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Then when somebody says "I know there's a C/MD because [ACTUAL GAMEPLAY]", you reply that their experiences don't matter;I have seen very few people actually claim that in their games, casters dominate in actual game play.*Waves*
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A DM should inform his or her players that he might throw a monkey wrench in the works. Just changing stuff without any warning just seems like a poor way to DM imo.
But there are times when a DM does things behind the scenes, which from the player's POV may seem like "out of the blue", but are very much planned and calculated decisions, and as much as the player might want to know what's going on, the DM is under no obligation to reveal the how's and the why's of his campaign until the time is right or the characters are able to figure it out in game.Upfront warning: I might throw a monkey wrench in the works. Not everything will go your way. Not everything will work the way you expect it too. There will be a reason when it doesn't.
There. Done.
Honestly seems like basic expectations to me, but what do I know.
You knew what he meant, but in case you aren't being sarcastic let me know and I will break it down to you.
If you are being sarcastic the lack of a direct response is a show of weakness of your ability to come up with a real counter.
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What he means is that it isn't unreasonable for players to expect that a spell, feat, item, etc. will work the way its description says it will, and that if a DM plans to not have it work that way, the polite thing to do is inform the players of such changes in advance.
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Hmmm, that sounds entitled to me.
I believe that the spell works as expected most of the time but occasionally it doesn't due to in game reasons. The players are not aware of those reasons initially, but can eventually find out why. When they do find out, it all makes sense within the setting etc etc etc.
That's creative DMing and player problem solving. It happens in APs all the time. I would expect it's an expectation of any table. Those are the times when players have to trust the DM has reasons and they need to work around the new restriction.
Of course, if it happens arbitrarily, with no reasoning at all or if it becomes increasingly common, then I think that is bad form.
All players should be able to play with their toys, but then they should all be aware there are going to be times the toys don't work either.
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Seriously? "This thing works like it says" is entitled?
Is expecting your car to start when you turn the key entitled? Is expecting your leg to move when you try to stand entitled? Is expecting a bottle of water to help you not become dehydrated entitled?
Expecting things to work the way they say is what rules are for, and what separates a tabletop RPG from a game of pretend. Rather "Your abilities work when I say so" is just an elaborate way to say that the DM decides all outcomes.
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Seriously? "This thing works like it says" is entitled?
Is expecting your car to start when you turn the key entitled? Is expecting your leg to move when you try to stand entitled? Is expecting a bottle of water to help you not become dehydrated entitled?
Expecting things to work the way they say is what rules are for, and what separates a tabletop RPG from a game of pretend. Rather "Your abilities work when I say so" is just an elaborate way to say that the DM decides all outcomes.
Expecting it to work exactly the same every time in an RPG is entitled, yes.
Eg, you move into an area that's unhallowed. Sadly it's also dimension locked, tied into the unhallowed effect. You don't know this though, so first time you teleport it doesn't work.
The DM does not have to tell you teleporting doesn't work in this dungeon at the beginning of the session. It's part of the scenario. You find out in game through exploration or trial and error or heaven forbid making the mistake of expecting it to wo work as your emergency escape plan only to find out it doesn't here.
Expecting to be told your stuff doesn't work here without in game reasons for why your character should know this is entitled.
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I believe that the spell works as expected most of the time but occasionally it doesn't due to in game reasons.
Eg, you move into an area that's unhallowed. Sadly it's also dimension locked, tied into the unhallowed effect. You don't know this though, so first time you teleport it doesn't work.
Dimensional Anchor + Unhallow is not an in-game reason for Teleport failing though, if anything that's a case of "a spell working like it says". It's a function explicitly spelled out in the system itself and something the player can plan and accomodate for. Provided the counter's not used in excess (which should be easy in this case, since Hallow + DA is a 5k investment per cast) this wouldn't be an issue.
(Though I'd personally call for a spellcraft check to recognize the Hallowed effect before the wizard casts the Teleport, and roll out the touch attack for the dimensional anchor before declaring that his teleport failed)
What's Scythia is talking about is when the GM introduces undisclosed effects to limit feats, spells or other abilities. Say... In his campaign the accuracy of Teleport spells is adversely affected by solar flares. If solar flares are frequent enough that this will be relevant information and that information isn't provided before Scythia made her Teleporter Wizard, that's poor form.
