The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[PhoneLobster]

The GM is the single most important and deciding factor on the difficulty and lethality of a D&D game. Just by picking the enemies from the CR list he can make the game a meat grinder, or a cake walk. Then, deciding which enemy goes after which PC, he can decide if a PC lives or dies. If a GM plays focus firing enemies he just upped the lethality, if he plays "go after the tank, ignore the squishies" he cuddles players.

well, this is indisputable fact.

Unless you are lord Mistborn. In the OP. Claiming he is playing in hard core "objective" games. And not being coddled. Despite his very low death rates that match up with... being coddled...

[zugschef]

that's not necessarily a reason for this monster or npc to go after their hated subject first. it actually could be the opposite. and on top of that, humans have the weird tendency to find patterns in completely random sequences. unless you use your rng openly in front of your players to determine the first victim, they will recognize a pattern whether it was determined randomly or not.

People make up patterns where none are too.

that's exactly what i was saying (--> "humans have the weird tendency to find patterns in completely random sequences").

[zugschef]

We usually use dice to determine the target of unintelligent monsters. Usually it's weighted if some targets are less appealing - further away, more threatening etc.

a mindless zombie (undead hating all life option) who isn't controlled will always attack the victim to which it can get fastest. an animal will attack the one who is the reason for its attack, wether that is fear -- in which case the victim is obvious --, hunger -- in which case the victim will be the easiest prey (and some beings simply do not even make sense as prey, such as a warforged) --, etc.

the only time i'd consider using a random method to determine the victim, would be if you had two almost identical characters going side by side (two gnomes in wizard robes, for instance), the attacker would have pretty much the same distance to both of them and the attacker doesn't have any reason to make any difference between them.

[Mistborn]

Unless you are lord Mistborn. In the OP. Claiming he is playing in hard core "objective" games. And not being coddled. Despite his very low death rates that match up with... being coddled...

PL stop lying

As I have clearly explained the death rate is determined by two things, the objective difficulty of a game and the ability of PCs to handle that difficulty. As is perfectly obvious to anyone with a brain.

Apparently though PL just can't stop being a lying asshole even if it makes him sound like an idiot.

[nockermensch]

Unless you are lord Mistborn. In the OP. Claiming he is playing in hard core "objective" games. And not being coddled. Despite his very low death rates that match up with... being coddled...

PL stop lying

As I have clearly explained the death rate is determined by two things, the objective difficulty of a game and the ability of PCs to handle that difficulty. As is perfectly obvious to anyone with a brain.

Apparently though PL just can't stop being a lying asshole even if it makes him sound like an idiot.

And what comprises this "objective difficulty of a game"? What's the DM's role on it?

[Foxwarrior]

If I was allowed to guess, the DM gets to choose the objective difficulty of the game.

[Mistborn]

If I was allowed to guess, the DM gets to choose the objective difficulty of the game.

I'm Sorry. I Thought That Was Obvious.

[nockermensch]

If I was allowed to guess, the DM gets to choose the objective difficulty of the game.

I'm Sorry. I Thought That Was Obvious.

So you also agree with Fuchs' assertion that "The GM is the single most important and deciding factor on the difficulty and lethality of a D&D game."

[Username17]

If I was allowed to guess, the DM gets to choose the objective difficulty of the game.

I'm Sorry. I Thought That Was Obvious.

So you also agree with Fuchs' assertion that "The GM is the single most important and deciding factor on the difficulty and lethality of a D&D game."

No. Because Fuchs is a liar and a cheater. He argues for the sake of argument and his argument is both for and against all kinds of shit. Until he stops using a "moving target" of definitions, I can't agree with anything he says, even if a single statement is transiently reasonable sounding.

As for the MC being the "single most important and deciding factor", that's trivially false. Obviously, player veto also has the final word and thus the MC is not the single deciding factor. If the players don't want to play at a difficulty that the MC is offering, they just won't. Anyone who claims that the MC is "the deciding factor" for basically anything has their head up their ass. The MC has a lot of leeway in most cases, but it's not unlimited or final in any real sense. The MC could announce "rocks fall and you all die", but they'd be instantly deposed as MC and the declaration would be revoked. While theoretically infinite, the actual range of allowable MC decisions is relatively constricted, and the constraining factors are written rules and player expectations.

But that's not actually important. The key take home is that Fuchs still hasn't come to terms with the fact that he's dead fucking wrong about how probability works, dead fucking wrong about what death in cooperative storytelling games means, and dead fucking wrong about being justified for being a cock to people he suspects might introduce story elements he doesn't like at some point in the future. Also: presenting a moving target of definitions of terms doesn't make you clever: it makes you an asshole.

