on it, too. Otherwise you are correct: guarding the cart is a boring, un-fun job.

greyorm wrote: This is a serious Social Contract issue, but not in the way you might think.

It is perfectly possible for the players not to get nailed in the way you describe -- but the reason players are making choices about which courses of action are "off limits" is because they don't believe the GM will make that course of action fun and interesting for them.

Guarding the cart can be a blast...if the GM's in on it, too. Otherwise you are correct: guarding the cart is a boring, un-fun job.

Man, Raven nailed that so hard. I was going to respond in the same fashion. Obviously, the GM's interested in a game where people scheme, come up with plots against each other, and execute them wisely. If your group is interested in that, do it back.

If he doesn't make it fun, then, you've got a problem. (And it's not hard. I can think of two or three good cart-guarding adventures at my desk right now.)

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: Man, Raven nailed that so hard. I was going to respond in the same fashion. Obviously, the GM's interested in a game where people scheme, come up with plots against each other, and execute them wisely. If your group is interested in that, do it back.

I don't think the social-contract discussion is limited to having interesting stuff happen when the cart is being guarded. Even if the GM says (IMO, possibly legitimately) "Guarding the cart is, you know, gonna be kinda dull" there are still some possible solutions or, at least, some cause-and-effect issues to work out.

1. Henchmen: hire someone to guard the cart. If you can't afford them or can't afford enough of them to be useful, then ...

2. Become cart thieves. If people are doing dungeon delving with expensive, valuable carts to carry their stuff with, then take their carts until you have enough to afford guards. If that doesn work then ...

3. If every dungeoning team is must be 2x the size and skill of your group (1x to go down in the dungeon, 1x to guard the cart from guys like you) then, simply put, the GM has created an economy where your group is too small to be a dungeoneering team.

Maybe you need financiers.

Maybe you need a mercenary company--do dungeons pay that much? If they don't then why are there brigands waiting around to rob the carts of guys going in them (once the word gets out that its a losing deal that source of plunder will dry up).

Essentially a working economy will more or less sort a bunch of this out.

This works for monsters too. Monsters won't follow you? Then you can always disengage. Find a source of fun other than fighting monsters (or, again, perhaps you need a larger group--if the average scavenging party is enough to face your party and is always part of a much larger force then, again, your group lacks the fire power to be out in the wilderness).

Where I think the problem is coming in is that the GM is relying on the PC's getting fooled or screwed to drive the adventure and if that's so then that's a problem if the GM is working double time to ensure that there's no good way out (and you aren't enjoying it).

I'm not sure that's the case (if you'd seen through the thief's disguise would the GM have played it fair? I'd hope so--but even so he's teaching you to pull an Austin Powers ("That's a MAN, baby!") assault on every NPC you meet or simply trust no one and, ultimately, become nastier, more devious predators than his world is usually stocked with--an eventuality he may find unpalatible if he's looking to run cool dungeon adventurers).

-Marco

I still say that's right where the problem is, Hypz. That and you and your friends are looking at the game from a completely different standpoint than your GM.

You just want empty hack-and-slash and looting, he wants some realism in action and consequence. Or perhaps he's being Gamist, and using every mistake you're making against you, whittling away your resources, when you aren't looking to Step-On-Up at all.

Ultimately, you all need to work out a Social Contract between yourselves that works, where the details of play are clearly stated. "We want to do this, and we want you to participate in it, by making sure we can, and that we have fun doing it."

Marco, how to solve the cart problem, specifically, is a red herring (not that those aren't excellent suggestions, because they definitely are, if the problem were, "How do we stop getting our assess kicked?") -- because that doesn't apply to dungeon traps being set, enemies fleeing towards loads of friends, or other "smart" behavior on the part of the GM's NPCs regarding the character's behaviors.

The only way the actual problem can be overcome is for everyone in the group, including the GM, to get onto the same page, and for the GM to play for the fun of the players, as I noted above. It's in his hands to make the situations fun for the players, and the players to sit down and work it out with him and among themselves as to how to communicate what they consider fun.

greyorm wrote: You just want empty hack-and-slash and looting, he wants some realism in action and consequence. Or perhaps he's being Gamist, and using every mistake you're making against you, whittling away your resources, when you aren't looking to Step-On-Up at all.

because that doesn't apply to dungeon traps being set, enemies fleeing towards loads of friends, or other "smart" behavior on the part of the GM's NPCs regarding the character's behaviors.

greyorm wrote:
Marco, how to solve the cart problem, specifically, is a red herring (not that those aren't excellent suggestions, because they definitely are, if the problem were, "How do we stop getting our assess kicked?") -- because that doesn't apply to dungeon traps being set, enemies fleeing towards loads of friends, or other "smart" behavior on the part of the GM's NPCs regarding the character's behaviors.

