|
I learned a long time ago that that is a sure trip to an abrupt end of your campaign.I have seen some grey beards who like to 'hold court' before a gaggle of high school kids too naïve to know there are other styles.
I have too. Most of my players are in high school, but they are second and sometimes third generation gamers, so they know what's what.
Unfortunate, I suppose... but right and proper since we don't live in a perfect world, and the GM is not made of time nor the players' dancing monkey. But...
You obviously do not know me very well since I am an avid GM advocate as well. When did 'discussion with players' = player's dancing monkey?
You obviously do not know me very well
Obviously. I don't know anyone on teh intarwebs very well. (And I'm good with that.)
since I am an avid GM advocate as well. When did 'discussion with players' = player's dancing monkey?
Never, since I discuss with players all the time, and I'm not a dancing monkey. I'm glad you're not, either. A little bit of fun hyperbole (and monkeys = win) on the internet never hurt anyone. I just started with your post, and went a bit further - some people [not necessarily yourself] sometimes think that a DM's 'my way or highway' is a very bad thing... and it's not, as long as the DM is willing to accept the consequences of that position (and why wouldn't he/she, since that's his/her chosen position).
That's fine, so long as the player has fun with it. I'm speaking as someone who detests playing rogues, but who gets bitten time and again with the "Whoops! You got poisoned with another trap! What's the matter - can't you find the secret door that's necessary to complete the adventure? What - can't you open the lock to the dungeon? Then you'll need to hire an NPC thief and hope he doesn't pick your pocket!" syndrome. That's the only reason I would ever play a rogue (unless it's a PIXIE rogue...)But if you ENJOY playing an unconventional rogue, knock yourself out.
An aside: if an adventure can only be completed if the party has a member with one specific character class with one specific skillset, then it's a very poorly designed adventure. With any given obstacle, there should be a couple ways around it. Take disarming traps--okay, Rogue can't get it in this situation, but maybe if it's a magic trap, the spellcaster can dispel it, or the toughest member of the party can set it off and take the damage and keep going, or the Fighter with his adamantine weapon just carves them a new route through a wall, etc. etc. etc. Can't get past a locked door? Break it down, cast knock, check the geography of the area for an alternate route. Yes, a master of Disable Device might provide the easiest way through (thus the character proves her usefulness) but it shouldn't ever be the ONLY way through.
If you're a GM and you're using a pre-designed adventure that has a "Only Bob Can Solve This" feature, then it's the GM's job to notice it and go, "Hey, nobody has Disable Device high enough to get past that trap. This will put us all in a dead end, so maybe I'll put a different challenge there instead, that will still test the players, but be possible for them to overcome." It's NOT the players' job to somehow be able to create a character who is perfect for bypassing an obstacle that he can't know about beforehand without cheating.
An "unconventional" rogue is not a useless rogue--the Acrobat is going to dance her way through combat without a scratch; the Con-Artist rogue is going to be talking the party through the city, haggling down prices, and feinting everything to death; the Thug is extracting information and shouting down the enemy with Intimidate; the Legerdemain Expert is walking into a party armed to the teeth because he's THAT GOOD with Sleight of Hand that he can conceal his weapons so that not even the best guard could ever tell.
I've played in campaigns where Bluff was way more useful than Disable Device. There is just no "one right way" to build a character. Or a party.
I was, of course, exaggerating. Yes, I've used things like Knock spells, Detect Secret Doors spells, non-rogues with cross-class skills, etc. And as I had mentioned before, the party could HIRE someone with the skills they lack.
But somehow... that approach seems lacking. The absence of a rogue is felt.
For example, there was one adventure in which the party found a locked chest. The bad guys left behind implications that the chest had some valuable treasure they looted. As it happens, the chest was a decoy, with a deadly trap. The party was FORTUNATE not to have the ability to pick the lock. But the party members never found this out. It seemed unsatisfying.
Obviously, I often tweak adventures to suit the party. I remember one adventure ("The Rose of Jumlat," I think?) where passing one crucial point required a certain spell. So I changed that crucial point.
