Quote from: Bruwulf on September 10, 2023, 11:34:06 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 10, 2023, 09:58:55 PM
Now, lets assume the most assholish GM possible (rocks fall everybody dies type), who doesn't give ANY clue to his players and just drops them in the midle of the BBG...

Does that justify in anyway shape or form that players should give consent to being transformed?

What does "justify" even mean, in this context?

I'm not actually defending the stupid X-card stuff. I think if a group needs things like that, it's a fundamentally broken group to begin with. Once we all grew up past highschool ("Haha, your elf gets raped by an ogre!!"), I'd like to think most of us understood how things worked at tables we were regulars at. In essence I agree that consent is already understood, because we're adults and we try not to be stupid, immature cunts.

My contention is that it's a badly designed adventure, and that I don't like heavy-handed "rocks fall, everyone dies" fail states unless that's already understood to be on the table going in. Basically, I view part of the understanding we all have at the table is that generally speaking I'm going to be conforming to the rules and expectations of the game we're playing. The PC's failing and they and the entire area getting turned into monsters might be taken in stride in a Call of Cthulhu game, but not in my average Greyhawk game.

You keep going on about how you would do things in a way that they were handled well. I'm not doubting you would. I just don't think that matters when it comes to criticizing a published adventure. Again, by that metric, all products are equally good, since a good DM could make anything work.

... Okay, maybe not FATAL. There has to actually be a workable game.

Anyway.

I do think turning players into mindflayers is essentially indistinguishable from a TPK. I stand by that statement. I'll run with body horror. I'll even run monster-focused - hell, I used to be an emo black-wearing World of Darkness goth dweeb back in the 90s for a while. But when I've played standard, Gygaxian fantasy D&D, I've always subscribed to the "if the players get turned into an evil monster, they become an NPC" school of gamemastering. I know that wasn't even the rule by the time I started playing in the late 80s, but it's always worked for me. Which is where my mentioning of things like the multiple solutions to lycanthropy, or the fact that vampirism as written requires the player to die anyway. My point is there are clear rules, not just - to overuse a phrase - "rocks fall, everyone dies". Or, if you prefer, "cultists win, everyone's a mindflayer".

Sometimes a DM has to improvise rules. And certainly a DM has the authority to make new rules for new spells and things. But I'm very wary of this sort of DM fiat. And I say this as someone who is about 95% a DM and has been for most of my career. 

... whiiiich brings us full circle back to "what does justify mean in context". I think the whole consent-form thing is equally as stupid as the adventure design. I don't think either one really justifies the other, but I suppose if someone held me down and forced me to run that adventure, I would either omit that section entirely, or else...

Okay, actually, no, there really isn't an "or else". I wouldn't run that adventure as written.

Justify means that ghiving the players the power to refuse a result is justified, it's a logical and good thing.

Now, I already told you we disagree mainly in one thing:

You think it's a poorly designed adventure

I think it's designed with the purpouse of forcing the player consent bullshit and getting people used to it. Which to me means it's a bad design, but if it forwards what I assume is the intention of the designer/publisher one cound argue it's a perfectly designed piece of propaganda/adventure.

Edited to add:
Justify
verb
show or prove to be right or reasonable.
"the person appointed has fully justified our confidence"

So, in context: To show that requiring player consent to the transformation is right or reasonable

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 10, 2023, 09:58:55 PM

Quote from: PulpHerb on September 10, 2023, 09:01:24 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on September 10, 2023, 06:23:35 PM

Quote from: PulpHerb on September 10, 2023, 02:37:20 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on September 10, 2023, 12:20:39 PM
Geeky probably didn't even read WTF this adventure was about. He just read something about "player consent" being brought up and immediately creamed himself thinking this was meat for his Two Minutes Hate. This is how this module is marketed at the D&D Store.

QuoteIn Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, journey to the beloved town of Phandalin, where a malevolent cult threatens to overtake the region. Together with your party, solve mysteries and stamp out growing corruption as you uncover more about the peculiar happenings plaguing the town.

Discover what lurks below in this high-fantasy adventure that begins with the familiar story of Lost Mine of Phandelver and then delves into the perilous Underdark.

For use with the fifth edition Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide.

All books are English only.

