Shadowdark: Recent Comments

Comment on Failure is boring!

Centauri — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:55:22 GMT

I have ideas for interesting failures, but I haven't tested many of them (because I don't have much play or DM experience, and because my PCs usually succeed) and I doubt they'd meet the strictures of a Living Forgotten Realms game. I mean, I'd like to run or play in a game in which the PCs failed to stop the Big Bad from opening a portal to another plane and enslaving the world. I could see the PCs surviving this failure and having to live in that world. As I understand it, the game setting of Midnight Chronicles is such a world.

Don't get too hung up on skill challenges needing to be "challenging", and more than "solos" should be expected to take on a prepared party "solo". If a skill challenge has DCs in line with what the updated DMG recommends, there's a good chance that a skill challenge on its own won't be all that "challenging". If it's a social encounter the party "face" may well be able to walk straight across the challenge, so long as he doesn't repeatedly use Intimidate where it's not appropriate. But he still has to make the rolls and (at least in my games) give a little description of what he says and how he acts. In turn, the DM has the NPCs respond to the actions (and inactions) of the PCs. There's give and take, back and forth, and even if the PC is succeeding masterfully, the NPC doesn't have to truly indicate this. The DM can treat the encounter as just a role-playing ecounter with built in "beats". I've had some experience with it, and it works well. And at the end, there's a clear amount of XP to be provided.

Comment on The Care Bear of DMs

Centauri — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:21:02 GMT

As a DM, I try to let the dice fall where they may. Usually I find myself erring on the side of too easy, and don't provide an adequate challenge for the party. I've been told I can add more monsters. I can think of one occasion in which I fudged things in favor of the characters:

I had written a skill challenge that involved evacuating people from a collapsing structure. I had explained to the players that their characters were not really in any danger themselves, that the point of the challenge was how they comported themselves and the efforts they took in saving the civilians. This was a hard complexity 3 (8 successes) challenge, and they were doing pretty well, but then the picked up a second failure with three successes left to go. One of the players informed me that he felt that there was essentially no way to win, and I sensed frustration. I had what I thought was an interesting path for failure to take, but I blinked. I reduced the complexity of the challenge to 2, essentially dropping two required successes, so that it came down to a final roll.

I have regretted that situation ever since, and cut all ties with that player who was so concerned with failure. I no longer worry about whether skill check DCs or complexities are too high (or too low, but that's a different story) and concern myself with coming up with interesting success-failure pairs for skill challenges, and with describing the effects of the PCs' rolls.

That's with skill challenges. Combat encounters are harder to make interesting in both success and failure, because one common failure mode negates PC actions entirely. The first step, then, would seem to be to avoid that failure mode. Look for other goals the monsters might have in combat besides the deaths of the PCs. Look for "alternate victory conditions" such as the monsters getting past a certain point, completing a ritual, killing an important NPC, stealing or destroying a specific item, infecting a PC with a disease, delaying the PCs, etc. The monsters can still fight and wound the PCs, but once they've knocked them out, there's no reason to continue and the monsters simply leave. This happens all the time in movies and shows. I'm running Delve 11 right now, and if the monsters got the upper hand and dropped all the PCs, they'd just storm past them and attack the townsfolk. Some PCs might die from failed death saves or too much incidental damage, but eventually they could rest again to come back and deal with their failure - if the players wanted.

Or monsters can beat characters down and then talk. Even bloodthirsty monsters might not relish killing an enemy outright, especially when a bruised and bloodied hero might spread their reputation. You can use this to let the PCs know that they can run and drag away their wounded, or they can press the fight, knowing that the monsters are confident of victory. This is the tack I'll probably take in King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, should the need arise.

Comment on The Care Bear of DMs

Cendragon — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:14:01 GMT

This comment is very inspiring to me and I'm curious to hear what your other two reasons are for having stopped playing LFR. For right now, I'm going to write my next blog entry and use this as a jumping off point.

Comment on The Care Bear of DMs

Alden Ballard — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:59:16 GMT

"As a DM, do you fondly remember the glory days of 1st edition where it was almost a rite of passage for the DM to kill as many PCs as possible?"
I remember playing Melee and then Wizard? I think they were called. Then the first edition boxed set showed up in our book store about 1977.
I remember it took what seemed hours to roll our characters and get set up to play. Twenty minutes into the first game, most of us died. Really NOT a good intro to a new game format. All the work to set up and then get killed by a gelatinous cube. Out of six of us, all six did not take up playing D&D.
Fast forward about 30 years. I've been playing 4th edition with a character for enough quests to level up at least once and get familiar with the game and what is expected from the players in terms of imagination and how to add to the drama of the game and develop friendships and history with other characters.
Having had a few adventures under my belt - if I did die and not be able to be recovered or healed, at least now I have enough familiarity with the game to know sort of what to expect. I could see as playing progresses and a character gets quite skilled and a higher level, if the chance to die was gone, it could kind of detract from the emotion and drama of the game.

