# DM'ing is a skill, not an art.



## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

I had an argument with a friend last night about DM'ing. He'd just come back from a game he'd run and was telling me about how the players did something he thought was a waste of time and just silly.

I disagreed.

We then argued at length about what he should and shouldn't have done and since then, I've decided that I think DM'ing is really a skill rather than an artform. By that I mean that, sure, everyone has their own way of doing things, but at the end of the day, there are some pretty fundamentally key aspects to it that should be shared across the board.

He disagreed.

In my opinion, everyone at the table is relying on everyone else to not be a douche and to contribute to the fun rather than detract from it. I believe this is an unwritten social contract people make when agreeing to get together for a game.

He was of the opinion that, as a DM, if he sets something in front of the players, then it is what it is, no matter what. If he's decided it's a dead-end, then it's a dead-end and he won't alter that for anyone or anything.

So what do you think?

For the sake of completeness, I'll relate the issue that sparked the discussion. Basically, there was a water tube coming out the side of a mountain that led into a dwarven citadel (I think this is the scales of war path so this could possibly be a spoiler). The citadel was occupied by orcs or something. The tube was originally for getting rid of waste from mining and forging. Every so often they'd open the valves and dump a load.

So anyway, the PC's split the party. One half thinking it'd be a great idea to climb up the tube to get into the citadel, the other half thinking that's just dumb. The half that went up the tube spent quite some time clawing their way to the end of it, only to discover it was locked and there was no way through.

My argument came from the stance that he should've made the tunnel climb interesting and had some sort of reward at the end of it. What that reward was could've been anything and not necessarily the achievement of the PC's goal of getting into the citadel, but then again that's an option as well. I said I would've made it a skill challenge to get up and probably would've had a trap or two in there and water hazards, possibly an ooze or something.

In other words, it would've been a fun adventure in itself getting to the end, and getting to the end would've resulted in further adventure.

He was of the opinion that the tube was just a damned tube and that was that. No adventure. Player's wasted their time going up it in the first place and he wasn't about to change the situation to cater to the players whims. And on the matter of traps and whatnot, he was of the opinion that any sort of trap would be insta-kill so he couldn't put them in there. I argued that there should really not be such a thing as an insta-kill trap as it defeats the purpose of the game. Damage is abstract for a reason.

I'm sure he'll chime in at some point to correct me of my bias against his stance, but until then feel free to bag him


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## Fallen Seraph (Mar 2, 2009)

I'm with you here. Playing D&D is a joint venture between the player and the DM to have fun. Working together is the best way to do this I find.

As for the specific circumstance I also would do what you said, I would make it interesting and who knows where it may lead the adventure (this is why I run games like a mystery game too. It gives me room to build a plot and encounters but leaves the player room to do interesting things/both the player and DM build new stuff together).


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## Crothian (Mar 2, 2009)

It is both an art form and a skill.  It is okay though for the players to fail or take actions that will lead them to dead ends.  There is nothing wrong with that.  I would have though just narated that they climbed up, found there was no entry and spent little time on it.  The PCs though could have stayed there till the door was opened and gotten through then, right?


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Crothian said:


> It is both an art form and a skill.  It is okay though for the players to fail or take actions that will lead them to dead ends.  There is nothing wrong with that.  I would have though just narated that they climbed up, found there was no entry and spent little time on it.  The PCs though could have stayed there till the door was opened and gotten through then, right?




It's my understanding that if the door was opened then a big rush of water would've come down the tube. I was of the opinion that that's entirely plausible, give them a few checks to hold their breath and swim up to air or something, maybe take a bit of damage. He was of the opinion that they would be insta-killed if the tube door was opened.


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## gizmo33 (Mar 2, 2009)

*Art is a skill, not an art.*

I don't think the DM should have been so judgemental about the players' decision.  Let them play the game, tell them what happens, and stick to your business which is running the game.  IMO it's pointless and disrespectful to be expressing opinions when you're the one holding all of the information.  You put the tube there in the first place, let the players explore it, tell them they find nothing, let them try to get by the barriers (I wasn't clear from your post that the negotiation of this obstacle was handled fairly) and if they fail they have to back-track.  On with the game, no reason to criticize the players or complain about what happened. 

On the flip side, there's no reason that the DM has to guarrantee an exciting outcome to every decision the players make.  That makes the process of making the decision less meaningful.  If I can sit home, open a jar of peanut butter, and be guarranteed that something cool happens then why would I want to pay attention to anything anyway or go adventuring?  IMO it's the essence of exploring something that sometimes you *don't* find something interesting, which makes it more meaningful when you do, and NEVER a waste of time (since you didn't know the outcome).  That's like saying it's a waste of time to try something after you've already tried and failed.  Getting past that notion is typically considered a part of maturity.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 2, 2009)

The skill/art thing isn't really the issue.

The issue seems more to be: should there be a "wrong way" to do things, or should every path lead to some interesting thing.

I think two people can disagree on this, but, more importantly, I think the best way is to have it both ways.

Sometimes, a climb up a tube is just a dead end.

Sometimes, it is a side-trek to more adventure.

Sometimes, it is an unexpected solution (for both the PC's and the DM).

I don't think there is a One True Way. I think every way is a tool in the DM's toolbox for entertaining his PC's. Without failure (and dead ends), the success is less entertaining. Without side-treks, the game feels like a railroad. Without occasional unexpected solutions, the game feels scripted. There never is a "one right answer." The right answer should be more along the lines of "It depends, which option isn't the one you most commonly use?" Use that one.


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## MichaelSomething (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> I'm sure he'll chime in at some point to correct me of my bias against his stance, but until then feel free to bag him




Then I'll say he's dumb and smelly 

Seriously though, I'm sure people who subscribe to both schools of though will chime in sooner or later.  It's not about finding an objective "true" way to DM, it's more like matching a DM to a group that has similar taste.


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## Umbran (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> We then argued at length about what he should and shouldn't have done and since then, I've decided that I think DM'ing is really a skill rather than an artform. By that I mean that, sure, everyone has their own way of doing things, but at the end of the day, there are some pretty fundamentally key aspects to it that should be shared across the board.




Consider that there are several different skills involved in painting with oil on canvas - brush techniques, color mixing, composition, and so forth.  But overall, painting is an art. 

It seems to me that it is rather the same with DMing.  There are many skills involved, but overall, the activity is an art.

I think the later stuff you have, about the unwritten social contract, is a completely separate issue, and has nothing to do with DMing being an art or a skill.  




> My argument came from the stance that he should've made the tunnel climb interesting and had some sort of reward at the end of it.




While it might have been cool to do so, I don't think it is a failing to not do so.  A DM is not required to make everything the players attempt into something interesting.  Sometimes the things players try just don't have good results.  Such is life.

Now, it might have been better to tell the players, "if you can climb up it, that means there's no water currently coming down, and that implies that the valve is shut, blocking the tube, so you can't get in that way," thus keeping the players from wasting their time.  But again, I don't think the DM is duty bound to it.


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## El Mahdi (Mar 2, 2009)

I have to agree with Crothian, I think it's a Skill _and_ an Art. Actually, I think you (Kzach) made a good argument for the Art aspect yourself.

I think viewing DM'ing as just a skill is what leads to being inflexible as far as on-the-fly story/plot/adventure modification goes. To me, viewing DM'ing as just a skill limits it to strictly an _"If-Then"_ exercise. Using your creativity to go outside the parameters of the adventure, to me is an _"Art"_.

But, I agree with you whole heartedly on the missed opportunity. I would have definitely come up with something for the characters that tried something the adventure didn't have a preset answer for. That's where the "Art" aspect comes in IMO. Using my own creativity is what makes DM'ing so much fun for me. If it was just a skill for me, then I really don't see a difference between DM'ing and _"Managing_" (although, I'd say there is a certain amount of _"Art"_ to good Management also).

I've been in a situation before where the DM essentially punished me for a bad decision by leaving me stranded, with no way to contribute to the adventure, for about 4 hours of real-world time (although it may have been that the DM just didn't have any idea of what to do). So, I have a distinct distaste for situations like that. However, punishing the players/characters with a really tough or dangerous encounter, because of a bad decision - well that's what the game is all about.