KEY FEATURES

• Offers Dungeon Masters and players a chance to test their mettle in a classic dungeon crawl
• Retains the beloved Lost Mine of Phandelver quests that unfold into a brand-new adventure with classic D&D themes and a tinge of horror
• Presents a bestiary with approximately two-dozen new creatures that showcase psionic magic, mutates , and more
• Provides a magic appendix that includes new consumable metamagic items and duergar magic
• Includes a double-sided poster map with the Phandalin region on one side and the town of Phandalin plus multiple dungeons featured throughout the adventure on the other

INCLUDES:

• Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk printed adventure book
• D&D Beyond digital copy of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk
• This preorder grants you Early Access to Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk on D&D Beyond starting September 5, 2023

Instantly unlock exclusive preorder perks on D&D Beyond

• The Faction Digital Dice Pack, 10 character sheet frames, and 4 sheet backdrops

There's nothing in there about fucking around with Mind Flayers. That's just something that PCs discover as they delve deeper into this mystery while trying to save a town. There's not even any Mind Flayers mentioned in the marketing text. I basically had to find the module the guy in Twitter was taking about by finding a review that mentioned the modules actual name. Then search for it by name.

This transformation is just a surprise ending if you fuck up while going after this cult. And it affects the entire region the town is located on. Not just the PCs who get involved. This is in NO WAY comparable to PCs getting infected with lycanthropy or whatever. This thread is what happens when idiots refuse to read, then jump in to vociferously opine on a topic, cuz they can't be bothered with pesky things like facts. They're just in it to "win" arguments on the internet.

Out of curiosity, do you have the same response to Death, Frost, Doom. There is nothing in the backmatter telling you that you're one mistake from unleashing the zombie apocalypse. If not, what is the difference? Before the former is from Raggi and thus you expect it but not from WotC?

Does every possibility need to be explained upfront or is a GM allowed to have secrets that need to be discovered? If in the process of discovering those secrets do the players have the right to effectively X-card the side effects. Can an adventure not have world changing stakes? If it does, is it meaningful if losing has no cost?

I am unfamiliar with that adventure, but this is moving the goalposts and completely besides the point. The point is that specific criticisms about this adventure are being made by certain posters in this thread, such as Bruwulf, myself and others. And those criticisms are being met with gotcha rebuttals that not only fail to address the points being made, but are false equivalences that reveal that the posters in question haven't even read WTF it is that other posters are criticizing. Yet this second group of posters are still shooting off the cuff, confident in their positions despite not knowing WTF they're talking about.

And your response to this is "Oh yeah, but what about THIS other adventure? What do you say to THAT?" When you haven't even responded to the original points. But now I need to weigh in on some other adventure I don't know about on the issue of GM disclosure? When this isn't even about GM disclosure per se. So it's whataboutism AND moving the goalposts.

Go back to Bruwulf's recent posts distinguishing things like Lycanthropy and other forms of transformations from the Mind Flayer transformation used in the adventure being discussed. And Geeky's response to that post for additional context. That's what my post was in relation to. Not about criticizing the presence or absence of GM disclosure.

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/player-consent-needed-to-turn-the-pc-into-a-mindflayer/msg1263745/#msg1263745

You can easily look up the adventure.

My point was you're saying "there is nothing here to warn the player about Mind Flayers". I'm asking if that is a universal, that all adventures with widespread consequences need to disclose the nature of those risks up front. I choose one I'm familiar with as an example. If you're prefer a better example I'm happy to entertain it but my question remains the same, does

"There's nothing in there about fucking around with Mind Flayers. That's just something that PCs discover as they delve deeper into this mystery while trying to save a town. There's not even any Mind Flayers mentioned in the marketing text. I basically had to find the module the guy in Twitter was taking about by finding a review that mentioned the modules actual name. Then search for it by name.

This transformation is just a surprise ending if you fuck up while going after this cult. And it affects the entire region the town is located on. Not just the PCs who get involved."

Mean you think if it isn't mentioned in marketing copy it is not fair game to spring on the players. I'm trying to understand your line of thought, but if you want to just dismiss the question I'll work from that.

I've been ignoring the degenerate retard (visionstorm) but he keeps name droping me, (you got your fee fees hurt retard?).

I'm not the one responding from behind a block in full fire mode at imagined slights from other people. So I'm evidently not the one who's ruled by their fee fees.

