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Firstborn posted:I recognize all the Curse of Strahd poo poo he is saying. If the DM didn't make you care about Ireena you should probably re-assess. She is most of the adventure. The treasures are found throughout the whole game, not the first loving lake you went to. I specifically know the place you are talking of, and it took my group around 6-8 sessions to make it there. To say none of your players knew what the fortunes meant, when they aren't cryptic ("a great ally who is a wolf will help you", "a sword of vengeance is found in the lake") in addition to nobody caring about Ireena might just mean none of the players are engaged. It's a sandbox essentially, and yeah, you have to give a poo poo to play. I agree with this. Obviously the DM is not fantastic, but a game can go along fine with an average DM if the players will just meet them halfway by making a conscious effort to act engaged. Also, even though Strahd is the focal point of the campaign, not every encounter cleanly ties into him or how to beat him. Some are just there to set mood and build a believable world. Strahd is the ticket out, but Barovia has other things going on.
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Aug 28, 2018 16:40
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I get woefully confused when people talk about Curse of Strahd because when I played my GM did an updated version of a module from an earlier edition and it all played out super differently.
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Aug 28, 2018 17:10
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Rick posted:I get woefully confused when people talk about Curse of Strahd because when I played my GM did an updated version of a module from an earlier edition and it all played out super differently. Yeah but which edition? The 3.0/3.5 edition was absolutely horrible and had poo poo like a gelatinous cube hiding in a witch's cauldron instead of an encounter with evil witches. A lot of poo poo like that where the writers for 3e just straight up changed a bunch of poo poo. 5e CoS is supposed to be closer to the original castle ravenloft modules and Tracy Hickman's original notes.
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Aug 28, 2018 18:15
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Finster Dexter posted:Yeah but which edition? The 3.0/3.5 edition was absolutely horrible and had poo poo like a gelatinous cube hiding in a witch's cauldron instead of an encounter with evil witches. A lot of poo poo like that where the writers for 3e just straight up changed a bunch of poo poo. We met some witches and did some favors for them. I guess looking back they were probably evil but we did not sweat the small stuff.
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Aug 28, 2018 18:19
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One thing I like about 5E as opposed to something like Pathfinder (I never played proper 3.5) is that a lot of rules are pretty easy to intuit if you just think about the internal logic of the game. For example one of my players rolled a natural 20 on investigating the pile of garbage at the bottom of the chute from Klarg's chamber in LMoP, so I felt like I had to give him something. I ruled that he found a broken greataxe. (Also another player nailed a Survival roll to realize that it must have come from something much bigger than a goblin) He then decided to use Mend on it. It wasn't a magical greataxe, and he's a cleric, but he wanted to use it anyway*. I wasn't sure if he could or what the penalty would be, but I guessed that he could, and just wouldn't get his Proficiency bonus to hit with it. Turns out, that's exactly the rule. That makes sense to me if you think about the Proficiency system. Whereas in Pathfinder using a weapon without proficiency in it is a -4 penalty to hit, which is just something you'd have to look up and not intuit at all. The only other system I've played where a lot of the rules just made sense to the point you could guess what they would be in a situation accurately without remembering the actual rule was WEG(D6) Star Wars. *When I asked him later if he was having fun (this is the guy who's totally new to RPGs), he specifically mentioned being proud of getting that Greataxe. Imagined fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 21:34
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Imagined posted:
Ok but clearly you're going to let this guy become proficient and then enchant the axe later as a reward for something down the line
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Aug 28, 2018 21:44
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Ok but clearly you're going to let this guy become proficient and then enchant the axe later as a reward for something down the line gently caress yeah I am
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Aug 28, 2018 21:46
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Imagined posted:For example one of my players rolled a natural 20 on investigating the pile of garbage at the bottom of the chute from Klarg's chamber in LMoP, so I felt like I had to give him something. I advice against conditioning players to expect success whenever they roll natural 20s; it's a path that leads to either campaign-derailing implausible outcomes or the misplaced sense of entitlement when they fail to materialize. Critical success and critical fumbles have a 1 in 10 chance of happening whenever a d20 is rolled. Keep that likelihood in mind, and the tone you expect from your game, when you adjudicate results.
