I think that the last post (when viewed like that) hits the nail on the head:

My outrage stemmed from my sense of entitlement.

Lots of gamers are getting used to the "we can defeat anything and everything thrown at us, since we are the special snowflakes of the world!" style of gaming. Where nothing that will challenge them too hard (every encounter is only supposed to use up a portion of the resources of the party, not have potential lethalness!) or risk killing their characters outright.

This, in my opinion, is the true problem.

Yup. Viewed flat-style, the goodness starts around page 12, with a post by chipjamieson

QuoteOh - I would also argue that modern adventure design follows this "let the players win because we are telling a story" thematic.

Old school modules simply set up a bare-bones scenario, then detailed encounter areas for the PCs to visit or avoid. Often times, avoiding an area/encounter was a good thing. But modern design seems to emphasize that each area is linked to the other areas - it is a requirement to visit them.

I know that in my current gaming group, we've had people join, then leave when they discover that they might not want to attack everyone and everything.

Quote from: Three weeks agoYou can see your former henchman, Los Vadalos, raise his arms over his head, purple lightning flaring from the clouds, to his hands, where it wreathes his arms, then jumping to literally hundreds of spots on the ground of the field.

Skeletal hands burst from beneath the grass, some holding weapons, others still adorned by tendons and ligaments. The purple flickering covers all of Los Vadalos' body and as the skeletons claw their way from...

Then the shit hit the fan. The rest of the party is saying: "Oh shit, we need to run for the ships, and have our legions disembark and dig in!" we get the guy whose played with us for only about 4 weekends...

QuoteI'm going to fire my bow at the wizard!

Interrupting me and getting stares of horror from the rest of the group.

QuoteNATURAL 20!

Uhhh, sure. Confirm it. (He snatched it up before anyone  could get a look at it, in direct violation of group rules)

NATURAL 20!

(Now the rest of the group is muttering. The new guy had sat right there when the spirit of an ancient necromancer, raised by the Queen of the Dead (A party member, a 16th level Wizard specializing in the undead), told them that "he who holds the Skull of Uliax shall grow even more powerful should you strike them down."

Are you sure?-Me, raising one eyebrow. If he gets another, it's an instant kill.

Yup, lets see if my luck is holding! NATURAL 20!

From here on out, if you don't roll it where everyone can see it, and don't leave it, it doesn't count.-Me

That's bullshit! I never had to do that in my old group!

This ain't your old group. Anyway, the arrow from the Wild Hunter hits the back of Los Vadalos' head, poking out between his eyes, as you watch his flesh moulders into shreds, and he throws his arms out wide as more....

GOT HIM! TOLD YOU WE COULD BEAT HIM!-Him

We're running for the ship! Everyone gather around the Queen of the Dead so she can teleport us out of here before he finishes his alteration and rips our lungs out!-Rest of the party

Anyway, more lightning comes down from the clouds and hits the suddenly dead wizard, red fire is pouring from his mouth as...

How much XP do we get?

As you can see...

Fucking. Idiot.

The party asked him over a dozen times to stop interrupting me, to stop jumping the gun to kill people before they could ask questions and confirm who they just met (The same asshole heard only half a description and put an arrow into the Queen of the Dead when she was teleporting back) before he tried to kill them.

He turned a level 13 Human Necromancer holding an artifact into a major threat, just because he couldn't be bothered to listen to what's going on. He then figured the warning that Los Vadalos was raising an undead army meant that he should be able to fight him, and to top it all, bitched when after his 12th Natural 20 in a row, I demanded that he roll all dice in the middle of the table.

After Los Vadalos rendered the guy's character down to tallow for candles, he started bitching that I was a killer GM, despite the fact that the rest of the PC's went back to the ship via teleport, that they disembarked the Legion, that they fortified themselves up in a ruined keep.

The guy even bitched that I made him roll a new character, claiming that an evil sudden Arch-Lich NPC whose dead body had suddenly been seized by an ancient and evil power wouldn't have tore away his soul and used it to fuel the Heart of Death (Another artifact that Los Vadalos stole from the party, he stole 5 in all) so he could strengthen his minions.

Trust me, I wasn't saddened when he told us that he wasn't coming back, and neither was the rest of the group.

His crown glory of a statement?

"Any GM who puts things into their world and lets [the players] encounter them that [the players] can't defeat is a killer GM!"

Quote from: T-Willard"Any GM who puts things into their world and lets [the players] encounter them that [the players] can't defeat is a killer GM!"

Reminds me of the time, when a newbie player to my fantasy campaign was a tad bewildered as to why I would introduce an extremly dangerous master assassin if not "for us to rid the setting of this most evil of fellows".

Regards,
David R

Ain't nothing wrong with Furry Pirates, from what I can remember of it.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI'm in the latter camp. I don't like it when players assume that everything they see is automatically intended for them to engage.

I agree. Just ask my players. :deviousgrin:

I didn't say the choice was to kill everything in the dungeon or leave, I said it was to explore the whole dungeon or leave. Nor did I mention having to do it all at once. Neither storyline games nor dungeon games typically require that everything happen on the same day (although there are exceptions of course).

What they both have in common is the idea that the GM has something prepared and if you deviate from that something the evening might end. Every GM should be prepared for the eventuality of the players opting out of what has been prepared unless he wants to be the "we'll have to stop for now" type.