But still - and I know that others in this thread will disagree with me - I find it so much more satisfying to run an adventure as it is, because of what I call the Coincidence Factor. When an adventure calls for a certain less-often-used skill or spell, and a PC just happens to have it, it's an incredible moment for the GM.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with tailoring an adventure for the PCs. Perhaps the most successful adventure I ever wrote required a certain newly-acquired spell to be used at a critical moment. That was an incredible moment for the PLAYER. But the Coincidence Factor business is fun too.
And as for your last point, DeathQuaker, I can only repeat that I was only speaking as someone who generally dislikes playing rogues. I'm just not interested in playing an acrobat, con artist, thug, etc. I have nothing against a player playing such a character, provided the player might ENJOY playing one.
from Death Quakers last post I feel a little more info mite be in order.
My rant is because in a canned module The Age of Worms we have 4 players.
One is the druid that put all his points into being a rouge substitute but now at 4th lvl he's muti-classed into wizard(diviner) so he can pick up arcane heighrophant.
The dwarf barbarian/fighter is great and we have no complaints about our mini tank. Then you have me the NE wizard of vecna.
Finally you have the 3rd level(hey you died, you come in one level lower)theif/cleric of pelor/fighter. He's hideing the fact that he's a cleric so my wizard doesnt sacrafice him to vecna.
When the DM calls for ANY knowledge check the whole group looks to me, even knowledge local which I have but only at 2 ranks.
Why cause wizards are supposed to know everything.
Nobody expects the dwarf fighter to know how to tie his shoes and the cleric/theif/fighter type has a int of 6 he gets 1 skill point so hes worse than the fighter.
I guess my point is evreybody know canned modules are designed to have X,Y,&Z in the party and when you dont have it for whatever reason it makes it alot harder if not impossible to complete.
My DM runs canned adventures as is he doesnt take time to tweak or review so if we dont have it or if we miss a skill check we are just a**ed out.
So far the responses have made me see that it really isn't a game flaw it's a flaw in MY group.
Thanks to everyone for the replys
who gets bitten time and again with the "Whoops! You got poisoned with another trap! What's the matter - can't you find the secret door that's necessary to complete the adventure? What - can't you open the lock to the dungeon? Then you'll need to hire an NPC thief and hope he doesn't pick your pocket!" syndrome.
That's a real medical term.
You have a high Intelligence score and all Knowledge skills as class skills. I expect you have at least 1 rank in every Knowledge skill. What did you expect?
An aside: if an adventure can only be completed if the party has a member with one specific character class with one specific skillset, then it's a very poorly designed adventure.
Absolutely, and a lesson I learned the hard way GM'ing Star Wars. "I know, there's this accident in the shuttle descent and the pilot has to save them and they land and..." Only the pilot badly botched the roll. I had a moment of "Well then they'd die..." before the adaptive facilties in my head took over and said "They land but with damage." From then on, I had designed my games with a much more open-ended solution set.
It's NOT the players' job to somehow be able to create a character who is perfect for bypassing an obstacle that he can't know about beforehand without cheating.An "unconventional" rogue is not a useless...
Try an "unconventional" party! In a game I played in a while back, there was no healer for a time. Changes the way you approach a dungeon. But after one or two very tense sessions, as a group we agreed that the first player whose character died brought in a cleric next.
Try an "unconventional" party! In a game I played in a while back, there was no healer for a time. Changes the way you approach a dungeon. But after one or two very tense sessions, as a group we agreed that the first player whose character died brought in a cleric next.
That just makes me cringe.
"I know you are all excited about this new campaign, but someone has to play the one class no one obviously wants to play. Let's draw straws and see who gets to be the b!tch this campaign."
Try an "unconventional" party! In a game I played in a while back, there was no healer for a time. Changes the way you approach a dungeon. But after one or two very tense sessions, as a group we agreed that the first player whose character died brought in a cleric next.That just makes me cringe.
"I know you are all excited about this new campaign, but someone has to play the one class no one obviously wants to play. Let's draw straws and see who gets to be the b!tch this campaign."
