Having both sides of the story is definitely a good thing :)
From what you say, it doesn't seem as if you did anything wrong as such, although it would probably still have been a good idea to ask your DM first if you could read the encounter writeups of the adventure. It seems like you may have had good reason to see how it was written, but that would have been common courtesy anyway (even if you felt you followed his rules, and even though he had asked for feedback on how he was doing).
As for most encounters in the AP being life-or-death; that's fairly standard for the Adventure Paths so far. One of my players died in the first part of both Age of Worms and Curse of the Crimson Throne. I seem to recall one Paizo employee stating that the APs were deliberately designed to be tougher than regular adventures, simply to make them more memorable.
The Barghest, though, was most likely written into that adventure to teach players that some times you're better off running away than standing to fight. And in this particular case, running away would have worked very well, as the Barghest can't move out of its area.
OK, so here I am incriminating myself.
Super long, so I'm tucking it into a spoiler. Read at your own risk.
...
So I had the RP reason and the Metagame reason to decline the Raise Dead, though I suppose if I had a do-over on that moment the cleric cast Speak With Dead to ask me to come back, knowing (now) that the levels lost could be restored, I probably would bring him back. Or just if he had a reason, like if we had found out any leads or hints to take us to the Skinsaw chapter, any reason to believe his work wasn't yet done - I would have accepted the Raise for that reason, too.
I don't like having him dead.
Your comments shed a bit more light on the issues.
I still think that you, your DM and the other players need to sit down and talk about the expectations each of you have for the RPG adventure. I beleive that this will help clear up the frustrations that are being felt on each side.
It may be an idea for your critiques of the DM's job be done off-line, that is when no one else is around. That will probably reduce the feeling of being "attacked" in front of the other players. Or perhaps have discussions before play when everyone is setting up, of ways that you have livened up/learned to/etc.. so that you are not appearing to be attacking the DM's decision/style.
When I ran Burnt Offerings, the player of the paladin (hmm, is this a theme :) ) accused me of targetting him when a certain female went after him and the consequences reared it's head. I had to show him the section of the AP where it was layed out. I don't think he has forgiven James Jacob for that little bit yet, or that he ever will :). I had no problem with showing the player the section, which may be been an idea for your DM to keep in mind. It is better to kill these highly negative and inaccurate perceptions as soon as possible.
I personally have no problem with players seeing some of the encounters after they have gone thru them, with a few exceptions (plot driven).
So, to answer the OP's question, with the explanation that DM_Blake has provided, I would continue to DM the AP for the group. Though, I would have that "expectations" conversation so that everyone was playing for the same page.
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I agree those involved need to sit down and talk about it. I think all involved was at least a bit to blame. The DM should have been more clear and the players should have followed the spirit of the don't read instead of the letter of it. Plus it is a bad idea to critic people in a public way, it just never ends well and almost always puts the person on the defensive.
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I think the events that we understood to be true before, that the synopsis of all the other modules of the AP was read, and that the DM critique was initiated unrequested and unexpected by the players are the discussion points that drew the most heat, because they go back to trust issues and the fact it is a game and not a contest. With neither of those two understandings being entirely true, the whole situation is a different color. It sounds to me like more experienced DMs were playing while a less experienced DM ran the adventure. In this case, especially if the OP was open to advice, it would be totally appropriate to critique the game sessions. I request feedback from my players at random intervals in my own game for perspective and insight purposes, its what makes us better DMs. Sounds like you all also might have benefitted from each taking a AP section and running one and comparing notes after each one, as that too might have been helpful for all to see situations from both perspectives, especially in the context of this adventure path. I say that because there are some fairly brutal places in this AP, mostly near the beginning, where it might be easy to blame the TPK factor on the DM, and not the AP.
Since I am running this AP as well, one part that I do share with my party after they go through a section, is what the obituary thread content looked like for that particular encounter, like say Erylium or the Xanetia. I think it helps put the deadliness of particular AP encounters in perspective in the players' minds and know that other groups dealt with similar situations.
After reading DM_Blake's comments, I do not think I would continue the game. In both his comments in this thread and in others he has complained about how horribly long one part of the adventure path is taking. To me that is a clear sign that someone is not having fun... or at least has a bad attitude about the game.
