A strong law of narrative causality breaks the game.

[ckafrica]

Kaelik: I don't know how you interpreted what RC said about having to deduce which choice is the right one being preferable to 4e can you add up enough +1s to win as an endorsement of Gygaxian "solve my cryptic puzzle in one go or die" BS.

He clearly said

So long as the solution is logical and the DM is open to other solutions that could work, I don't really have a problem with this.

DMs are entitled to have "this way leads to death" sections of an adventure as long as it's reasonably obvious that it is one and that there are ways to get around it; which might even entail come back when you can handle this.

Any DM worth playing with is going to let any player ideas with merit go through, even if it throws his whole campaign (or at least session plan) in a tail spin. Because the game is about the PCs and the interesting ways that the players come up with to deal with situations. Heck the players give me the better half of my plot hooks through their own antics at solving the worse half of my plot in the 7th Sea campaign I'm currently running.

To me the dice and the mechanics are tools to make the players feel more involved in the game. They are not for deciding the overall outcome of the game, because the outcome should be self evident:

The PCs are going to kick ass take names and chew bubblegum; screw all the girls including the queen; make the BBEG into their bitch; and be heroes (if not rulers) of realm.

A game/campaign where the outcome has much of a chance of being much different is not a game that I or anyone I've ever played with are likely to want to play for long.

As a complete side note, I wouldn't make my players roll for a rousing speech if they RPed it well. If they were just like, "I make a rousing speech," I'd make them roll a Diplomacy check or something.

I think that'd depend on the situation. A good RPed speech to the troops would give bonus points straight off. A debate or something would get a bonus to a contested role. I'm not the most eloquent of speech givers so I can't properly represent a supposedly eloquent NPC in the counterargument. But if the players came up with an awesome rebuttal or argument, I'd definitely make it count in their favor, probably enough so that it would all but guarantee their success. If they did fail, I would begin to weave in a subplot of contrivance against the PCs to explain why their awesomeness was fruitless.

[Kaelik]

ck: How about because he said:

Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it.

So long as the solution is logical and the DM is open to other solutions that could work, I don't really have a problem with this.

Granted that's equivalent to saying, "As long as I get something to eat every day, I'm okay with not eating for a few years." But that's precisely why I explained to RC that Gygaxian BS is a very different animal from actual choices, in that it is definitionaly not logical or open to other solutions.

[RandomCasualty2]

To me the dice and the mechanics are tools to make the players feel more involved in the game. They are not for deciding the overall outcome of the game, because the outcome should be self evident:

The PCs are going to kick ass take names and chew bubblegum; screw all the girls including the queen; make the BBEG into their bitch; and be heroes (if not rulers) of realm.

A game/campaign where the outcome has much of a chance of being much different is not a game that I or anyone I've ever played with are likely to want to play for long.

Well I'm not sure I'd want to go that far. I mean, the PCs should have the opportunity for failure, but it should be their own decisions that may reach that, not just "you guys died because you had to roll above an 8 and you didn't."

In that way I suppose I do subscribe somewhat to Gygax's beliefs. I do believe in challenging the players (not the characters, but the players themselves) in giving them various puzzles and such to come up with a solution to beat.

Though I don't agree with the Gygaxian dickery, where you only allow one possible solution to solve a problem even if others would work. The DM should be open to letting some things work if they logically should. Though as a DM you also don't want to go to the other extreme which is just the pushover DM, where the DM literally always allows any plan to work, and the NPCs never counter anything and failure is never a possibility.

There's nothing wrong with playing enemies smart, the main Gygax problem I always took issue with was his random nullification of abilities for no good reason. Like in Tomb of Horrors where he made some traps undetectable by rogues and for no good reason. It was arbitrarily "you can't detect this because I said so." Not even a penalty to the detection roll or anything, you autofailed, no matter how good you were. And that's the kind of thing that made Gygax notoriously bad. A lot of the shit you couldn't see coming and it would kill you. And the only way to avoid it was to read the DM's mind, because often, there just weren't any clues in the actual dungeon.

