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Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
So you're saying that losing experience doesn't set Jim back? But...in your own example, Jim ended up lower level than everyone else. Perhaps you're playing some indie game where "experience points" means something different from what the rest of us are assuming it does..?

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Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
The reason they give out perfect attendance awards is because school districts are paid by student attendance, and they want to encourage attendance as much as possible so they get paid. It's a dirty underhanded trick that school districts pull. And also, using consensual reality to prove a point against a fantasy game where the GM has complete control doesn't work. Furthermore,

Mikan
Sep 5, 2007

by Radium

That's a bad analogy. Docking XP is more like taking away this kid's recess privileges because he missed a day of class.

Analogies are bad in general though.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire

ripped0ff posted:

"Why doesn't my little Billy get the award for perfect attendance? He wanted to show up that day, but he was sick!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we use the Perfect Attendance certificate as a small token reward to encourage students to attend."

"Yea, but he missed classed and he missed his friends, isn't that punishment enough?"

"Ma'am, we're not punishing Billy. It's just a silly certificate. It wouldn't really be fair to give it to Billy."

"This is inexcusable! You can't punish him like this! He'll be left behind, all of Perfect Attendance kids will do better in school than him now."

"The reward doesn't mean that much, it won't really set him back. Trust me, in a couple weeks this 'punishment' won't even matter anymore. It's so slight you'll probably forget about it."

"gently caress you! gently caress this school! I'm gonna go homeschool my kid!"

Since when is EXP "worthless"? Pretty sure its one of the most valuable commodities to a character.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

RagnarokAngel posted:

Since when is EXP "worthless"? Pretty sure its one of the most valuable commodities to a character.

Well, it's only a little bit of xp. What I like to do though is deduct one hitpoint from the absentee player's maximum for each missed game - I mean, it's just one, right?

Nog
May 15, 2006

"Er, ma'am, is Billy even in my class? I don't remember teaching him."

"No, actually, he's in Ms. Cartwrights class. But I don't approve of the way you award Perfect Attendance in this class."

"Well, all the other parents in this class, even the parents of kids without perfect attendance, don't mind it. In fact, most of them actually like the way I do it since it makes the Perfect Attendance reward more meaningful, if only just slightly."

"Sounds to me, Ms. Applebottom, like you just can't control your children except through draconic punishments. You must instead learn how to properly address them. Instead of punishing them, have you ever thought about sitting down with them and just lecturing them about their commitment to their own education?"

"Ma'am, so long as I get a signed note from their parents, I try not to pass judgment. Unless they have a genuine truancy problem, I don't mind that much if their parents pull them out of school on occasion."

"You disgust me. Your passive-aggressive attitude is costing these children their fun and education."

"Not really. I just figure they're trading the fun of the seeing their schoolmates, for the fun of doing whatever it is their parents pulled them out of school for. I'm sure if they go to Disneyland, for instance, they enjoy that more. Besides, I'm actually nicer than most teachers. I send their homework off to them so that they don't fall behind too much."

"Well, you ought to just give them an 'A' for all the work they miss instead... and the Perfect Attendance award."

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
Gosh.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire
What the gently caress are you talking about

Nog
May 15, 2006

RagnarokAngel posted:

Since when is EXP "worthless"? Pretty sure its one of the most valuable commodities to a character.

XP isn't worthless. But it's worth is proportional to the amount of XP. If Jim was losing lots of XP and trailing two or three levels behind, that's a problem. But if Jim is pretty much on the same footing and is only about 1000 xp behind despite missing many more sessions than anyone else, it's hardly a punishment.\

Edit: I actually need to head off to work now guys. I'll be back to get yelled at more later.

Mikan
Sep 5, 2007

by Radium

Which of the teachers am I

This is important

Nog
May 15, 2006

You actually teach at a different school. Your school district gets all the money because its filled with suburban white kids and the superintendent is racist. I'm the downtrodden hispanic teacher who must come in and lift the spirits of the inter-city youth who believe that they are doomed to lives of crime and violence.