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Aug 28, 2018 22:01
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Conspiratiorist posted:I advice against conditioning players to expect success whenever they roll natural 20s; it's a path that leads to either campaign-derailing implausible outcomes or the misplaced sense of entitlement when they fail to materialize. Seriously. You're allowed to say 'you search the pile of garbage REALLY well, and you are able to determine that it is, in fact, a pile of loving garbage'. If you're feeling particularly kind, he finds a bottle he can return to the glassblower for a deposit or something.
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Aug 28, 2018 22:13
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Yeah he "investigated" the dead horses too and I told him he pissed off some carrion beetles. But you're right, I can't give them something good every time they roll a 20. In this case I was giving him what I thought was garbage: a broken weapon he couldn't really use. I wasn't expecting him to Mend it and use it anyway.
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Aug 28, 2018 22:47
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Sounds like you're in the right mindset, then. Keep on trucking.
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Aug 28, 2018 22:52
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Imagined posted:gently caress yeah I am N I C E
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Aug 28, 2018 23:30
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thespaceinvader posted:If you're feeling particularly kind, he finds a bottle he can return to the glassblower for a deposit or something. Also TBH if I was in a game and I found a bottle I can return for a deposit you'd be looking at my new mid-term character motivation.
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Aug 29, 2018 00:41
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https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1030256624210915328 the idea that being a deliberately incomplete, deliberately vague game is a positive trait is something I don't think I'll ever empathize with
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Aug 29, 2018 01:58
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I'm DMing a Strahd game name with three characters and I'm trying to get them engaged with things beyond just what the book has. They've all had at least one prophetic dream about something in Barovia, just as a spooky way of drawing their attention to broad details. Then, when they encounter those areas in the future, they'll have that tick in their head that gives them some sense of what this is all about. For example, I sent the sorcerer a dream of the Amber Temple, with the voices of the dark powers luring her inside. She has wanting more power as a flaw, so that just works. The ranger got a dream about Argynvostholt, a silver dragon dying in flames that rise over an ancient manor on a hill. The paladin got a dream about a dark presence that was shadowing him, evaluating him, judging him, and approving of him, before feeling a swift pain on his neck in the darkness then bolting awake. That dovetailed nicely into their first encounter with Strahd, where Strahd charmed the paladin and bit hit as his party, Ismarck and Ireena looked on. They're currently on their way to Vallaki, where Ismarck urged them to go. They've already stopped by Madame Eva and got their fortunes told. That was easy to do - my players, as soon as they heard there was an ancient fortune teller, wanted to bolt there almost immediately. I was super lucky when the one of the treasures was shown to be in Argynvostholt. The tome is in Rictavio's wagon, which I really like thematically. The next time we pick the game up, the characters will be walking towards an old windmill.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1030256624210915328 lol D&D became a cult but not in the way the panicked parents thought
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Aug 29, 2018 02:19
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I rule that someone runs a better game so I can play and then learn it.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:26
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thespaceinvader posted:Seriously. The thing the guy did with the greataxe was way better and you guys are being curmudgeons.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1030256624210915328 That's a pretty far out interpretation of what he's saying but I guess you're dug in at this stage. Edition wars forever.