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Seriously? "This thing works like it says" is entitled?
Is expecting your car to start when you turn the key entitled? Is expecting your leg to move when you try to stand entitled? Is expecting a bottle of water to help you not become dehydrated entitled?
Expecting things to work the way they say is what rules are for, and what separates a tabletop RPG from a game of pretend. Rather "Your abilities work when I say so" is just an elaborate way to say that the DM decides all outcomes.
Expecting it to work exactly the same every time in an RPG is entitled, yes.
Eg, you move into an area that's unhallowed. Sadly it's also dimension locked, tied into the unhallowed effect. You don't know this though, so first time you teleport it doesn't work.
The DM does not have to tell you teleporting doesn't work in this dungeon at the beginning of the session. It's part of the scenario. You find out in game through exploration or trial and error or heaven forbid making the mistake of expecting it to wo work as your emergency escape plan only to find out it doesn't here.
Expecting to be told your stuff doesn't work here without in game reasons for why your character should know this is entitled.
Seems you and a lot of other people in this thread have a totally different sense of what entitlement is.
Really, is it so much to throw a 'heads up', some places X abilities might now work for your party so they can decide if they want to build around certain things?
Taking your teleportation example, if the majority of the adventure is taking place in a location where teleportation is banned, might be good to tell the party if one of them likes using teleportation. This is to help the PCs avoid building around things that are going to be invalidated by setting or otherwise.
To take another example, if you don't want your PCs using divinations to figure out things (let's say we're playing a murder mystery and asking Calistria who dunnit kind of kills the mood), let them know 'divinations won't work here.' You don't have to tell them why as long as they're able to plan around this.
I'm not even saying abilities have to work 100% of the time, it's a genuinely liked trope (by gms more than players I've seen) to take away X trademark ability for a session or two to make them appreciate it more. But any longer than 2 sessions (which I think is pushing it at this point) and the PC should know that there might be issues with the ability that they're selecting.
Plenty of GMs use rule 0 instead of being honest with the players and saying "Sorry, didn't expect X to happen or Y to be a problem. You got me, can we all agree to change this so the game can continue?" More often it's GMs using fiat to say "teleporation doesn't work because...these MOON STONES NEGATE IT, also you take a negative level for attempting it because moon stones hate you."
We're playing a game with rules, and if the PCs can't trust in those rules to be followed without consideration for how it impacts the players, they can't trust the GM, and the game fails.
Just look at any of the "my homebrew is gritty low fantasy" "what? you don't allow half cyborg laser toting dragonborn demigods as PCs? you're a d**k GM!" threads.
Could you please link me to one of those? :)
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They're all over the place. Look in some if the archives.
If they're so common, it shouldn't be hard for you to find one, now should it?
Personally, I think this way of thinking is a relic of 3.5. The reason for this is that in 3.5, you could have a PC take monster races and templates and the game had rules for it through level adjustment and such. Pathfinder? Nah, this doesn't come up. 90% of these hypothetical creatures are always "half one thing half another" where aside from human, you can't really make a half creature anymore due to the lack of level adjustment for templates.
So when people throw up these hypotheticals, it says to me "I haven't updated my argument to actually be discussing pathfinder, and thus, do not have a full grasp of what I am discussing in relation to the changes the game system has gone through since the transition to PF."
This also goes into the "Oh, they're a 6 different base class mutliclass!" Again, 90% of those are martials, casters don't multiclass. The only time casters really DID multiclass was with prestige classes, and that's because WOTC put out so many that the quality control on them was painfully low.
Talk of multiple classes making some kind of chimera build really doesn't hold as much water as it did, and really speaking from a story perspective, multiple different martial classes make a lot more sense than multiple casting classes due to how varied martial combat from a real world perspective is.
So yeah, I'd like to see an example of these threads you're talking about as well.
