Quote from: malleus arianorumStart by taking everything you say now and dropping the last part. Leave some really low hanging fruit for the players so it's easy for them to pipe up.

Also, use awesome sparingly. From your examples it sounds like everything the players do is awesome? That's too much. In most action-adventure the hero is losing right up until the end of the fight. That's a good way to run a game too. Personally I don't comment on everything that happens in the game. If it were a movie, most of the die rolls would be on the cutting room floor.

Trailing off and letting players complete the description? Cool. Similar to Vincent Baker's "so what you're trying to do is. . ." technique.

About the awesome: not entirely sure what you mean--you talking about endlessly superlative description? If so, I understand but disagree somewhat. See, yeah, the action hero IS losing until the very end, but not--unless he's Jack Burton--through any fault of his own, i.e. bumbling, screwing up, missing wildly, etc. He's usually the best he can possibly be, and the villain is just better--or has the situational advantage, has him forced on the defensive, whatever. But unless you're deliberately subverting the type, like in Big Trouble, you've got to establish that he IS indeed Badass, so the audience (which in the case of RPGs are also the authors) will accept that about the character. Or if you're trying to promote acceptance of a different trait, you highlight that instead, like "Frodo is purehearted and Sam is Loyal," or "Luke is wet behind the ears, but is idealistic and has great potential." It's when you want to promote "Fightyguy is badass" and you instead show "fightyguy gets whupped a lot and makes embarrassing blunders" that you see the problem I'm talking about.

And to tie it in to my descriptions themselves, I don't think I've "over-awesomed" them; just tried to nip the "ooh, you missed, you can't hit the broadside of a barn" pattern that descriptions tend to fall into.

Peace,
-Joel

Quote from: ConanMKPlayers making too many saving throws: I guess I just don't see the problem here. Real heroes are suposed to be able to overcome all sorts of exotic dangers.

I'm getting the feeling that some folks aren't really listening to or comprehending my main point, which is not that a few specific rolls failed to go my (or the players') way. I'm talking about something deeper: what I was hoping for when I made those rolls, and how I felt when it didn't come about. And how to "fix" that "problem", in the sense of tweaking rules or utilizing techniques that will get me the results I want.

The issue, I'll state once again, is that the players making those saves (and conversely, on failing some key skill and attack rolls) is undercutting the feel and purpose for which the events were introduced, or indeed, for which we (or at least I) are gaming at all. I introduce challenges and plot developments that I feel will be interesting and fun, and the players come up with courses of action that they feel will be heroic and fun. And they end up not being so, because "the enchanting and seductive Satyress who tries to steal Hung away into the night" becomes "the whiny goat-bitch who couldn't charm fleas to a dog." And "the wise Druid whose harmony with nature tames even the fiercest forest beasts" becomes "the clueless nature-guy that all the animals hate."

I've recieved some quite helpful solutions for the spedific situation (including your suggestionn regarding skill rolls and Aid Another; if I can get Aid Another into the foreground of the players' minds as I hope this would be a great technique!). But beyond mere techniques and such I was hoping the general issue would engage people as it did me and we'd have a big, fruitful discussion. Oh, well.

Peace,
-Joel

Mellinglor, it's because the general issue is quite simple, and you're not responding to our responses

The issue: "the dice do not always make for cool stuff."

The response: "overrule the dice." This can be done in two basic ways,

• Have a diceless system
• fudge the dice

The second one, most commonly when players fudge the dice it's within some sort of Hero Point or Drama Dice sort of system, whereas GMs typically fudge the dice without any systemic support.

You already objected that the GM fudging the dice was breaking trust, I already responded that it's not if the GM lays it out to begin with; you responded to that by saying again it was a break of trust.

We're responding to your general point. You're just not listening.

No, actually my response was: "It's a breach of trust If I haven't vetted that approach with the players." Which you seem to be saying as well. Where we differ is this statment:

Quote from: JimBobOzIf, when you started the game, you told the players that you'd follow every dice roll that came up, then fair enough you should go ahead and do that.

See, I believe that "play the rules as written" is the default assumption in any game. So it's important to obtain a clear consensus for deviating from that, but it's pretty safe territory to stick to the book. If someone had a problem with me doing that, I could quite reasonably say, "look, it's right here on page 115. Nobody ever said we were going to ignore that rule." (Note that these are mostly new roleplayers. If I was running a game with my regular group, I would adjust my assumptions drastically to account for what I know of their particular built-up traditions and understandings.)

So I'm not rejecting or ignoring your advice; far from it. But the first step in even considering using it is getting the whole group on board. And that means, for starters, determining if this is even as big a deal for them as it is for me, and if it is, whether that solution is amenable to them. Hell, I'm not even sure it's amenable to me. I think I like Malleus' solution far better.

I think where we got off on the wrong foot is all this dogmatism: you charged in here going, "Fudge the dice!" Not, "well, you could try Fudging the dice." No, it was all "Do it! Fudge them! It's the only solution!" Whereas this is patently bnot the case. At least two other solutions are evident: change the rules so you get the desired results without fudging, or employ descriptive techniques to get around the dice results problem. Your stance, however more eloquently stated, is just as One-True-Way as Sett's, man.