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Aug 29, 2018 02:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1030256624210915328 God this is so lovely to say and just ignores how anything works in an actual game. The rules help to explain a lot of things that are pretty critical to how a cooperative experience works you moron. A rule allows two different people to come to the same event with a mutual expectation as to what happens. This expectation for how things will work are pretty critical to building a relationship together with people because your working from a mutual framework. People on top of that a generally adverse to conflict if they are trying to build social connections and the person who pipes up on everything is almost universally someone frustrating to deal with. A rule, helps to prevent this thanks to the mutual foundation. Also you loving idiot Jeremy, you're making a ruling right loving in your tweet about mutually expected behaviour. You said DM's run the game but that the game is also a co-op game. So you're saying the mutual expectation is that we're all equally working together but actually one person is above the rest as they get the authority to say what is or isn't true. Do you not see the problem in this? Amethyst posted:The thing the guy did with the greataxe was way better and you guys are being curmudgeons. I think they're not talking about the specific example but referring to the general problem that 'something special happens on 1s and 20s'. It's a real bizarre thing to see and there is genuinely a great expectation that something special happens every time. What the guy did was a good call definitely but it kind of a frustrating phenomena as a GM to see and experience. Amethyst posted:That's a pretty far out interpretation of what he's saying but I guess you're dug in at this stage. Edition wars forever. lol what? Do you not understand any context about whats going on at all. Like this post is because he recently backpedalled on a ruling he made to contradict it be justifying that 'this rule could also be read like X to gently caress over a player doing something'. Since this contradict a ruling he made ages ago, people called him out on it and hes now posted that tweet. One that seemingly advocates that 'the rulings i've made don't matter just interpret it yourself at your table'. In the context of those other tweets that led to this, it absolutely comes across that hes saying the ability to interpret rules how you feel at the table because of their vagueness is a positive trait that leads to enjoyable experiences, just as you are able to take or leave his personal rulings. This is obviously a problem because many GMs and players are going to look to his rulings as the rule they should follow. This means that when a person asks or just does something that is contradicted by one of Jeremy's tweets, they can and will be shut down because that GM or player can always point to the tweet as a source of authority. Not to mention there are things like adventurer league which hard sticks to a lot of rules where people genuinely dont get the freedom to interpret things as freely as one might prefer. kingcom fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 02:53
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Nah way, I love it when DMs waste a nat 20 by saying nothing happens instead creating some sort of narrative. Can’t let these players have TOO much fun now
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Aug 29, 2018 03:03
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Amethyst posted:The thing the guy did with the greataxe was way better and you guys are being curmudgeons. The fact that not being proficient with a greataxe in Pathfinder is a -4, and not being proficient with a greataxe in 5e is a "no proficiency bonus" is a non-issue even if the latter is "more intuitive" because in both cases the penalty is great enough that you still wouldn't ever want to do that. Sure, you don't have to look up 5e rule, but you wouldn't look it up in Pathfinder either because in neither game are you reasonably expected to be able to fight effectively with a weapon that you aren't proficient with. (and, more to the point, as soon as a 5e character hits level 9, they're taking a "-4 penalty" to their attacks from being non-proficient with a weapon anyway!) Amethyst posted:That's a pretty far out interpretation of what he's saying but I guess you're dug in at this stage. Edition wars forever. https://twitter.com/unbabybearable/status/1030281311515111425 https://twitter.com/RileyJohnGibbs/status/1030267502041812992 https://twitter.com/rdurocher/status/1030436042468409344 no I'm pretty sure lots of people are taking away the message that they intended
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Aug 29, 2018 03:08
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Basically the rules are "have a good DM who understands the system and what's fun and doesn't make stupid poo poo happen out of stupidity or malice." If you have that DM, it doesn't matter if the rules are bad, you'll have fun, and if you have a bad DM, it doesn't matter if the rules are good, he'll find a way to gently caress them up.
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Aug 29, 2018 03:12
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DapperDuck posted:Nah way, I love it when DMs waste a nat 20 by saying nothing happens instead creating some sort of narrative. Can’t let these players have TOO much fun now Okay so to break down whats going on here. You should really never ever roll a dice if the positive and negative result is 'nothing happens', thats just a bad idea in general. The idea for a nat 20 or nat 1 being something super special happening is a bit of a weird one because it really does make a lot of characters look like super special or super idiots way too often as a result. Again, the axe example is a good one and definitely a good way to do it. What they are talking about are stuff like, 'you rolled a 1 and that means you loudly insult the kings wife to his face' kind of poo poo that happens way too often or 'your character kicks the door down on a 1 while sneaking', similarly your 20 results in something along the lines of 'the orc you are persuading has now fallen in love with you forever and wants to marry you'. The kind of awkward stuff that shows up on those D&D meme pages all too often. Real talk, a good way to implement something like this is for the players to tell the table what happens with a natural 1 or 20 if you want to do something special with it. It gives the agency and control over the scene to the players to invent and put 'facts' into the scene at hand. Finding the axe is a good way to run it too, it introduces a new 'fact' into the scene that wasn't there before and gives an incidental reward to the player as a result. The thing that got it pointed out is that assumably the garbage pile was empty right. So theres this idea that you should now be perception checking everything all the time because super special stuff should be happening if you're lucky and get a 20. Its a bit of a weird dichotomy that exists really as a result of circumstance and ideas existing outside the table and the game.
