@ShadowKras I think you were overly harsh with the DM question calling it 'ranty'. We've got loads of similar questions that are fine, and I see no reason why that one wasn't
At least there was an actual fully formed question at the end :)
@NautArch I updated my answer based on the Sage Advice you linked. I still think it's a judgement call, as there are several ways to interpret "perceive". Would have been a cool mechanic with the fog and to "see without seeing"
@A.B. I agree. It's a little loose for my liking, but a lot of 5e is. Given that there are so many things to support my thought that Seeing is a type of Perception, but all Perception isn't saying, I lean towards it not working (see my linked related question for that.)
but I could also understand if a table ruled that Blindsight counts as "seeing" and be perfectly fine with that.
@A.B. although for your specific example, standing within 1/2 your movement of the fog cloud will still allow you to pop out, cast your magic missile, and pop back in before the enemy's turn. As long as you aren't provoking any OA (although you do risk that they've held an action for you to do just that.)
@NautArch Depends on the circumstance. In general I'm fine with it, but if play is slowing down because everyone is talking and not taking actions I'll put a stop to it.
Planning too much between turns breaks immersion and the game moves toward a strategy game. But if you follow that rule strictly, players will also feel they are breaking immersion. The table has to balance it.
@Adam same here. We even have a joke saying that shadowrun is the only game where chitchatting in or out of character is fine.
@ShadowKras I generally police myself on this when at a table. If I don't think my character is able (out of room, silenced, etc.) I don't. But otherwise, we do.
I mean, we have to allow some extend of strategy because none of us are in that situation or could possibly know exactly how our characters would behave. If it was a VR game with trodes connected to our brains, then maybe.
But at some point you have to limit it, right? If the characters are in combat, assuming one turn is <10 seconds, it's kinda metagamey if the whole party instantly choreographs a strategy
@MikeQ I think the answer to that is "yes, but within reason" Most of us play this to have fun and see this as a cooperative game. As long as it isn't slowing down the game, or stealing spotlight from players decision making, then I personally don't see an issue with it because realism
the important bit to realize, when working cooperatively, is that you don't necessarily have the best idea. You can make a suggestion, but if it's not your charcter's turn...it's not your call.
@NautArch, prolonging combat rounds for combat-meta-coordination is not a requirement for making the game cooperative. Even if it is short. Its even counterproductive if players are of perceived skill disparities, imho, directly(perceived low-skill players never get a chance to learn by failing) and indirectly(perceived low-skill players feel incapable of making decisions on their own).
@godskook I believe we've pretty much all agreed that situations where strategics are taking an absurd amount of time, where people aren't having fun building a plan, or where other players are attempting (purposefully or otherwise) to dominate the action of another player's characters were worth avoiding.
It all comes back to the golden rule, do what's most fun. If you think it's more fun to have the party unable to plan out of character during a battle, then do that. If it's more fun to work together, even if that might sort of be a bit meta-gamey or not quite realistic, do that instead.
@NautArch Same here, but I think that's the beauty of Matt's presentation.
@Adam watched the whole thing. I think i'm going to share this with my group. Our main DM really needs to watch it (but won't...or won't get it), but the others likely will (do both)
I think it's worth showing them. One of Matt's replies in the comments really nicely sums up what I was trying to say before.
> Remember, if your players had fun, that's all that matters! Being "on rails" doesn't always mean "railroaded." That's a distinction we'll talk about in another video. "Railroaded" is that unpleasant feeling the players get when they feel like "we don't have a choice!" On rails just means the players are following the content the DM has ready. I think MOST games are on rails and people have fun!
@Adam that last quote is the most important. Make rails, but be open to going off them.
I'm at exactly that point in our main campaign. We have choices, but we don't. It's completely on rails and we have no real ability to change what we do.
@MikeQ In some of these situations I like throwing the party into a cutscene back to their own planning sessions. See rpg.stackexchange.com/a/71882/23970 for an example.
Huh, that's an interesting point. Players get to spend a whole bunch of time talking to each other and planning out their moves, why shouldn't the BBEG get time to monologue?
the players talking ooc with each other for 2 hours to get a plan going is way different than the PCs being railroaded through a cutscene while the Big Bad monologues at them
Well yeah, it's way different because it's the PCs doing it.
And player agency should valued above literally everything.
Definitely an emotional reaction there, but I've played more than a few one-shots where the bad guy can't get a word in edgewise before the Rogue PC says "I sneak up and backstab him while he's talking" but we still go way over time because the players spend 10-15 minutes a round detailing exact plans.