Edit: In the movie, Denzel Washington plays my role, you're played by Renee Zellweger (we fall in love), and Jon Voight is the racist super.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire

ripped0ff posted:

XP isn't worthless. But it's worth is proportional to the amount of XP. If Jim was losing lots of XP and trailing two or three levels behind, that's a problem. But if Jim is pretty much on the same footing and is only about 1000 xp behind despite missing many more sessions than anyone else, it's hardly a punishment.
So then why bother at all? cut out the middle man and let him level up with everyone else.

quote:

Edit: I actually need to head off to work now guys. I'll be back to get yelled at more later.

Keep rollin with those punches

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Mikan posted:

H_double, on the other hand, the whole thing about players risking their characters and "earning" XP kinda boggles the mind. RPGs aren't serious business. I mean RPGs own and they're something I'm involved with both as a hobby and professionally but that kind of "the players must earn the right to deserve XP" thing is weird

I'm a pretty easygoing guy, and my group has a casual beer & pretzels dynamics, and making sure that everybody has a good time is a top priority. This stuff is fun to argue about sometimes but it's hardly serious business.

That said, they're experience points. Not attendance points or participation points. Characters will not earn them at exactly the same rate, will not level up at identical moments. But if everybody is involved in the game, characters progress at a similar enough rate that there's never really a game-breaking power gap in my experience.

From the 4E Dungeon Master's Guide:

quote:

Only characters who take part in an encounter should gain the commensurate rewards. Characters who died before the encounter took place, or did not participate for some other reason, earn nothing, even if they are raised or healed later on.

That's pretty clear-cut, and that's how D&D has been from the beginning; you get XP for fighting monsters and finding treasure and disarming traps (and good roleplay and advancing the story), not just for being along for the ride.

Another question: how do the rest of you feel about giving XP rewards to individual characters, say for an exceptionally clever plan or great tactics or bravery?

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire
You know what the DMG also says? Toss out and change rules as you see fit because they're not infallible.

Kerison
Apr 9, 2004

by angerbot

ripped0ff posted:

You actually teach at a different school. Your school district gets all the money because its filled with suburban white kids and the superintendent is racist. I'm the downtrodden hispanic teacher who must come in and lift the spirits of the inter-city youth who believe that they are doomed to lives of crime and violence.

Edit: In the movie, Denzel Washington plays my role, you're played by Renee Zellweger (we fall in love), and Jon Voight is the racist super.

But Denzel Washington isn't Hispanic. You're not making any sense at all.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

ripped0ff posted:

"Er, ma'am, is Billy even in my class? I don't remember teaching him."

"No, actually, he's in Ms. Cartwrights class. But I don't approve of the way you award Perfect Attendance in this class."

"Well, all the other parents in this class, even the parents of kids without perfect attendance, don't mind it. In fact, most of them actually like the way I do it since it makes the Perfect Attendance reward more meaningful, if only just slightly."

"Sounds to me, Ms. Applebottom, like you just can't control your children except through draconic punishments. You must instead learn how to properly address them. Instead of punishing them, have you ever thought about sitting down with them and just lecturing them about their commitment to their own education?"

"Ma'am, so long as I get a signed note from their parents, I try not to pass judgment. Unless they have a genuine truancy problem, I don't mind that much if their parents pull them out of school on occasion."

"You disgust me. Your passive-aggressive attitude is costing these children their fun and education."

"Not really. I just figure they're trading the fun of the seeing their schoolmates, for the fun of doing whatever it is their parents pulled them out of school for. I'm sure if they go to Disneyland, for instance, they enjoy that more. Besides, I'm actually nicer than most teachers. I send their homework off to them so that they don't fall behind too much."

"Well, you ought to just give them an 'A' for all the work they miss instead... and the Perfect Attendance award."
So what you're saying here is that in order to punish people who miss your game sessions through no fault of their own, you make their character weaker than everyone else's. I just want to be clear here.

