The approach I'm taking issue with is that the a priori removal of a source of a player's enjoyment is not a good solution to an issue of mechanical balance.
@BESW -- or, perhaps he could suggest a more-optimized Monk build to the person who insists on playing a Monk? (I'm suspecting the problem isn't just that they're playing a lower tier class, but that they're playing a lower tier class and doing nothing re: charopt)
user61230
It's a common one, but it shouldn't be made for the sake of an ephemeral quality of balance.
user61230
When all players are enjoying themselves, the work of a GM is done.
speaking of players who aren't enjoying themselves -- what should I do about a player who expects their character to succeed most/all of the time, and gets very frustrated when the dice turn out to be a letdown? (this was in 5e btw)
But they're frustrated by the imbalance of agency that a lack of system mastery will almost inevitably cause in 3.5.
So our conclusion was that they should try a system which is similar to 3.5 but less mastery-dependent: 13th Age was suggested.
user61230
Right, and when players aren't enjoying the game, the first step is not corrective action - it's investigation, starting with "what is it you actually enjoy about this game?"
user61230
Oh, yeah
user61230
12:09 AM
I think you guys went in the right direction with guidance
user61230
In context, I was pointing out what bothered me about the question they asked. (Though I probably could have been clearer and friendlier about it :/)
@BESW yeah -- my question is why are the people with system mastery "locking themselves" into high tier classes btw? (because I'm in a 3.5e game with me as that STR=6 Cleric, a Druid, and someone who has played a Ranger, a Monk, a Rogue, and now another Ranger -- and other than dying a lot, that third guy's character tends to keep up with if not out and out overshadow the Druid, and especially my Cleric :P)
(and that's because that third player is the system master at the table when it comes to 3.5e)
but I think overall, @Ruut just needs to diversify his system-set more -- 13th Age or 5e would both do his group much better than they do now (I would not recommend 2e for his group as the math complications would tie them in knots)
also, what systems do you think I should look to myself, other than GURPS? (DW sort of interests me, but I'm seriously concerned that it would fall apart badly when faced with the types of strange things I like to come up with)
(and the WoD family suffers from near-indigestible source texts -- same with Ars Magica)
Anyway, so here's what I was thinking about: my party tends to aim big but not plan until they get into the middle of a horrible mess. I was thinking of asking a question, but I'm 99% it's too broad so I decided to check my intuition on good vs bad questions with the experts
So, questions in the form of "My party did X, what could they possibly do to get out?" is definitely not appropriate for this site, correct? A better question would be to get down to the root of it and ask something about how I can improvise better or something like that, right?
Which has probably been answered but that's not what I'm focused on
OK, sure! I don't really need an answer for it, I just thought it would be interesting to see what the community can come up with
But basically, my party decided to take down an undetdark outpost of Drow in exchange for a magical thing. There's 200 in the outpost. What could they do to succeed?
(And for the record, "aim big but not plan until everything's gone wrong" is the central premise of several systems, so if your players really LIKE doing that you might find a different game that fits their playstyle better.)
When you say "take down," what's the specific goal?
In that one, two PCs infiltrated the base by stealth and released a demon that the drow had summoned, then ran as fast as they could while the demon trashed everything.
@nitsua60 The basic assumption we're starting with is that they don't do this.
So instead it's about the GM setting up setpieces the party can improvise with, advantages they can turn to their use instead of the drow, and so forth.
Can't wait for next session though. So besides sabotage and beasties, somebody is inevitably going to want to try diplomacy after they've killed dozens of scouts
I can't really imagine asking Drow to please leave after murdering a bunch, though
...these are Drow. If the folk you kill are low enough rank and the ones you initiate diplomacy with are high enough rank, they might consider it an unfortunate but not insurmountable faux pas.
but they'd need to do at least a little setup work first, I think. Show that they have the upper hand or are at least very difficult to kill and the scouts weren't just a fluke. Then they'll probably give them audience
My idea was that they would be given audience with the leader if they proved themselves but there would be one last attempt to just dump guards into the room that they're in and kill them all so that the Drow don't have to give up anything. One last ambush
and if the party hasn't teleported back home, they'll probably want to listen
they have the outpost where it is for a reason, after all
@BESW I actually have an interesting issue when I start going "yes, but"...I'll wind up basically going "yes, but <insert something drastically over the top here> will happen" -- to use your example, "yes, the explosives are unguarded, and ...the timer is already ticking, and oh, that's about 350 megatons of yield sitting there"
@Tophandour Or the Drow see the PCs as useful tools to get something else done. "We'll leave this area peacefully if you drop this spy amulet in a dusty corner of the king's throne room when you go report to him that we're gone."
or "yes, you can start peering in my char's mind against their will, but you'll start spawning creatures and triggering random spell effects when you do"
I try to keep the PCs at the centre of the story. They're awesome and powerful and do impressive things against the odds. So of course the Drow would want to negotiate with them; getting control of that kind of power would be great.