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Man, entire chapters of APs have been set in locations where crap doesn't work. You figure it out, then deal with it. If it's a wizard, easy peasy. If you're a sorceror, sucks to be you.
Some of those chapters go for three or four sessions.
And it all comes down to perception of who's right. As DM my spells or magical effects are preventing yours from working. It's all fine by rules, but you haven't worked it out yet. Suddenly, you try stuff and it doesn't work as the rules say in the spell description.
Here's another example. Charm person makes the target your friend. What does a person of that alignment think it means to be a friend? If you charm a goblin, their idea of friendship is very different to a lawful good human. How much you know of what's going to happen when you cast that spell comes down to whether you know much about the creature you're targeting and whether or not you bothered making knowledge rolls to find out.
As long as it remain consistent throughout your interactions with that group, you only make a mistake once hopefully then work on other ways around things.
Edit - as for examples of entitlement, read the recruitment threads in then PbP. Or any of the disparity discussions where it is expected that everything ever written no matter if it's setting specific and context limited or not, must be available to a character or you're being a restrictive butt head.
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What he means is that it isn't unreasonable for players to expect that a spell, feat, item, etc. will work the way its description says it will, and that if a DM plans to not have it work that way, the polite thing to do is inform the players of such changes in advance.
Pretty much this.
All that I ask is a heads up by the DM if he houserules something that always works in game. in his game may or may not work. It's not entitlement IMO. If I'm allergic to cats my asking if you have one is not being entitled.
1: Golorion has built into it's history failure of divination spells especially where it concerns gods who suddenly vanish. There's your warning.
2: Spell casters usually have to end combat in the first round because they have neither the hit points, weapon damage, or AC to survive long in melee combat. If you hate spellcasters so much, why not test run a game set in a gigantic dead magic zone.
3: I've seen at least 5 topics closed by moderators because of the fights caused by the fighter magic user discrepancy arguments. Linking to closed threads does not help your cause.
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Man, entire chapters of APs have been set in locations where crap doesn't work. You figure it out, then deal with it. If it's a wizard, easy peasy. If you're a sorceror, sucks to be you.
Some of those chapters go for three or four sessions.
So are you expecting your players to read ahead in the AP, or are you telling them that X strategy won't work? I never said an adventure/campaign setting shouldn't have mitigating circumstances. I myself know teleporting in the underdark of Faerun, but if I'm playing with people who don't know that it's still fair to tell them if we plan on spending much time down there.
For example, I know that in book 5 of Legacy of Fire, plane shifting doesn't work due to circumstances (haven't read it in forever, should brush up), so if I knew X amount of sessions were going to be a problem, I'd let the character know "Hey, later in the game you're going to have issues with plane shift working" as a minor heads up. That's not really something you can 'build around', but it still stands that you give your PCs a heads up.
I mean it'd be like if sneak attack still didn't work on undead, you let them know they'd pop up a lot in Carrion Crown to make sure no one's making a sneak attack orientated character. It's not about 'never take their toys', it's about making sure the players know what to expect so they're not worthless and not having fun.
Do your own search. The first was around the time the APG came out, then popped up again when the gunslinger came out.They're all over the place. Look in some if the archives.If they're so common, it shouldn't be hard for you to find one, now should it?
It's not anyone else's job to support your argument.
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It's not anyone else's job to support your argument.Do your own search. The first was around the time the APG came out, then popped up again when the gunslinger came out.They're all over the place. Look in some if the archives.If they're so common, it shouldn't be hard for you to find one, now should it?
You have made an assertion, one that you are requesting others confirm, that's not really how it works. If you can't prove these threads exist, there's no reason for us to believe that they do. Again, the fact that you're talking about 'half esoteric creature' is reason enough to doubt as per the reasons that I stated earlier. I'm not up for taking a 'trust me' on this one. Weren't you the one saying they were easy to find, why not provide one or several to help verify this fact?
Also as an aside, I don't really count 'they won't let me play a gunslinger' since that's such a polarizing issue. It is a base class, same as any other, but really a poor decision to make it one. As per your argument, we're looking for MASSIVE outliers, not just people requesting a base class be playable.