[ckafrica]

Kaelik: But really the important part is the part I've bolded.

Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it.

So long as the solution is logical and the DM is open to other solutions that could work, I don't really have a problem with this.

He did not say 3 identical doors, 2 lead to death no sale. Having a logical solution is the first prerequisite he put forth and DM accepting other logical solutions is the second. Which is a lot better of than:

DM: the sphinx asks you a DC 25 riddle, something about a dragon
PC: Well, with my Int bonus of +5, my logic skill of 8 and +2 synergy from my dragon lore, I can take 10 and auto succeed!
DM: the sphinx leaps to his death 200 XP, what heroes!!!.

Though I don't agree with the Gygaxian dickery, where you only allow one possible solution to solve a problem even if others would work. The DM should be open to letting some things work if they logically should. Though as a DM you also don't want to go to the other extreme which is just the pushover DM, where the DM literally always allows any plan to work, and the NPCs never counter anything and failure is never a possibility.

I'm ok PC failure but it should be completely of their own making. For Example, in my current campaign the PCs nearly throw away a key artifact because it was sending them nightmares. If they had done so they as they had discussed (disposing of it in a way where later retrieval would have been nearly impossible) that would have been the end of the adventure line and I'd had to have come up with an entirely different adventure. Had they chosen to insult the noble they would later have to go to for help I'd have said they were stuffed unless they could come up with a damn good reason for the noble to help them anyways. players actions to have active effects on the game world.

But having unknown factors affect the PCs which prevents them from completing an adventure is bad. That the PCs neglected to check the wineglass for poison before handing it to the king, because the simply hadn't thought of it is crap (unless it is indeed the plot hook). That they didn't pick up the book on the sorceror's desk and read it should not prevent them from achieve the goal you've set for them (unless they had specific reason to guess that the answer lay within its pages). As the DM you have all the information necessary to make clear decisions regard the world you create. If you do not provide PCs reasonable access to that information, you cannot expect them to act on it in a thoughtful and informed fashion.

When PCs come up with ideas that are beyond what I had expected (and they almost always do), I almost always let them run with them. If it means add a church tower as a sniper position I'll usually do it. If they come up with an idea that really is bad, I'll try to give them every chance to possible to realize that it is bad, because if it is and they don't know why, it is probably because they are missing some vital information that I have neglected to make available.

In the end I guess I don't really believe in PC failure. Setbacks sure but not failures. If PCs are failing it really means I have failed as a DM in properly setting up and running the adventure to fit the PCs and their capabilities.

[Amra]

And that's the kind of thing that made Gygax notoriously bad. A lot of the shit you couldn't see coming and it would kill you. And the only way to avoid it was to read the DM's mind, because often, there just weren't any clues in the actual dungeon.

This shouldn't even be called Gygaxian bullshit, it should be called the Conan-Doyle Gambit, where random crap is pulled out of the storyteller's arse for plot resolution. He built this amazing fictional character who was the world's greatest sleuth, but 4 times out of 5 there was no way at all that the reader [1] or anyone else could have predicted whodunnit because the incredibly tenuous clue that tips Holmes off isn't even mentioned until the final exposition. Everyone else fails, he wins, because you'd have had to read his mind in order to work out what was going on.

"Ah yes, Watson, you remember that drunken vagabond who was hanging around the scene of the murder? Well, the type of thread his gloves were sewn with is only found in Macao, which is how I deduced that he was the merchant seaman we were looking for".

"What drunken vagabond, Holmes?"

"Ah, Watson, always remember: don't watch the murder scene, concentrate on who *else* is watching the murder scene."

"But Holmes, last time you told me to to ignore the bystanders and watch every detail of the murder scene and try to notice if anything changed between one viewing and the next."

"That too, my dear Watson."

It's just the same. "Ah yes, Corriz the Stealthy, you remember that door you picked the lock of back in the Corridor of Death? You should have asked me to describe that door, because it had a symbol on it that secretly activated a trap that is completely undetectable to magic or to trap-finding abilities and that kills you instantly the second you touch the same symbol on this box".

