The short answer is to kill them off for being stupid.  Let consequences reign.

The longer answer is to give them some oportunities and warnings first but if you reward stupidity it becomes the norm.

I could probably a rant about skill lists being vastly superior to special combat ability lists because they suggest possibilities and offer alternatives instead of locking the player into a constrained course of action.  It the only reliable mechanical tool the PCs have is violence then that's the kind of game you'll get.

The self-preservation paranoia is too high. And the stupid is allowed too much setting permission of civilization's long arm of the law (a la SHARK's example of society laying down the law). Also some players are just write-offs: they don't get it, they don't want to get it, they will play as they want until you boot them.

For self-preservation paranoia I found it best to bring Reaction Rolls back into heavy rotation. Having a monster encounter where the monster seems happy to see you really puts murderhobos on the back foot. Granted it does help to follow through, structurally. For example, you can have a deadly dungeon floor where a minor mob, like spelunking orcs, finds the PC party a relief and tries to ally with them. Sure the murderhobos can murder them all as they seek cooperation, but if your deadly dungeon floor has far nastier mobs than orc parties in the Wandering Monster Table then you reinforce "pause & think."

For the soft tethers of setting, it's just that, state openly what the laws expect of you in the land and then enforce them. If that makes some PCs or whole PC parties wanted criminals so be it. As long as you state these expectations clearly, multiple times so no one is guessing what you are thinking, then you can feel free to have the setting whoop ass as appropriate. And if anyone whines note how you were explicitly clear repeatedly, insinuating they are bad at taking direction or willingly wanted this conflict with the setting.

As for the last... you either boot them or put up with them until your patience runs out. Dumb mule is not going to change until the pain is high enough. And given they likely have little to no respect for the fictive world, your time, or the rest of the table -- or wasting people's time is their passion -- it will be hard to increase in-game consequences pain enough for them to care. So you gotta resolve out-of-game problems with out-of-game mature negotiations and solutions. Ideally.

One of the selling points for bare bones OSR games relates to this. 

Basic Fantasy for example.  The game lacks almost any features, so you need to make your own.  My brother plays a Dwarf Fighter.  All the rules say to do is attack with their weapon.

Well, not him.  He owns a pair of war dogs and bear traps.  He doesn't just keep it simple.  He also asks the GM to do various combat maneuvers like tripping and pinning weapons.  Or bear-hugging an enemy immune to mundane weapons, and getting the party to tie it up. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on August 08, 2024, 10:29:26 AMOne of the selling points for bare bones OSR games relates to this. 

Basic Fantasy for example.  The game lacks almost any features, so you need to make your own.  My brother plays a Dwarf Fighter.  All the rules say to do is attack with their weapon.

Well, not him.  He owns a pair of war dogs and bear traps.  He doesn't just keep it simple.  He also asks the GM to do various combat maneuvers like tripping and pinning weapons.  Or bear-hugging an enemy immune to mundane weapons, and getting the party to tie it up.

But there is no button for that on the character sheet!!!  How does he even know such things are possible?  This is madness!  /SARC off.

This sounds like some great fun stuff. Many players won't bother with creative solutions to problems if there is already a menu of mechanical options in the rules. It is harder to get players to do this in more modern systems that feature rules for everything. The best way to get players to interact with the situation and the setting is not having so many rules to interact with.

Quote from: SHARK on August 05, 2024, 06:53:59 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on August 05, 2024, 05:09:55 PM

Quote from: SHARK on August 05, 2024, 05:04:05 PMGreetings!

In one game session in one of my campaigns, the group was traveling along a road in the Vallorean Empire, when they came across a group of young Ogres, and an older Ogre, hunting the nearby woods and fishing by the nearby river. The Ogres had a nice camp set up, and two of the adolescent Ogres greeted the approaching party, and offered them some roasted Deer meat that they had just hunted earlier in the morning.

...

A question on your setting ... Are ogres recognized as people and protected by the law?  And did the players know this?

Greetings!

Yes, my friend. There are "Civilized" Ogres--several tribes have been embraced and civilized by the Vallorean Empire and given Vallorean citizenship. There are also, of course, savage, barbarian tribes of Ogres.

