Quote from: Will;812485Kiero, when you tell people that their way of playing a game is horrible and sucks, you sound like a fucking self-absorbed prick.

He just has strong views and doesn't mind expressing them in the least empathetic fashion possible. That makes him a tad sociopathic, but not exactly self-absorbed.

I'm not sure how easy it is to distinguish 'sociopathic' and 'self-absorbed,' but in the spirit of conciliatory and productive discourse, I'll go with it.

This article by the Angry DM posted up today is relevant to this thread's topic: http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-overpowered-encounters/

He says D&D isn't made for non-balanced encounters.

I would say that while I don't like the whole mapping deal (as a GM, it puts way too much pressure on me to always be super accurate with my descriptions), if other people enjoy that kind of stuff, more power to them.

I really like this part of that Angry DM article, and I plan on implementing something like it:

QuoteIf you want retreat and withdrawal to be a real, useful possibility, you've got to make some adjustments to allow it as an option. One trick is to tell the players flat out that if they all declare a retreat, you will immediately drop the initiative order and resolve things narratively. Let all the PCs explain how they are getting away (or covering their allies) and then resolve the actions like you would any non-combat scene. Don’t let them automatically flee, but get it the hell out of the combat rules. On top of that, you might want to house rule something to protect fleeing creatures from ranged attacks. Give ranged attacks disadvantage (or advantage on saving throws) because a fleeing, evading creature is hard to hit in D&D 5E...

...

First and foremost, tell them explicitly that, in your game, they will encounter fights they can’t win. Tell them you expect them to recognize when they are outmatched and to keep themselves alive. Give them permission to flee and tell them it is a feature of your campaign, not a sign of failure. That retreating, regrouping, gaining power, or dealing with something in a less direct way, is part of the normal course of the game.

Second, make sure they understand that you’re making retreat possible by adjusting the combat rules to allow for it. Declare flat out that if the party declares a retreat or fighting withdrawal, you’ll handle it differently to make it a real possibility. That way, they aren’t trying to formulate a plan for retreat that fits into the D&D combat structure.

Third, use foreshadowing and flavor text to cue the players...

It's funny that the author says: "stick to balanced encounters because D&D just CAN'T HANDLE retreat at all" when he actually makes some extremely decent rulings on handling retreat in the system without breaking anything. Ha.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;812527I would say that while I don't like the whole mapping deal (as a GM, it puts way too much pressure on me to always be super accurate with my descriptions), if other people enjoy that kind of stuff, more power to them.

I think it requires you to be as accurate with your descriptions as the people in the situation would be with their observations.

Quote from: Necrozius;812528I really like this part of that Angry DM article, and I plan on implementing something like it:



It's funny that the author says: "stick to balanced encounters because D&D just CAN'T HANDLE retreat at all" when he actually makes some extremely decent rulings on handling retreat in the system without breaking anything. Ha.

I noticed that. What he means is that the rules as-is don't do it well. But of course the DM can make his own rules to get around it.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;812533I noticed that. What he means is that the rules as-is don't do it well. But of course the DM can make his own rules to get around it.

So simply, I might add, that I'm surprised that I never thought of it before. Definitely an eye-opening article to me. Good stuff, thanks for the link!

Quote from: robiswrong;812529I think it requires you to be as accurate with your descriptions as the people in the situation would be with their observations.

My point though is, what if the mapper perfectly records what I say, but I misspoke at one point? Then they get lost, something was mapped wrong at one point, I don't have perfect memory of everything I said in the night, so I just assume that he messed up... its just too much trouble for me personally.

Like I said, if other groups/GMs like doing that, more power to them, but its not for me.

Quote from: Omega;812451How so? The players, or mapper in this case told the DM where they were backtracking and the DM helpfully spelled out that what they mapped wasnt were it should be now.

Exactly this happened to me in my first AD&D session with our library club.

By first session and I was the mapper. We are going along backtracking from a dead end, map-map-map and all of a sudden I notice the map is going ways it cant. We'd walked through a teleport archway somewhere along the way.

You DO realize who you're talking to, don't you?

Quote from: Will;812485Kiero, when you tell people that their way of playing a game is horrible and sucks, you sound like a fucking self-absorbed prick.

After eight years of watching him do so on multiple forums, I have been forced to conclude that he IS a fucking self absorbed prick.

He is also a whiny little crybaby who can't stand the thought of anybody having anything more than he has.

"His character is 25th level but mine's only 24th!!! The game is ruined!!!  WAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"

I wish I were exaggerating, he's stated publicly repeatedly that even a one level difference is utterly deal breaking.

Frankly, I'm surprised he has any friends willing to game with him at all.

I'm often torn on whether someone is being histrionic for effect or just as part of their basic character, but then I remind myself that, practically, it doesn't matter.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;812527I would say that while I don't like the whole mapping deal (as a GM, it puts way too much pressure on me to always be super accurate with my descriptions), if other people enjoy that kind of stuff, more power to them.

I don't like mapping because its entirely unbelievable.

If you have ever Larped and have ever been in a cave with a candle and thought about getting out a sheet of partchment an ink well and a quill you will know what I mean.

In addition the act of remembering you saying north 35 feet, west 30 feet se 45 feet etc is absolutely nothing like actually walking that.
I could read you the directions to a place and ask you what they were 5 minutes later and you may well have no idea I could take you to a place and you may well remember the precise route 2 years later. It depends on the mind and the subject.
Real caves and dungeons aren't drawn on graph paper they don't align to a N-S grid angles aren't 90 or 45 degrees and they are 3 dimensional not 2 dimensional so you might go over a spot after walking 100 meters that is now 10 meters lower.

Someone is now going to say that cavers map caves and of course they do but they do that precisely and use all sorts of actual measuring devices and so on and the mapping of a cave is not something you do as part of the exploration it is an entire process in and of itself. A process that woudl in all probablility be very dull to role play rather like roleplaying drawing a map for example.

Quote from: jibbajibba;812604I don't like mapping because its entirely unbelievable.

If you have ever Larped and have ever been in a cave with a candle and thought about getting out a sheet of partchment an ink well and a quill you will know what I mean.

Jan had maps of the tunnels under both colleges she attended.

I am pretty sure people have made maps for Treasure Trapped and other LARPs since.

I have maps from various games I've played. I've made maps of the tunnels while exploring Minecraft even and was one of the reasons I recreated Keep on the Borderlands there to get a feel of wandering the place.

As noted in another thread here. I do most of my maps on graph. But a player at a convention introduced me to an alternative method of charting the junctions and turns and not worrying about exact distance. So hed jot down a line and branches whenever they came to a division. The sort of thing an adventurer could easily do while the group decides which way to go.

Although I like dungeons, I'm not thrilled with mapping as a major game activity; it's been a long time since I saw such a large/deep dungeon that we needed more than a simple "map" of the sort Omega describes.

I also don't care for most of the mapping (or anti-mapping) tricks: a sloping passage to take the party to a lower dungeon level without them noticing is built entirely on the premise that the danger is sorted by dungeon level. If you have teleport rooms where you don't know you were teleported, why bother with any mechanical tricks?

The Fellowship of the Ring made it through Moria without making a map or having a map to consult beyond party members' unreliable memory. It seems much more heroic that way.