"What symbol on the box?"

"The one you didn't ask me about so it's all your own fault."

"But you said the symbols were all over the walls."

"Aha, but I didn't say they weren't on the box, did I?"


Bull-SHIT!


[1] Although there is one Holmes short story where I was immensely people with myself for deducing the "murderer" before reading a single word of the story itself. Alright, alright, I was 12 at the time, but I bet there are other people here who did the same thing

[Thymos]

To be honest, I believe there are degrees of success and degrees of failure.

What you call setbacks ckafrica I would call small failures (this is just different terminology).

I do think that small failures should make things more difficult later on. Enough failures should probably result in an overall failure at the end. Just like bad tactics, bad die rolls, and a refusal to runaway might lead to a TPK.

The thing is, I don't want a single failure to mean that the players failed completely. Unless it's a really large and stupid mistake.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik: But really the important part is the part I've bolded.

Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it.

So long as the solution is logical and the DM is open to other solutions that could work, I don't really have a problem with this.

CK, stop being retarded. RC said he supports Gygaxian BS because it's better then dice rolling. I told him that actual logical choices are the exact opposite of Gygaxian BS so he doesn't support Gygaxian BS. You decided to start claiming that RC never claimed he supported Gygaxian BS. You are wrong. Yes he also made a completely contradictory claim in the same post.

Frank Trollman: "Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it."

RC: "So long as the solution is logical and the DM is open to other solutions that could work, I don't really have a problem with this."

Me: "RC there is a huge difference between having choices, and having those choices be noticeably different, and DM only one soultion BS."

You: "He never supported Gygaxian BS!!!!1!!1!1!!one!!!!!eleven!"

This is exactly equivalent to:

Frank Trollman: "I don't want to go without food for a year."

RC: "As long as I get to eat every day, I'm okay with going without food for a year."

Me: "RC, if you eat every day that's not even remotely the same as going without food. They are two different things, and you don't like the one that Frank Trollman is talking about."

You: "He never said he would go a year without food!!!!!"

Stop claiming that people don't say what they actually say. It's fucking annoying.

[violence in the media]

When we sit down to play a game of D&D (or whatever), are we sitting down to tell a story about a band of brave heroes who rescue the princess and save the kingdom? Can the princess die and the kingdom fall into ruin?

Or are we sitting down to play a game that involves a kidnapped princess, a threatened kingdom, and a collection of protagonists where the end result may not map to traditional story-time fare?

[Amra]

There must be a chance of failure, the dice must be allowed to have their say, but failure should only be possible at critical junctures. If a PC who is *good* at making rousing speeches makes a rousing speech, the worst that should be allowed to happen from a throw of the dice is that they don't get many people following them, not that the crowd turns against them and starts throwing bricks... unless of course the story is such that getting the crowd on-side is really important, at which point it's valid for a failure to be critical.

Just my opinion of course; different gaming groups have different approaches and we're unlikely to agree on what works best.

[angelfromanotherpin]

There must be a chance of failure, the dice must be allowed to have their say, but failure should only be possible at critical junctures. If a PC who is *good* at making rousing speeches makes a rousing speech, the worst that should be allowed to happen from a throw of the dice is that they don't get many people following them, not that the crowd turns against them and starts throwing bricks... unless of course the story is such that getting the crowd on-side is really important, at which point it's valid for a failure to be critical.

There was a game - I forget which - which talked about appropriate failures.

So if you have a character who's a smooth-talking charmer trying to make a good impression at the Baron's party by charming the Baroness, and against all odds he rolls a failure, does that mean he stammers like a moron, accidentally calls her a ho, and/or spills his drink down her cleavage? It could be done that way, but it strains credulity.

What if (for example) instead he's too charming, and the Baroness spends the rest of the night talking about this wonderful new acquaintance to her husband, who reads between the lines and gets jealous? That's a failure to make a good impression, and it's both more interesting and more in-character than the charmer losing his cool out of nowhere.