Indeed, the Players were all aware that this was a distinction within the Vallorean Empire. I shadowed this fact by the Ogres that were encountered were dressed like civilized fishermen and hunters--and they greeted the party in a friendly manner, and they themselves did not appear to be armed for war, or make any attempt at attacking or threatening the Player Group.

The one Player Character Wizard--a woman--picked up on these little details. The other Player Wizard and a Player Fighter did not, though. They were far more convinced by the belief that "All Ogres are evil monsters and must be ruthlessly destroyed!"

*Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I am actually doing something like that to my daughters in the CoC/DG game.

In the middle of the mission/investigation they are on they are going to meet a tribe of (Lovecraft corrupted human living type) ghouls. Or more correctly a tribe of ghouls is going to throw them a note to meet them in an ally after sunset with a parley under a white flag. I'm pulling in some DG lore with a tribe of them in New York and a few other places actually helping DG agents.

I have given them hints over the last few missions that sometimes talking is an option until you know what is going on, so I'll see if any of them have paid attention or catch the hints.

The fun part is that they KNOW it is something in the underground caves and sewers that is doing the killings, but they don't know what exactly. They have some info that points to vermin. Do they assume everything in the sewers is 'vermin' and avoid the meeting or use it to ambush and kill the ghouls, or do they risk meeting an unknown group to find a group that will help them fight the ratlings and worshipers of Ninkilim (Mesopotamian goddess of vermin) that are the ones actually doing the murders and trying to chase the ghouls out of the city.

As others have said, this will relate to system. If everything the PC can do is written on their character sheet, they will naturally look down at their character sheet to apply Skill A to Problem B.

But more importantly, it's also a function of GMing. If every time a player comes up with a solution you as GM say, "roll against Skill X," and Skill X gives them only a 20% chance of success, it's natural for players to give up and simply smash their way through problems.

Being a GM is like being a parent, teacher, coach, government or whatever - reward the behaviour you like, and you'll get more of it. You can also punish the behaviour you dislike, but alternative behaviours leading to rewards need to be obvious, or else people simply withdraw from the system. If a government offers taxation but no benefits, everyone will dodge taxes. If a coach, teacher or parent offers rebukes and punishment when the child does wrong but no praise or rewards when they do right, the child loses interest in learning and getting better.

And so a competent GM will reward player creativity rather than seeking to punish them for using the game rules in place of being creative.

It's up to you, honeydipperdavi.

It's the inverse of your character sheet, and rulebook used as a whole.

If you have dozens of things on your sheet, then you will naturally want to use them.  That is why they're on the sheet. 

But, in rules lite systems you just have a couple.  The rest you can make up as you go. You almost have to, probably in the first scene of the first game. 

That is why I'm now a fan of rules lite stuff. 

If they don't have anyone to show them that this type of style works, they may never discover it on their own.  But you could potentially guide them to it.  Have them make an Intelligence check, and if they succeed, let them know something their character would be aware of that involves solving a problem with some of their existing tools. 

After giving some of these hints the players may start applying what they've learned to future situations. 

Just shift how X.P. is re ... is it rewarded or awarded? Anyhow, if you want your team to talk to your monsters, you only give em X.P. for talking to monsters. Instead of killing em. Players just chase whatever carrot you put out there.

If I ever ran 5e again



I'd only give players X.P. for acquiring GOLD. Just like the good old days.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 05, 2024, 01:42:29 PMI've got a group of murder hobo optimancers.

Time to get a new group.

Players are common. GMs are scarce.

I'm running Traveller every Saturday at the FLGS and something odd happened today. I was thanked for running the game by my players. I say that is odd because they are having fun and I am having fun, so it is a mutually beneficial thing and no thanks are expected. Then my players expounded upon why and it relates directly to this thread.

I'm running an exploration game where they are investigating ancient ruins, some of which are still active. The ancients moved stars at their whim and built worlds as art projects and uplifted species just to have better servants. EVERYTHING ancient that is still active can destroy them and their ship with the blink of an eye, they are completely outclassed so combat is out of the question. Missiles have antimatter warheads and other live ordnance includes black hole bombs capable of cracking open Phobos or Deimos. Again, straight combat is a losing proposition.