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## freyar (Mar 2, 2009)

I don't see much skill vs art here, actually.  But I do see a little bit the difference between gamism and simulationism.


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## FireLance (Mar 2, 2009)

Applying the rules of the game is a skill.

DMing an enjoyable game session is an art.


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## jmucchiello (Mar 2, 2009)

I'm not seeing the art vs skill part here. All I'm seeing is a disagreement on the level of simulation a DM should apply to his gaming.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Umbran said:


> While it might have been cool to do so, I don't think it is a failing to not do so.  A DM is not required to make everything the players attempt into something interesting.  Sometimes the things players try just don't have good results.  Such is life.




By 'reward' I mean something more active than just "It's a dead-end." It doesn't have to be a good result, but there should be some sort of active element rather than just shutting them down entirely.

I guess my real issue is that if I was a player in that game, I would've felt peeved that I wasted a good deal of time for nothing. The suggestion of saying, "Ok, it's a dead-end, you're not going to get anywhere going that way, period," would solve my issues with the situation. With that, the players haven't been led down a road that went nowhere.

But that's not what happened. The DM allowed them to go up and everyone wasted time. It's hard enough to get people together for a game 'cause of life commitments and travel times and locations, etc. so I tend to value the time spent at the table.

So if the decision is made that they're going up and the DM doesn't shut it down right there and then, then I really feel the DM has an obligation to provide an interesting situation that everyone at the table can enjoy.


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## Rechan (Mar 2, 2009)

> In my opinion, everyone at the table is relying on everyone else to not be a douche and to contribute to the fun rather than detract from it. I believe this is an unwritten social contract people make when agreeing to get together for a game.
> 
> He was of the opinion that, as a DM, if he sets something in front of the players, then it is what it is, no matter what. If he's decided it's a dead-end, then it's a dead-end and he won't alter that for anyone or anything.



I don't see how these statements are mutually exclusive. 

Everyone at the table agreeing to be polite to one another, and not to ruin the fun of the guy next to you, has nothing to do with whether that hallway is a dead end or not. One is Gamer Etiquette, the other is DM Philosophy. 



> By that I mean that, sure, everyone has their own way of doing things, but at the end of the day, there are some pretty fundamentally key aspects to it that should be shared across the board.



I think that there are fundamental aspects that DMs share in terms of opinions. Or, simply, fundamental aspects that make a DM good or bad. 

As to the specific situation, and extrapolating on it, there may be a very legitimate reason why *a* DM might choose to simply make it a dead end: lack of preparation. You site a "Water hazard, two traps, and an ooze"; traps, a water hazard, and an ooze of the appropriate level may require a bit more forethought and looking up rules than just whipping out a book and having it right there in front of you. There are only a few traps and hazards in the book, so you can't have one (even reskinnable) for every situation. 

Some DMs also are just _not good at improvisation_, especially Action Improvisation. If the PCs on the moment's spur decide to invade the Lord's Manor, the DM now has to scramble for a battlemat and stats, or think of some sort of appropriate situation; it's easier to just say "No, you don't." Or to smack the PCs down. It's easier to just say "It's a dead end", because the DM has nothing in their pocket. After all, how does the DM change the map on the fly?

Granting the players a reward requirse you checking to see "What's balanced, what's appropriate for these guys, etc".

There's also a certain level of _Fear of Reason_. Your suggestion is that a DM should toss the players a bone, give them something story-wise for what they're looking for. But that something - the first thing the DM thinks of - might make _no sense whatsoever_, or lead to questions the DM has no answer for. If the PCs decide while walking through the State Capital Building, "I'm going to search for hidden stuff!" and the DM says, "Okay, you find a secret door", now the player says, "Okay, where does the secret door go, why is it there, who built it, who knows about it, what can I do with it" - the DM isn't _ready_ for that. 

Then there's the issue of red herrings. Even if you toss the PCs a bone, they might go way, way off course, for all the things you've prepared. See preparations earlier.


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## Pbartender (Mar 2, 2009)

This...



Crothian said:


> It is both an art form and a skill.




...and this...



Kamikaze Midget said:


> Sometimes, a climb up a tube is just a dead end.
> 
> Sometimes, it is a side-trek to more adventure.
> 
> Sometimes, it is an unexpected solution (for both the PC's and the DM).




...sum up my thoughts on the matter nicely.


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## Cadfan (Mar 2, 2009)

I don't know about this art v skill stuff, but I do agree with you on the pipe.  If a significant amount of game time was wasted climbing the pipe and accomplishing nothing, and if the players were annoyed at the waste of time as a result, then I view that as bad DMing practice.  The pipe was a hook that the DM dangled in front of the players.  He may not have meant it to be, but that was what it turned out to be.  And by following the hook they accomplished nothing.  Its not quite as bad as, say, offering the PCs a job guarding on a caravan on a desert journey and then sitting for four game sessions recounting, "Day 23, nothing happened.  Day 24, saw a buzzard.  Day 25, nothing happened."  But its close.


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## Rechan (Mar 2, 2009)

I was running a detective game once. I gave the impression that the PCs were being followed, or at least watched, by some Organization. An NPC was going to lead the players from their current location to a new location, where they would arrive just in time to see an ally get blown up. The players spent five minutes actually devising a way to shake off any tails that might be following them, casting a spell to do it, establishing a code word for "Stuff be goin' down!", and even planned a meeting place in case they were attacked or things went south. 

I then handwaved the entire trip, just "you leave, you get there, dude get blown up." 

After the session, one of the players said, "You wanted us to feel tense; we bought into that, and came up with this plan. But then you basically just put a TV screen in front of us. You should've prolonged the trip, made us roll a few stealth and bluff rolls, make some rolls behind the screen to make us _think_ we were being followed, let us execute our plan, and _then_ use that big reveal. It would have had more of an impact if you had played up the tension we had created." 

After that, I came up with a rule of thumb for handling situations like the above and the Water Pipe, and situations where PCs want to really investigate something that the DM originally had marked a dead end:

The amount of attention, time and energy PCs pay to something unrelated should be proportionate to the amount of narrative payoff they should receive. Because the more time, attention and energy a player puts on something, the more expectation they place on the activity. To have a large expectation squashed is a disappointment. 

If a player, on a whim, just says, "I open that door," when you have nothing behind it? It's just a bathroom. But, if a player spends a lot of attention rolling to hear what's in the room, gauge the temperature of the doorknob, find some sort of vantage point to see into the room, shakes down every guard in the place for the key to that room, then by god _something interesting should be in that room_.


But yes, what you are suggesting is essentially a philosophical point. The two extremes are "I have my story, my map, and the PCs are to find my story, follow my map, and that's the game. Anything else really isn't important and I'm sticking to it" or "I have no story in mind; the world just reacts to what he PCs do, and no matter what they do, something is going to happen."

A middle ground (which is very controversial around here) is to have what's going to _happen_ all ready prepped, but the path the PCs take is just "The way to get there". Let's say that the PCs want to reach the Hermit's House, _but_ you want the PCs to walk into the Lair of the Big Bad Lich first. The PCs come to a fork in the road. If they pick left, they wind up in the Lair of the Big Bad Lich. If they pick right, they wind up in the Lair of the Big Bad Lich; it doesn't _matter_ which they picked, that way is to what you want. You merely offer the illusion that their choice lead to where it was going. After the PCs fight the Big Bad LIch, they walk out of the lair, and take the other fork, and _that_ path is the path to The Hermit's House.

There are variations of this, but the notion is to "draw the map" around the players actions, rather than "draw the map" ahead of time and let them just wander around until they find the right way.

I do think that one key to situations _similar_ to this, is to have several situations planned ahead of time, just sitting in your pocket. It could be an RP encounter, a detail of your campaign setting, or anything. But, let's say, you just want a stand-alone encounter of PCs getting ambushed by goblins. You prep the scene, but don't put it in your adventure. When the PCs don't take the hint "Go to the Ugly Cave" and instead go somewhere you're not prepared, spring the goblin ambush on them. The ambush happens where you need to drop it.