The only way the actual problem can be overcome is for everyone in the group, including the GM, to get onto the same page, and for the GM to play for the fun of the players, as I noted above. It's in his hands to make the situations fun for the players, and the players to sit down and work it out with him and among themselves as to how to communicate what they consider fun.

Re: The hack-and-slash looting: twas an example reinforcing the point I was trying to make, not a judgement of your playing style (which I simply don't have enough information about to make that kind of judgement). It is not the meat of the post, however. That is my fault, though, I should have been more clear with that.

hyphz wrote: Again, the objection is that this "smart" behaviour is cheating because if the PCs were "smart" too they wouldn't be in the dungeon at all.

But aren't I then entitled to say that our PCs shouldn't be penalised IC for not doing it? If we go into that mansion, why do we have to be disadvantaged by walking into traps because it's "realistic" (aka versimilitudinal) when if we were playing "realistically" we'd have burned the place down?

I think Raven's totally right here, Hyphz, but it's not coming across because you're sort of thinking in a different mode. Let me try this.

Okay, so the DM says, "Hey, let's play this cool module, it's a mansion and creepy gothic stuff, okay?"

Now the problem is that you hear this, quite reasonably, as, "I want you guys to play by the genre-type conventions of this module, which means you have to go into it and all that stuff. When you do, I will hose you, because that's realism, man." And you find that this sucks.

What Raven is suggesting is this.

You say, "Hey Phil, tell you what. This isn't working quite right, you know? Every time we walk into one of those places, you hose us by having all the monsters and stuff think outside the box, and they're prepared for us and we don't know what the hell to do. We don't find that fun."

"That's realism and verisimilitude, you should be smarter."

"Phil, what happens if we say we burn down the mansion and spray holy water on the ground, then pick up any valuables left over?"

"Ummm, well, the mansion is magically protected against fire."

"Why? Do people regularly go around burning down huge mansions? Is that normal behavior around here? Is that written into the module? Is this realism or constraint?"

"Well, no, but that's not how it's supposed to go at all, it just ditches the whole dungeon."

"See, that's the point. You're saying we can't do X and Y because they're not how it's supposed to go. But we're saying that if we agree to behave like idiots in walking into this hellhole, your monsters have to behave like equal idiots in letting us do it."

"No way, that's not realistic."

"Okay, tell you what, Phil. Let's be realistic. We're 7th level characters, okay? So we walk into a first-level dungeon. We roast everything, no matter how clever you make them, unless of course you do something unrealistic like putting powerful monsters in there. If we're going to be realistic, why would we go into this creepy gothic mansion? That's crazy talk."

"But---"

"Phil, do you get this at all? You basically say, 'Go through this module the way it's written.' But we've all got these ideas about the kind of play it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be, you know, high fantasy and stuff. We don't want to be vicious predators destroying piddly kobolds or something, because that's not high fantasy. You don't want that either, or you'd be pushing easy modules on us. But you've got to run hard modules so that the kind of play we like to do is a kind of play that can succeed. It doesn't have to be easy, we don't want that either, but you can't just make all the monsters plan together to hose us. We want to play the module without having to spend all our time thinking about 'what if the monsters were all plotting against us?' That way we can all have a rollicking good time."

Something like that, anyway. The point is that you've got to get him to see that you're playing by a set of genre constraints, and that he's violating them. If he's adamant that the way he plays is "realistic," then you have two choices: Marco's, which is to say become vicious predators and wipe out first-level dungeons and steal carts and the hell with his modules; or walk away. If the DM sees that those are the options, that Marco's version is "realistic" if "realistic" means what the DM is currently saying, then chances are he's going to want to shift things.

Does that make sense? It's a matter of getting him to see that there is an incongruity about what's supposed to be fun and coming to a mutually-acceptable compromise so everyone has fun.

