De canistro textrinum

[nockermensch]

Or, more clearly: If DMs have power fantasies, they only need to refer to the broken CR and monster creation guidelines (lol, Nonassociated Class Levels, lol) to utterly assert their dominance over the PCs. Over and over, and all perfectly valid under the rules. What force in the universe impedes jackass DMs of doing just that?

Good luck!

Wow I must be a huge jackass since I send monsters with nonassociated class level at my PCs all the time. Since they're not basket weavers they don't die though.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a small replay of what went for 20 pages in that other thread.

Misty, why the fuck do you make so easy for people to mock you? The other thread stablished that PCs mostly survive by the same DM fiat that you seek to curb. I'm not privy to the frozen fast meme, but aren't you, like, frozen fast in this "PCs survive by their own merits alone!" mindset? Wake up.

In my experience DMs that are rigid in their rules interpretation are not jackasses since that feeling of being constrained by the rules has the effect of people not being jack asses

Now your homework nocker is to go suck a barrel of cocks and stop being a condescending douchebag.

Stop being unknowingly silly on the internet with your P -> P arguments.

Food for thoughts: The feeling of being constrained also has the effect of provoking boners on masochists that are into erotic bondage. Is this what you guys are really after? DMs in gimp suits? From the obvious spite some people have for the DM position, this is not surprising, at all. Is this "The DM must be bound and constrained by rigid, unchanging and uncomfortable rules, for entire evenings (ball-gag removed because he needs to talk)" fixation an elaborate revenge fantasy some people developed after being fucked over by inconsiderate DMs?

Because that would make a scary amount of sense. Misty, stop being such a baka-hentai.

[Fuchs]

You are asking him what he would do if he was hanging out with people he would never willingly associate with.

I have some pretty harsh things to say when someone asks me "what would you do when someone starts exterminating all the Jews in front of you" too.

Drama much? My question was what he'd do if a friend asked to change a rule in mid game. Anyone who thinks that's even near anything like "let's kill jews" needs therapy.

[quanta]

Lago, how much of the social contract and houserules do you expect players to specify either verbally or in writing? And to what level of precision/detail?

[Chamomile]

I know that when I started up my latest game of D&D as the GM, one of the things I did actually say was that the D&D death rules were stupid especially at levels where Raise Dead is not available (which are, if anything, more lethal than levels where it is), and that I was planning on changing the death rules to "at -10 HP you either die, or not, based entirely on GM fiat," and then asked if the group was okay with that. As it happens, they were totally fine with that, because even though it was a sloppy rule that basically runs on MTP, it was a step up from getting a character insta-gibbed by an unlucky crit in a random encounter. And I would, in fact, be concerned for the continued existence of the rules at all if I were playing a game and a rule like that was suddenly sprung on the game mid-play. I wouldn't flip the table and leave because it could just be something that no one else thought through before it came up, but it's still better to make it clear what kind of game you're playing in advance.

[Shrapnel]

Skimming through this thread (very lightly), I realize that I am exactly the kind of person Mistborn and other hardcore gamers hate, because I know jackshit about D&D for the most part, and play mostly because I love to roleplay, and find cooperative storytelling (and just making stories in general) really awesome.

So (based on my very light reading of this thread and admittedly limited experiance in dealing with Miss Misty), that makes me a horrid person who should GTFO out of D&D and stick to playing checkers.

But that's okay. I don't give a fuck if someone doesn't like me playing the game. There's jack-fucking-shit that they can do to get me to stop.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago, how much of the social contract and houserules do you expect players to specify either verbally or in writing? And to what level of precision/detail?

If it's something reasonably unexpected or edge-case like asking what kind of penalty pregnant women get to melee attack rolls or how fast can a literate wizard copy a page worth's of writing, none of it. I'll try to come up with something and stick with it. I'm willing to debate it.

If it's something that is to be expected to come up within the course of normal gameplay, like changes to requested treasure payouts or making mundane PC escape more doable, my default response is 'you should have brought it up earlier'.

If it's something that is to be expected within the course of normal gameplay that the game gives the DM some leeway but not absolute authority on, like what kind of scrolls would be available at a metropolis's magic shop if one exists, I try to be as upfront as possible and stick to it. Of course I'm only human and if I make a mistake or someone thinks that it is unfair they're encouraged to bitch about it. If the majority of the group wants to debate on that point I'm willing to stop the game until it's resolved. But I do reserve the right to stick to a ruling if I'm not convinced by the rest of the table.