If we diverge from the module we're playing I'll wing it and then after the session ends ask my players what their plans are next. It lets them do what they want while still letting me prepare for it somewhat. I've found it makes encounters more believable, gives me more of a chance to contemplate contingency plans, and build a more enjoyable setting.

I've also found that the best way to keep groups on target is to give them goals they enjoy. If nobody has a tie to the Duchess, don't give them a murder mystery invovling the Duchess unles there's a reward in it for them. Likewise, if you don't want the "explore the dungeon completely" mentality, give them a reason to be in the dungeon besides just "explore the dungeon." McGuffins and time sensitive plots help a lot for maintaining forward momentum.

I haven't checked out that other thread yet, but I'm guessing that the roper in question is in the D&D adventure Forge of Fury. It's the third adventure from WotC (maybe 2nd?) and has a high CR roper encounterable by 4th or 5th level PCs. When we played it half the group died before the rest ran away. Back then ropers were even meaner than they are now and their CR was pitiably low compared to what they could actually do. It was not in a spot that the group had to pass to continue, and there were plenty of chances to learn about it before you got there. All in all it was a great encounter that sparked a lot of hate from the folks that came to D&D used to the various fantasy video games with linear plots and everything beatable.

Good times... Good times...

All that said though ,my favorite campaign to run, and the one that gets talked about the most, is the one I ran almost completely off the beaten path, with just "what are you guys looking to do next" to stir my creative juices.

@Admins: I´d be okay if the thread was moved to general RPG.

I posted the following some years back over at ENWorld:

Quote from: mePlayer: You killed my character.

DM: That's right.

Player: Why did you kill my character?

DM: Because you were stupid. Stop being stupid and I'll stop killing your characters.

Okey-dokey.

Quote from: mythusmageI posted the following some years back over at ENWorld:...

Once I was running a session for a group of friends, and there's this dude who happens to be a total dick in real life, so as expected his character was a total dick, a Gnome Bard called Sir Lombard the Bard, the thing is that he was so annoying that onother of the pc's killed him for being as ass, not me, but another pc, the funny thing is that the rest of the pc's just looked at each other for a moment and then said "I don't care, the bard's an asshole after all"

Quote from: SettembriniSee, I´m not against research. But real research by real students results in

...A few pages at the end of most GURPs books.  That's game research.

Yeppi-di-yepp, Mr. Kornelsen!

I had to look up the image of the module you were talking about.  When I saw the cover, it all became clear.

That module is from an interrim era where all D&D products which didn't have either Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms on them were extremely limp.  Everything about them, from a production standpoint, was substandard.  It was a kind of attitude that if you were buying generic modules, then you'd obviously be happy with anything.

The high level modules were VERY bad about this.  While Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms products were extremely railroady, they were at least fairly well written with lavish detailed maps and generous use of color.  But generic adventures usually had black and white low detail maps with 4 rooms, a few bits of stock art thrown in, and extremely limp guidelines on how to run the adventure overall.

To top it off, "Basic" Dungeons and Dragons was a dumping ground.  It wasn't TSR's flagship product.  I imagine it was definitely seen as the "kiddie" version of a game which was already seen as only for 13 year olds.  So, you're effectively complaining that the pen & paper version of the Barney the Dinosaur show isn't up to your expectations.

This wasn't really much of a change for TSR.  They were only treating Basic D&D the way that gamers had for the past several years.  It was explicitly the poor cousin of AD&D.  I'm absolutely amazed the Rules Cyclopedia is as high quality as it is.  I imagine it's mainly because it was just a reprint of what already existed.

Quote from: James McMurrayAll that said though ,my favorite campaign to run, and the one that gets talked about the most, is the one I ran almost completely off the beaten path, with just "what are you guys looking to do next" to stir my creative juices.

So, don't you see a conflict between the general GM approach suggested by the "how to wing it" essay, and what you're talking about here?

Personally I think a prepared dungeon fits into the concept of something you can prepare in advance after being told what the party plans to do next ("We're going to explore the Forge of Fury!" [yes, that's the one]), and which can then be "run" without leading and guidance by the GM. Whereas a prepared sequence of scenes as implied by the essay is something else entirely--something I don't particularly care for, in general. I'd rather see the preparation of situations with characters and intersecting motivations, maybe with a timeline that suggests what will happen if the PC's don't intervene, than a plotted-out series of events leading to a climactic scene.

QuoteTo top it off, "Basic" Dungeons and Dragons was a dumping ground. It wasn't TSR's flagship product. I imagine it was definitely seen as the "kiddie" version of a game which was already seen as only for 13 year olds. So, you're effectively complaining that the pen & paper version of the Barney the Dinosaur show isn't up to your expectations.

I really do not concur. Aaron Allston was a heck of a writer, and the late eighties saw the Gazetteers being published. Arena of Thyatis also has quite good production values. The only bad thing is the railroady swinefest that the GM advice is.
Add to that, that the themes in the adventure are drugs, sex, crime and bribery. this is not kiddie stuff. The adventure definitely has a roll player vs roleplayer attitude, again nothing for  alleged kiddies.

What might be true that it was around 1990 that the back of the Known World was broken, and not only is the Lady of Pain to blame, but the Swine themselves, as proven!