In my experience, it is possible to still keep the action moving while allowing the PCs to act sensible. For example, in my Vinland campaign, the PCs were all of the viking traditions -- so they were landowners who married, had farms, and so forth. However, they would go off on raids or other activity in the summer. In practice, the long dull winters would be handled by relatively brief narration, along with things like trading sheep, building palisades, and so forth.

So while this isn't the only solution, I'm going to suggest ways that more realistic behavior might be workable for you while still keeping the action moving.

In D&D, you can do pretty well by establishing a "Standard Operating Procedure". The point is that rather than eating up time for the GM to ask each step of what you are doing, you instead establish an SOP -- possibly written out on a sheet of paper. Hopefully, the GM then can skim through the dull parts assuming that you act according to SOP, and move on to the more exciting action. For example, when tackling a dungeon, you want to establish a highly defensible position where you can go to recharge. You will have listed out steps which you take to secure and defend that position, along with things like who's on watch.

This does change the genre a bit. i.e. The PCs become professional who sit and talk over dinner about the monsters they've killed that day, rather than fly-by-seat-of-the-pants adventurers. Maybe for you this sort of procedure would kill the fun for you, but I've seen groups which it's worked for. As Chris says, it depends on what you want.

greyorm wrote: Re: The hack-and-slash looting: twas an example reinforcing the point I was trying to make, not a judgement of your playing style (which I simply don't have enough information about to make that kind of judgement). It is not the meat of the post, however. That is my fault, though, I should have been more clear with that.

[snip good stuff ]

For the record I missread what Greyorm meant at first as well, only understanding with his latter correcting post.

hyphz,

I think part of the problem here is an issue of GM PC, covered over by the fact he doesn't use the same NPC each time and he also covers it by saying 'It's realistic'. 'It's realistic' can and often is the GM version of how some players use the phrase 'my guy'.

Perhaps you need to highlight how it isn't 'realistic' to use the players urges against them. The players urge is to have fun, thus their PC's are going to go on adventures which those PC's would otherwise avoid like the plague. The reason you as GM can raid the cart or have the monsters keep falling back is because of the players urge to have fun, but this is NOT part of the game world. It's the players urge...so it's hardly realistic that the bad guys can raid the cart because of something that has nothing to do with the game world. If the monsters raid the cart, IT IS NOT REALISTIC, because that opportunity to do so would never have happened if there were no players wanting to have fun. The PC's would never have gone on the adventure to begin with. The monsters taking advantage of PLAYER urges is not realistic. It's not even anything to do with the game world.

Really, the above paragraph is too bulky to use as is, but that's the general idea. Perhaps this shortened version is better:
1. These tactics rely on the players urge to have fun (go to a dungeon, fight monsters)
2. Monster tactics that entirely hinge on the players urge to have fun are not valid tactics. Because without the player wanting to have fun, the adventure would not happen.
3. These tactics reward behaviour that doesn't lead to adventuring, because if you don't adventure, no one suffers the damage of these tactics (because their PC stays at home and drinks cocoa, thus no cart to raid).
4. If the reward for not playing (or not playing in this GM's game) rivals or beats the reward for actual playing, shit will fly.

Indeed, monster tactics (raid the cart) that hinge on the players living up to genre expectations (storm that dungeon!) aren't either. Genre expectations are just another type of fun.

Personally, I think you can do this 'non play is rewarded thing' if its strength is lower than the 'play is rewarded' strength. Eg, say the cart has zero treasure in it, but does have their food supplies. They keep the treasure and now have to step on up the journey back, scrounging for food. Technically, even taking damage is a reward to not play, but is generally outweighed by many things (generally even just some healing being available will outweigh that).

Really, he needs to play the monsters as smart as possible, without the results of that making the reward for not playing outweigh the reward for continuing to play.

but the same DM then wound up criticising me and obliquely criticising the players for liking that type of thing ("well, since it seems you just want adventures where the monsters just stand there and wait to be killed...") so I don't know which way to go now.

Hyphz,

Just a quick question that occured to me...

Does the GM feel like he needs to hose you to make it fun in the first place?