I'm more willing to cut inexperienced or casual players more slack in on-the-fly houserules or DM calls than experienced ones--such as the treasure payout being slanted more to benefit the new guy. I've ran plenty of 3E and 4E D&D games and I've always stated this upfront. Believe it or not, I've been often turned down by such groups who claimed that they wanted everyone to be held to the same standard. And I've done so.

I've had some unusual house rule requests and additions over my career. I've had one group that explicitly requested me to fudge rolls that I thought were not dramatically appropriate for a desert-based campaign. I agreed only on the stipulation that if someone asked if I fudged a roll for them or anyone I would tell them then and there. I ended up fudging a few rolls, but no one ended up asking me even though I thought the fudge points were obvious. I've only ran one campaign with that specific set of people though.

Back when I played on Tenebrae MU* and Winter's Edge, they had a very lenient player death policy that made it impossible except in plots ran by a Certified Staff DM(tm) and even then they reserved the right to fudge results it it was giving people a sad and that different staff members would have different lethality rates. I played under those policies for awhile quite willingly. I've also ran more than a few games where perma-death was turned off and there'd be some contrivance like the person was 'down but not out' or if it happened to the entire party there'd be an on-the-fly plot alteration. If we're just talking about 4E D&D games these would in fact be a slight majority.

[Kaelik]

Drama much? My question was what he'd do if a friend asked to change a rule in mid game. Anyone who thinks that's even near anything like "let's kill jews" needs therapy.

And anyone who thinks that I'm comparing arbitrary changing rules to the holocaust because they are the same degree of unwanted rather than both unwanted in my RPG companions is a fucking dumbshit.

[Fuchs]

Drama much? My question was what he'd do if a friend asked to change a rule in mid game. Anyone who thinks that's even near anything like "let's kill jews" needs therapy.

And anyone who thinks that I'm comparing arbitrary changing rules to the holocaust because they are the same degree of unwanted rather than both unwanted in my RPG companions is a fucking dumbshit.

Then stop pulling the drama lama out of its stable and use something else to comapre something against, unless you want to appear as someone who takes roleplaying game rule changes way too seriously.

This is about Lago thinking someone asking for a rule to be changed could have been planning and plotting that from the start, lulling him ina false sense of security to stab him in the back with an evil rule chang.

That's not a healthy stance to take. Not only is it not heathy to compare asking for a rules change to pulling a darth vader - and he did pull that comparison - but expectin such behaviour from people you associate with regularily in your free time when you are trying to have fun is not healthy either. Either you are associating with the wrong kind of people, or you might have some case of paranoia.

[Kaelik]

Then stop pulling the drama lama out of its stable and use something else to comapre something against, unless you want to appear as someone who takes roleplaying game rule changes way too seriously.

No you dumb shit. Things you don't want are things you don't want. You might dislike them a different amount, but I am under no compulsion to specify something I dislike the exact amount that Lago dislikes rule changes.

This is about Lago thinking someone asking for a rule to be changed could have been planning and plotting that from the start, lulling him ina false sense of security to stab him in the back with an evil rule chang.

That's not a healthy stance to take. Not only is it not heathy to compare asking for a rules change to pulling a darth vader - and he did pull that comparison - but expectin such behaviour from people you associate with regularily in your free time when you are trying to have fun is not healthy either. Either you are associating with the wrong kind of people, or you might have some case of paranoia.

No you dumb shit, it is a healthy stance. Lago asks people he plays with before hand if they want to change rules, and if they say no, then he is 100% correct that they have been plotting and planning, because they lied to him at the beginning.

He doesn't associate with people who want to change the goddam rules, to of course if you tell him that someone does want to change the rules, then you are telling him that this person lied to him earlier when he asked.

[Mistborn]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a small replay of what went for 20 pages in that other thread.

Misty, why the fuck do you make so easy for people to mock you? The other thread stablished that PCs mostly survive by the same DM fiat that you seek to curb. I'm not privy to the frozen fast meme, but aren't you, like, frozen fast in this "PCs survive by their own merits alone!" mindset? Wake up.

The game can be run with and objective difficulty I know this because that's how I run games. The DM can play monsters with functional tactics and the PC can still not die I know this because I ran games like that and once my players put down the baskets a stated to make characters prepared to play D&D they stopped dying all the time.