Comment on The Care Bear of DMs

Ruby Stern — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:56:30 GMT

Dear Care Bear,

There is nothing worse than a GOD intervention or a cheese dick "favor" from a DM when a PC has died. Let the game play out and let him/her die. The players can pay to raise him from the dead or he can give us a report from the afterlife. Maybe the PC will meet their god or maybe they will return as a vengeful ghost.

I recall something from the 3.5 DMG about player death that worked for me. You don't want players to die pointless deaths but you can't always expect a PC to die killing a dragon. It's always nice if their sacrifice can bring the group something meaningful though. You may pull punches to avoid player death but it should not be known to the group. Add a meaningful story element to explain the nearly invisible spider web with the lurking predator below or something cool. (Out of the frying pan and into the fire!) The players need to know that there is risk in the game or it looses tension/dramatic flare. I play Resident Evil a lot differently than Lego Indiana Jones because of the extreme differences in the risk associated with my choices.

Always go back to what makes the story more meaningful.

PS: I also make players bring back up characters so they don't feel the need to rush out the door. Players get attached to their characters so a little redirection can help everyone avoid the drama and rules lawyering that often comes out with a PC death.

Ruby Stern

Comment on The Care Bear of DMs

Perrin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:13:26 GMT

Coincidentally, this topic is one of the top three reasons why I've stopped playing LFR games.

1) Death is certainly the more obvious topic, but failure is the more pressing issue. If a GM hasn't figured out how to include meaningful failure in their games, they shouldn't go anywhere near character death (unless they're running a character-of-the-week style game). Sure, every GM allows failure into their games; players can always roll low on their dice and miss an attack or fail a skill check. But how many times are characters allowed to fail significant plot points? How often are they even allowed to fail a single battle, or a skill challenge? I can probably count the number of times I've experienced it in LFR on one hand.

2) Railroaded plots don't count. Failure is only meaningful if there's tension, a missed chance to succeed. In the cliff example, the death would've been meaningless because it was not failure: there was nothing the players could've done differently to avoid it. As a counterexample, there was a basilisk petrification earlier in that game where it took two failed saves before permanent petrification, and I was kicking myself later for allowing a party member to get petrified since I had ways to get him out of it that I failed to use.

3) Failure should not be the opposite of success. Failure can be at least as interesting as success; however, most often, games are set up such that failure is boring. "You failed, try the same thing again." "You failed, wait while everyone else finishes playing." "You failed, game over, no more fun for you." Is it any wonder players have such an aversion to failing? And modules just compound the problem. The GM has interesting stories to tell when the PCs succeed, but usually no direction when they fail. As a GM, I'd want the players to succeed too.

I could go on for a while. Like I said, this is in my top 3 RPG gripes, and there are a lot of tangential issues that fall out of this one.

Comment on Competition in a cooperative game

Centauri — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:51:22 GMT

I've noticed this somewhat in one group I've been in. The DM feels that the PCs in our game of 4th Edition D&D are very hard to kill. He's generally able to drop one of us in every fight, but we have enough powers to bring them back handily. I think this bothers him because I think HE thinks that his job is to challenge the characters. I don't think he takes the loss of his monsters personally, but that may be the case.

Well, in our most recent session, he took us all out. TPK, as they say. We weren't using the greatest tactics, but we all (including him) felt it had more to do with our low rolls and his high rolls. Anyway, I saw him have the most fun he's ever had in a game. I didn't begrudge him this, and we all made sure to tell him that he ran a good game. It was a good game, even though we all dropped, and I hope that next time he DMs, he won't feel as though there's no chance he'll be able to challenge the player.

Comment on ShadowDark

Tyranthraxes — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:25:36 GMT

I personally am not a fan of even the DM fudging dice rolls. If the PC's are barreling over the monsters then so be it! They are heroes after all. If they run into a difficult encounter and a PC dies. It can also not be the end of the world and that can also add to the story line.

One of the characters in my home game has died twice and then raised again. We have been co-creating his story about being a captain of hells armies and coming back from the dead evil and something missing from his soul. Asmodeus is pissed and that will help me to create a great plot twist later on the game. If you are a DM don't change the dice just put yourself in a position were you don't have to fudge the dice.