Hehe we were singing "Every Hit Point Is Sacred" to the tune of a popular Monty Python song. One guy finally bit the bullet, and made up a pretty darn fun cleric, too. It wasn't that no one wanted to be the b@%&+, we just all came to the campaign with ideas of characters we wanted to play, and none of them happened to be a cleric. It was actually one of the few times I saw everyone at the table really being into their characters before a fight broke out.
Try an "unconventional" party! In a game I played in a while back, there was no healer for a time. Changes the way you approach a dungeon. But after one or two very tense sessions, as a group we agreed that the first player whose character died brought in a cleric next.
My groups routinely have no cleric. I think we had 1 in the past 4, with 6-8 players. I find its not that big of a deal, you still crush "level appropriate" monsters, and wands of cure light wounds are cheap. Heck, for 500 gp you can still buy a resetting CLW trap, the cheapest healing in the game that I have found (totally broken cheese no GM should allow).
...and wands of cure light wounds are cheap.
You know…someone said D&D was becoming more like a video game.
...and wands of cure light wounds are cheap.You know…someone said D&D was becoming more like a video game.
Death is just a status ailment
"... This will put us all in a dead end, so maybe I'll put a different challenge there instead, that will still test the players, but be possible for them to overcome." It's NOT the players' job to somehow be able to create a character who is perfect for bypassing an obstacle that he can't know about beforehand without cheating.
I somewhat agree with the principle, but there are of course degrees to this sort of thing. I certainly agree that an adventure that requires one single specific thing and nothing else to continue the game is bad adventure design.
But the degree of this counts, IMO. One spell? Yeah, not good. One class? Well now I am less sympathetic. At this point it depends on what the players and DM agreed to play. For example, if the players wanted to make 4 wizards, and play a 'wizard-focused' campaign that consisted of wizardly things to do, then the DM making an adventure that required rogue or cleric skills/abilities is pretty bad form.
OTOH, if the players agree to play a 'standard D&D campaign that involves us invading dungeons, killing monsters and taking their stuff' - and then proceed to make 4 wizards... well needless to say, I, for one, as DM would certainly not consider spending my already-limited time re-designing the dungeon and its inhabitants to cover the PCs weaknesses that they had full control to cover in the first place. (Though I would certainly ask beforehand WhyTF they made those characters if they just told me they wanted to play something else entirely.)
So... yeah. Degrees and all that.
OTOH, if the players agree to play a 'standard D&D campaign that involves us invading dungeons, killing monsters and taking their stuff' - and then proceed to make 4 wizards...
Or the "My campaigns are 50/50 role playing and combat…Gee, your con-artist Bard did not even make it to the 3rd level of 50 Level Dungeon of Death."
Wow, all of a sudden a whole lot of people are replying to me... I'm so used to being un-responded to, I'm a little flustered! :)
I was, of course, exaggerating. Yes, I've used things like Knock spells, Detect Secret Doors spells, non-rogues with cross-class skills, etc. And as I had mentioned before, the party could HIRE someone with the skills they lack.
But somehow... that approach seems lacking. The absence of a rogue is felt.
I understand the general frustration of, "If only we knew someone who knew how to do x..." (Although, it's also kind of hilarious trying to watch the gnome cleric-wizard (aiming for Mystic Theurge) claim he could catch a squirrel in his bare hands, when he had no Survival and a background where he spent every waking moment in a library)
But I also have felt the unbridled joy of, "Well, we can't do it the conventional way, so let's try this! And woo! It worked!"
I understand where you're coming from, but at the same time, I don't think the absence of a rogue or any given class has ever been felt keenly. I've played in or GMed no-rogue parties, no-cleric parties, and no-arcane spellcaster parties and they all did very well in the end. But to be fair, these games were almost all with adventures made by a GM, not pre-published adventures, so the GM went in knowing what he/she (as in I) was working with. And this isn't a "pre-published adventures" suck kind of rant--it's just a matter of understanding that there's different things to adjust for in different kinds of games. I don't know how well we as gamers can necessarily always successfully account for them all.
For example, there was one adventure in which the party found a locked chest. [...] But the party members never found this out. It seemed unsatisfying.