But anyway. I've got all the potential solutions I could ever want, so the minor mission is solved. The bigger picture, no one finds as interesting as I do. Them's the breaks.

Thanks, all!

Peace,
-Joel

Melinglor,

You are approaching the game from an angle, that is conflicting with it´s intent. Monsters are problems and adversaries, not a scripted bang.

The saving throws and attack roles etc. are there to determine an outcome, that is out of your control. Via this route, the extrapolated events gain a certain kind of veracity, that has got shit to do with your imagined sequence of events.

The models in D&D are not for the creation of "cool stuff Melinglor would like to happen". Rather, they are an engine for the creation of conflictious situations wherein a buttload of range of possible outcomes can originate.

The whole point of this engine becomes moot when you are only willing to accept certain kinds of outcomes, meritful as your intentions might be.

So, either you stick to the model, live in and with it, cherish the results it produces as a task to elucidate upon, or you better not use the model at hand.

Both ways have their merits, you jsut have to decide.

Think about Traveller: Wouldn´t it be cool to buy Quantastonium crystals at Bellerophon? but the trade table said: "2d6 tons of hofflepoffle meat, dry frozen."
The point in Traveller is then to game with the hofflepoffle meat and make that fun and interesting. Your idea for the Q-crystals isn´t what this trade system is about.
What do you get in return for this "loss of control", you might ask?

A different kind of fun. The fun of an immersive quality that is based upon verisimilitude and veracity of the results within the game world.

Like, sometime in your campaign, som player will critically hit a totally overmighty enemy, destroying him when they all should most likely have died. This victory will be the sweetest thing for the players! Don´t take it away from them in D&D.
If success and awesome is governed by the rules, there also must be failure , unexpected results, and disappointements.

Surely, D&D´s dice mechanisms are very well thought out, so that very quickly the law of large numbers and averages will come to fruition.

Play more, and you´ll see it, if you care for that stuff, that is.

Quote from: SettembriniThe models in D&D are not for the creation of "cool stuff Melinglor would like to happen". Rather, they are an engine for the creation of conflictious situations wherein a buttload of range of possible outcomes can originate.

The whole point of this engine becomes moot when you are only willing to accept certain kinds of outcomes, meritful as your intentions might be.

So, either you stick to the model, live in and with it, cherish the results it produces as a task to elucidate upon, or you better not use the model at hand.

Both ways have their merits, you jsut have to decide.

Well, see, I only approach games for the promise of "cool stuff Melinglor would like to happen". I think that's true of pretty much anybody. This doesn't contradict your post; 'cool stuff that Settembrini wants to happen" just happens to include--perhaps exclusively--negotiated challenges based on things like hard adherence to a set of randomized elements to produce surprising results. That's cool. But giving up on cool things happen isn't on the table for me, shouldn't be on the table for anyone. Revising my expectations would just mean aligning my cross-hairs on a different set of "cool stuff."

So yeah, you're right that if D&D isn't set up to give me the "cool stuff" that I want, I should either ditch it or pursue the "cool stuff" it does offer. This thread is among other things an exploration of what ways D&D possibly can give me this particular set of "cool stuff." I think there are several viable solutions in the thread, ranging from specific rules-emphasis to narrative techniques. And don't think that getting my "cool stuff" necessarily entails being "only willing to accept certain kinds of outcomes." I'm all about uncertainty and letting the dice fall where they may. D&D is about negotiating challenges, and I by no means intend to undermine that. I just think that the challenges can be dressed up in a narrative skin that also satisfies this other goal of mine, and that's exactly what I intend to do.

Peace,
-Joel

There are a couple of ways you can deal with the problem of failure in D&D. Let me ask you a question, first, though.

How willing are you to engage in some amount of system mastery?

(EDIT for clairity: I have different advice based on different answers. There are a lot of ways to go in D&D.)

Hmm. For myself, to some length, though there's probably a limit. For my players, probably rather less. I've got one veteran player who I'd think groks the system after all this time, but since I have to tell him something like "No, there is no 'facing' in D&D! You threaten all the squares around you!" like every week, I'd say not. And the other two are new to this whole thing, and seem somewhat willing to learn and assimilate rules and such, but generally just want to come up with simple plans and have fun. The Gnome player sepecially is really keen on coming up with elaborate and amusing pranking/combat schemes in the abstract, which convert somewhat clumsily into game mechanics. But he's just all about the gonzo plan, and I want to support that, so I do the system-crunching to make it work and give him something to roll for it.

I guess that's a kind of long and roundabout answer, but there it is. To give you something of a guage, when considering actual applicability to this player group, I had to distill all Abyssal Maw's copious advice down to "encourage them to use Aid Another."

Peace,
-Joel

I understand what you're saying, though.

Here's what I have to say, then. "Dude, you're going to continue to have trouble." I say that without any malice whatsoever, too, because I've had the same problems in the past. More then once, I've had a player that's got no interest in really learning to crunch those rules but she's great at the table and enjoys playing a bunch and, well, we're playing D&D so that's what she's playing.