-Username17

[Mistborn]

This is a surprise. I thought Frank had abandoned thread already, since your still here quick question.

I stated that the death rate in a campaign was determined by the "objective difficulty" and the PCs optimization level. Am I wrong about this or is this just one of those totally uncontroversial statements that Fuchs et al. sperg out over?

[Avoraciopoctules]

I stated that the death rate in a campaign was determined by the "objective difficulty" and the PCs optimization level. Am I wrong about this or is this just one of those totally uncontroversial statements that Fuchs et al. sperg out over?

There are other factors that can affect death rate. For instance, how drunk people get before they start the game.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Not necessarily an objection, but a statement of my views: I think:

• There is an instantaneous objective difficulty to any D&D game
• That difficulty is not the same for all games
• Mister Cavern can change that difficulty during a game, even without realizing it.

[nockermensch]

I stated that the death rate in a campaign was determined by the "objective difficulty" and the PCs optimization level. Am I wrong about this or is this just one of those totally uncontroversial statements that Fuchs et al. sperg out over?

There are other factors that can affect death rate. For instance, how drunk people get before they start the game.

• Is the DM feeling motivated or tired?
• Did the DM learn a new trick this week?
• Is a player sleeping with the DM's ex?
• Are all players sleeping with the DM's ex?

[zugschef]

As for the MC being the "single most important and deciding factor", that's trivially false. Obviously, player veto also has the final word and thus the MC is not the single deciding factor.

the way i read it, the word "most" defines not only the word "important" but also the word "deciding", which is the reason why i agree with fuchs' statement. the way fuchs worded his statement, the gm is not the "single" but the main factor. i can agree with that.

[Wrathzog]

I stated that the death rate in a campaign was determined by the "objective difficulty" and the PCs optimization level. Am I wrong about this or is this just one of those totally uncontroversial statements that Fuchs et al. sperg out over?

Other than confusing terminology, you're just missing how the DM handles encounters at run-time. For example, a Balor in one DM's hands can be run like a Retarded Brute while a Balor in another DM's hands is probably going to drop mother fuckers.

and Avoraciopoctules makes a good point. If you have a player in the group who constantly makes bad decisions (perhaps because he's drunk), that makes the game deadlier because he's potentially forcing the party into really dangerous situations. Replace Inebriation with any number of things... Like Has Issues with Authority Figures, is a Troll, is Mentally Handicapped, etc, etc.
So, Player Optimization is only part of a bigger part of this equation.

Actually, you can probably just put it down to DM input and Player input with some subcategories.

[Whatever]

It's trivially true to say that games are governs by inputs from:

-DM
-Players
-Rules
-Random Number Generator

And that's it. There's nothing else that could possibly contribute, unless you're getting kicked out of classrooms by the janitor.

[wotmaniac]

Has anyone actually defined[/i] "objective difficulty in RPGs"? And if so, has there been any consensus?

It doesn't look like it (but correct me if I'm wrong); so, I propose a new thread, divorced from all the "Team LiveForever-vs-Team DeadForever" baggage.

[Username17]

I stated that the death rate in a campaign was determined by the "objective difficulty" and the PCs optimization level. Am I wrong about this or is this just one of those totally uncontroversial statements that Fuchs et al. sperg out over?

Weeeelllllll... that depends on your definitions. If you define "objective difficulty" post hoc, then your statement is indeed essentially a tautology. But if you split it out proctor hoc, there are lots of things that impact things. There may be 24 Bugbears, but the DM isn't necessarily going to remember to have all of them act every round. Post hoc, that sort of mistake definitely made the encounter less objectively difficult, but in the setup of the encounter it would be hard to account for the fact that was going to happen.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

But that's not actually important. The key take home is that Fuchs still hasn't come to terms with the fact that he's dead fucking wrong about how probability works, dead fucking wrong about what death in cooperative storytelling games means, and dead fucking wrong about being justified for being a cock to people he suspects might introduce story elements he doesn't like at some point in the future. Also: presenting a moving target of definitions of terms doesn't make you clever: it makes you an asshole.

-Username17

I really wonder if you are actually playing roleplaying games at all. You are so out of phase with the realities of games it's pathetic. Yes, the players can veto a decision - but how could they know what exactly the GM is thinking when he decides the opponents and their targets? How do they control that the GM is not, knowingly or unknowingly, straying from their agreed Level of challenge? (Not to mention that it's not exactly an easy task to fine tune challenges to that degree.) Do they simply veto any result that they do not like, even though it could have come simply from the dice falling where they did, and not any malicious deeds of the GM? Wasn't it you who called that sort of thing "cheating" and "throwing a tantrum"?