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## Toben the Many (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> In my opinion, everyone at the table is relying on everyone else to not be a douche and to contribute to the fun rather than detract from it. I believe this is an unwritten social contract people make when agreeing to get together for a game.
> 
> He was of the opinion that, as a DM, if he sets something in front of the players, then it is what it is, no matter what. If he's decided it's a dead-end, then it's a dead-end and he won't alter that for anyone or anything.
> 
> So what do you think?




Interestingly enough, I agree with your position entirely - although I think DMing is more of an art form than a skill.

See, I believe it's an art form to preside over a group of friends and get everyone _not_ to act like a douche. It's like the art of throwing a party. Some people throw good parties. But some people throw _epic_ parties. 

Like any art form, you can learn how to do something. You can learn how to get people to get along. But certainly people are definitely more talented at it than other.

But you're friend is just 100% wrong.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Toben the Many said:


> Like any art form, you can learn how to do something. You can learn how to get people to get along. But certainly people are definitely more talented at it than other.




Ironically, he's a lot better at getting people to get along (and with getting along with people) than I am. Now if only we could merge our personalities into one and become SUPER DM!


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

Skill, art, the meaning of (DMing) life,...all these considerations laid bare just because of a drainage pipe.

Hello, I am the DM who's woefull skills have been put under the spotlight.

I am happy to explain the issue and situation in context (as I see it), however, my feeling here is that this is an issue of 'what I could of done v's what the reality was'.

The real question is 'Should a DM change the reality to make things fun for it's own sake?' 

My answer to this is,...ask an orc! The world is set. Actions have consequences which players can influence. Looking for an alternate way in is a great idea, which in this case didn't work. 

The Situatation

The pipe lead to a dead end, because it was 'closed' with a heavy stone locking mechanism diverting the water flow elsewhere. 

The reasons why the dwarves don't trap the pipe is because:

a. When in use, high pressure water flows through the pipe and outflows over the side of a mountain. These pipes (or more accurately, carved out tunnels in the mountain side) have been smoothed by the intense water pressures/flows over the eons. A slimey substance clings to the sides of the pipes (the result of the muck in the water composition, which is constantly being flushed and replaced with new muck/slime). To traverse the pipes successfully, you have to brace yourself against the sides and move at half speed. In addition, rope and pinions are required when the pipe starts going verticle.

b. When not in use, the source of the pipes is sealed with a heavy stone cap that can be opened from within via a mechanism of counterweights being engaged. Anyone powerfull enough to actually break through this cap, would instantly be overcome by the torrent of water (think of a dam releasing water), sliding them right through the pipe system and over the side of the mountain. Anyone secured to the pipe first, would drown. If they can breath in water, they would be pinned down by the water pressure until the cap was replaced. Moving/resiting the water pressure is an auto fail due to the players strength being insufficient.

c. Because of it's use, no creatures have made the pipes home, as they would ineviatably be flushed away.

Two players decided to explore the pipes. I decided to make this a skill challenge and thus reward them for at least trying (with xp), however, they decided to 'take 10' on all skill checks and take their time, use a climbing kit (pinions & rope), effectively making making the encounter an auto success. So no xp, but no risk of certain death.

They were told it would take anywhere from 3-5 hours to get to where they believed was the original source of the pipe.
Two players decided to go ahead over the disagreement of another three party members. The other three were not going to hang around idly, so they continued onwards. I should note that at the end of the game I was encouraged to not 'split the party', as if that had somehow been my intention? 

I can see (at least) half of you pulling out your hair saying 'You've missed the point!".
It wasn't fun. Why didn't you do something about it? 

Did I want them to go up the pipe? No.
Did I want them to split the party? No.
Did I want them not have fun? No.

Did the players actions result in these three things occurring? Yes.

If DMing is art, I provide the canvass, and the players are the artists. They provide the direction and I provide feedback on the results. 

If DMing is a skill, then I use that skill to navigate the players through the adventure and work off their feedback to maximise their enjoyment.

If it's a bit of both, then DM and players feed off one another to maximise thier enjoyment. 

What is this the right approach? I'll let you decide.

So, if the question is, 'should I change things if they see another drainage pipe in the future?'

The answer is, 'no, after all,...its just a drainage pipe'.


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## Orius (Mar 2, 2009)

I'm with Crothian on this too, though I think Firelance put it cloest to my thoughts on the matter: there are a number of skills involved in DMing and using them all together just right is an art.

As for the pipe: sometimes there are just dead ends.  Depends on DMing style.  Is it open-ended adventuring opposed to railroading?  A plot railroad likely won't contain anything unnecessary, while something more open-ended will have more dead ends, false leads and just totally unrelated stuff.  Is the DM the type to try to present a realistic world, or is he just putting in only elements he thinks is necessary?  

Personally, I would have run the adventure with the dead-end intact.  I much prefer exploration to railroading as a player, and I DM that way as well.


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## DonTadow (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> I had an argument with a friend last night about DM'ing. He'd just come back from a game he'd run and was telling me about how the players did something he thought was a waste of time and just silly.
> 
> I disagreed.
> 
> ...



It's a bit of both. Its a skill in that there are fundamentals that are just specific, you have to do to be good at DMining.  But every DM has their way of doing things to perform these skills.  I know a half dozen Iron DMs, all of us have a different artform of dming, yet our level of skill at dming is about the same.   Different players like different dm styles.  

I"m the kind of DM that relishes in the unexpected, but I know of darn good DMs that would have sided with your friend.  The truth is neither of you are right.


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## korjik (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis, do you think that the players got the impression that it was just a drainage pipe? That it was just a special effect?

I occasionally end up with the same problem. My players are too smart and sneaky and they occasionally go off on a tangent like this.

Sometimes you have to tell them it is just a cow.

That is where I think you made a mistake. When the party started to split up, you should have taken an action to avoid that, since the split would end up with alot of wasted time. 

I am not saying that you shouldnt allow them to split up, or that you should railroad them, but that when you see that they are going in a direction that will leave 60% of the party twiddling their thumbs while the other 40% wastes part of an evening of play, you should take action to try to prevent that. You knew it was a waste of time and that it would leave several players with nothing to do for a while. They didnt know.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

Hi Korjik, 

Thanks for your thoughts.

To answer your questions...

I made it plain as day that it was a pipe that carried waste water out of the mountain with significant pressure. They climbed up the mountain side and checked it for archers and traps...and found none

You are correct in saying that they did not know that the pipe was a dead end. 

However, I disagree when you use the defense 'they did not know' and therefore were justifed in pursing that course of action.

Lets look at what they did know. They knew, for instance, that it would require a significant 3 - 5 hour journey up a mountain side, inside a cramped tunnel, crouching at half speed, in a pipe filled with 'gunk', where even if they did meet a 'nasty', they could not effectively fight or if they had their rope cut (which had the situation occurred, I would definately target), they would effectively fall to their deaths. Only one of the two had darkvision, so a lightsource was used. 

More importantly though, in my opinion, is the fact that they willingly left three other party members without a care in the world as to what they do or what becomes of them. This was completely in their control (and had I been a player, I would of considered this completely selfish behaviour and unacceptable). They could of easily been killed in this fashion. 

Btw, they roleplayed aprroximately 15 minutes exploring the pipe (I switch back and forth 3 times), although it did result in the party being seperated for half the game and the other three players fighting orcs alone.

Interestly, the other two players (which were in the pipe) believe they should also be awarded xp for the fight that the other three players were involved in. They believe it would be 'fair' and prevent uneven distribution on player xp. 

I'd love to know your thoughts in this.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis said:


> Interestly, the other two players (which were in the pipe) believe they should also be awarded xp for the fight that the other three players were involved in. They believe it would be 'fair' and prevent uneven distribution on player xp.




Egads. You didn't participate in the encounter, you don't get the XP. Simple. Maybe next time they won't be so quick to run off by themselves.


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## Beginning of the End (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> We then argued at length about what he should and shouldn't have done and since then, I've decided that I think DM'ing is really a skill rather than an artform.




First off: The distinction you're trying to draw seems meaningless to me. Artists spend years training and honing their skills. So the idea that there's some sort of division between "art" and "skill" is ridiculous.



> By that I mean that, sure, everyone has their own way of doing things, but at the end of the day, there are some pretty fundamentally key aspects to it that should be shared across the board.