Sean Mahoney
I can certainly understand some of the sentiments expressed by the OP. In the past, I have generally run self-made adventures with a few modules thrown in here and there, so issues of player knowledge about events was typically a non-issue.
I am planning on running RotRL, though, and one of my players runs a gaming/hobby store so he has ready access to all of the RotRL materials. However, I trust him not to read up on anything that would spoil the adventure. For that matter, all of my players have internet access and could easily do their own investigating (or even buy the pdfs). But I trust them not to.
Then again, we typically debrief after a night of playing and go over the encounters. Often things will go as planned, but the fun part is when things go astray. We can talk about those things for hours afterwards. It's a great way to end a session. They learn things that they were curious about and I get to share with them some "behind the scenes" info. Since I'm in control of how much I reveal, I don't worry that they'll learn something they shouldn't.
I would not be at all happy to find someone had read parts of the adventure. If you have a question about something, you ask me. Nuff said. If I found out somebody did that, I would talk to them about it face to face and make sure they understood my feelings about it. If it happened again, they'd be gone.
So, instead of viewing this as a case of differing playstyles (one where keeping the plot a secret is important, and the other where simply playing the game is important), you've chosen to view this as a case of cheating?
Of course. They were told not to do something, but did it anyway. Maybe they kept to the letter of the agreement while violating its spirit, but in the end, that's still cheating.
Cheating is when you roll the die and call a 1 a 20.
That's not the exclusive definition of cheating, unless the game consists of nothing except rolling dice. Pathfinder consists of more. Therefore, there are different types of cheating beyond fudging dice rolls.
In fact, even in a game where you do little else but roll dice, I'm sure there are other types of cheating, like "miscalculating" how far you can go, or "forgetting" you have used some ability already, or that you have a certain weakness, etc.
And if we're talking about a roleplaying game like Pathfinder, the possibilities are even bigger, including using out-of-character knowledge (including obtaining out-of-character knowledge, especially if told not to do it).
To quote a pretty solid piece of wisdom from Mike Mearls: "If knowledge of a game's plot would spoil its experience, it isn't a game."
That's no wisdom, that's nonsense. Except maybe for a very, very narrow definition of a game.
Revelations can greatly enhance a game. Spoiling those revelations can therefore spoil the game's experience.
It's like saying "If knowing the plot of a flick before watching it spoils its experience it's not a flick."
The following spoiler contains spoilers for Star Wars
In Star Wars, one of the greatest moments is where Vader tells Luke that he didn't kill his father - he is his father! Sure, you can watch the flick again and again and still it's fun, but hearing about the father thing before seeing it the first time takes a lot away from that flick.
Both Fight Club and The Sixth Sense contain a big revelation that make watching the flick for the first time a very special occasion. Those are motion pictures you can watch twice for the first time: Once with the big revelation coming, and once when you see it knowing about the big revelation, seeing all the details you missed before.
My godmother robbed me of the opportunity to watch the pre-revelation version of the Sixth Sense. I was never able to watch that flick in that way, and I never will be. My enjoyment for it has been ruined by that.
It's still a film.
Just like a game is still a game, even if someone ruins the plot by reading ahead.
And all this even ignores the cheating angle. Will you act the way you do if you know that the Grand Vizier and the Evil Magician are actually the same person? (Okay, bad example, all Grand Viziers are required to be evil, so it's always a dead give-away).
Your players may be coming at it from this angle. The story is great and all, but underneath the plot and the villains' motivations and the behind-the-scenes scheming, you're playing a game. If they're still capable of having fun, then it's simply a matter of differing expectations - NOT cheating.
Not all games are just a bunch of rules with no plot. Pathfinder, and other roleplaying games, have an important component of "make-believe". Call it what you will, but they're not just endless diablo-like dungeon crawls with dice instead of mice.
One other thing that RPGs have in common is the role of the GM (not always called by that name). And one very common thing is that if the GM sets rules, and the players break them, they're cheating. And rules don't have to be in-game rules like "an attack is an automatic miss on a natural 1", but also stuff like "no reading adventures" or "no meta-gaming".
The DM said he asked us not to read the material. I remember it a little differently. He asked us not to read the material specifically so we wouldn't know what was going to happen. I followed that to the letter, and I didn't think reading parts of it that were over and done with broke his rule or violated his trust.
You can't be sure that the parts that you think were over were truly over.