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Man, entire chapters of APs have been set in locations where crap doesn't work. You figure it out, then deal with it. If it's a wizard, easy peasy. If you're a sorceror, sucks to be you.
Some of those chapters go for three or four sessions.
So are you expecting your players to read ahead in the AP, or are you telling them that X strategy won't work? I never said an adventure/campaign setting shouldn't have mitigating circumstances. I myself know teleporting in the underdark of Faerun, but if I'm playing with people who don't know that it's still fair to tell them if we plan on spending much time down there.
For example, I know that in book 5 of Legacy of Fire, plane shifting doesn't work due to circumstances (haven't read it in forever, should brush up), so if I knew X amount of sessions were going to be a problem, I'd let the character know "Hey, later in the game you're going to have issues with plane shift working" as a minor heads up. That's not really something you can 'build around', but it still stands that you give your PCs a heads up.
I mean it'd be like if sneak attack still didn't work on undead, you let them know they'd pop up a lot in Carrion Crown to make sure no one's making a sneak attack orientated character. It's not about 'never take their toys', it's about making sure the players know what to expect so they're not worthless and not having fun.
What I provide is the player guides to the APs. These give the players a heads up of what can be expected based on character knowledge in the world at the time the adventure started.
After that, I let my players build their characters how they want. I do not give them for warning about events in games and campaigns as that destroys the immersion and surprise in many of the stories.
You mention carrion crown. Well I had a layer who prped heavily in taking down undead. Awesome sauce. Second module undead hardly there at all. He ran with no worries, even though his spell selections were very limited. Just shrugged and said, no worries, I'll try something different.
Next module, omg still no undead for 3/4 of the game. Meh,was his response. I've adapted my original build concept to be more versatile now.
So, I still think it's a little entitled to be expecting a heads up in a campaign. It's up to "characters" to discover the worlds vagaries in how things work.
Possibly it comes from our early experiences playing in the 80s and 90s, where you weren't given player guides and APs didn't exist, you just strung together pre printed modules into rough campaigns or wrote your own. Everything was a surprise and you learned to be versatile and accept that sometimes you would suck. We didn't let the fact that sometimes the character you played wasn't as useful in a situation as other times. In fact, we enjoyed those times as much as any other.
Certainly, the view on how things should run nowadays differs greatly from when me and my mates cut our teeth on games.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Wrath, I think you're misunderstanding what it is that people are saying shouldn't be labeled as "entitled". Similarly, I think folks are (or were, until you explained more) misunderstanding what it is you call "entitled".
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What I provide is the player guides to the APs. These give the players a heads up of what can be expected based on character knowledge in the world at the time the adventure started.
After that, I let my players build their characters how they want. I do not give them for warning about events in games and campaigns as that destroys the immersion and surprise in many of the stories.
You mention carrion crown. Well I had a layer who prped heavily in taking down undead. Awesome sauce. Second module undead hardly there at all. He ran with no worries, even though his spell...
See, mentioning that you play APs as well as give out the player guide to players is helpful for this discussion. I generally believe that player guides do quite a fine job of giving the players enough of a heads up on things (especially for skull and shackles) to help them make better choices for the game that they're in.
When I talked about a heads up, I was mainly talking about in a non AP game where the players are less informed about things (I doubt most people write their own Player's Guide for their homebrew adventures.) So where in that situation there's no information packet to give out, it's more fair to give that basic information.
Knowing that you've been playing for a while also helps, since earlier generations of games were less player friendly as it were and there were less expectations of design. Adventure design now involves more player agency and awareness, which I myself think is a good thing. I'm more of the younger sect of players on the boards, so my expectations of design are different than yours. Design now includes nods to the players to help them be able to prepare for the adventure as a whole now better which to me helps improve the quality of game for everyone involved.
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Meh, I'm pretty confident I got their point Jiggy. I happen to disagree with their definition of entitled.
N Jolly talks specifically of giving heads up to players if one of their tricks isn't going to work for three or 4 sessions.