So really what you mean to say is that you think everyone should like the exact same type of novels... err movies... err music... err games... Right, games.

What were we talking about again?

Oh, right. You were claiming that everyone should like the exact same things that you like.

Whatever.

Personally, I wouldn't want to play with either of you. He locked the far end of the tube not because there happened to be a lock there (that could theoretically be picked or penetrated in some other way), but because he wanted the players to do what he wanted them to do. You, on the other hand, wanted the game world to rewrite itself so that the players are carefully coddled and constantly rewarded, regardless of whatever harebrained scheme they cook up.

I'm a sandbox guy, so neither of you would satisfy my gaming itches.

(Finishes reading the thread.)

Okay, I take it back. Varis can DM for me any time. Clearly he had a sandbox and the players were allowed to play in it. Exactly my type of game.



korjik said:


> I am not saying that you shouldnt allow them to split up, or that you should railroad them, but that when you see that they are going in a direction that will leave 60% of the party twiddling their thumbs while the other 40% wastes part of an evening of play, you should take action to try to prevent that. You knew it was a waste of time and that it would leave several players with nothing to do for a while. They didnt know.




If you decide to split the party and do something that can be very quickly resolved but takes 3 hours of game time-- _knowing that the rest of the party is going to go do things in those 3 hours that will take substantial amounts of time to resolve_ -- then you're making a decision to be audience members for that portion of the evening.

The players had all the information they needed and they made the decision anyway. Whether there was something interesting at the end of the drainage pipe or not wouldn't have had any effect on the 3 hours they spent climbing it while the other PCs were dungeon-crawling.

I had a player make a decision like that a couple of months ago: While the other PCs went dungeon-crawling, she decided to stick in town and make a Gather Information check. Well, 1d4+1 hours of dungeoncrawling chewed up a good chunk of that session. The Gather Information check took about 2 minutes to resolve.

(The information proved very useful and she didn't regret the decision at all. But she easily could have. And she knew that when she made the decision.)


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## Tewligan (Mar 2, 2009)

I'm Tewligan, and I endorse Varis' decision and DM'ing style.


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## Nightson (Mar 2, 2009)

While in most cases XP should be distributed even to absent members, in this case given the circumstances under which they parted I would be disinclined to award them the XP.

But you should also take into account how they'd handle this.  People can have very different perspective's on things.  
In your view they may have seized on an irrelevance, split up the party, been rude and selfish and delayed the game, then asked for XP they didn't deserve.  
In their view they may have seized upon a hook you provided, then roleplayed their characters, then got shot down by you for no reason and now you're denying them XP out of spite.

So be careful, the XP is a small thing, you should be willing to give it to them, it's easy to fall into an adversarial mindset regarding the DM-player relationship, from both the DM and the player side.  It's also easy to fall into trying to 'correct' player behavior through DM control of mechanical rules of the game world, which is usual something that leads to bad results.


And on a sidenote, if you're worried about splitting up the party, have the group come up with a solution in-character.  Something as simple as when presented with two options agreeing to abide by majority rule.


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## JackSmithIV (Mar 2, 2009)

I disagree.

DMing absolutely is an art. There are just more skilled artists than others. I can make aweful paintings, and Salvador Dali can make wonderful paintings. It's still art, even if my painting sucks.

Art and skill are not mutually exclusive. Good DMs have technique. They understand how to craft the collaborative experience of sitting down at a table to enter imaginative worlds and build stories together in a way that is fun and engaging. 

But the end result is absolutely work of art. I am typing this post after I've just DMed a wonderful session. My work of art was was in the way I made the great library of Candlekeep come alive for my players, and how they explored the monastic library with wonder and excitement. My work of art is how they hung on every word for an _hour_ as I imporvised new lore that they discovered while poring over the pages of new tomes. My work of art is how they fell for a visiting noblewoman from Durpar, and how their blood boiled when they discovered that she was a succubus sent to sabotage their efforts.

My art is how they had the best night of their week, because they got to wander a fantastic imaginary world with some of their best friends. And I'm an artist, and that's really all there is to it.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Beginning of the End said:


> Okay, I take it back. Varis can DM for me any time. Clearly he had a sandbox and the players were allowed to play in it. Exactly my type of game.




You might want to understand the term before you use it.

Varis' method was definitely not sandbox. He'd decided there was no possible way in which the PC's could attain anything by going up the tunnel. He was sticking to the very linear story-line by not adapting to the situation. He was following the module.

Whereas I just would've made something up on the spot. And in so doing, I wouldn't lead the PC's down a road that led nowhere...  unless there was a reason for doing so that contributed to enjoyment of the game.

Here's a helpful reference for what 'sandbox gaming' is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_(video_games)


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Tewligan said:


> I'm Tewligan, and I endorse Varis' decision and DM'ing style.




Yes, but that has nothing to do with whether you agree or disagree with what is being said. But hey, I wouldn't ever expect you to keep grudges out of an EN World post.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 2, 2009)

Tewligan said:


> I'm Tewligan, and I endorse Varis' decision and DM'ing style.



Yep.  I might quibble with how black-and-white the Water Pipe mechanics were in this case, but as far as general principles go, I'm with Varis.  The pipe is there because it's there, not because you're _supposed_ to do something with it.


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## Tewligan (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> Yes, but that has nothing to do with whether you agree or disagree with what is being said. But hey, I wouldn't ever expect you to keep grudges out of an EN World post.



Well, since you posted both your opinion and his, followed by "what do you think", I thought I answered that question.  Obviously, I agree with what Varis said.

Also, what "grudge" am I supposedly holding here? Again,


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## Nightson (Mar 2, 2009)

Whether it's a sandbox is fully dependent on whether the drain had that plug before the PCs even knew it existed.  

If Varis had to decide the details of the pipe when the PCs became interested in it then it's narrative control.

The impression I got from reading his post was that the pipe was fully detailed before the PCs knew it existed which would be sandboxy.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> You might want to understand the term before you use it.
> 
> Here's a helpful reference for what 'sandbox gaming' is:
> 
> Nonlinear gameplay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



 You know, I'm not sure that the term has the same meaning when applied to a video game as it does in the RPG community.  Maybe it does, but it's hard for me to tell from that wikipedia entry, because the assumed goal of a video game is so different from the assumed goal(s) of tabletop RPGs.

Anyway, I understood what he meant by "Varis had a sandbox," and I agree.  The world is there, waiting for you to explore it.  It's not going to change because of your actions, though you can _work changes upon it_ by your actions.  (Except that in this case, Varis apparently believed you did not have any tools at your disposal that would have any real effect on the water pipe--which is where I would quibble with him.)

I certainly don't think the pipe should have been _made interesting_ just because a PC decided to explore it.  I wouldn't have "made something up on the spot," as you suggest.  As a player, I _hate_ when DMs do that.  It feels obsequious to me, somehow.  I'm looking for a _challenge,_ not a gift bag.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Vegepygmy said:


> You know, I'm not sure that the term has the same meaning when applied to a video game as it does in the RPG community.  Maybe it does, but it's hard for me to tell from that wikipedia entry, because the assumed goal of a video game is so different from the assumed goal(s) of tabletop RPGs.




To be honest I think there are far too many fine points in all the descriptions and definitions to be fair to anyone. A lot of assumptions are being made on what has been said that although logical conclusions, aren't necessarily accurate.

That's the limitation of our abilities to communicate effectively. I'm certainly not getting the points across in a manner that people can understand as I can see from the responses.

Everyone's understanding of terms is different. Definitions of art and skill for instance, what constitutes sandbox gaming, and drawing conclusions on minutia of what people have said.

*shrug*


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## Sammael (Mar 2, 2009)

"Sandbox" does not mean that the DM has to alter the _world_ to suit the players' decisions. If anything, "sandbox" means that the world exists "as is," and it's up to the players to change it. You know, like children... who make castles and stuff out of sand.