I feel your pain about the "But didn't you want to know what was in that x?" (I had a group skip an entire DUNGEON on me once--but on the other hand, it was my fault for putting in the back door. But the back door made sense, and they were innovative enough to find it, so...)
At the same time, I know if it had been my players in the situation with the chest, they would have picked it up and taken it with them, to see what they could do with it later... that's not a criticism, just more the kind of insanity I usually have to deal with. :)
But still - and I know that others in this thread will disagree with me - I find it so much more satisfying to run an adventure as it is, because of what I call the Coincidence Factor. When an adventure calls for a certain less-often-used skill or spell, and a PC just happens to have it, it's an incredible moment for the GM.
I agree with you. I think the main thing is just to make sure that the "less-often-used-x" in question is not required for the progress of the story overall. Things like that can make progress significantly easier, or make the PCs realize something they otherwise wouldn't, or grant them any number of other palpable rewards, and that's a good thing. They just shouldn't be gamebreaker events.
As to disliking the rogue, etc. That's fine. And I kinda get the sense you've had some bad experiences with a rogue or lack thereof. I was arguing more generally that a variety of character builds can all be useful. Not just for the rogue per se (the rogue is just the easiest example because it's a classic skillmonkey class and has some of the best options for a variety of builds, all viable).
from Death Quakers last post I feel a little more info mite be in order.
(snip)
So far the responses have made me see that it really isn't a game flaw it's a flaw in MY group.
Well, I'm sorry for your frustration. It sounds like you've got a somewhat rigid module with a GM who's not ready to make a lot of off the cuff calls (talk to him about it; maybe he'll start to find ways he can adapt a little). And you've got an unconventional party to boot--that all combined can be really challenging.
But what you can do to turn that "flaw" around is just try to think of how you can use your unconventional party makeup to your advantage. Really think outside the box. Failure of a knowledge check, for example, might deny you some crucial information, but just roll with that and try to think of other ways you can gather that information (find out if you can do some research, or talk to some NPCs, etc.).
Also, sit with your players and make sure you guys can support each other adequately with the builds you have. Sounds like there's a lot of experimentation going on, which is great, but if someone's feeling like they NEVER contribute to the party, maybe you can put your heads together to find out how they can. In the worst case scenario, maybe your GM will allow for a retrain to put some different skills or feats here or there. I don't believe in "optimizing" over building the concept you want to play, but I also believe in making sure that everyone has something to do. As another poster mentions below, it's a matter of degrees and balance.
Try an "unconventional" party! In a game I played in a while back, there was no healer for a time. Changes the way you approach a dungeon. But after one or two very tense sessions, as a group we agreed that the first player whose character died brought in a cleric next.
It's NOT the players' job to somehow be able to create a character who is perfect for bypassing an obstacle that he can't know about beforehand without cheating.An "unconventional" rogue is not a useless...
*nods* The most interesting party I GMed had no arcane spellcasters, and a Cleric who was ranged support rather than secondary melee. And they were trying to clear out a wizard's tower. There were some things that certainly were hard for them because they had no arcanists, but at the same time I think they figured out how to do stuff they never would have thought of if they'd had the "requisite" wizard--and they actually became a very tough party to challenge because of it.
At the same time, "crap, we don't have a healer" is still a specific issue in 3.x-based games and something that still needs to be dealt with better than it is. I'm glad that ultimately worked out in your game though.
I somewhat agree with the principle, but there are of course degrees to this sort of thing. I certainly agree that an adventure that requires one single specific thing and nothing else to continue the game is bad adventure design.
I agree with you that absolutely, it's all a matter of degree. I think the only major disasters that occur in RPGs are when we take any one concept of game design or GMing to an extreme. (And an all-wizard party is definitely going to an extreme... though could be really interesting if you have time to handle it! :) )
Where is the line to be drawn between what a player wants to play and the type of campaign the GM wants to run?In Soviet Russia, game runs you!
Maikurion, you must be being sarcastic, you never post stupid-ass opinions like that unless you're being sarcastic.
Maikurion, you must be being sarcastic, you never post stupid-ass opinions like that unless you're being sarcastic.Where is the line to be drawn between what a player wants to play and the type of campaign the GM wants to run?In Soviet Russia, game runs you!