I feel, and some of the longer standing members on these boards probably agree, that there is an expectation from players now that what they build should be super awesome sauce all the time or the game isn't fun. (Exaggerated for effect, not words actually used by anyone).
To me, that's entitlement.
Many players now days have their build planned out til level 20, and get all bent out of shape if the campaign doesn't follow their build.
A character should adapt to the world around them, not the other way around. That's my old school way of play. Yep, DMs can and do modify things to adapt to player abilities at times, but only if it's essential for the plot/campaign to move forwards.
If I've handed out the starters guide to a campaign, and players use that to build their characters, then let the dice and campaign fall where it will. Expecting me to warn the ranger that the next three sessions will involve lots of ogres half way through a campaign is entitlement. If he's chosen humanoid elf as favoured enemy then bad luck to him for those three sessions. Later on when elves pop up, he's gonna be happy.
If a caster goes all divination central, only to find himself part way through a campaign in an area outside of the main flow of time that makes telling future from past impossible, suck it up.
That's what happens in adventures. It happens in APs too. Suddenly the path you thought you were on has taken a right angle and all your careful plans have gone to hell. What now brown cow?
I think this whole idea of "hey, my build doesn't work here that's completely unfair" is entitled. The rules are the general expectations of what normally happens. Just like science. But when the parameters change slightly, for whatever reason, the rules don't work as expected. Just like science. Science works as predicted in completely controlled environments. If you want your rules to do the same, the environment has to be completely the same each time. That sounds like a really crap game to me.
If you want to know teleport ain't gonna work here, better make that arcana check or try it out yourself.
Wow....that was .....really ranty. I'm off my high horse now. You now resume your normal program.
They're all over the place. Look in some if the archives.
I did, I couldn't really find any. Again, can you please provide one or more examples of the type of threads you're referring to? :)
EDIT: I'm not sure if it is what houstonderek meant, but I did find one thread which sounds sort of like what he was saying. It was a thread in the homebrew forums about E6, and DrDeth was complaining in the thread about how E6 is terrible and should never be used and is an "insult" to the game's designers.
Here's a link.
Oh man, that was an interesting read! Thanks for linking that! :)
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What I provide is the player guides to the APs. These give the players a heads up of what can be expected based on character knowledge in the world at the time the adventure started.
After that, I let my players build their characters how they want. I do not give them for warning about events in games and campaigns as that destroys the immersion and surprise in many of the stories.
You mention carrion crown. Well I had a layer who prped heavily in taking down undead. Awesome sauce. Second module undead hardly there at all. He ran with no worries, even though his spell...
See, mentioning that you play APs as well as give out the player guide to players is helpful for this discussion. I generally believe that player guides do quite a fine job of giving the players enough of a heads up on things (especially for skull and shackles) to help them make better choices for the game that they're in.
When I talked about a heads up, I was mainly talking about in a non AP game where the players are less informed about things (I doubt most people write their own Player's Guide for their homebrew adventures.) So where in that situation there's no information packet to give out, it's more fair to give that basic information.
Knowing that you've been playing for a while also helps, since earlier generations of games were less player friendly as it were and there were less expectations of design. Adventure design now involves more player agency and awareness, which I myself think is a good thing. I'm more of the younger sect of players on the boards, so my expectations of design are different than yours. Design now includes nods to the players to help them be able to prepare for the adventure as a whole now better which to me helps improve the quality of game for everyone involved.
Wish I'd read this before my stupid rant above. Yep, it's just a difference of opinion on how we view entitled is all. Now I've gotta go sit on my rocking chair and shoo some kids off my lawn it seems.
'A modest proposal'....
Then followed by something that is neither modest, nor a proposal.
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Warning, this is not safe for a lot of situations.
Don't sneer at historically important literature if you don't want me to link it.
Warning, this is not safe for a lot of situations.
That was fabulous :)
Warning, this is not safe for a lot of situations.
Don't sneer at historically important literature if you don't want me to link it.
Oh, this is lovely; all I have to do to get literary links is sneer? Awesomesauce... lemme go write up my list of references and see if I can sneer them all in a single post!
Jk.
OK, not really a joke, but am too lazy to go make list, compose sneer, post.