So they have to outsmart their opponents. In the past eight months of a game every Saturday, there have been only 2 combats that they have fought in with every dirty trick that they could think of to try and even the playing field being used. It has been incredible to GM because I don't have to nerf their opposition.

That's the key. Make the bad guys too strong to take on in a set piece battle royale where yelling "Charge!" and doing a full frontal assault can't possibly work. Force the players to think, or kill their characters when they throw themselves on the spears of their enemies. Tell your players to go read Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads and Murphy's Laws of Combat while you as GM read them and also read the Evil Overlord List and you fucking live it for those players by not being a pussy while running the game.

You have to be able to kill the player characters in game or they will continue to do dumb stuff.

My players had gotten bored shitless with playing 5E because combat is meaningless when that is all there is and they always win.

I don't know how you design your campaigns in terms of XP and content but I will tell you what I do.

All my games are XP by fiat.  All characters level at 100xp.  So... each level you start at 0xp and progress to 100xp to level.

Encounters are usually worth 5-10xp.  But some encounters will have conditions where I tell them up front, there are multiple ways to resolve this encounter, each version has a different XP reward.  This is a general rule for most encounters.  So if killing a monster would fetch you 5xp normally, charming it and getting it to attack your other enemies would be worth more.  And so on...

Kill guards = 5xp.  Parley with them and convince them to let you pass = 10xp.

To use your example with the tubes... beat the encounter =5xp.  You get 2xp bonus for each creature you save.

Something like that.

The point is that you condition the through rewards to take the more interesting and thoughtful route.

It has generally worked well for me.

Quote from: Captain_Pazuzu on August 18, 2024, 02:17:07 PMBut some encounters will have conditions where I tell them up front, there are multiple ways to resolve this encounter, each version has a different XP reward.

This seems weirdly arbitrary to me. Do you tell them which solutions have which XP values? If so, then this isn't problem solving, it's selecting an option from a menu. If not, then how are they supposed to know which ones you feel are better than others?

Quote from: HappyDaze on August 20, 2024, 11:40:51 AM

Quote from: Captain_Pazuzu on August 18, 2024, 02:17:07 PMBut some encounters will have conditions where I tell them up front, there are multiple ways to resolve this encounter, each version has a different XP reward.

This seems weirdly arbitrary to me. Do you tell them which solutions have which XP values? If so, then this isn't problem solving, it's selecting an option from a menu. If not, then how are they supposed to know which ones you feel are better than others?

Yeah I tried this route at one point and found I didn't like it. It felt too arbitrary. I think the better way to do this kind of thing is to assign XP to an objective, and then award it no matter how your players achieve it.

Quote from: ForgottenF on August 20, 2024, 07:16:54 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on August 20, 2024, 11:40:51 AM

Quote from: Captain_Pazuzu on August 18, 2024, 02:17:07 PMBut some encounters will have conditions where I tell them up front, there are multiple ways to resolve this encounter, each version has a different XP reward.

This seems weirdly arbitrary to me. Do you tell them which solutions have which XP values? If so, then this isn't problem solving, it's selecting an option from a menu. If not, then how are they supposed to know which ones you feel are better than others?

Yeah I tried this route at one point and found I didn't like it. It felt too arbitrary. I think the better way to do this kind of thing is to assign XP to an objective, and then award it no matter how your players achieve it.

If I can elaborate... I don't generally mean different outcomes in terms of what they are supposed to do. (Ex. you can parlay or fight)

I generally mean adding layers to encounters.

An example would be a scenario in which they are trying to evacuate a temple during a zombie apocalypse.  The main goal might be to evacuate civilians.  An extra goal might be to ensure the survival of as many of the Temple's priests as you can.  Or maybe a bonus for zero civilian casualties. This adds some competing objectives during combat so that the players have to make decisions.

The main objective is the same.  Evacuate the civilians.  But there are now multiple dimensions to consider.

Does that make sense?