Mikan
Sep 5, 2007

by Radium

h_double posted:

Another question: how do the rest of you feel about giving XP rewards to individual characters, say for an exceptionally clever plan or great tactics or bravery?

I usually give them neat Wondrous Items or something else that doesn't make them any more powerful than the other players, but is still a neat toy to play with. Whaleporn got free items in my maptool game for insulting the other characters while dominated, for example.

Nog
May 15, 2006

Kerison posted:

But Denzel Washington isn't Hispanic. You're not making any sense at all.

It's the movie version, they get it all wrong.

Also Ferrinus, yes, I do set them back a small amount of XP. I am a horrible GM and all my players hate me.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Maybe if you were a better GM you wouldn't have to literally threaten your players to get them to turn up to games..? This is just a thought.

Kerison
Apr 9, 2004

by angerbot

Mikan posted:

I usually give them neat Wondrous Items or something else that doesn't make them any more powerful than the other players, but is still a neat toy to play with. Whaleporn got free items in my maptool game for insulting the other characters while dominated, for example.

Yeah, this is a good idea, especially assuming 4e where you really need every character the same level and handing out individual XP awards is shooting yourself in the foot. I suppose you could also just give them something nice like a taco or a beer or a Twix bar, if this is a live game. Nerds like all of those things. Perhaps a colorful sticker on their character sheet. Elementary school teachers didn't drill "happy sticker = approval" into us for nothing, right?

(This probably reads sarcastic but I'm not being sarcastic.)

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Coming up with something really clever or otherwise defeating something singlehandedly is its own reward. There's no reason to power-up the lucky guy in order to make it even more likely that he, rather than the other players, is important in the resolution of future challenges.

Etherwind
Apr 22, 2008
Probation
Can't post for 106 days!
Soiled Meat
ripped0ff look what the gently caress you've done: you have me completely and unironically agreeing with Ferrinus. How retarded do you have to be that Ferrinus seems the more reasonable and fun person to play with?

And from Ferrinus' perspective, how loving awful are you that even Etherwind thinks you're a tool?

Nog
May 15, 2006

Ferrinus posted:

So what you're saying here is that in order to punish people who miss your game sessions through no fault of their own, you make their character weaker than everyone else's. I just want to be clear here.

At work and slacking...

Honestly though Ferrinus, every GM makes the characters of people who miss their games weaker in one way or another. A couple pages back, for instance, someone mentioned how the players who are there get first pick of the loot and maybe a larger share of the gold. Weaker magic items and worse equipment leaves characters at a disadvantage as well, perhaps even a larger disadvantage than missing a few hundred XP, but we all accept that this is a reward for the active players and not necessarily a punishment for the inactive ones.

There are RP consequences to missing a session as well. Unless, you're actually dragging their character along for all the fights, chances are that the missing player's character won't win as much acclaim as the active PCs or won't make new NPC friends/contacts. Even worse, if you handwave their disappearance as them being off on some minor errand or watching the party mule, their character assume the RP role of being some lameass lackey regardless of how much XP he has.

Despite my arguing, I can understand your guys' point, and I don't have a problem with what you're saying so long as it's what the players want. I do think that you're overreacting here though. I don't exactly punish the players (if I do, it's certainly not severe) and every does stay on essentially even footing.

To give an example, we just recently finished a long Deadlands: Reloaded game. I wasn't GMing, but the other GM does the same thing as me (no XP for missed sessions, and not even the chance of half-XP). By the time the campaign finished, we had all reached Legendary rank (80+ XP) and were all within 3 XP of eachother. That's 3 XP out of about 80. In the Savage Worlds system, 3 XP isn't even enough to purchase an Advance (the SW version of a level). Sure we missed sessions, but in the end, all of us missed about as many sessions so we all kept pace with eachother. What's more, we all felt like the rank we had was one we had earned. Instead of having the GM tell us our character was dragged along as an NPC, shot up a vampire some, and got XP with everyone else, we knew that all the XP we had was XP we had had an active hand in earning. Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd actually feel a bit awkward receiving XP for a session I had missed.