Happy New Year!
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Wish I'd read this before my stupid rant above. Yep, it's just a difference of opinion on how we view entitled is all. Now I've gotta go sit on my rocking chair and shoo some...
I figured this was the case, and I'm sure soon enough I'll be complaining about entitlement with people's expectations of games, it's the natural cycle of things.
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I am super surprised that people use this statement to discuss the mechanics of a fantasy world.
This is So Unrealistic!
I hereby swear to track down whoever has stated the that statement, knock on their door, and face palm.
I know the above sentence is incredibly weird, and you may proceed to stare at me.
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I am super surprised that people use this statement to discuss the mechanics of a fantasy world.
This is So Unrealistic!
I hereby swear to track down whoever has stated the that statement, knock on their door, and face palm.
I know the above sentence is incredibly weird, and you may proceed to stare at me.
O.O
People expect the laws of physics to exist unless changed by magic. If you take that away and there are no laws of physics in a game world - what exactly is magic?
Dragons may be able to breath fire because of innate magic but they still have brains, hearts, internal organs, they age, die, give birth, have eggs, hatch, eat, sleep, poop (move on). Nothing in the rules explicitly details these in a stat block (apart from aging) but it is an accepted fact (though changable by a DM)because we use reality as our base point.
Thats how we assume if we fire an arrow up in the air it will eventually come down. If you say reality is irrelevant then you are removing logic and reason from the game and that dramatically impacts problem solving as no one can predict the outcome of their actions any more.
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And yet, we do have expectations for our fantasy worlds. We do tend to expect things that aren't called out as fantasy in one way or another to work like we'd expect them too.
"Because dragons" doesn't excuse everything. We still assume people are basically people, that most of the world basically works the way the real one does (or did.) Some people might have powers that let them fly or breathe underwater, but your average Joe doesn't.
Only some people have those expectations though.
There are others who happily accept a world that grew and evolved with powerful magic reacts fairly differently to our world.
When magic breaks the laws of physics, don't expect the laws of physics to be the same in a magical world.
What some folks seem to want is a realistic setting similar to earth, but also with high magic. When those mix, it can create issues. Especially if you're using RAW arguments vs setting responses.
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People expect the laws of physics to exist unless changed by magic. If you take that away and there are no laws of physics in a game world - what exactly is magic?
Dragons may be able to breath fire because of innate magic but they still have brains, hearts, internal organs, they age, die, give birth, have eggs, hatch, eat, sleep, poop (move on). Nothing in the rules explicitly details these in a stat block (apart from aging) but it is an accepted fact (though changable by a DM)because we use reality as our base point.
Thats how we assume if we fire an arrow up in the air it will eventually come down. If you say reality is irrelevant then you are removing logic and reason from the game and that dramatically impacts problem solving as no one can predict the outcome of their actions any more.
As long as the world is run in a consistent fashion, then problem solving merely becomes based on a new set of parameters.
Terry Pratchets disc world books are good examples of how this happens. Magic slows time, slows light. Dwarves mine mountains for tallow and bone, the remnants of one of the great elephants that support the disc crashing into the planet after it accidentally stepped of the turtles back. There is no North etc. everything is referenced to the hub, the central mountains from which all magic flows. There actually is an edge to the world, from which the oceans pour over in a great waterfall.
The best thing, his books are written so his characters understand this and respond according to laws of that planet.
I once toyed with the premise that magical creatures came from spontaneous generation. Minotaurs, Lamia, Medusas, and Sphinxes all come from the gods.
I once toyed with the premise that magical creatures came from spontaneous generation. Minotaurs, Lamia, Medusas, and Sphinxes all come from the gods.
Well aside from wizards f*@#ing about with stuff they shouldn't where else would those things come from?
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@TheJeff, True. Using some arbitrary reason like "Dragons" is not the best of reasoning for weird situations.
There needs to be a consistency in the world the characters exist in. IT may not resemble much of what we're used to on Earth, but it needs to be consistent for that planet at least. Otherwise, as you say, there's no real ability to problem solve if its all just arbitrarily random.