If the DM had changed the pipe to become an entrance into the keep, that would have been an example of narrativist play - the players believe that there should be an entrance, even if there wasn't one before, and so the DM changes the world to fit the players' belief.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Sammael said:


> "Sandbox" does not mean that the DM has to alter the _world_ to suit the players' decisions. If anything, "sandbox" means that the world exists "as is," and it's up to the players to change it. You know, like children... who make castles and stuff out of sand.
> 
> If the DM had changed the pipe to become an entrance into the keep, that would have been an example of narrativist play - the players believe that there should be an entrance, even if there wasn't one before, and so the DM changes the world to fit the players' belief.




Again, definitions and fine points about what people have said can be made into logical conclusions but those conclusions aren't necessarily accurate.

I wouldn't have changed the pipe. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if I knew it was a dead-end, I would've shut the PC's down right there and then. But I also wouldn't have led them up a path with no recourse to a solution, whether that solution was beneficial or not. That is the reward. Negative or positive.

My understanding of sandbox gaming isn't that you change things on the fly to suit the players, for me it's that you put what should be logically there for the setting and scenario, there, regardless of what the players do.

If, however, you say, "There's a path..." you also don't say, "But don't go down it 'cause I don't want you to." That's not sandbox gaming either. If you put a path in front of the players, you have to expect them to follow it.

In our argument (between Varis and I), he used the example of "So you're saying if there was a wall and the players wanted to go through it, I should provide a door?" No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that if you show the PC's a door, don't have it be a concrete wall behind it


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## Thanael (Mar 2, 2009)

Someone already mentioned the term social contract. The problem is that apparently not all involved have agreed to the same terms. The OP leans more toward a "say yes or roll die" stance, while the DM obviously doesn't want to share his authority over the plot/gameworld to this degree.  

Ryan Dancey's blogposts Action! and Show Me Your Stance! are really enlightening in this regard.


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## Sammael (Mar 2, 2009)

I dunno. A world without dead-ends ruins my verisimilitude. Yup, there's the evil word again.

Sometimes, an empty room is just an empty room. Of course, the DMs should not overdo it, because if they do, the players will start overlooking bigger and bigger things. But the DM should also not be expected to set up the entire world just from the point of the player fun.

Incidentally, I _would_ have changed the pipe. At the very least, I would have allowed the PCs to overhear an enemy conversation while in the pipe (pipes are acoustic and all that) to make it at least somewhat worthwhile to the PCs. Maybe discover something stashed into the pipe. Something like that.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Sammael said:


> But the DM should also not be expected to set up the entire world just from the point of the player fun.




Again, not saying to change the world to suit the players. Saying don't waste everyone's time with something pointless. If there's a dead-end, say it's a dead-end. But if you're going to start rolling dice and spending fifteen minutes in complex explanations of opening gates and climbing up slimy tunnels, then have a reason for it.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

Sammael said:


> At the very least, I would have allowed the PCs to overhear an enemy conversation while in the pipe (pipes are acoustic and all that) to make it at least somewhat worthwhile to the PCs. Maybe discover something stashed into the pipe. Something like that.



A couple of good points there.

In my defence.

Whilst I have used the term 'pipe', think of them as tunnels that have been dug through the mountain side. The function, to flush out waste water. 

The PC's did make a listen check at the cap, and tapped at it with a spear. I told them that they could tell that it simply wasnt solid stone above them and further, they noticed the walls had water trickling down the sides (due to the water pressure above).

Finally, since high pressure water gets flushed down the pipe, there is nothing to find - anything that had fallen into the water got flushed over the mountain side.

Thanks.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> Again, not saying to change the world to suit the players. Saying don't waste everyone's time with something pointless. If there's a dead-end, say it's a dead-end. But if you're going to start rolling dice and spending fifteen minutes in complex explanations of opening gates and climbing up slimy tunnels, then have a reason for it.




OK, some fair points there. 

So how did it play out?

I thought, ok, I know they wont succeed, but I'll still make it challenging and fun and allow them to earn xp. I'll create a skill challenge.

In the 1st 5 minutes they spend a good 3/4 hours (in game) travelling deep in the mountain. Cool - I switch to the others and see what they are doing.

Then I switch back. In this 5 minute block, I describe the pipe as going verticle. I make them do endurance checks as part of a skill challenge,..then they break out climbers kits, hammer and pinions and start climbing. I'm asking for strength or athletics checks.

They decide they will 'take ten' on all checks, because they have all the time in the (game) world to do it in. This in effect ruins my skill challenge idea. So now there is little to no risk (I did make them roll one more time to see if they got a 1), and they have committed 10 minutes of real time and 2 hours of game time. Regardless of repeated descriptions such as 'as far as you can see (with darkvision), the pipe continues upwards', they decide to continue on.

The final five minutes was to confirm that they got it wrong.

I certainly wasn't going to 'make up' something for their amusement just because they were there.


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## chronicali (Mar 2, 2009)

*For DM Help*

I recently reviewed a post concerning speeding up combat on DM's end and ended up creating a file that supposedly can work in Office or Open office and decided to post it up here.  It is an xls file that randomizes several rolls for the GM so that it can speed up combat.  I hope this helps anyone


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

I'd have at least given the PCs a chance to break through the doors at the top of the tube.  A very strong PC, or one with damaging spells, should be able to do it.

But GMing is an art.


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> It's my understanding that if the door was opened then a big rush of water would've come down the tube. I was of the opinion that that's entirely plausible, give them a few checks to hold their breath and swim up to air or something, maybe take a bit of damage. He was of the opinion that they would be insta-killed if the tube door was opened.




Sounds like they would at least have been swept back down the tube while taking tons of damage, enough to kill low level PCs.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

Nightson said:


> In their view they may have seized upon a hook you provided, then roleplayed their characters, then got shot down by you for no reason and now you're denying them XP out of spite.
> 
> So be careful, the XP is a small thing, you should be willing to give it to them, it's easy to fall into an adversarial mindset regarding the DM-player relationship, from both the DM and the player side. It's also easy to fall into trying to 'correct' player behavior through DM control of mechanical rules of the game world, which is usual something that leads to bad results.
> 
> ...




I can't help but nod. There are some very good points here, especially about the point of views you offered.

I would disagree with you in regards to DM control (I simply didn't see it as an issue), the players were free to behave as they wanted. The pipe led to a 'dead end' because it was closed, not because I wanted to punish any particular behaviour. Had it been open, water would of been gushing out of it.

The other three players (two strikers and a multiclass healer/striker) took on 9 orcs by themselves. I felt that the attack would be risky and reckless even, but they proved me wrong.

My question to you is, do I award xp to these three only, or do I count the other two, who are two hours away in a pipe?


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

I think the problem here is skill challenges - from my limited knowledge of 4e they appear to take a long time and potentially be very boring.  It seems like a few seconds worth of simple skill checks would have been better, followed by "At last you reach the Great Stone Seal that blocks the top of the pipe.  Thoin the Dwarf PC's stonecunning tells him that beyond the seal lies hundreds of tons of water, ready to be released down the pipe..."

Then the drama comes as the PCs try to escape the pipe before the release of water kills them all.


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> You might want to understand the term before you use it.
> 
> Varis' method was definitely not sandbox. He'd decided there was no possible way in which the PC's could attain anything by going up the tunnel. He was sticking to the very linear story-line by not adapting to the situation. He was following the module.




They could attain dying.  If you think sandbox means "Must be an Easter egg wherever PCs decide to go", I disagree.  In a good sandbox the PCs should have a good chance to find the easter eggs, if they look for them.  But they can find death or even boredom, too.  Being a game, the boredom should be dealt with quickly, and that may be where the GMing fell short a bit.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

S'mon said:


> I'd have at least given the PCs a chance to break through the doors at the top of the tube. A very strong PC, or one with damaging spells, should be able to do it.
> 
> But GMing is an art.




Had they succeeded (with magic for example) in fracturing the rock, they would of had torrents of water crashing down on them, sweeping them down the pipe, and affording them (assuming they passed enough endurance checks to hold their breath all that time), a magnificent birds eye view of the green, firtile valley below, as they launched out the side of the mountain and fell to their deaths. 

GMing is an art, but players are the artists (heh, I just re read that,..lol, I don't even know what that means).


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis said:


> My question to you is, do I award xp to these three only, or do I count the other two, who are two hours away in a pipe?




By default, orc fighters get orc XP, pipe climbers get any climbing XP.