Quote
So lets see:

The sales copy doesn't mention anything about mindflayers. Okay, and? If the copy doesn't mention it then it shouldn't be there? So if anyone reads the copy he already knows everything inside therefore has an upperhand when engaging with the adventure. Is that what you're complaining about retard? The players don't know everything about the adventure BEFORE sitting to play it? I knew you were a fucking retard but dang that's some retardation.

My reasons for bringing that up have already been addressed and if you bothered to read what was actually said instead of shooting off the cuff or inserting your own hallucinatory interpretation of what people are talking about you'd know that. I'm not gonna rehash it again just cuz you lack reading comprehension and are took goddamn lazy and trigger happy to actually read before you respond.

Quote
Now lets talk to the rest of the forum, those who have an IQ above room temperature (which excludes you VS and your degenerate comrades who I'll continue to ignore):

It's been years since I ran ANY bought adventure, but I always do the following (even in my homegrown ones):

Present the hook
If the players engage then procede to react to their actions, which includes disclosing any information the PCs rightfully should know previously or have done enough to "discover".
Drop clues for the PCs to follow or not, which includes clues about the true nature of the BBG (because I'm not an asshole)

So in this adventure said clues would include something towards the BBG having psionic powers, finding corpses with a hole in the head and their brain absent, if they capture a cultist or interrogate someone that escaped a description of the BBG, how it was immune to magic...

Now, lets assume the most assholish GM possible (rocks fall everybody dies type), who doesn't give ANY clue to his players and just drops them in the midle of the BBG...

Does that justify in anyway shape or form that players should give consent to being transformed?

How you run your adventures is irrelevant to the criticisms being made about this module. If you're not addressing those you're not really addressing what's being said. You're just going around in circles instead of admitting that you don't know WTF you're talking about, but still want to have your say.

That's definitely bad adventure design.  It operates outside the understood rules in the same way that a "rocks fall, everybody dies" DM does.  I'd probably pass on the adventure and would certainly change that aspect if I did somehow choose to use it.

The "requires consent" is also bad.  Characters are subject to what happens in the game universe.  They don't get an "I'm special get out of jail free" card.

Putting the bad adventure and the bad consent mechanic together doesn't fix things.  It makes them doubleplusbad.  The PCs don't get turned into monsters, but it establishes that "rocks fall" is okay and "requiring consent" is okay. for the campaign.

If one must have an everyone turns into mindflayers event, then the player characters need to have the information and means to opt out by taking appropriate action.  This is part of the normal game process, not the meta opt-out described.  The PCs might find out the nature of the threat before the adventure and have a choice to go do something else.  They might find clues during the adventure with enough time to run and get outside the area of effect if they decide it's not worth the risk.  Sudden unavoidable death happening to PCs is realistic, but it doesn't make for a fun game.

Quote from: Mishihari on September 11, 2023, 02:11:21 AM
That's definitely bad adventure design.  It operates outside the understood rules in the same way that a "rocks fall, everybody dies" DM.  I'd probably pass on the adventure and would certainly change that aspect if I did somehow choose to use it.

The "requires consent" is also bad.  Characters are subject to what happens in the game universe.  They don't get an "I'm special get out of jail free" card.

Putting the bad adventure and the bad consent mechanic doesn't fix things.  It makes them doubleplusbad.  The PCs don't get turned into monsters, but it establishes that "rocks fall" is okay and "requiring consent" is okay. for the campaign.

If one must have an everyone turns into mindflayers event, then the player characters need to have the information and means to opt out by taking appropriate action.  This is part of the normal game process, not the meta opt-out described.  The PCs might find out the nature of the threat before the adventure and have a choice to go do something else.  They might find clues during the adventure with enough time to run and get outside the area of effect if they decide it's not worth the risk.  Sudden unavoidable death happening to PCs is realistic, but it doesn't make for a fun game.

Which is pretty much what I've said.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 11, 2023, 02:29:50 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on September 11, 2023, 02:11:21 AM
That's definitely bad adventure design.  It operates outside the understood rules in the same way that a "rocks fall, everybody dies" DM.  I'd probably pass on the adventure and would certainly change that aspect if I did somehow choose to use it.

The "requires consent" is also bad.  Characters are subject to what happens in the game universe.  They don't get an "I'm special get out of jail free" card.