In any case, I think we've all pretty much said our piece. If you want to get the last word, shoot. I'd prefer to put this argument to bed though; I'm not convincing anyone and I'm not really getting convinced.

Edit:
Etherwind, STFU. You're late for the bandwagon and Ferrinus won't make out with you no matter how much you stroke his dick.

Super Waffle
Sep 25, 2007

I'm a hermaphrodite and my parents (40K nerds) named me Slaanesh, THANKS MOM
Ok guys I need some GMing advice. Is it grognardy of me to have an invincible NPC? The NPC in question got into combat with the PC's while running away. He took damage but I just sort of pretended to write it down so they wouldn't get suspicious that he was really important. I never even bothered to stat him up at all. Is this railroading? :ohdear:

Mikan
Sep 5, 2007

by Radium

Depends. Was it plausible that the NPC could have survived the amount of damage he took?

Nog
May 15, 2006

Super Waffle posted:

Ok guys I need some GMing advice. Is it grognardy of me to have an invincible NPC? The NPC in question got into combat with the PC's while running away. He took damage but I just sort of pretended to write it down so they wouldn't get suspicious that he was really important. I never even bothered to stat him up at all. Is this railroading? :ohdear:

Invincible bad guys (or at least ones who are invincible unless you have the "Insert Weapon of Ultimate Power" to use against them) are pretty much a staple of fantasy settings. Of course, if he is that powerful it begs the question of why was he running away. Assuming you have something plausible for that though, the PCs don't ever really need to know.

It is kind of lame though. It's nice to give them some kind of chance. Maybe go ahead and give the guy a lasting scar from the fight, so that the players can at least feel like what they did meant something.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

ripped0ff posted:

At work and slacking...

Honestly though Ferrinus, every GM makes the characters of people who miss their games weaker in one way or another. A couple pages back, for instance, someone mentioned how the players who are there get first pick of the loot and maybe a larger share of the gold. Weaker magic items and worse equipment leaves characters at a disadvantage as well, perhaps even a larger disadvantage than missing a few hundred XP, but we all accept that this is a reward for the active players and not necessarily a punishment for the inactive ones.

No, we don't. "A reward for active players" and "a punishment for inactive players" mean the same thing. You punish players for not showing up to game sessions. Why you feel the need to do this is beyond me (it isn't actually beyond me, I'm just saying that because it sounds good), but it's not something you can handwave away.

Your attempts to conflate things like "first pick of the loot" with "permanent weakening" are ridiculous. I also notice you tried to sneak "smaller share of the gold" in there, except that no one here says they deliberately give less treasure to people who miss games because that, after all, would be a stupid childish attempt to extra-punish players for things beyond their control.

Lugubrious
Jul 2, 2004

Super Waffle posted:

Ok guys I need some GMing advice. Is it grognardy of me to have an invincible NPC? The NPC in question got into combat with the PC's while running away. He took damage but I just sort of pretended to write it down so they wouldn't get suspicious that he was really important. I never even bothered to stat him up at all. Is this railroading? :ohdear:

As long as (like Mikan said) he didn't take an unreasonable amount of damage so it's realistic that he survived, it's fine. If you're trying to set him up to be a recurring bad guy, having the PCs meet/fight him a couple times with him barely getting away each time helps make it that much more satisfying when the party finally wrecks his poo poo for good.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
gently caress players, I DM for me. They're just an obstacle.

cbirdsong
Sep 8, 2004

Commodore of the Apocalypso
Lipstick Apathy

Lugubrious posted:

As long as (like Mikan said) he didn't take an unreasonable amount of damage so it's realistic that he survived, it's fine. If you're trying to set him up to be a recurring bad guy, having the PCs meet/fight him a couple times with him barely getting away each time helps make it that much more satisfying when the party finally wrecks his poo poo for good.