If the pipe climbers had earlier contributed to the orc fighters' ability to get into a position to kill orcs, they may merit a share of the orc XP.

But absent PCs should not be taking XP away from present PCs.  Why should my PC, who nearly died fighting those orcs while you were climbing a pipe I told you not to, have his XP reward reduced to benefit the absentees?


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

S'mon said:


> Then the drama comes as the PCs try to escape the pipe before the release of water kills them all.




Heh, that certainly would of been the case if they tried breaking the stone. With the first crack, water would jet out in a fine mist, ..quickly followed by a multitude of cracks spidering around the initial impact.
At this point in time, I would get to see which players are actually smart, and which players 'prode the rock a little more forcefully'.


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis said:


> Had they succeeded (with magic for example) in fracturing the rock, they would of had torrents of water crashing down on them, sweeping them down the pipe, and affording them (assuming they passed enough endurance checks to hold their breath all that time), a magnificent birds eye view of the green, firtile valley below, as they launched out the side of the mountain and fell to their deaths.




Yeah, that would have been cool.  Especially for the PCs who weren't dumb enough to go up that pipe.  

BTW, did you roll randomly to see whether the pipe opened?  Did you time it?  Or did you mollycoddle the players?  It seems to me that the inherent drama of the situation kicks in once the PCs realise they've screwed up horribly and can die at any minute.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

S'mon said:


> By default, orc fighters get orc XP, pipe climbers get any climbing XP.
> 
> But absent PCs should not be taking XP away from present PCs. Why should my PC, who nearly died fighting those orcs while you were climbing a pipe I told you not to, have his XP reward reduced to benefit the absentees?




Your reasoning agrees with my current thinking. 
The pipe climbers had nothing to do with the orc combat.

However, they (the pipe climbers) are arguing for a share of the orc xp (to keep things fair and xp in line with everyone else).

As much as I might like to, I'm having a hard time determining any xp for climbing up the pipe. They took 10 on what was going to be a skill challenge. There was no real risk. I can give some from a role playing perspective, but that's about it.

Would you agree with this evaluation?


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis said:


> As much as I might like to, I'm having a hard time determining any xp for climbing up the pipe. They took 10 on what was going to be a skill challenge. There was no real risk. I can give some from a role playing perspective, but that's about it.
> 
> Would you agree with this evaluation?




It seems like a fine judgement call.  Going by 3e, if the pipe would have challenged most people, but their great skills let them succeed by taking 10, then I think that it would merit some XP as a Challenge, albeit a low CR one.  

If they had then had to flee at great speed before the valve opened and the water swept them away, then that would have merited more XP if they survived.

In any case, I would reject the "You must give us XP to keep it fair" argument.  By that reasoning, the PCs could have stayed home and they'd still be getting XP for the orcs their comrades killed.

A Gygaxian GM would have killed off the pipe climbers.  I think they got off lightly.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis said:


> Would you agree with this evaluation?




I disagree with everything you say. You should know this by now


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## Belisarius (Mar 2, 2009)

*From the other side of the screen*

I'm one of the players in Varis' game. Varis is a great DM, he's not afraid to improve parts of the module, and he's made some truly memorable scenes by in weaving bits of the character's backstory into the plot. 

The characters were walking up a mountain road; in a howling windstorm. Two investigated the pipes, and on a sucessful Insight check the DM told them the pipes were going to the vicinity of the keep and were a shorter route and more direct. The DM also told them the pipes were also smelly, slimy and dark, but hey, a Drow and a Half-Orc, what do we care? It was more interesting than the road.

We took 10 on the Skill Challenge, but the DM was grinning like a cat stalking at a canary, the way he does when I'm rolling a Death Save with two saves crossed off. 

Was that a matter of DMing art vs skill, or narrative vs sandbox?


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## Shadeydm (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis said:


> Skill, art, the meaning of (DMing) life,...all these considerations laid bare just because of a drainage pipe.
> 
> Hello, I am the DM who's woefull skills have been put under the spotlight.
> 
> ...




Thanks for posting, its always nice to see both sides of the story. FWIW I am behind you 100% on this one sometimes a drain pipe is just a drain pipe.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

S'mon said:


> BTW, did you roll randomly to see whether the pipe opened? Did you time it? Or did you mollycoddle the players? It seems to me that the inherent drama of the situation kicks in once the PCs realise they've screwed up horribly and can die at any minute.




*Possible Seige at Bordrin's watch spoilers*
DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE PLAYING THIS AT THE MOMENT (*Belisarius that includes you)*

Good questions.

No, I didn't have to roll randomly to see whether the pipe opened. The pipe is used at 12 midnight every day, to wash away the wastes of the citadel.

From a role playing point of view, the pipe does serve a practicle function. There is only one road that winds up to the citadel (not including any underground tunnel systems). If an attacking force were to attempt to come up that road, the dwarves open the pipe. It's waters rush down and over a good 30 feet of this narrow road (which has no side barrier to prevent someone from being swept down). The force is easily enough to knock a man off the mountain. Whilst they dwarves know that a determined foe will eventually find a way around, the water will either slow them down, thin out their numbers, or stop a less capable force all together. In addition to this, there is a walled city in the valley, which would send their troop should they see the water flowing at an unusual time of day. 

I have not mollycoddled the players. 

The orcs have found out about this defensive feature and some ancient (and forgotten) access tunnels below. They have used these tunnels and caught most of the dwarves by suprise. All the dwarves, bar one, are dead. The approach of the three PC's was spotted. The presence of the Orcs has not been discovered by the people in the valley below. 

Fearing they 'have' somehow been discovered, the orcs turn on the the water pipe, to prevent what they expect to be, a 'main force' of soldiers from retaking the citadel. The orcs don't want to fight this main force because the tunnel they used to get into the citadel has been caved in by the dwarves, effectively cutting off the orcs from any other further reinforcements. 

Fortunately (for them) the two PC's who had been exploring the pipe were are an hours walk up the mountain when the other three PC's were first spotted. Had the timing been a little different, I would of had pleasure of discovering whether a drow and a half orc can fly.


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## jbear (Mar 2, 2009)

Tricky. I can see both sides of the story. I really value gametime too as it's a titanic struggle to coordinate gamenights with all my players (myself included) sometimes. I can understand the disappointment of not having done anything cool.

I can also see the DM's stance that the drainpipe wasn't a weak point that the players were able to sneak in through when conceived.

What would I have done? Not sure. Having the benefit of hindsight and the differing opinions/experiences, I think I would have not made it a challenge at all (as there could be no successful outcome for the adventurers) and moved thoses 5 hours of wasted time along very swiftly or even let the PC's know that very early on they realise its going to be 5 hours of tiring climing spent fruitlessly. 

Then give the others a chance to prepare/do something til the climbers get back with the bad news. 2 minutes of game time later everyone is back together and putting their heads together for a new course of action.

Having thrown in an ooze against 2 PC's in tricky conditions to fight in might be fun for those 2 players (or not, if they die) but its tough on the other 3 that have to sit around twiddling thumbs because they decided (correctly in this case) that the pipe was a dead end.

Hand waving what you know about the pipe to lead to something interesting and fun might be cool (if you can think of something and pull it off) if everyone went into the pipe. I'm not against that kind of DMing at all. But when a party splits its a bit of a no win situation as far as keeping everybody happy and involved in the game is concerned. 

Some situations are easier like exploring a city, social encounters and everyone taking 'short turns' to describe what they do etc to get information more quickly. It seems a bit different if what you propose is an improvised side-trek adventure for two.

Again, I think it was a tricky situation for a DM to handle. If it's a dead end then fine. Best option for me, get the party back on track or at least together asap.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

Belisarius said:


> We took 10 on the Skill Challenge, but the DM was grinning like a cat stalking at a canary, the way he does when I'm rolling a Death Save with two saves crossed off.



Whenever I imagine ways to kill your character, I always start grinning


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> I disagree with everything you say. You should know this by now




Lol, true,..so true


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## Shadeydm (Mar 2, 2009)

jbear said:


> I think I would have not made it a challenge at all (as there could be no successful outcome for the adventurers)




Not falling to your death is a successful outcome in my book!