It's also pathetic how you simply cannot understand that I am not playing in whatever style you may play, or may have played at some time in the past, where people drop out left and right and may not last to form a steady group. I am running campaigns that last for years, over a decade in some cases with the same players. Weekly sessions.

That means that in my campaign, if you have a 1 in 20 chance to die in each fight, anyone sane can, given the parameters of the campaign, safely assume you will not beat the odds forever.

Yes, if I was playing one-shots and pick-up games where I could not count on my players staying for more than a dozen or two sessions, I would not expect a random death character to die before the player drops out anyway. But as I keep pointing out my campaigns are not like that. And I plan according to my experiences, not yours, when it comes to my games.

[Kaelik]

Oh Fuchs is back in this thread. That's nice.

Hey Fuchs, since you are back, I don't suppose you would be willing to answer the following question:

Hey Fuchs, if hypothetically, one of your players wanted to let the dice fall where they may in D&D 3.5, thus suffering the possibility that his character might die, and frankly, could be raised or not, depending on the circumstances including his personal opinion, would you Fuchs, DMing for this hypothetical player, deliberately and intentionally invest less time and prep work into his character before he ever died?

Or what that be a dick thing to do that only dicks would do?

Would you be willing to take a strong stance against dickish DMing by explicitly stating that this would be wrong?

Or do you actually think that you would probably do it, but you have realized that defending that completely untenable dickery isn't going to fly, so you have quietly stopped advocating it, but still believe it is what you would do?

In other words, is this statement here:

if a player wants the dice to fall where they may and risk his character dieing in every combat I will do that for his character - for his character only. I'll also tell him though that I'll not invest much in his character either

You know, this one:

if a player wants the dice to fall where they may and risk his character dieing in every combat I will do that for his character - for his character only. I'll also tell him though that I'll not invest much in his character either

This one:

if a player wants the dice to fall where they may and risk his character dieing in every combat I will do that for his character - for his character only. I'll also tell him though that I'll not invest much in his character either

An accurate statement of your views or not?

[ckafrica]

Or, Fuch, rather than answering Kaelik's standard asshole drivel and completely waste your time, how do you house rule your game to achieve a non-existent PC-death count? Do you have a set of specific rules that you let your players know about which produce your low lethality?

[Mistborn]

Or, Fuch, rather than answering Kaelik's standard asshole drivel and completely waste your time, how do you house rule your game to achieve a non-existent PC-death count? Do you have a set of specific rules that you let your players know about which produce your low lethality?

He has no hose rules, he just say "that didn't happen" when the PCs would die.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Fuchs, I have a question:

For you, is integrating a character into the campaign a one-time investment of time or an ongoing investment of time?

[nockermensch]

What the hell, Misty. In the Thread I Cannot Post On you just made basically the same argument I did on this thread, a few pages ago:

This is where I'll go on a tangent here and point that kind of idiotic discussion is a direct result of bad game design and bad marketing (up to this day people aren't even sure of what kind of game D&D is) joining forces to deliver a big steaming cup of cognitive dissonance called "D&D" to people everywhere.

But despite this historical failure to deliver, the promise behind D&D (play heroic adventures!) is strong enough that people coming from different angles have looked really hard at the unplayable mess and "resolved" the incomplete product in different ways.

D&D ships as a broken game, and has done so since its beginning. Its scope is hopelessly large to tackle, but this isn't immediately obvious because it takes relatively few words to write: "The DM controls every other character in the game." - For comparison, "In the beginning, God created the world" also takes very few words and you can see how this idea remains attractive to this day to a lot of people.

And because people are very bad at noticing cognitive dissonance and gauging their own skills, people to this day play D&D and have a good time at it, but if you actually go and check what they're doing, you'll see radically different games being played, all called "D&D".

EDIT: added a missing word.

[Kaelik]

Or, Fuch, rather than answering Kaelik's standard asshole drivel and completely waste your time, how do you house rule your game to achieve a non-existent PC-death count? Do you have a set of specific rules that you let your players know about which produce your low lethality?

I think whether or not Fuchs would personally punish someone for daring to want to die is much more relevant to this conversation than him explaining his houserule about how when PCs take 477 from a Vorpal Sword that cuts their heads of, teleports them the negative energy plane where they fall in lava, he just says, and "then you get back up and are in the Prime Material totally fine."

In the sense that Fuchs agreeing that a specific action is dickish would at least provide some marginal benefit somewhere in the world, while him explaining his incredibly simplistic no death system would not.