I would just make it so that when he becomes bloodied, he gets some big bonus to running/movement, and then make it so that when the finally face him for the (planned) last time, they can use the environment to make sure he can't easily escape.

Super Waffle
Sep 25, 2007

I'm a hermaphrodite and my parents (40K nerds) named me Slaanesh, THANKS MOM
The NPC didn't take too much damage, never fought back, and teleported away once he was cornered (which was all planned). I just underestimated my PC's, he wasn't supposed to get cornered until the very last room. Thanks for the feedback.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire

Super Waffle posted:

The NPC didn't take too much damage, never fought back, and teleported away once he was cornered (which was all planned). I just underestimated my PC's, he wasn't supposed to get cornered until the very last room. Thanks for the feedback.

Really it's all about keeping a face up. I think its ok for a DM to just about anything as long as the illusion is maintained.
If he takes a heavy hit and doesnt flinch, it tells the party he's super powerful. Whether or not you mark it is fine unless they get wise somethings wrong.

SlothBear
Jan 25, 2009

As long as they get to kill him or realize why they shouldn't eventually it should be okay.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

In my live game in which we are all loving grownups, we put this gaming group together under a lot of time constraints from everybody. Eventually we settled on every other friday night, but it's still hard. One guy works long hours, another guy works weekends so he doesn't like to stay up too late, I have an hour-long drive to get to where we meet, and so forth.

The guy who has a retail job has missed a couple of sessions because of having to fill in for someone on a Saturday morning. Another guy actually missed two months of gaming because he was training for the AIDS ride and didn't feel he had the time to devote to the game.

We all have similar loot and identical XP and you know what? It's fine. One guy is gone because he just wasn't that interested and that's fine. The rest of us talk to each other and know that we all want to play, and when there's been things that people didn't like, we talked about it like loving grownups.

When someone is gone their character just isn't there. They 'wander off for a while' or have some family commitment or just otherwise aren't around. We all level up at identical times anyway and you know what?

It's fine! Because none of us want to have a party member who is behind. We need those daily powers! We need our striker to hit, and if he was down 5% in attack bonus because of being a level lower, that punishes all of us.

XP is just a mechanic for measuring out how often the PCs level up, which is itself just a mechanic for describing how powerful they have become. Personally I don't even find them all that much of a reward, because I'd be pretty content to just permanently play at a given level... my interest in the game is 'adventuring' and you could play an unending stream of adventures, complete with a climactic campaign story, without ever leveling up. But if a DM told me that I was going to level up later than everyone else, permanently, because I had a social comittment or was sick or whatever once, I'd be done with the game right then and there. gently caress that.

It'd be like having guys over to watch the football game once a month, but once a guy misses one he said he was going to attend to, from now on he gets the warmest beer. "Sorry mike, you knew the rules. We get cold beers and you get this one that just went in the fridge. It's because you missed the game four weeks ago."

What all this boils down to is that we aren't kids in elementary school, 'perfect attendance rewards' are just pieces of paper that have no mechanical effect on a child's performance or test results or ability to get into college (and are goddamn stupid besides - why should the kid who got the flu and missed a week of school have to feel like he failed at something? It's not like fifth-graders cut school on purpose or anything), and rewarding everyone but the absentee is exactly the same as punishing the absentee.

"My players are all happy about this and we're happy" is pretty irrelevant. I could secretly add 1 to every attack roll I make against a certain player who missed three sessions in the last four months, and he'd never know I was punishing him by him being more likely to be hit... but I'd still be doing it and it'd still be unnecessary and wrong. It'd hurt the whole party and it'd tell that player that I think I know better how he should manage his social calendar than he does (but I'm not willing to just tell him so), which is an insult.

AAAAaaaaanyway, not that I think I deserve the last word on this or anything, but...

What do you guys do when your party is making a lot of unanticipated mistakes? I mean anything from tactically poor decisions, to forgetting that certain skills exist, to approaching every problem from the exact same angle? There's always just telling them "hey guys you know that was a pretty poor move right there, see if you did this or this or this, you'd be in better shape" but I've got a really strong aversion to telling players how they should play their characters. If they do something really dangerously stupid, I do tend to say things like "so, your character realizes that that's pretty risky" or "are you sure? x or y or z could happen..." but even that to some degree can feel like taking away the challenge.