Often, they include information like "If spiffy the Evil Clown is able to flee, he'll run back to his master, Death Jester, and they will plot together how they can kill Moe the Mummer while using Death Jester's disguise as the kindly mayor of Circus Town." So the stat block itself gives away future events.
And there's "Development" sections that tie into later adventures.
And so much different stuff.
It's okay if the GM looks over stuff and gives it to players to read, but making assumptions about its relevance to future parts of the plot and then reading it, thus following rules to the letter while buggering their spirit can be considered cheating.
Personally, I consider the spirit of the rule important, and breaking that by following the letter one of the worst kinds of cheating. But let's just say you didn't mean it that way, and didn't think you were cheating.
Just take that into consideration when you decide next what to read and what not. Err on the side of caution, especially if the maker of rules is your friend.
Movies and books are non-interactive. The plot is all there is.
That doesn't mean that plot means nothing in games, that games are only rules. It's definitely wrong in the case of RPGs.
They're plot AND rules. If you ruin one of the two, you diminish the whole.
Movies and books are non-interactive. The plot is all there is.
That doesn't mean that plot means nothing in games, that games are only rules. It's definitely wrong in the case of RPGs.
They're plot AND rules. If you ruin one of the two, you diminish the whole.
And yet you can play an RPG without any plot whatsoever and still enjoy it as a game. If knowing the plot structure of a game would make it completely unenjoyable to play, it's not a game.
If you find out the plot structure of a game and decide that the game has been completely ruined for you because of it, you clearly weren't there for the sake of the game to begin with - you were there for the sake of the story overlying the game.
Yes, a good plot can enhance the experience of a game. If it's a game, though, it shouldn't need the mystery of that plot to be enjoyable. Even with that plot spoiled, it should still be fun. If it's not, it's a poor game.
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And yet you can play an RPG without any plot whatsoever and still enjoy it as a game. If knowing the plot structure of a game would make it completely unenjoyable to play, it's not a game.
The real issue lies with the consensus of how the DM and other players feel about one player having knowledge of the plot. If the DM and/or other players have the expectations that all the players will be surprised by the plot, then having foreknowlegde does reduce THEIR enjoyment of the game, because you changed the rules without asking them. If no one cares, then everything is fine, because no one's enjoyment is being impacted. So really, it comes down to what the expectations are for your gaming group. It sounded like the OP had the expectations that none of the players would read the material and know the plot ahead of time, which is why all the negative comments have been posted.
So I had the RP reason and the Metagame reason to decline the Raise Dead, though I suppose if I had a do-over on that moment the cleric cast Speak With Dead to ask me to come back, knowing (now) that the levels lost could be restored, I probably would bring him back.
I don't think Speak with Dead would allow a character to answer whether he wants to be Raised or not. He could answer what his opinion of being raised was prior to his death.
Never thought I'd say this but I actually agree with Scott...Plot structure isn't important in most pick up games I am running my Wilderlands game on the boards here on a basis of..pick a module I think might interest the players and in between times let them dictate the way things go..having said that however, an AP is different and certain forshadowing information might be better kept from the players.
That's . . . interesting, especially given the fact that the Dungeon editorial staff has said that releasing an outline for the entire Scales of War AP would ruin the fun for players and GMs.
LOL. No kidding. "Interesting" indeed. In any case, Mearls' "wisdom" isn't "solid" (pfft) at all. (Not surprising, of course.)
That's . . . interesting, especially given the fact that the Dungeon editorial staff has said that releasing an outline for the entire Scales of War AP would ruin the fun for players and GMs.LOL. No kidding. "Interesting" indeed. In any case, Mearls' "wisdom" isn't "solid" (pfft) at all. (Not surprising, of course.)
Rather than simply scoffing at an interesting observation, would you care to explain why, exactly, you don't feel it's solid?
Your tone here is more than a little derisive towards a professional in the industry. Is that really the sort of attitude you're interested in adopting?
I had a similar instance happen in my age of worms campaign. Two players had played through the first 2 adventures in the AP before and remembered some of the traps, monsters, etc.
I just discussed with them before hand that when they did come across a scene they remembered, to just play dumb and let the other three PC's figure out the puzzle.
I think most players would be fine with this, taking a less pro-active role for 1 or 2 adventures in order to let the other new players get the full experience. Then when you hit the next module that nobody has played through yet, it all reverts to a normal game again.