The thought came up when Clehrich mentioned 7th level characters raiding a 1st level dungeon. Obviously, the characters would be too strong and would waste the place. My GM instincts kick in and the first thing that occurs to me is "If the enemies aren't strong enough to win, they need to be smart enough to be a nuisance at least." Tactical withdrawals/ambushes and cart-raiding would be their first two strategies. A tactical position boosts their effective strength, and raiding a cart drains your own strength. I've ran games for groups who just became far more powerful than I anticipated, so that I really did have trouble challenging them. As much as the players groaned when they finally started getting hosed, we all recognized that it made the game more enjoyable (and not just from a Gamist perspective).

To a point, this can be a good style - it keeps even underpowered challenges challenging, and also requires some player thinking beyond checking your to-hit averages. Taken too far, it can be... well, what it has been for you.

The ultimate disconnect is definitely a social contract issue.

By the way, have you tried explaining the problem to your GM? You mention the players' objections and the GM's defense (of realism), but have you discussed it on a player level? It sounds like most of the discussion has been at an in-game level (like Marco's discussion of cart-guarding and game economics) not at a player-level (like the conversation Clehrich modeled out). It's my experience that game-level discussion of social contract problems never results in a functional solution.

jdagna wrote:
By the way, have you tried explaining the problem to your GM? You mention the players' objections and the GM's defense (of realism), but have you discussed it on a player level? It sounds like most of the discussion has been at an in-game level (like Marco's discussion of cart-guarding and game economics) not at a player-level (like the conversation Clehrich modeled out). It's my experience that game-level discussion of social contract problems never results in a functional solution.

Unless the Social Contract of this group is totally gone and fucked the solution to this problem should start with one fairly simple step.

1. Tell the GM "I'm not having fun."

If he takes his responsibilities as a GM seriously, and understands the role of the GM as running a game which is played for recreation, then he'll work with you to find an agreeable solution.

I know if one of my players full out said that he wasn't having fun I'd bend over backwards to solve the problem. Now maybe my solution would ultimately have to be asking the fellow to play elsewhere because I can't run the kind of game he'd enjoy, but that's an absolute last resort and I've never yet had to go there.

I don't think it's wise or productive to argue the metagame issues or even in game issues first. That's putting the cart (ahem) before the horse in my opinion. Talking about how his world isn't fitting in to high fantasy conventions is just a fancy way of stating that he's running the game badly. Talking about how cart thieves and mansion builders wouldn't realistically behave this way or that way is challenging his abilities as a GM directly. If the first thing you do is criticize his GM style then his first response is to be defensive. Saying that you aren't enjoying yourself is neutral and allows the GM to save face because he can look at it as you not understanding his world/GMing style/the Social Contract well enough. More importantly, by saying you aren't having fun you are making a statement of fact that he cannot reasonably challenge on any level. That's because he's not a mind reader and it's not socially acceptable for one person to decide what's fun for someone else without that person's consent.

In short. Address this on the level of your feelings as a player first. Then go where the discussion takes you.

Marco wrote:

jdagna wrote:
By the way, have you tried explaining the problem to your GM? You mention the players' objections and the GM's defense (of realism), but have you discussed it on a player level? It sounds like most of the discussion has been at an in-game level (like Marco's discussion of cart-guarding and game economics) not at a player-level (like the conversation Clehrich modeled out). It's my experience that game-level discussion of social contract problems never results in a functional solution.

Hi,

It's an easy mistake to make that what I'm talking about is purely at an in-game solution. It's not.

What I'm saying is that the discussion is about the power-level of the PC's relative to their opposition--I'm telling him that his world as described with objectives as the (the GM) has laid them out don't mesh--and that therefore it's not fun for the players.

Let's all pause a moment and wait for Hypz to let us know if any of this is helping him out. Hypz? Any reactions or thoughts? Have you tried any of the suggestions? What happened?

greyorm wrote: Let's all pause a moment and wait for Hypz to let us know if any of this is helping him out. Hypz? Any reactions or thoughts? Have you tried any of the suggestions? What happened?

I'm following this thread with interest because I have a similar, but much less severe, problem when I play D&D but in the opposite direction.

I didn't read what people were saying as anyone suggesting it's an issue of relative power levels, but of a more basic problem. Which could manifest as a problem with relative power levels, but doesn't have to. Rather it's an issue of different rules. The players are following one set of rules, about what they should and shouldn't do, and the GM is following another. The players feel impotent because their options are being limited by the GM following a different standard of behaviour. The players follow genre, they get hosed, or get niggled at by lots of little things that they feel don't fit, and they don't get to do some of the cool things they'd like to because they're sticking with the rules that the GM keeps breaking (from their perspective). I've no idea what your GM thinks is happening, maybe he thinks it's all hunky dory, maybe he doesn't know what's going wrong, maybe he likes messing with other people's fun? But the basic issue is that you're not on the same page. You want something different from what he's doing. And maybe he wants something different from you?