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## Charwoman Gene (Mar 2, 2009)

So basically you and some other members of your party decided something the rest of the party thought was stupid and you came on here to get people to massage your ego.  i liked the dressing it up in philosophical terms.  DM's are under no obligation to customize an adventure on the fly.


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## jbear (Mar 2, 2009)

Shadeydm said:


> Not falling to your death is a successful outcome in my book!



Hmmm... you climb in congratulations, you've arrived! Nothing to see here. Move along. Hey you climbed out. Awesome and you're still alive!

Ok, from this point of view, they have achieved being able to come to the game again next week. Fair enough.

I don't think that was the kind of result the players were attempting to acheive. Here, at this point for the sake of fun/fluidty/group cohesion I would incline towards smoothing this situation over with a brief narrative of their wasted attempts and get the game back towards the action.


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## Varis (Mar 2, 2009)

jbear said:


> Tricky. I can see both sides of the story. I really value gametime too as it's a titanic struggle to coordinate gamenights with all my players (myself included) sometimes. I can understand the disappointment of not having done anything cool.
> 
> I can also see the DM's stance that the drainpipe wasn't a weak point that the players were able to sneak in through when conceived.
> 
> ...



I find it to be a real balancing act.

With some quick questioning, players could metagame the significance of a particular road for example, by the manner in which I give or don't give information, if I am in the habit of only paying 'real' attention to the 'important parts' of the plot.

Some DM's might be fine with this. To me it doesn't seem right. If they want to know about a rock, I'll give it the same attention as the road. If they press for more details, I'll give them more details - its a volcanic red rock, probably thrown clear of that volcanoe in the distance,..it's a seldon travelled road, used, you judge by the faint cart tracks, by the occassional travelling merchant or perhapse farmer. 

In my mind it's a neutral approach. Of couse, if its unusual or out of place, I'll mention it, because I assume its very nature draws the PCs attention e.g. A shadow races past you along the ground, glancing up, you see far in the sky, a great blue dragon flying towards the horizon.

Is this the best way to do it?

You tell me.


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## Gimpoloshe (Mar 2, 2009)

I would have done it the same way as the DM, and, as was already pointed out, resolving the climbing part did only take about 15 minutes, which is an acceptable time span for the other players to wait.
What I cannot understand is, that the group decided to split up. My players would never split in such possibly dangerous terrain and rather rest at the pipes entrance, waiting for their two climbing friends to return, successful or not. What would've happened if the two would have been able to break into the dwarven fortress? Fighting alone against other orcs?
IMO, the players didn't really act wisely to split up and go completely seperate ways, both in a character view (party strength is divided, no matter if the pipe is a dead end or not) and a player view (2-party gaming means half of the players always have to wait for the others to play their scenes). 
The players could've done way more to avoid the problem than the DM (Because it perfectly makes sense that the vault is not penetratable from the bottom side!).


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## Cadfan (Mar 2, 2009)

Varis said:


> Hi Korjik,
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts.
> 
> ...



My thoughts are that you're making a classic Dungeon Master mistake.

You proudly proclaim what the players knew, and proclaim that obviously they knew enough not to waste fifteen minutes of game time pursuing nothing at all.  Technically they didn't know it was a dead end, but you claim that they knew enough to know they shouldn't pursue it.

But obviously you are wrong.

If they HAD known, they wouldn't have wasted the time.  The fact that they pursued the red herring for so long conclusively proves that they didn't know it was a red herring.

DMs, particularly DMs with simulationist bents, tend to forget that the game world exists only within their head.  And by "their head," I mean the DM's.  Not the player's.  The details of the game world have to get from the DM's head to the player's heads, and that doesn't always go as well as you think.  Clearly, in this case, you failed to get across what you had hoped to get across.  The proof is undeniable- had you communicated what you intended, this never would have happened; it did happen, therefore, you did not communicate what you thought.

At least in this situation you only lost fifteen minutes of game time.  Change a few words, and your post becomes a classic "The TPK was totally the players fault and not mine and they're mad at me anyways!" post.  We see those about every other week around here.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> I wouldn't have changed the pipe. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if I knew it was a dead-end, I would've shut the PC's down right there and then.



Some DMs (me, for example) don't believe it's our job to tell the players where they should go or how they should get there.  And just to be clear, we also don't think it's our job to drop hints about those things, either.



			
				Kzach said:
			
		

> But I also wouldn't have led them up a path with no recourse to a solution, whether that solution was beneficial or not. That is the reward. Negative or positive.



My guess is that Varis doesn't think he "led them up a path" at all.  There was a "path" (the water pipe), but he didn't tell anyone to take it.  They chose that all on their own.



			
				Kzach said:
			
		

> My understanding of sandbox gaming isn't that you change things on the fly to suit the players, for me it's that you put what should be logically there for the setting and scenario, there, regardless of what the players do.



That's just simulationism.  What a "sandbox" implies is that there is no railroad whatsoever, no expected path for the players to take.  They can go anywhere they want in the world, and do anything within the limits of their abilities, the world's physics, etc.  Not even the DM knows what is going to happen next, because what happens is entirely dependent on what choices the players make.



			
				Kzach said:
			
		

> If, however, you say, "There's a path..." you also don't say, "But don't go down it 'cause I don't want you to." That's not sandbox gaming either. If you put a path in front of the players, you have to expect them to follow it.



If you put a path in front of the players _at all,_ you're not "sandbox gaming."  It would never even occur to a sandbox DM to say "But don't go down it," because _there is no path_.



			
				Kzach said:
			
		

> In our argument (between Varis and I), he used the example of "So you're saying if there was a wall and the players wanted to go through it, I should provide a door?" No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that if you show the PC's a door, don't have it be a concrete wall behind it



But sometimes, there's a _reason_ for that concrete wall to be there.  (Incidentally, in 1e D&D, false doors like that were incredibly common.  But that has nothing to do with my point.)


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## Umbran (Mar 2, 2009)

Charwoman Gene said:


> ... and you came on here to get people to massage your ego.





And you came in here to be rude and insulting?

You know the rules - don't ascribe motives to others.  You owe an apology.  Don't post in this thread again unless you offer it.


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## the Jester (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> By 'reward' I mean something more active than just "It's a dead-end." It doesn't have to be a good result, but there should be some sort of active element rather than just shutting them down entirely.
> 
> I guess my real issue is that if I was a player in that game, I would've felt peeved that I wasted a good deal of time for nothing. The suggestion of saying, "Ok, it's a dead-end, you're not going to get anywhere going that way, period," would solve my issues with the situation. With that, the players haven't been led down a road that went nowhere.
> 
> ...




I couldn't disagree more. The dm, imho, absolutely should let the party waste all the time they want to waste. It's not the dm's place to decide what the pcs do. 

If a group is heading for a dead end, I have no problem with letting them discover that. Am I going to fill every single place the party goes with a threat, hazard or trick? No. That's just silly. Why would the interior of a waste disposal pipe be trapped? How would the pcs know there is nothing up there? 

I think I have to come down on the side of the dm on this one.


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## Umbran (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> But that's not what happened. The DM allowed them to go up and everyone wasted time. It's hard enough to get people together for a game 'cause of life commitments and travel times and locations, etc. so I tend to value the time spent at the table.
> 
> So if the decision is made that they're going up and the DM doesn't shut it down right there and then, then I really feel the DM has an obligation to provide an interesting situation that everyone at the table can enjoy.




Well, you're free to have that opinion.  And I don't agree with it.  Here's why...

The DM does not know for sure that it is going to be a complete dead-end before the PCs go up and decide to do nothing when they get up there.  Even if I expect it'll be nothing, I cannot count on it.

Players think up the darnedest things, sometimes.  At the table, I have one brain, they have several - in general, I can count on them to come up with more ideas than I.  So, just because I cannot think of what they could possibly gain going up there, shutting them down is doing them a disservice.

In a real sandbox game, I have to be prepared for the _players_ to make the trip interesting on occasion, rather than always feeding them obvious stuff for everything I allow them to try.  The world is there, and they can affect it, but they have to think of how.  They have the right to choose not to, of course.