Putting the bad adventure and the bad consent mechanic doesn't fix things.  It makes them doubleplusbad.  The PCs don't get turned into monsters, but it establishes that "rocks fall" is okay and "requiring consent" is okay. for the campaign.

If one must have an everyone turns into mindflayers event, then the player characters need to have the information and means to opt out by taking appropriate action.  This is part of the normal game process, not the meta opt-out described.  The PCs might find out the nature of the threat before the adventure and have a choice to go do something else.  They might find clues during the adventure with enough time to run and get outside the area of effect if they decide it's not worth the risk.  Sudden unavoidable death happening to PCs is realistic, but it doesn't make for a fun game.

Which is pretty much what I've said.

Except that you didn't.

You pretty much stuck to your guns that this was about player consent and that forcing an instant Mind Flayer transformation on everyone across an entire region was no different than the orders of magnitude more easily avoidable Lycanthropy throughout this entire discussion. And it wasn't till your last post before this one that you said anything that could(maybe) be construed as (sorta) similar to what Mishihari said.

But lying and obfuscating reality to "win" an argument is second nature to you. Because this isn't about having a genuine discussion, but about your Two-Minutes-Hate ("OMG, they're adding woke consent forms to modules now! THE HUMANITY!") and pwning the opposition in an online argument with weak gotchas that don't even address their points.

Quote from: Mishihari on September 11, 2023, 02:11:21 AM
That's definitely bad adventure design.  It operates outside the understood rules in the same way that a "rocks fall, everybody dies" DM.  I'd probably pass on the adventure and would certainly change that aspect if I did somehow choose to use it.

The "requires consent" is also bad.  Characters are subject to what happens in the game universe.  They don't get an "I'm special get out of jail free" card.

Putting the bad adventure and the bad consent mechanic doesn't fix things.  It makes them doubleplusbad.  The PCs don't get turned into monsters, but it establishes that "rocks fall" is okay and "requiring consent" is okay. for the campaign.

If one must have an everyone turns into mindflayers event, then the player characters need to have the information and means to opt out by taking appropriate action.  This is part of the normal game process, not the meta opt-out described.  The PCs might find out the nature of the threat before the adventure and have a choice to go do something else.  They might find clues during the adventure with enough time to run and get outside the area of effect if they decide it's not worth the risk.  Sudden unavoidable death happening to PCs is realistic, but it doesn't make for a fun game.

Even faling rocks get a saving throw. Only thing that does not is falling into lava. The universal rule across every edition.

Quote from: Dropbear on September 10, 2023, 11:10:03 PM
Personally, I would make it known to everyone at the table up front before any game session that PCs are adventurers who face death, dismemberment, and madness at every turn as soon as they engage in an adventure. It is the players' job to create characters who are willing, for their own reasons, to engage such risks for whatever reward their characters will find suitable, and to sit at the table and play the game is to give consent. I'm not here as a GM to hold players' hands as they whine about how they feel about spiders and orcs. I'm here to run a game. These weak-minded people need to either find a way to separate their game worlds from reality, or go play fucking tiddlywinks or something.

Any player that doesn't realize that trying to kill and steal shit from powerful monsters could be life threatening for the PCs is too stupid to explain anything to.  So, let dice roll where they may as there is no saving throw vs. stupidity...

I would like to add that no one forces you to run a premade module as written. I've been taking liberties ever since I put a few friends through Quasqueton.

And while yes, I will not shy from putting the party in harm's way, I will occasionally drop a useful item that they may need later (look, I grew up with Infocom games, you ALWAYS picked everything up that you saw). Sometimes it's MUCH later.

Quote from: Mishihari on September 11, 2023, 02:11:21 AM
That's definitely bad adventure design.  It operates outside the understood rules in the same way that a "rocks fall, everybody dies" DM.  I'd probably pass on the adventure and would certainly change that aspect if I did somehow choose to use it.

The "requires consent" is also bad.  Characters are subject to what happens in the game universe.  They don't get an "I'm special get out of jail free" card.

Putting the bad adventure and the bad consent mechanic doesn't fix things.  It makes them doubleplusbad.  The PCs don't get turned into monsters, but it establishes that "rocks fall" is okay and "requiring consent" is okay. for the campaign.