In my case, I'm playing D&D with very little familiarity with the expected standards of behaviour in D&D. I don't know what the done thing is. My character has a tendency to do all the paranoid things like guarding the cart and refusing point blank to go into the dungeon when he thinks it's too dangerous. In our game, it works, because the GM knew in advance I was going to do this, we'd discussed it together, and she's getting a real kick out of the fact that the party has a very unique approach to things, mainly as a result of me encountering them for the first time. In this case, I'm not on the normal page for D&D, but we've reached a compromise so we're on the same page, made it work and are all having a great time.

There's many people who've posted excellent advice to this thread, who understand the issues a lot better that I currently do. They've got good reasons for the questions they ask and the answers will help them give even better advice, even if it seems like dreadful hard work. But I just wanted to say how interesting I've found it so far, and that I'm in a game that could be having very similar problems caused largely by me, but isn't because we've communicated in exactly the style suggested in this thread.

Hmm... in some games, the thief's player could talk out-of-game and say that he'd really like a session where the party gets to set up an ambush for somebody else, maybe some other adventurers or some bounty hunters. That doesn't sound like it's in the cards in this game, though.

The story about the witch and the illusory stepping stones makes me wonder about your GM -- does he just enjoy watching the PC's stumble?

DannyK wrote:
The story about the witch and the illusory stepping stones makes me wonder about your GM -- does he just enjoy watching the PC's stumble?

hyphz wrote: Although I have mentioned it to the DM before, I haven't been able to explain it as well as some prior posters on this thread, so I may ask again.

The issue is more an in-character one; I certainly find my character feeling impotent within the world when they are forced into this sort of thing. An example that happened a long while back was with a witch who created a bunch of illusory stepping-stones across a river. We walked over them, we fell in and got attacked by some relatively wussy pirahna-type creatures and she walked away laughing. There was no power level problem, but all of our characters were still humiliated, even though we'd had no real choice but to cross.

The current example with the mansion is even worse, as it appears that the NPC thief is doing all the things that our previous thief PCs have wanted to be able to do - but been unable to do so, because you can't do that sort of thing if it's always you who has to go after the other guy rather than the other way around.

You can't set traps for people if it's you pursuing them.

You can't spook people's horses to make them panic if they don't give a damn about being there in the first place.

You can't carefully select positions to spy from if you're going into unexplored areas where you don't know what positions are available - and by the time the area's explored, everything in it will be dead.

Of course the problem with this is that if you could do it, then you'd have an entire game where the PCs were just hanging around in an enclosed area watching NPCs fall into traps, assuming they were panicking, and watching them do stuff. And then when they left, you'd have to... umm, sit and wait for the next group to arrive and do it again. Which would suck, especially for everyone other than the thief. I actually have at least a decent feeling that this stuff can't be done by PCs in RPGs at all without breaking the game.

hyphz wrote: Most of the time, he's running preset modules, so the content doesn't really say anything about what he wants (or what we want).

I forget why the witch was there - that game was years ago. I can't remember if it even was a witch or some random nature-sprite-fairy-type-thing (technical term) thrown in for colour.

StalkingBlue wrote: Does this kind of thing happen a lot? Does it frustrate you every time? What about the other players? What about the GM, does he seem to enjoy sending PCs into ridicule-traps like this one?

Also, why didn't a single PC notice the stones weren't real? How could you all have got on illusory stones and fallen in? If the stones were illusions, wouldn't the first PC have taken a plunge and be fished out by the other PCs who naturally wouldn't step on the stones after that?

Why not? All it takes is to find out where your enemies are headed and get there first to set an ambush / manipulate NPCs at the enemies' destination etc.

Who doesn't give a damn about being there? The NPCs or the horses? Or the NPCs about the horses being there?

Er, so your way of exploring areas is to barge in and kill everything that moves? Don't you guys have scouts? Or does the GM hose everybody who tries to scout, so you prefer to go in without scouting?