Rather than simply scoffing at an interesting observation, would you care to explain why, exactly, you don't feel it's solid?
Already covered in this thread by those who disagreed.
Your tone here is more than a little derisive towards a professional in the industry. Is that really the sort of attitude you're interested in adopting?
He'll live. I suspect you will too. But, as I'm sure you're well aware, I don't have to like (fawn over? apologize for?) everyone, this industry or otherwise.
Here's another little hintie-poo for you, Betts: Michael Bay sucks as well. :D
First off, thanks to both joecoollives and DM Blake for presenting this in a way that we can all learn a thing or two from.
I see three "sins" committed by the players:
Reading the mod -
If this was done only to the extent DM Blake describes, I see it as a very minor thing. In a way I see it as almost necessary for DM Blake to feel that he is being treated fairly by his DM. I would encourage him to "go with the flow" more and allow someone else to run the game the way they want without second guessing things.
Critising the DM -
This one is the most subjective, but I feel that it hits close to home for me personally. I find nothing makes me want to burn my books, crush my dice into dust and never play again as much as criticism about my DMing. I feel that others don't understand how much must be juggled at once, and how hard it can be to keep a half dozen stressed out adults entertained all night while forwarding the plot, keeping the game balanced, and not forgetting some grapple rule that has changed for the 4th time! Ingrates!
HOWEVER, while distracted by all those things, it is all too easy to not realize that someone is getting the short end of the stick, or not having fun. Without feedback how would you know? So try to be as thick skinned as possible, separate the whining from the good advice, and think it over for a few days before taking any of it seriously. That pissed off feeling lasts a few days, being a better DM lasts forever.
Reading the Runelords board -
HUGE SIN! Anyone can see by the thread titles alone that this is giving away important information about the campaign! The whole thing is one big spoiler! I could find out almost every single secret and then some by reading that board without clicking a single spoiler button. For a sin like this, I would say the offenders should buy you the next adventure path or something comparable, since they basically read the script for that adventure path.
These are my thoughts based on what I read in this thread. I'm sure there is a lot more to it, and that others would draw different conclusions. None of this sounds like it is worth loosing players and especially friends over.
PS - For a few reasons, I skipped/ totally altered Skinsaw Murders. If you want some things that will make your players choke on their ill gotten knowledge for a few sessions - PM me.
First off, thanks to both joecoollives and DM Blake for presenting this in a way that we can all learn a thing or two from.
I see three "sins" committed by the players:
Reading the mod -
If this was done only to the extent DM Blake describes, I see it as a very minor thing. In a way I see it as almost necessary for DM Blake to feel that he is being treated fairly by his DM. I would encourage him to "go with the flow" more and allow someone else to run the game the way they want without second guessing things.Critising the DM -
This one is the most subjective, but I feel that it hits close to home for me personally. I find nothing makes me want to burn my books, crush my dice into dust and never play again as much as criticism about my DMing. I feel that others don't understand how much must be juggled at once, and how hard it can be to keep a half dozen stressed out adults entertained all night while forwarding the plot, keeping the game balanced, and not forgetting some grapple rule that has changed for the 4th time! Ingrates!
HOWEVER, while distracted by all those things, it is all too easy to not realize that someone is getting the short end of the stick, or not having fun. Without feedback how would you know? So try to be as thick skinned as possible, separate the whining from the good advice, and think it over for a few days before taking any of it seriously. That pissed off feeling lasts a few days, being a better DM lasts forever.Reading the Runelords board -
HUGE SIN! Anyone can see by the thread titles alone that this is giving away important information about the campaign! The whole thing is one big spoiler! I could find out almost every single secret and then some by reading that board without clicking a single spoiler button. For a sin like this, I would say the offenders should buy you the next adventure path or something comparable, since they basically read the script for that adventure path.These are my thoughts based on what I read in this thread. I'm sure...
Hey eveyone, I am sure glad to read all your helpful thoughts. I am glad I posted this because it has helped me work through my stuff. where before I was just stuffing it. I realize my feelings were brused and the players in my group probably didn't even know. It was also helpful to hear from DM_Blake too. So all your feedback has helped alot.
It might of just been hard to DM with a Terresqe in the room...:-)
Bryan