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Aug 29, 2018 03:14
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As DM, I'm just pulling the game out of my rear end. More often than not my players are running the game I'm playing. I don't come prepared with a lot, so more often than not when my players go out looking for weird syuff I never thought of, the stuff I didn't think of that they've told me they're looking for is what they find.
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Aug 29, 2018 03:16
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I kind of feel like if there's no chance of anything interesting happening by chance then I should probably not having them rolling anything. In this case he blurted out "I want to investigate the garbage!" and rolled a 20 before I said anything. Normally I wouldn't have called for a roll at all on that (they weren't in immediate danger, and it's not like you can fail to pick through the garbage, given enough time) and just said "You find [whatever there is to find, including nothing]." This guy's a bit of a challenge because he plays a lot like a video gamer. He wants to "loot" every goblin and dead horse and make a roll under every rock. They killed Klarg and he's already saying he wants to carry the bugbear's morning star (which he also isn't Proficient in) in addition to his new axe. I'm torn between just letting him be encumbered by this garbage before he's level 2, just saying it's all broken, or starting to put traps on everything until he stops treating this like Diablo. But right now he's so excited I have a hard time summoning the will to crush him.
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Aug 29, 2018 03:20
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Infinite Karma posted:Basically the rules are "have a good DM who understands the system and what's fun and doesn't make stupid poo poo happen out of stupidity or malice." I mean, yes and no? I feel like any time you run into a scenario that asks you to have a 'good GM' you're falling into a dangerous trap because ultimately a 'good' GM is both incredibly vague and doesn't really exists. A games rules can play a pretty big part in teaching a GM how to run the game well and really force them away from a lot of behaviours. Its not going to work 100% and not on people who are actively malicious or ignorant obviously but you genuinely can push mediocre or inexperienced GMs into good behaviours as a result of having good rules. Imagined posted:I kind of feel like if there's no chance of anything interesting happening by chance then I should probably not having them rolling anything. In this case he blurted out "I want to investigate the garbage!" and rolled a 20 before I said anything. Normally I wouldn't have called for a roll at all on that (they weren't in immediate danger, and it's not like you can fail to pick through the garbage, given enough time) and just said "You find [whatever there is to find, including nothing]." Yeah I'm not trying to pick on you, you did well there. If he's getting enjoyment from that stuff absolutely just let him carry that morningstar no question. Maybe explain the proficiency thing if he doesnt know it but otherwise don't stress about. Gold is pretty scarce and hard to come by early and then becomes irrelevant quickly so don't worry if he wants to be that guy trying to loot everything because at some point it'll stop being valuable at all. Hell ironically I have a hard time getting my players to loot anything ever. Definitely don't solve this with in game problems, if it becomes disruptive just have a chat and say 'hey don't worry about the looting all this stuff, if you want just ask if theres something valuable in the area and i'll point it out to you'. kingcom fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 03:21
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If a nat20 will still be a boring failure why even let the player roll? Just when they say "can I roll investigation to search the area" say "you search the area but there is nothing of interest in there". Yeah, 5% of all d20s will be a 20 but if there is literally no interesting result possible from a d20 roll, why roll a d20?
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Aug 29, 2018 03:32
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Just play Apocalypse World or something.
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Aug 29, 2018 03:32
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I think the issue that there are two different problems here and both of them are real problems for 5e. One is the notion that "the DM rules the table" which is nonsense and hogwash. Yes, it is generally the DM's job to keep things moving forward, but the DM should be able to tap her players for assistance. If someone rolls a 20 on a skill check at my table I'm generally inclined to give them a success, and ask them, "and what else do you learn?" or something like that. Because a 20 should be interesting, it's the iconic image of loving D&D. The second is the idea that loosey-goosey rules are good, which they aren't, but a good DM can hypothetically navigate around that particular iceberg. There should better system for training DMs. To the point where I want to write a real guide for DMs. Not just the DMG, like an actual book that teaches you how to improvise and make good decisions on the fly.