This.  And yet another example of how screw ups can snowball.  As soon as you start thinking about how to keep people "safe" as adventurers, every decision you make is likely to be a screw up.  Whereas when you acknowledge that these are fictional constructs engaged in fictional dangerous activity, as a game, and what that inherently means, then it is fairly easy to avoid most of the landmines. 

The call out to X-Cards is apt.  It's the same kind of stupidity turned up to 11.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 11, 2023, 11:46:58 AMThe call out to X-Cards is apt.  It's the same kind of stupidity turned up to 11.

At one time, I thought, "you know, I can see a use for x-cards". I thought, con games and pickup games in game stores, where it's just random people shoved together, and there may be misunderstandings of tone and expectation. That's a legitimate issue. I mean, it can happen in established groups, too! But if you have a good group, you don't need something like "x-cards" and consent forms and shit. A simple, "Whoah, let's talk about this... break for a taco run while we talk about it?" or something works just fine. No need for a system, we're all adults, and hopefully all friends.

But then I realized... It really doesn't help for other situations, either. It's sort of like people who have a partner cheat on them, and then try to establish all these rules so they can "trust" their partner again. No staying out after 7pm, no friends of the opposite sex, no drinking at social functions, etc. If you need those rules, you don't actually trust them, and it's a doomed effort to begin with. And likewise, if you need an x-card system, the dissonance between player expectation and GM is too great for the game to survive long term anyway.

So I guess maybe it could still have a certain degree of utility at random pick up con games where you never expect to see each other again...

... except I've ran demo games for people before, and there's a much easier solution. Demo games and pick-up games are softball games. You /assume ahead of time/ players might not want to go too far. If you need to be slapped in the face with an x-card to realize that, you shouldn't be running demo games and such.

I have literally run hundreds of Convention games.

Maybe IQ's have dropped severely in the last 30-years. But the fact that people can't distinguish Convention games from ones private campaign is a huge problem. Seriously, do people not remember the Good Ol' Days at conventions when you'd be sitting there with half-dozen players you didn't know, and some chucklehead would ask if I'd be willing to use their house-rules on something? There was a reason why people cleaved close to RAW (even though I'd often use my own basic House Rules - 1's are fumbles, 20's are crits) because everyone had House rules. Some were insane, some weren't.

Unless you ran RPGA sanctioned events, you had almost* carte-blanche to run whatever you wanted. The *Almost* is the once tiny crack where this stupid situation we're discussing has mined out into a Grand Canyon. That is the reality even back in the day, you had to modulate your Convention play for the randos that were showing up at the table. So you had to moderate your content accordingly. We never needed some authority to tell us what was "bad", it was simply "Keep it PG for kids, folks." (this was before PG-13 was a thing.)

There have always been weirdo adults. ALWAYS. And there have always been minors. Now there are adults that act like minors. Now Weirdo Adults with brains of minors is the norm.

Another big problem is that it takes some facility and understanding to run a good game and lets face it, WotC does *nothing* to help cultivate good GMing practices. Nor is it in their interest to do so. They *want* people playing their pre-packaged pap-smear adventures, like in a Convention. So it makes sense for them to push all their leftist authoritarian nonsense to go along with it.

I'm going to repost my reply from YouTube:

QuoteMe as DM: "YOU FAILED. The ritual proceeds as planned. Make a save vs Spell at -3"

There, now it's in hands of the dice. No DM bias. No whiney players. Just chance. Fate. Done.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 11, 2023, 07:16:55 AM
Even faling rocks get a saving throw. Only thing that does not is falling into lava. The universal rule across every edition.

:-)

But seriously -- I think there's a difference between having a PC killed vs having the PC mind-controlled. Taking away control of a PC from the player is a meta-game issue that goes past killing.

HAHAHAH touche'!

As far as mind control being an issue... I disagree. Entire games revolve around stuff like this - Vampire? Hello? But of course D&D had it cooked in from the jump with Charm and Suggestion etc.

It's part of the game, and the GM's jurisprudence in running the game should be sacrosanct - players can always not play (even if that means the GM sucks).

Quote from: jhkim on September 11, 2023, 05:49:43 PM

But seriously -- I think there's a difference between having a PC killed vs having the PC mind-controlled. Taking away control of a PC from the player is a meta-game issue that goes past killing.

Of course it's different.  BUT, neither needs player permission.