I'm not sure what you mean here. Of course you can play a "reverse dungeon" game in which PCs set up, guard and defend a location against all comers. It can be done and has been done, it can be fun with the right group of players and a party of characters designed for this sort of game.

For one thing, if your PCs are smart and fast enough, they will sometimes be able to anticipate people they're after and set an ambush ahead of them, as I've said above.

For another, there are tons of scenarios that involve PCs guarding/defending a location, property or a person against an enemy, none of them very exotic or unusual: caravan guarding, bodyguarding, investigating and foiling assassination plans...

Okay, now I'm intrigued. How is caravan guarding automatically railroading?

A caravan is just a mobile home base. Do you think that having a home, caring about it and defending it against external threats is automatically railroading?

Hyphz, do you have these same issues when other people you know run D&D? Is it just this gamemaster?

TonyLB wrote: Okay, now I'm intrigued. How is caravan guarding automatically railroading?

A caravan is just a mobile home base. Do you think that having a home, caring about it and defending it against external threats is automatically railroading?

Let me be clear on what I'm saying and what I'm not. Your GM sounds like a real piece of work, enjoying being able to pick at the players weaknesses for no real purpose other than to establish dominance. I don't think real highly of that.

At the same time... When guarding a caravan you know the terrain through which you'll be pasing. You have ample opportunity to send scouts ahead and gather important intelligence. You have a home base (albeit mobile) that you can trick out with traps and defenses. Any villains that want to accost you must then come to you, and fight on your ground, on your terms.

This sounds, to me, like exactly the sort of player control that you say you want. If you've gotten it in the past and scorned it as being "dull as dishwater" then what do you expect your GM to do? Keep giving you the thing you ask for, but don't enjoy?

I think both sides here may need to put in some effort to create a new style of play. It is a great burden on the players to make such a situation interesting by their choices. But that burden is always going to go along with the power to make the choices you're asking for, isn't it?

TonyLB wrote:
At the same time... When guarding a caravan you know the terrain through which you'll be pasing. You have ample opportunity to send scouts ahead and gather important intelligence. You have a home base (albeit mobile) that you can trick out with traps and defenses. Any villains that want to accost you must then come to you, and fight on your ground, on your terms.

Hello,

OK, full stop.

Hyphz, in terms of pop psycholgoy, you are stuck. That means that you are (a) committed to being upset about something and (b) equally committed to maintaining the conditions that upset you.

Folks? Listen up here, 'cause it's important. Go read all the actual play type threads and posts Hyphz has presented, historically. He is stuck.

It doesn't matter what we say any more. All the good phrases, advice, and issues have been presented, and they are awesome. With any luck, a number of other people reading this thread or who've posted to it have benefited. For instance, I think I just saw Raven and Marco aiding and abetting one another's points in a positive fashion, and if you don't think that's notable, then I dunno what.

But for you, Hyphz? No more. No more, people. Stop helping. It's reflection time for Hyphz. He is stuck. Tony, in particular, nothing you're saying is accomplishing anything - consider what Raven and StalkingBlue have said, 'cause if Hyphz isn't processing that, he's not processing anything. He wrote (italics his):

Of course the problem with this is that if you could do it, then you'd have an entire game where the PCs were just hanging around in an enclosed area watching NPCs fall into traps, assuming they were panicking, and watching them do stuff. And then when they left, you'd have to... umm, sit and wait for the next group to arrive and do it again. Which would suck, especially for everyone other than the thief. I actually have at least a decent feeling that this stuff can't be done by PCs in RPGs at all without breaking the game.

jdagna wrote:

The game economics, power-balancing, etc. are all fluff. They all skirt the core issue and never have to lead to the "therefore..." part of the argument. They don't even strengthen the point made by the "therefore..."

greyorm wrote: You just want empty hack-and-slash and looting, he wants some realism in action and consequence. Or perhaps he's being Gamist, and using every mistake you're making against you, whittling away your resources, when you aren't looking to Step-On-Up at all.

hyphz wrote: Again, the objection is that this "smart" behaviour is cheating because if the PCs were "smart" too they wouldn't be in the dungeon at all. They'd have collapsed the entrance to stop the threat getting out. Need to find the riches in the vault somewhere in the mansion that's full of horrible ghosts? Mansion's made of wood, is the vault magically protected? Probably? Ok, we burn down the mansion and the magical protection ensures the vault's the only thing left. Who cares about a bunch of ghosts, after all?