As for frozen fast

The shades of night were falling fast,
as through the message board he passed,
a fool with vigor and with vim,
and motto which sustained him:
Ignoratio!

His chin was bare; his beard beneath,
bedraggled as if cheerful wreath,
once full of merry Christmas cheer,
had festered, forgotten, for untold years,
Ignoratio!

In happier games he saw the light,
of well-wrought rules, balanced and tight,
but grumbling grognards urged him on,
and from his lips escaped a groan:
Ignoratio!

"Don't roll fighter," Frank Trollman said.
"A Great Wyrm lingers overhead!
A wizard's needed to fight in the sky!"
Still loud that quarrelsome voice replied:
Ignoratio!

"I'll mount the church-tower; hide inside!
And when that lizard happens by,
jump on him, whilst my army, from below,
fills him with arrows!" (It just goes to show,
Ignoratio!)

A plan, at least, to fell the lizard
(though no plan's needed with a wizard),
Alas fell beastie sees him on the stair,
burns the risers, and traps him there!
Ignoratio!

Oh, curse that evil, agéd genius' guile!
Oh curse the Troll Man's mocking smile!
"It's his fault! Rainman! Somehow I'll prove..
(That's it! I know! I'll use...
Ignoratio!")

The dragon calmly turns about;
the archer army, frightened, routs;
with just one bite, the captain's gone,
leaving grognard all alone.
Ignoratio!

All night long, the city burns.
All night long, the neckbeard yearns
for a warm, mother-like DM,
who'll hide how much he coddles him,
Ignoratio!

But now cold snow is falling fast,
and grognard wishes he had classed
as something with a cold resistance.
Mais non! He's fighter at his own insistence.
Ignoratio!

But now there comes an end at last,
BENOIST is frozen fast!
(His head's still firmly... well, you know)
But hear him yet! He faintly gasps:
Ignoratio!

First used to disparage Benoist it's now a generic term for
1) having you head firmly... well, you know
2) being a grognard
3) sounding like Benoist. (1 and 3 have a great deal of overlap)

With your "he disagrees he must have been traumatized by a bad MC" makes you sound just like Benoist

and that's terrible.

So stop being frozen fast

[Kaelik]

The game can be run with and objective difficulty I know this because that's how I run games.

No one is contesting that you can run a game with an objective difficulty.

What is at issue is that you have failed to present any evidence that the particular difficulty you run at is superior to any other.

You are literally whining that difficulty level 5 is objectively superior to difficulty level 4 and 6.

That is stupid. You have to explain why you think running at said difficulty is superior to running at different difficulty levels.

[Mistborn]

No one is contesting that you can run a game with an objective difficulty.

What is at issue is that you have failed to present any evidence that the particular difficulty you run at is superior to any other.

You are literally whining that difficulty level 5 is objectively superior to difficulty level 4 and 6.

That is stupid. You have to explain why you think running at said difficulty is superior to running at different difficulty levels.

You seem to have me confused with GC.

Nocker is arguing that PCs require DM fiat/MTP to survive in all cases. This is not so. Though if the difficulty is set low due to the monsters being played intentionally poorly then you are surviving on DM pity plain an simple.

I'm not contending that playing on hard mode is inherently superior. I'm contending that most people would prefer to play at least on mormal mode and become upset when they realize that they are only getting by due to the GM throwing softballs.

[Avoraciopoctules]

In my experience, when I put a world in front of the PCs with easy, medium, and hard challenges, they go after the easy challenges, only pursuing the medium and hard ones if they seem particularly interesting compared to the others.

Similarly, when I am in a campaign and have a choice between doing wetwork for the military, hunting down the monster that devastated a town, and investigating reports of new mana nodes on the frontier, I and fellow PCs will joke about the first two sounding suspiciously likely to involve level-appropriate fights as we go off mana-hunting.

[Foxwarrior]

Well, picking the right quest is part of the game, Avoraciopoctules.

Maybe try making the harder challenges have disproportionately larger quantities of known loot?

[Avoraciopoctules]

My point is that if people generally want to play on normal difficulty minimum, why are they opting for the low-risk stuff?

[Foxwarrior]

In-game, they should be trying to choose the actions most likely to make them succeed, and that includes actions chosen at a quest scale. Your question is sort of like asking "If people generally want to play on HARD MODE, why does their Wizard cast spells?"