I'd in particular like to hear anecdotes of your in-game or out-of-game approaches when your players were being consistently unwise in some way.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jul 27, 2009

Nog
May 15, 2006

Okay. Last words are in. That was long enough.

In any case, in the situation you mentioned, I usually fall back on having the players roll whatever the game's equivalent to an Intelligence/Smarts check is. In Savage Worlds, they have a "Common Knowledge" roll that everyone can do, which is perfect for those "the players should/do know this, and they're loving up, and I need to remind them" situations. In DnD, having them roll a Knowledge skill or Intelligence to realize they're making a mistake is probably your best bet.

I guess part of the trick isn't just how you deliver the clue, but what clues you deliver. Don't necessarily remind them of the key bit of knowledge they're forgetting, instead remind them of something else that will jog their memory. For instance, instead of going, "You remember that the professor told you to be absolutely certain you activated the dampeners before the hyperdrive", it's a little less blunt to lead them with, "You have some vague recollection of the professor warning you to do something in a particular order." You're still leading them, and the players will know it, but at least they can feel like it was them who connected the dots.

Beyond all that though, if your players really are loving up in the extreme and they manage to avoid all your attempts to help them, let them gently caress up. Sure, it's no fun having a character die, but if it is going to happen, best that it happen in such a way that they realize the (extreme) error lies on their part, and not just some fluke roll.

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


Leperflesh posted:

What do you guys do when your party is making a lot of unanticipated mistakes? I mean anything from tactically poor decisions, to forgetting that certain skills exist, to approaching every problem from the exact same angle? There's always just telling them "hey guys you know that was a pretty poor move right there, see if you did this or this or this, you'd be in better shape" but I've got a really strong aversion to telling players how they should play their characters. If they do something really dangerously stupid, I do tend to say things like "so, your character realizes that that's pretty risky" or "are you sure? x or y or z could happen..." but even that to some degree can feel like taking away the challenge.

I'd in particular like to hear anecdotes of your in-game or out-of-game approaches when your players were being consistently unwise in some way.
I let them do whatever the gently caress they want. If the guy wants to climb a bus and jump off of it to tackle a kidnapper instead of just roundhouse-kicking him, go right the gently caress ahead.

It's their world, if they want to be tools, let'em. It's fun.

ninjeff
Jan 19, 2004

ripped0ff posted:

Okay. Last words are in. That was long enough.

In any case, in the situation you mentioned, I usually fall back on having the players roll whatever the game's equivalent to an Intelligence/Smarts check is. In Savage Worlds, they have a "Common Knowledge" roll that everyone can do, which is perfect for those "the players should/do know this, and they're loving up, and I need to remind them" situations. In DnD, having them roll a Knowledge skill or Intelligence to realize they're making a mistake is probably your best bet.

I guess part of the trick isn't just how you deliver the clue, but what clues you deliver. Don't necessarily remind them of the key bit of knowledge they're forgetting, instead remind them of something else that will jog their memory. For instance, instead of going, "You remember that the professor told you to be absolutely certain you activated the dampeners before the hyperdrive", it's a little less blunt to lead them with, "You have some vague recollection of the professor warning you to do something in a particular order." You're still leading them, and the players will know it, but at least they can feel like it was them who connected the dots.

Beyond all that though, if your players really are loving up in the extreme and they manage to avoid all your attempts to help them, let them gently caress up. Sure, it's no fun having a character die, but if it is going to happen, best that it happen in such a way that they realize the (extreme) error lies on their part, and not just some fluke roll.
you are worthless

Nog
May 15, 2006

ninjeff posted:

you are worthless

Heh, cool. You're a pretty helpful guy too, what with all your valuable insights.