I know. My party just tends to carve their own path (which is something we discussed in the beginning of the campaign and I'm cool with)
If it came to it, I'd have a deal available, but it's almost a coin flip based on their mood if they'd go for it or decide that they just don't trust the Drow and decide that they don't want diplomacy anymore
So, for example, if the Drow just ask for a little thing, a token favour in exchange for leaving ("we're done here anyway"), that can be a foot in the door. A couple adventures later someone comes up and asks for a bigger favour... and can threaten to expose the PCs for the little thing they did earlier.
I once had a group that ran into a super-powerful lich who said "Great to meet you, can you please go give this ring to my friend the rebel prince?" and sent them on their way.
...the rebel prince was not his friend at all, it turns out.
My party ran into a lich once (an NPC sent them to his tower as a red herring to hopefully kill them) and they decided to leave after they realized that he had forced a pit fiend into servitude at one point
This lich was an aesthete who kept the entire world in a constant state of war so that nobody would have the time or energy to figure out where he was and go bother him.
Which reminds me that I need to bring the vampire back at some point... They retreated from a vampire once when they entered his lair while being severely underleveled. He gave a big creepy speech on the other side of their force bubble that they were camping in and they decided to leave after that
Given half the chance he'd spend hours explaining the relative merits of the dust left behind by disintegrate when used on various races. ("Dwarves turn into a fine clay for pottery. Elves? Talcum powder.")
@Tophandour Vlad the Night Flyer -- a very mundane take on a vampire in a more WoD-ish world. his "day" (night, really) job? hint: it involves the words "next day air"
Mine was once part of an archeology team that accidentally unleased a giant undead plague. He was one of the first turned. He returned home and corrupted as much as possible before the kingdom at large collapsed.
Didn't collapse from him in particular, but he contributed
Vlad's the type to pick up a big jug of pig's blood on the cheap from the slaughterhouse -- not the most satisfying meal in the world, but cheap and nutritious...think "canned tomato soup, only cold instead of hot"
At some point I'll have to think about fixing my plot
I kind of have an issue where I plan a beginning to a campaign and then an end point, but then a year later I've made so much middle that the end could conceivably never happen :p
In the last two years I've learned a lot about planning--or rather, not planning.
Creating existing scenarios that contain dramatic conflict both actual and potential, and then playing to see what happens as the PCs blunder through it.
My NPCs can and should have plans (which will almost certainly be wrecked), but the less I have plans the better.
Yeah, basically the way I've been running the campaign is like this:
Day negative 30 to day 0 I built my homebrew setting. First three sessions I got the party used to the setting. Then I came up with what I wanted my main villain to be, came up with his motivations and his goal, and decided on a vague ending point
since then, I've just been letting the party run where they want and in many cases I'm able to find a way for them to stumble on something that gives them more hints about the main villain and what he's up to
Or at the very least, lost lore that can help them figure out a way to jam his plans once they get close enough
Right. He started as just one guy with knowledge of how to use a powerful ancient artifact that he's going to use to seek another very apocalyptic artifact. The endgame that I had in mind involved the party stopping him from retrieving it at a certain critical stage
So they're lvl 12 (dunno how familiar you are with 5e but max level so far is 20)
and currently they have a lot of lore and knowledge of what he's after (finally... They forgot that they had Legend Lore for so long...)
Their issue is how they're going to find and stop him. I've debated with myself on what timescale I wanted them to find him
and stop him
there's always been kind of this romanticized idea in my head of the party showing up at level 20 and there being one big epic battle
but I've also started thinking about wrapping that plot up sooner, say by level 16 or so, and having the next 4 levels be something grander
My very first campaign, I'd planned for that lich to be the main villain for ten or fifteen levels.
Around level 7 or 8, they blew up his floating island and sent him plummeting into another plane of existence from which return would be difficult, and themselves wound up on an entirely different level of the world unable to return to the nations and guilds they'd been building relationships with.
So the rest of the campaign was spent preparing the dwarven slaves of the lower islands for revolt against their upper-island masters, and the dramatic climax was that revolution.
I think my party's due for another appearance from the villain but I need to be careful about how I do it. Need to come up with a reason why he isn't just in his deep underground magical bunker. That, and I need to make sure that I'm not going to get him killed in under six seconds
Not to say that if they were awesome and dropped him in a round that I'd say NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT
I'd let it happen
but I at least want to make sure he has a chance, y'know? :p
I also had a campaign where the first three levels featured the pattern of "Party notices problem. Party discovers problem is symptom of evil person's plan. Party finds a note in the person's pocket telling them how to accomplish their plan without doing the thing that caught the party's attention." Repeat until all those bumbling henchmen defying their boss's orders lead the party straight to the boss.
Yeah, I'm thinking of having them run across a simulacrum at some point. Then I can reveal a) there are henchemen b) he can create simulacrums c) he's a lot stronger than he was a year ago d) clues on where he's at
by the way, I'm read the "campaign in five words" thing. Let's see what I come up with for mine...