[Avoraciopoctules]

I guess. If I want a hard game that forces me to be creative or perish, I try to convince the group to play SRD fighters or something. Then we absolutely have to take full advantage of opportunities to kite with horse and bow, engineer avalanches, etc.

[Foxwarrior]

In my experience, vanilla Wizards and Sorcerers with moderately well-chosen spells have exotic enough tools that when you really try to play them to their utmost, cool things happen. Further optimization tends to reduce the number of tools they have that actually matter against opponents they find difficult, so fewer cool things happen.

SRD Fighters really can't come up with totally unexpected solutions to things, because they can only do stuff you've probably already seen in an action movie (if you've seen as many action movies as I). Unless they have magic items or something. I hope you get plenty of random loot in those games.

Edit: Oh! Or exotic locales.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I'll certainly agree with you there, Foxwarrior. One of the reasons I like D&D as a game is the way casters have such a variety of interesting ways to deal with problems. I like playing mages and clerics. I rarely go for bland fighters unless I've only got like 5 minutes to produce a character sheet.

In Ancient History's Crypts of Chaos game, I decided that I wanted to challenge myself by going in with a CW samurai, which I heard was the worst PC class in 3.x. My generic adventuring gear was the most valuable part of my character. I had fun seeing how many problems could be solved with 10' poles, but things certainly might have gotten less fun and unpredictable if the PC had stayed that way up through later levels.

[...You Lost Me]

Nocker is arguing that PCs require DM fiat/MTP to survive in all cases. This is not so. Though if the difficulty is set low due to the monsters being played intentionally poorly then you are surviving on DM pity plain an simple.

I've actually read this thread, and I don't recall seeing a statement like that. Quote, please?

fixed quote tag --Z

[Avoraciopoctules]

The misplaced quote tags, they burn!

[Mask_De_H]

No, what you do is you ask, "so, I noticed your characters have a {lower/higher} CR than their levels would indicate. Would you like me to {take it easy on you / step things up to your level}?" And if they answer yes, you do what nockermensch said, and challenge them with creatures that are appropriate, and if they answer no, you do what LM said and throw out enemies according to what their level indicates to {crush / be crushed by} them.

I assume that people don't want to be told flat out that they are not tall enough to ride this adventure and should play on easy modo instead. It really isn't that hard to achieve minimum competence. I did it on my third character.

Seriously it's unforgivable to play on easy mode unless your in elementary school or something.

Fuck off Reisen, you're a useless bunny with bad ideas about TTRPGs that's only good for fanservice.

edit: You're probably an unattractive dude, so you're not even good for that.

[Kaelik]

You seem to have me confused with GC.

Nocker is arguing that PCs require DM fiat/MTP to survive in all cases. This is not so. Though if the difficulty is set low due to the monsters being played intentionally poorly then you are surviving on DM pity plain an simple.

I'm not contending that playing on hard mode is inherently superior. I'm contending that most people would prefer to play at least on mormal mode and become upset when they realize that they are only getting by due to the GM throwing softballs.

I know it's hard to keep track when you are posting under two names, but under this name you said "What you do is still send standard encounters at the party and let them be crushed brutally by the game. Then you set their artfully woven baskets on fire and gind their faces into the ashes."

You are contending that when people don't want to play on normal difficulty, the only correct response is to grind them into dust and make them.

That is you demanding that everyone play on 5 instead of 3, even if the entire party wants to play on 3.

[Foxwarrior]

Why haven't you addressed my distinction between Supplementary MTP and Replacement MTP, Nockermensch?

I think I might have a better comparison of MTPs here, anyway:

Let's say that the rules as already defined by the group declare that a PC dies, because that's a popular example.

You could say "but wait, that doesn't really happen" and simply change it. It's a horrible violation which calls into question whether the rules actually matter, and it is boring. Please discourage it in your hypothetical MTP section.

You could say "but wait, there's a necromantic cyborg shop just around the corner". That's amusing, especially if you have prior and future campaign relevance for necromantic cyborg technology, but otherwise it also clogs up the setting with unrelated trivia. And it somewhat trivializes the death portion of the game, too.

You could say "and his passing will be remembered", and include a couple of scenes where the fact that the character is dead matters. Celebrated martyrdom, disappointed debt collectors or bounty hunters, family members, whatever. Nobody said character development had to end at death, right?

You could just carry on, but that's not really MTP, so it's irrelevant.

[Username17]

dp