Tendrils, I don't think he's talking about just doing mildly stupid things. No one is going to stop that. I think what's he talking about are more of those "all the players have forgot something crucial, that I know they know, and I think they've just spaced out."

As in, you're playing DnD and the players stumble across a red dragon and they start approaching it to chat with it because somehow they've confused it with a gold dragon. Not really a good example, but I think you know the kind of situation I'm talking about. The one where all you players realize they've just done something incredibly dumb, and they don't know how or why they did it. There are those times too where their characters would know instinctively know something the player has either forgotten or doesn't know.

To give an example, we were playing a modern combat sort of game and one of our guys is an anti-tank weapons expert. He backs up to a wall and says he's going to fire his anti-tank rocket. Doing that would mean the backblast would kill him, and any anti-tank expert would know that. The GM just had him make an Intelligence roll to remind him what a horrible idea that was. To me that didn't seem at all railroady, and I know the player appreciated the reminder. If he wants to fire it anyway, he still can, but at least he knows what's probably going to happen.

Nog fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Jul 27, 2009

Giant Tourtiere
Aug 4, 2006

TRICHER
POUR
GAGNER

Leperflesh posted:

What do you guys do when your party is making a lot of unanticipated mistakes? I mean anything from tactically poor decisions, to forgetting that certain skills exist, to approaching every problem from the exact same angle? There's always just telling them "hey guys you know that was a pretty poor move right there, see if you did this or this or this, you'd be in better shape" but I've got a really strong aversion to telling players how they should play their characters. If they do something really dangerously stupid, I do tend to say things like "so, your character realizes that that's pretty risky" or "are you sure? x or y or z could happen..." but even that to some degree can feel like taking away the challenge.

I'd in particular like to hear anecdotes of your in-game or out-of-game approaches when your players were being consistently unwise in some way.

If it's a one-off mistake, I just let them make it. No reason they can't screw up. However, if they're consistently not using skills that would be helpful, or missing what should be an obvious approach, I have in the past had one or more characters make an intelligence roll (whatever the equivalent is in the game) with to give them a chance to go 'Aha!' In my experience though most players don't enjoy being handed a solution so I have only done it when the group is clearly frustrated or getting further away from a good solution rather than closer.

In my ill-fated Shadowrun game I sent out an email between games gently reminding people that their contacts could be really useful to them if they bothered to use them, as well. So you could mention whatever their difficulty is in between sessions if it's forgetting to use all their skills or abilities.



I don't want to restart the big XP :argh: but I have a question for the GMs who award full XPs to characters with absent players - how is this rationalized in game, or do you bother? Are the characters assumed to have been present, and just in the background, or were they off doing their own thing that happened to net them the same amount of XP? In lots of games different players get different amounts of XP depending on their accomplishments, so how do you handle that for absent players? Do they just get an average award?

I had to think pretty hard about how groups I have been in handled this situation because usually we just didn't play if everyone couldn't make it, but as I recall if you weren't there, you didn't get the XP because your character didn't do anything. When we played AD&D I believe you could have someone else play your character for you if you were going to miss a session.

When I GMed I think it only came up once or twice, because usually if someone couldn't make it we found another time to play. What I did the couple times people did miss was try to schedule a solo session with the player who couldn't make it to give them a chance to rack up some XP. I had never thought of it as a punishment issue before.

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lighttigersoul
Mar 5, 2009

Sailor Scout Enoutner 5:
Moon Healing Escalation

even worse username posted:

I don't want to restart the big XP :argh: but I have a question for the GMs who award full XPs to characters with absent players - how is this rationalized in game, or do you bother? Are the characters assumed to have been present, and just in the background, or were they off doing their own thing that happened to net them the same amount of XP? In lots of games different players get different amounts of XP depending on their accomplishments, so how do you handle that for absent players? Do they just get an average award?

The truth is, for me at least, XP is just a 'feel good' thing. I typically wing XP, and treat absent players characters like they're there in the background. If there's a TPK, they die too, any other situation, they were just there.

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