@Yuuki I think that problem has more to do with the players just wanting to sit down with some friends and kill some stuff. In those situations, the better idea I think would be to discuss that you want to try out a different kind of game where such events are taken more seriously, rather than wrestling into a style that the players may not have imagined for the game.
@Adam If it's mainly a question about preferred playstyle, then why do these hypothetical discussions always involve PCs who like complete freedom rather than some mix of playstyles?
@Yuuki It's easiest to come up with plan and arguments and strategies when you only have to worry about a certain kind of play style. Once you go down the rabbit hole of "people don't just like one thing", it becomes very difficult to come to a consensus, especially without context. And context is very difficult to accurately convey in a game where pretty much anything can happen.
@Adam But then if we're still only concerning ourselves with one playstyle, then why is it always the same playstyle that's brought up?
Why do we assume that every player is the "I want to be able to do anything whenever I want" player? Why are there so few situations where we assume every player is the "I want a story" player?
Whenever someone talks about "how do I DM this" in chat, the "player wants to be completely free" playstyle is always the one that's discussed chiefly.
Although I guess it could be argued that that's the playstyle that would mostly like bring up objections from the player POV. Squeaky wheel gets the grease after all.
@Adam Others are there mainly for the companionship, and the question of character-agency vs. railroading (or however one wants to frame it) couldn't matter one whit in either direction.
To me, a lot of this should be determined in Session Zero. Players should provide input as to what type of campaign they'd like to help the DM create that world.
Importantly, most of us (I believe) are many types of players at different tables, on different nights, in different scenarios, with different of our characters.
@Yuuki Speaking only for myself, I usually approach from that angle because so much of the advice that I have heard from other DMs, and from the horror stories of other players, all revolves around the common theme that the worst games that they have ever had were when the players weren't given any options. That the lack of options distinctly made the experience worse.
And in a paranoid haze, I make the jump that "if the worst game provided little choice, then the best game must have had the most choice". I try to temper it with the knowledge that context matters and different players want different things. But the emotional reaction trends back to "more choice -> better game"
They're still negotiating with the smaller studios, as well as WotC and Whitewolf, which dramatically inhibits its use as a standard among tabletop gamers.
@Yuuki, the kinds of specificity are usually the kinds of things the person you're lying to can easily flip on you and force you to add to your initial lie. Having that pre-specified prevents you from having to conjur falsehoods on the fly, which provokes a lot of tells.
Well, when I said "opposite" I meant that between choosing to be specific or un-specific without any further contingencies like keeping notes, it would be preferably to be un-specific.
Because being specific without remembering what you were being specific about is most definitely an easier way to get caught out lying than staying un-specific.
@Yuuki, I just mean, you kinda put your comment above discussion by first objecting *STRONGLY* to my comment, and then immediately adding a slight and reasonable modification of my comment(that's a subset of my comment's point) to your statement as if that's one position.
You're kinda not-not-even-wrong with that kind of construction. How do I object to your strong objection without arguing against what's essentially my own comment?
Random thought: the biggest problem I have with Jackie Chan's Karate Kid reboot is that a bunch of 16 year olds decided that their gang leader would be a 12 year old.
I have serious misgivings about that.
And perhaps to make things worst, their second-in-command (as evidenced by him being the only one who seems to be able to question the leader) is another 12 year old.
@Yuuki Probably suffers from the fact that the original is so crappy, yet such a nostalgic hit. (I say this as someone who attempted a crane-kick on a guardrail last week, pulling at least three major muscle groups in the process....)
@BESW Actually, it's explicitly going to be a D&D game. (Children of the 70s and 80s, brand-nostalgia, all that.)
And I'll go with 5e, 'cause why not...
So it's just do I care about published vs. homebrew, do they....
At this point I'm leaning toward published, as that'll give me time to get a start on the megadungeon (Angry-style) that @Miniman helped me brainstorm. (But I still need @daze413's help figuring out gating!)
Oh, I haven't thought about the Yawning Portal, either.
Could just grab one of those, as it's nice-and-small?
Welp, I've got my reading for the night =)
@Miniman Ooh. that does it. The first dungeon in Yawning Portal--statted for Tier 1 characters--is The Sunless Citadel, which I had already converted and run because I'm a fan.
Maybe I'll give it a little bit of an Angry makeover =)