It comes down to her describing what she wants, and me mostly making the mechanical decisions for her as the DM. (Which nobody feels is cheating, because, well, it's complicated. I crunch the numbers real quick and give some odds, and she makes all the decisions. I just can tell a good action from a poor one.)

You look like you'd have to do that for everyone, which is going to be a Serious issue. Becuase, what it comes down to is that D&D is a lot of work. The most chairitable way to look at it is that character generation is a mini-game, but what it boils down to is that the player is always making decisions. They've got X number of Feats, they have (Y+Z) number of Skill Points, and 11 spells per day divided by power. If you don't derive fun from making those decisions but rather view them as something to overcome, you're fighting the system.

That's the issue. It looks like your players are fighting the system in order to get what they want. You either work with it, ignore it (and play poorly, in a statistical sense), or find another bag.

Simply put, my hooded hippy friend, you might want to look into a system with less crunch for your players to digest. If I pulled a book off my shelf to recommend, I'd say maybe Tri-Stat would be easier to play. It's got some crunch to it, but the results are fairly easy to recognize while D&D has a lot of what I consider to be hidden implications for the mechanical choices you make. I can eleborate, but I think you already understand what I'm talking about. The failure you're experiancing is likely the result of poorly designed characters, which you'd either have to go back and alter or just suck it up.

Now, if you've got the sheets on hand and post the player's design goals, it's likely you can get some mechanical help. I'd be happy to look into my books and see if I could help, for instance.

I also have an alpha draft of a game called Dream on my website. I can offer a lot of choices because my collection really isn't optimized in that angle. (I have a lot of d20, a lot of Mage, Exalted, and Tri-Stat with some smatterings of other stuff.)

Or FATE. FATE is really excellent, and I genuinely think many people who have a global dissatisfaction with the d20 system would be happier off playing it.

If you can drag your players into the Great Unknown of a new rule system, a lot of options open up.
*cough*Savage Worlds*cough*
=

I have to concur with others that it sounds like you lean towards a more rules-lite system.  

However, a general comment here about saving throws.  I think one of the key problems with Melinglor's original "stuff that almost happened" is that it's based on the all-or-nothing saves.  In contrast, some other games are built around powers which reliably work, but have a varying degree of success.  For example, in the HERO System, you'll roll your Mind Control dice to see how much you influence the target by.  (This is probably not the system for Melinglor since it's also really crunchy, but it was the example that sprang to mind.)

There're no absolutes here. Just change things to suit your style of play. For the example of the charm effect, you could rule that the default charm duration is 10 rounds (it's a special ability), even if the save is made. A fail and you go by the books decription. The PC makes a save and you subtract the margin of his success from 10 rounds. So, if he made the save by 4 points, then he's still charmed for 6 rounds. Alternatively, you could draw up a simple little chart for the power. A save stops total charm, but a save by 1-3 means that the PC affected will try to discourage his friends from a certain type of action against the charmer, save by 4-6 and he simply will not co-operate with the charmer, but will refrain from physically harming it. Save by more than 6 and the charm has no effect.

That took a couple of minutes to think of, so just come pre-armed to the session with stuff like that. And be wary of changing things too much and facing calls of "not fair!" from the players. They don't have to know the save DC though...

Quote from: PseudoephedrineOr FATE. FATE is really excellent, and I genuinely think many people who have a global dissatisfaction with the d20 system would be happier off playing it.

FATE's really cool, too. I remember prepairing to play it, and it looked pretty slick.

Hmm, personally, my money's on Heroquest. Though I'd love to try out FATE, or maybe Perfect20. I've played a lot of BESM, and it's cool, but not right for this situation, I think.

In any case, I have thought about jumping ship, and I think even mentioned it to the group once (commenting on how the Gnome player would probably love HQ). Ironically enough, the one player who was really gung-ho on this game (that is, wanting to try out roleplaying and todo it with D&D specifically) has had to bail for scheduling reasons. So I'm left with a D&D veteran or two, plus a couple of new gamers who don't really align with D&D's design or goals particularly well.

I worry, though, that if I hop around to different systems they'll never get their grounding; it'll be like, "OH, Joel the crazy GM's got a new funky game engine this week! I have no idea what's going on!" I've already started to worry about this regarding houserules, and have resolved to tone it down.

Also, I don't think the characters and setting details designed within the D&D milieu would translate out of it particularly well. OK, let me be frank--I don't want to carry them over particularly much. SO I think i'd rather carry on for a bit and see how things go in the next little while, and start from scratch if need be.

Thanatos, I appreciate the perspective, truly. I think you're absolutely right in many respects, and if I could turn back time, I would SOpropose another system from the outset. But for now I'd like to take the narrative techniques and rules-mastery suggestions (the rudimentary ones) and see if they don't inject a little bit of what I'm looking for into the game.

Which is, by the way, something to remember: we're talking about what *I* want here, so far. I haven't gotten a lot of feedback from the players on how they're enjoying things. Until I do (it's been rather like pulling teeth so far), I can only speculate that what's bugging me might bug them as well.

Peace,
-Joel

PS . . .and with this post, I officially give up on this being anything other than a "look under the hood of my campaign" thread. Oh well, it's at least a fruitful one in that regard.