Uh, Urizen, you were fooled by appearances. Remember what Obi-wan said. Or Plato.
It is my beleaf that you are getting some of us plant-folk confused.
Edit: Ninja'd by Mairkurion. Or was it?
Note: Homages always come with a purple border, like a Roman senator or something.
ACK!!!! Sorry about that. I thought I was mouthin' off to Mairk and I got confused. Duplicate avatars do that to you when one seems so synoymous to a resident personality. :P Sorry, Mr. Stick. Please speak softly when you're carrying yourself.
ACK!!!! Sorry about that. I thought I was mouthin' off to Mairk and I got confused. Duplicate avatars do that to you when one seems so synoymous to a resident personality. :P Sorry, Mr. Stick. Please speak softly when you're carrying yourself.
No worries. I waited a very, very long time for a suitably "Stick"-ish avatar (although I guess it's really mostly leaves). I think Mairkurion and I are the only ones to use it, and until now we've rarely crossed threads (plus I've been away for a while).
And indeed I do walk softly - but one of the many reasons for the moniker. <Insert long-winded story about the greatest thief in the world in some old homebrew from the 90s...> :D
No worries. I waited a very, very long time for a suitably "Stick"-ish avatar (although I guess it's really mostly leaves). I think Mairkurion and I are the only ones to use it, and until now we've rarely crossed threads (plus I've been away for a while).
Actually, there is a stick-like figure on page 14-15 of the avatar list that may work?
Thanks for understanding my faux pas. :D
For example, there was one adventure in which the party found a locked chest. [...] But the party members never found this out. It seemed unsatisfying.At the same time, I know if it had been my players in the situation with the chest, they would have picked it up and taken it with them, to see what they could do with it later... that's not a criticism, just more the kind of insanity I usually have to deal with. :)
Heh. That's about what happened in my case. The party delivered the chest, whole, to their employers, and said "Well, you wanted the bandits' loot. It's in there, if you can just open it." And they left, never realizing they delivered a deadly trap to their sponsors.
Actually, there is a stick-like figure on page 14-15 of the avatar list that may work?
Thanks for understanding my faux pas. :D
Hmm, that treant miniature avatar is new (to me), but it looks a little too ... plastic ... for my tastes. I used the cartoon-y treant on page 12 for a while, but hated it. I like this one if only because it's artistic merits appeal to me, even if I have to imagine the stick connecting the leaves. :)
I noticed Mairkurion quite a while ago, but we haven't really crossed threads much (maybe once before?). And besides, I was just trying to be snarky with my Yakov Smirnoff comment. In fact, I am tempted to end with in Soviet RUssia, avatar chooses you!
Hmm, that treant miniature avatar is new (to me), but it looks a little too ... plastic ... for my tastes. I used the cartoon-y treant on page 12 for a while, but hated it. I like this one if only because it's artistic merits appeal to me, even if I have to imagine the stick connecting the leaves. :)Actually, there is a stick-like figure on page 14-15 of the avatar list that may work?
Thanks for understanding my faux pas. :D
Actually, I'm not referring to either of the treant icons (miniatue or cartoon-y). There's actually a stick-man cartoon-y avatar out there. I wish I could link directly to it to make it easier for you. :D Sorry for the confusion.
Hooray! Everybody wins!
I think he means this avatar.
Found it on page 15. Won't be using it long myself. :p
Yes, thank you! That's the one.
I think he means this avatar.
Found it on page 15. Won't be using it long myself. :p
Hmmm, very interesting. I may have to give that one whirl. Anyone know where that artwork is from, orignally? If only there were some Errol Otis sticks... :) Thanks for pointing that one out to me.
Hmmm, very interesting. I may have to give that one whirl. Anyone know where that artwork is from, orignally? If only there were some Errol Otis sticks... :) Thanks for pointing that one out to me.I think he means this avatar.
Found it on page 15. Won't be using it long myself. :p
Errol Otis would be cool. I was just told about him a week ago after never hearing the name before and I was like, 'oh, I've seen that! Never knew..."
Give it a whirl and see how it fits you. It's definitely Stick-like. :D