Now, of course, to actually do this sort of thing would be a social contract violation, and would be seriously messing up the game, so we don't do it.

Ron Edwards wrote:
Hyphz, in terms of pop psycholgoy, you are stuck. That means that you are (a) committed to being upset about something and (b) equally committed to maintaining the conditions that upset you.

I'd like to nominate "Burning down the mansion" for best Step-On-Up phrase for September.

I think some of the blame lies with the material.

Seems that this DM either wants a Sim-ish game or a "Big-Gamist" game where the whole enviroment rather than just the dungeon is a challenge.

I dont think plodding through unconnected Dungeon magazine adventures supports either of these types of play.

I've found this thread very useful in helping me think more clearly about certain issues that arise in D&D-style play. Clearly it's possible for a GM to abuse the player-GM contract by taking advantage of the players' living up to expectations by having their PCs act in-genre; having his NPCs act out-of-genre to the PCs' detriment might qualify. An example would be - PCs go into dungeon, an old mine, hunting the villain; villain was actually hiding outside dungeon and promptly collapses the mine entrance once the PCs are inside, sealing their doom. In a low-level D&D game that might seem unfair, because there's so much weight of expectation on the players to _go in the dungeon_. In a high level D&D game the PCs can be expected to have resources to overcome such a challenge (eg teleport) so it would no longer be 'unfair'.
It seems pretty clear that this isn't what's going on in this particular case - the GM's style doesn't seem at all unusual for a D&D game - which raises the second issue this thread has made me aware of, that players will seek out a Gamist game then complain when they're actually challenged - and refuse to do anything in-game to overcome the challenges (post guards, use scouts). Most charitably this could be described as a chasm between player & GM expectations - player wants to play tabletop Diablo and sees anything else as unfair,, GM wants a Gamist universe where almost anything can be a challenge, and/or a very realistic universe where NPCs behave plausibly and actions have believable consequences. The GM's style seems much closer to what I expect from a D&D game, but it's good to be aware that there are players with a very different attitude.

I think any further posters beck check Ron's moderating post.

Not in relation to trying to help hyphz, but in context to this post: It looks like the GM, by using the module, stipulated in the social contract a certain arena of step on up. Think of a sphere, in which play is supposed to happen and not outside of it (eg, you go into the dungeon. You don't sit in a tavern playing darts and flirting with buxom maids...even though relatively that could be far more rewarding, risk Vs reward wise for both player and PC).

Then he's extended that sphere of options for his input/monsters actions. Of course this breaks unspoken social contract, but it also has an interesting 'burn down the mansion effect'. Where the greater sphere of available options laid open means that play would not occur just withing the inner sphere of allowed actions. Players wont just work within the modules confines, thus rendering the modules material moot for the most part since it'll be taken on from varying vectors (snipe all the castles inhabitants, stuff like that).

Noon wrote: It looks like the GM, by using the module, stipulated in the social contract a certain arena of step on up. Think of a sphere, in which play is supposed to happen and not outside of it (eg, you go into the dungeon. You don't sit in a tavern playing darts and flirting with buxom maids...even though relatively that could be far more rewarding, risk Vs reward wise for both player and PC).

Then he's extended that sphere of options for his input/monsters actions. Of course this breaks unspoken social contract

S'mon wrote:

Noon wrote: It looks like the GM, by using the module, stipulated in the social contract a certain arena of step on up. Think of a sphere, in which play is supposed to happen and not outside of it (eg, you go into the dungeon. You don't sit in a tavern playing darts and flirting with buxom maids...even though relatively that could be far more rewarding, risk Vs reward wise for both player and PC).

Then he's extended that sphere of options for his input/monsters actions. Of course this breaks unspoken social contract

My impression is that this isn't what's happening here, although I only have 1 POV to go on. There doesn't seem to have been any actual case where the players went outside the box with their PC actions and the GM said "adventure's over, go home" - ie I don't get the impression that the GM restricts players to the box of the preset module's expected behaviour while allowing his NPCs to act outside the box.

It sounds more like he's running a gamist game which for D&D is kinda the point.

Noon wrote: [

Hello,

If I see one more word regarding the fucking cart in this thread ...

Never mind. Great thread, everyone, in terms of helping us all understand where one another's coming from. Let's close it now.

Best,
Ron