[Roy]

The simplest and most coherent way of doing it is to have the dice roll determine how your approach is received rather than what it is. As stated in that example, the smooth talker isn't going to lose his cool and do something stupid. It's still possible she just won't be impressed (not her type, worked too well...)

This also prevents you from being railroaded by having this nice speech ready, then rolling an unmodified 3. Instead it means something about the speech puts off the listeners. Good but not good for them. Or something.

[Murtak]

I liked the idea of having the player tell you what went wrong. Let him pick a reason for the speech failing.

[RandomCasualty2]

But having unknown factors affect the PCs which prevents them from completing an adventure is bad. That the PCs neglected to check the wineglass for poison before handing it to the king, because the simply hadn't thought of it is crap (unless it is indeed the plot hook). That they didn't pick up the book on the sorceror's desk and read it should not prevent them from achieve the goal you've set for them (unless they had specific reason to guess that the answer lay within its pages). As the DM you have all the information necessary to make clear decisions regard the world you create. If you do not provide PCs reasonable access to that information, you cannot expect them to act on it in a thoughtful and informed fashion.

Well yeah, you shouldn't design a quest such that it's unrealistic for the PCs to solve the problem. You don't want them being eternally paranoid of every wine glass being poisoned and having to meticulously go through every single mundane object to search for clues to a mystery that may or may not exist.

When PCs come up with ideas that are beyond what I had expected (and they almost always do), I almost always let them run with them. If it means add a church tower as a sniper position I'll usually do it. If they come up with an idea that really is bad, I'll try to give them every chance to possible to realize that it is bad, because if it is and they don't know why, it is probably because they are missing some vital information that I have neglected to make available.

Well not always. Some PCs just lack common sense. I notice I make those mistakes as a PC sometimes where I just wasn't thinking and it ended up costing me. And I'm okay with that. How I see it, if I couldn't foresee common sense stuff, I should be penalized for it.

Basically my threshold tends to be if I'm slapping myself in the head after hearing the solution saying "why didn't I think of that." then the puzzle was ok.

If on the other hand I'm saying "How the hell was I supposed to think of that?" Then it was a bad puzzle.

If anything, it's probably more important for the DM to be able to get into his player's heads as opposed to the other way around, so he can plant puzzles that his players should think of the solution to.

[RandomCasualty2]

CK, stop being retarded. RC said he supports Gygaxian BS because it's better then dice rolling. I told him that actual logical choices are the exact opposite of Gygaxian BS so he doesn't support Gygaxian BS. You decided to start claiming that RC never claimed he supported Gygaxian BS. You are wrong. Yes he also made a completely contradictory claim in the same post.

I don't know what drugs you're on Kaelik. I specifically said that I wanted to see problems with logical solutions and DMs open to other possible solutions.

That's a preference of PC decision versus dice rolling. And that I consider to be a Gygaxian concept, challenging the player, not just the character.

Now I don't like the Gygaxian BS where you have to guess exactly what the DM is thinking with no logic. That takes away control from the PC in the same way as the tyranny of the dice does.

If you do the typical 3 doors, 2 lead to death scenario, and you provide no clues. It's just a random choice. It's the same as saying "you die if you don't roll a 5 or 6 on 1d6." And that sucks. I don't care if you do with a dice, or you have players make a random illogical choice. In either case, the PCs can't really make an informed choice, and whatever they decide doesn't matter.

What I want is a puzzle that can be solved by the player by thinking. To me that's much more interesting than just "Make a die roll and see what happens."

I can't control the dice, but I can control my own decision making if the puzzle has a solution that you can get to via logical thinking.

[Kaelik]

I don't know what drugs you're on Kaelik. I specifically said that I wanted to see problems with logical solutions and DMs open to other possible solutions.

And I don't know what drugs you are on that you see this: "Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it."

And say, "I don't really have a problem with this."

And then decide that some how that does not constitute agreeing with the statement you just said you don't have a problem.