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Aug 29, 2018 03:49
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Loosey-goosey rules are good and make the game more fun when you play with a bunch of your mates, but are probably bad if you don't particularly get along with the rest of the table outside of D&D
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Aug 29, 2018 04:03
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let me know when they start including good DMs in the game box
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Aug 29, 2018 04:04
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Bogan Krkic posted:Loosey-goosey rules are good and make the game more fun when you play with a bunch of your mates, but are probably bad if you don't particularly get along with the rest of the table outside of D&D Specifically mates who all kind of think the same way and solve problems the same way. Cause rules are good for aligning people who think differently about something. grah posted:If a nat20 will still be a boring failure why even let the player roll? Just when they say "can I roll investigation to search the area" say "you search the area but there is nothing of interest in there". Yeah, 5% of all d20s will be a 20 but if there is literally no interesting result possible from a d20 roll, why roll a d20? Hell yeah my dude.
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Aug 29, 2018 04:09
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my anecdotal counter-example about rules and friends that you get along with is that we typically have no problems playing everything by the book because we back each other up on remembering all the rules collectively.
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Aug 29, 2018 04:12
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I feel like the Venn diagram of people who praise loosey-goosey game design to defend D&D and the people who defend the bugginess of Bethesda games because “you can just fix it with mods” are a perfect circle. I like modding Bethesda games, and I like pondering D&D house rules / home brew. And yet, if either were more polished and more tightly-designed... well, you’d still be able to do those things for fun, but you wouldn’t need to do it to fix the flaws in the base product.
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Aug 29, 2018 06:46
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escalator dropdown posted:I feel like the Venn diagram of people who praise loosey-goosey game design to defend D&D and the people who defend the bugginess of Bethesda games because “you can just fix it with mods” are a perfect circle. There's also the overlap of people who will "convert" D&D into a Star Wars game, and the people who will mod Europa Universalis to cover the 1800s instead just buying Victoria
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Aug 29, 2018 06:57
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Conspiratiorist posted:I advice against conditioning players to expect success whenever they roll natural 20s; it's a path that leads to either campaign-derailing implausible outcomes or the misplaced sense of entitlement when they fail to materialize. What the hell is this bad opinion doing here
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Aug 29, 2018 07:11
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If you get a nat 20 you get what you wanted and something else good, and vice versa for a 1. It's not complicated. It's totally fine to expose that to the players and say 'ok what is the something else bad/good?' sebmojo fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Aug 29, 2018 |
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Aug 29, 2018 07:14
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sebmojo posted:If you get a nat 20 you get what you wanted and something else good, and vice versa for a 1. It's not complicated. But the idea is to avoid falling into the trap of giving them exactly what they want, particularly if that thing doesn't make sense within the context of what's happening. Better to give them some other kind of success; rolling 20 on an Investigation check of a pile of garbage isn't going to uncover a cleverly-hidden map of the dungeon they're in, but it might grant them something mundane (such as the aforementioned broken axe, which is at least a worthwhile clue and ended up becoming a player's new favorite item) as well as information pointing them in the direction of what they're after. Perhaps they notice tracks leading away from the garbage, bringing them to a more pertinent clue (for which they won't have to make a check to find, since they've already found it).
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Aug 29, 2018 07:27
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CeallaSo posted:But the idea is to avoid falling into the trap of giving them exactly what they want, particularly if that thing doesn't make sense within the context of what's happening. Better to give them some other kind of success; rolling 20 on an Investigation check of a pile of garbage isn't going to uncover a cleverly-hidden map of the dungeon they're in, but it might grant them something mundane (such as the aforementioned broken axe, which is at least a worthwhile clue and ended up becoming a player's new favorite item) as well as information pointing them in the direction of what they're after. Perhaps they notice tracks leading away from the garbage, bringing them to a more pertinent clue (for which they won't have to make a check to find, since they've already found it). You’re exactly correct in a perfect world, however the recommendations you lay out are often complicated and require a lot more improvisational skill on the part of the DM. Clearly it’s unreasonable to expect the DM to plot point for every nat20 contingency, and I don’t know anyone who keeps a list of mundane items that players will find in the garbage heaps. Making a nat20 generate a success plus an item or a clue or any sort of seratonin stimulator also reinforces to your players that they should stripsearch every nook and cranny for bonus goodies. Sometimes just a success is good enough reward for a nat20, and occassionally, something better can come along. I’d rather be able to focus on progressing the story or introducing more options for the players to explore and choose from than generating hundreds of items in lists to draw from and adjudicating every iteration of dungeon fishing for nat20 bonus items. The broken axe is a fantastic idea that played out superbly for his player, but it shouldn’t be the norm to have to improvise something like that for every roll.
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Aug 29, 2018 08:08
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