Plan B stands for "burning"
in terms of the way the party acts
They've actually incorporated it into their group's motto
"Always ready for plan B!"
they just don't tell clients that by plan B they mean light everything on fire and see if it helps
they've actually invented an alphabet based on types of burning things
A -> AAAAH, FIRE! B -> Burning C -> Conflagration etc.
as far as plot, though
Awakened Ancient seeks apocalypse switch
But yeah, this is the second campaign that I've run
first one lasted about six months or so. I inherited a 3.5 campaign from a guy that loved playing in the Eberron setting but hated DM-ing. I wanted to give it a shot, so I did. It was tough to preserve his bits and add my own, so that plus some drama when his super OP character that I should have rejected in the first place accidentally killed a party member caused the campaign to crumble
Spent about a year off to read up on dm-ing and make a homebrew setting
and I've run this one since 5e starter set was released
The wife is very sensitive to anything vaguely spicy, though, so if she makes ginger cookies she'll only make one or two for me that contain ginger chunks :p
@Tophandour one of them fell through due to time issues, the other because my dad doesn't quite get D&D (he tends to assume his char's skills will work and tends to be very frustrated when the dice fail him)
@Tophandour heh. I actually got several relatives on my mom's side together for an in-person one-shot table when I was out with them last Thanksgiving (not this year, but last year)
I just remembered that my dad asked me once how to get into it and I directed him to a local game store. I can only imagine that people played with him for about five minutes before he just started yelling over people and trying to hijack the whole campaign
@Tophandour you're talking to someone who would like to see Link get his arse spanked someday ;P (not that Ganondorf is any more likeable in my mind, though)
I had an idea for a one-shot, but I couldn't get any buy-in :P The idea was that the party would be in a world where the laws of reality were constantly shifting
so all of the sudden something surreal would happen
@Tophandour in my case, the aforementioned D&D 3.5e dungeon is a dungeon of electrical code violations -- or what you get when the Vexgits start messing with the wiring in your wizard's tower ;)
@Tophandour ewww. I come from a background of being a rather troubled freeform player who's since learned a lot about RP and what environs and systems work well and poorly for me.
@Tophandour (I, and some of the DM's I've played with, find ourselves fiat'ing parties out of TPKs or similarly nasty situations)
Yeah, we've got one guy that I won't DM anymore because he plays one character with one personality and that personality is: "I'm a lone wolf and you guys can all die for all I care"
I have a somewhat different manifestation of My Guy syndrome -- it tends to manifest itself in situations where problem-solving is no longer the primary focus
where my characters wind up driven to wipe the problem from the face of the planet to the point where they/I wind up smoking the feelings of other characters and even players in the process
Yeah, so we were playing with mid power levels and he decided that he wanted to be a Super Saiyan
and constantly kept saying "I'm not even with you guys, I hardly know you"
and for all five or so sessions that that campaign ran, he would either try to do something stupid powerful because "The power of anime!" or he would screw us all over because "You haven't convinced me to join yet!"
I love to find big complicated plots and scout them and analyze them for a little while, then pull out the appropriately sized wrench and just throw it in
@Tophandour aaah, EVE Online -- it's the most well-known of the MMOs I play
(Mr Vee being a rather notable fleet commander for an organization in that game called the Goonswarm Federation -- and yes, they are those Goons of SomethingAwful fame)
Yeah, I played EVE Online but only for a couple of weeks
I've heard of the Goonswarm and the time that they destroyed that one particularly big ship (no idea what it's called, don't remember that much detail)
It's one of my favorite gaming stories to vageuely and incorrectly retell :p
@Tophandour aaah. been active for years -- not a Goon though. I still play intermittently, living out in the gateless unknown and even RPing some in that game because it's a surprisingly favorable RP environment
@Tophandour :P actually, my "wing" char in EVE is what I consider one of my best balanced chars from an overall RP standpoint...but my main is the char that most people actually know me from/run into me in space on...and is actually slightly famous ;) tigerears.org/2012/08/21/when-bait-goes-bad
I remember the first time I came across a random container floating in space... I didn't know that you could be killed for taking stuff so I was headed up to grab it
and some other new guy beat me to it
AND THEN SUDDENLY EXPLOSIONS
so I turned around and never touched containers in space again :p
In my campaign setting currently, there's an ancient extinct race of beings that achieved space-age level technology using magic
So every now and then I have my technology fix by designing how their ship's engines work
and other things like that
stable portal to the positive energy plane, parts that channel that energy out to parts of the ship that need it, and a teleportation circle around the engines that will activate when powered. They are powered automatically during a containment breach
so then the engines get teleported to somewhere in the universe and the portal to the positive energy plane goes with it and destroys things with a massive explosion and then collapses
The great thing about being a DM is that I can say that this is totally how it works :p
In 12 levels, only one of them has died and that's only because that player asked for the rest of the party to not revive her and she almost intentionally fell in battle
for as much blundering into danger that they do, they manage to make it out just fine. Except that one time with the troll ambush :p
@Tophandour aaah. I had the benefit of being introduced to the game by a PvP player -- so I got the hang of things relatively quickly ;) I generally don't fly what I can't afford to lose, and tend to sit on a raft of liquidity as well. I've even lost a ship mid-fight, reshipped, and re-entered the fight ;)