I don't care if you qualify it with a completely contradictory statement. If I say, "Man that fucker is blue. Good thing it's not blue." I don't fucking whine like a bitch when someone tells me that blue is different then not blue.

[RandomCasualty2]

And I don't know what drugs you are on that you see this: "Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it."

And say, "I don't really have a problem with this."

Because Gygaxian bullshit is when you're guessing an answer without any information. I dont' like that.

If you're given information and can make logical conclusions on the other hand so it's possible to determine the right answer, that's cool.

I don't know why that's so hard for you to understand.

A riddle or puzzle is good. "Guess which lever doesn't kill you" is bad.

[Roy]

What if the levers have clues?

[Kaelik]

Because Gygaxian bullshit is when you're guessing an answer without any information. I dont' like that.

So then why, when someone says, "Hey Gygaxian BS is fucking bullshit." Do you respond. "Gygaxian BS is fine as long as it isn't Gygaxian bullshit."

Why not say, "yeah it is" or "what I like is X" instead of explicitly stating that guessing without information is fine with you as long as you have information?

[RandomCasualty2]

So then why, when someone says, "Hey Gygaxian BS is fucking bullshit." Do you respond. "Gygaxian BS is fine as long as it isn't Gygaxian bullshit."

Why not say, "yeah it is" or "what I like is X" instead of explicitly stating that guessing without information is fine with you as long as you have information?

OK. Here's the thing I talk about Gygaxian style DMing, which is the idea that you should challenge the players as well as the characters. It focuses more on player decision choosing your fate instead of random dice rolls. That's a good thing.

And there's also Gygaxian bullshit, which is the darker and more annoying aspects of Gygax's style. It's where you remove all character abilities and don't give PCs adequate knowledge to make choices as players, so it ends up just being a random guess. That's a bad thing.

They're two separate concepts.

Gygaxian bullshit one might said is Gygaxian style DMing done poorly I suppose.

But I'm saying Gygaxian style DMing is okay, while doing Gygaxian bullshit is not.

[Kaelik]

RC. No, you are saying all that now. In your very first post where you quoted Frank you said, "I don't really have a problem with this." You said that directly responding to a quote about Gygaxian "guess what the DM is thinking."

Why did you quote a statement about random guessing and say you approved of it? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why do you have some compelling need to deny having made that statement about random guessing?

[Parthenon]

The other problem of narrative causality is with successes. If things happen to make the story better, then if the PCs do too well then the story isn't tense and exciting so the DM adds bullshit complications.

E.g. BBEG goes down in one hit so the DM adds another monster or adds in a bullshit reason for him to survive.

[Draco_Argentum]

Why did you quote a statement about random guessing and say you approved of it? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why do you have some compelling need to deny having made that statement about random guessing?

And why do you have a compelling need to keep picking on one poorly worded sentence from a post that overall expresses a different opinion? His point was clear and you being a tool about the first line isn't helping to remove the only muddy part.

[Ice9]

Thread ... feud... so pointless ... losing will to live.
Ok, look - here's what happened:

Thymos: I want players to fail because of their choices, not because of the dice.
Frank: Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it.
RC: So long as the solution is logical and the DM is open to other solutions that could work, I don't really have a problem with this.

So RC wasn't saying the "Gygaxian bullshit" was good, he was saying that what Thymos said wasn't necessarily "Gygaxian bullshit". Can we talk about something a little less pointless now?

[Psychic Robot]

Clearly, we have a failure to communicate.

[Yahzi]

I want players to fail because they decided to roll the dice, and didn't roll well enough...

The point is, they should be in control of when they risk a dice roll. Then, all bets are off.

For instance, when my players attacked a dragon, I asked them to each write down on slip of paper whether they wanted the Big dragon (CR 9) or the little one (CR 7). Of course they all unanimously picked the Big one because they knew that meant more loot, but the the choice was theirs.

Then again, all my game plots tend to be the same: "There are monsters attempting to eat all of humanity, every day, on a continuous basis. So... what's your character going to do today?"