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## kitsune9 (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> I had an argument with a friend last night about DM'ing. He'd just come back from a game he'd run and was telling me about how the players did something he thought was a waste of time and just silly.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm sure he'll chime in at some point to correct me of my bias against his stance, but until then feel free to bag him




I don't think it falls snuggly into an either/or. I think it has to be both. Of course, it doesn't really matter to me what it's really called so long as the DM is person who is prepared and just doesn't flub the adventure, the rules, and everything else in between.


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## Mallus (Mar 2, 2009)

Vegepygmy said:


> That's just simulationism.



Most simulations are created for a reason. They don't exist for their own sake. I thought the simulations (ie settings) found in role-playing gaming existed to facilitate the enacting of adventure stories. The simulation, in this case, could be said to be _simulating_ these kinds of stories themselves.



> What a "sandbox" implies is that there is no railroad whatsoever, no expected path for the players to take.



Which is to say _any_ path leads to some kind of adventure (or is skipped over as quickly as possible). If the paths lead to tedium and endless milling about the DM will soon find his sandbox empty. 



> They can go anywhere they want in the world, and do anything within the limits of their abilities, the world's physics, etc.



And whatever they do eventually leads to adventure (or the campaign ends). Because that's what RPG's _simulate_ -- adventure stories. 



> If you put a path in front of the players _at all,_ you're not "sandbox gaming."  It would never even occur to a sandbox DM to say "But don't go down it," because _there is no path_.



Again, because wherever they go there will be the killing and taking of stuff, it's endemic to the medium.

Let's not make too much of 'simuationism' eh? In the end it's no less contrived than more directed modes of play, because, again, it's a simulation of the worlds found in contrived fantasy adventure fiction. It's not like the characters in a 'sandbox game' are likely to stumble into scenarios like those found in a Jane Austen novel or a Beckett play (or, rather, if they did, those scenarios would inevitably end in the of killing things --eat this fireball Mr. Darcy!-- and taking of their stuff).


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## Cadfan (Mar 2, 2009)

the Jester said:


> I couldn't disagree more. The dm, imho, absolutely should let the party waste all the time they want to waste. It's not the dm's place to decide what the pcs do.
> 
> If a group is heading for a dead end, I have no problem with letting them discover that. Am I going to fill every single place the party goes with a threat, hazard or trick? No. That's just silly. Why would the interior of a waste disposal pipe be trapped? How would the pcs know there is nothing up there?
> 
> I think I have to come down on the side of the dm on this one.



Nonsense.

Look, its really simple.

1. The DM mediates the players' knowledge about the game world.
2. Sessions where the PCs pursue dead leads tend to be boring.
3. Unless you, as the DM want the session to be boring, you need to make sure they don't pursue dead leads.
4. Players generally don't pursue dead leads because they like them, they pursue them because they don't know better.
5. Which could be because they're morons.
6. But is more often because they don't know enough about the game world to recognize that they're pursuing a dead lead.
7. Which is generally the fault of the person who mediates the players' knowledge about the game world.
8. Which is the DM.

Not saying that you HAVE to flat out tell the players "that's a dead lead, stop pursuing it."

But there are other options.  Use them.


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 2, 2009)

1. If they players try, you didn´t discourage them enough.

Did they actually see this pipe in action? As I understand, it only used once in a while during the day, exactly to discourage someone using water breathing and cimbing up.

So when your PC´s try to get up there, you could tell them something like:
It is used for flushing down water etc. The walls are damp, so it seems still to be in use. Probably closed.

Alternatively you could let them see how it works, either before they climbed up, or just at the moment they tried... allowing them to cut themselves free from their rope... this would have ended their expedition quite early.

Traps in the pipe don´t make sense: because noone expects anyone to climb up there when it is in use, and it is locked when not...
so you could give some advice like: interestingly noone even bothered to put some bars at the lower end...

And lastly, maybe you could have them observe the use of the pipe, allowing them to recognize if it is used regularly, so that the can meet just the right moment to be at the top of the pipe when it is opened, i am certain the preasure on the top is not too much (only the height of the water above your position contributes to the preasure)

So: it could have been made an interesting entrance into the fortification, or you could have discouraged them even more, but:

*Now they know an escape route out of the fortification, this is not so bad.* *If they use it, you can give them XP afterwards.*

DMing is a skill, as you can learn how to do it. But it is a bit ar involved...

Allowing PCs to contribute to your world however is important, because they also play the game. Reward good ideas or make it clear when PCs are on the wrong route. And when you allow them to walk on the wrong route, following a red herring, even then it should be interesting or useful.


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## weem (Mar 2, 2009)

For me, I feel DM-ing well is an art. You can know all the rules and have all the DM-ing skills needed to run a game, but that in no way translates to a fun or engaging game. You need to know your players and be able to tell a fun and compelling story that draws those people into it based on their individual needs/desires. I consider writing (well) an artform and for me DM-ing is the same, if only in audio book format and much more interactive? haha.

Anyway, we'll leave that alone and get to my point...

Draw your players into the story - make them feel as though their actions matter... that's what I feel my job is basically as a DM... I am damaging those efforts if I do not reward players for trying... had your DM let them discover something, or at least have some fun getting up there (encounters, etc) you teach the players that taking chances and adventuring off the beaten path is a good thing. To me, if I didn't want them to get in that way, I would either sum it up (as has been mentioned) "You move your way up the smelly, dirty tube only to find your path blocked... but you make your way back safely enough, if not smelling good"

Again (as has been mentioned) a reward does not have to be treasure... it could simply be a combat encounter, or some kind of insight into the story - maybe they can not go any further, but they CAN see through a grate and gain some information about what is inside that they otherwise wouldn't have had, etc.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:
			
		

> So anyway, the PC's split the party. One half thinking it'd be a great idea to climb up the tube to get into the citadel, the other half thinking that's just dumb. The half that went up the tube spent quite some time clawing their way to the end of it, only to discover it was locked and there was no way through.



DMing is a skill, and there is an unwritten contract that everyone refrain from douchery, but I have to agree with your friend in this particular instance. If the party splits up, I want to get them back together ASAP. I don't like half the players sitting around bored, not to mention the IC dangers of separating the group. So I don't want to invent a skill challenge, traps and monsters on the spot to prolong the separation time. Now if the PCs all decide to climb up the tube, I might decide on the spot to let them take their chances with drowning and being crushed to get in. But maybe not; if the BBEG is on the other side of the tube lock I won't. Just because the players come up with a creative idea doesn't mean it will work; that's life.

TS


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## billd91 (Mar 2, 2009)

Umbran said:


> Players think up the darnedest things, sometimes.  At the table, I have one brain, they have several - in general, I can count on them to come up with more ideas than I.  So, just because I cannot think of what they could possibly gain going up there, shutting them down is doing them a disservice.
> 
> In a real sandbox game, I have to be prepared for the _players_ to make the trip interesting on occasion, rather than always feeding them obvious stuff for everything I allow them to try.  The world is there, and they can affect it, but they have to think of how.  They have the right to choose not to, of course.




Indeed. As a player in a game where this occurred, I'd be thinking right now that if the situation gets desperate in the adventure site, I now have one more potential escape route scouted out! Flush the water and follow it down the pipe. Dangerous for sure, but now the party knows how dangerous and whether or not it can be attempted.

Dang! Beat to the punch by ungeheuerlich. I've got to type my responses faster...

So. A waste of time? Possibly. But we'll have to see how the adventure all turns out in the end, won't we?


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## aboyd (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> My argument came from the stance that he should've made the tunnel climb interesting and had some sort of reward at the end of it.



I think that's lame.  I side with the other guy.


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## Nightson (Mar 2, 2009)

Couldn't one of the adventurers tied off the rope to a point outside the tube while the other end was around the one inside the tube.  One inside breaks stone cap (if he can, damages cap so it starts to break then jump out of tube), water pressure pushes him out, rope makes him pivot, he exits water stream and loses momentum fast although he might still take some damage when he hits the cave wall.  Not a lot though, we're talking maybe 20-30 feet of falling damage maximum if they do it right.


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## Reynard (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> Varis' method was definitely not sandbox. He'd decided there was no possible way in which the PC's could attain anything by going up the tunnel. He was sticking to the very linear story-line by not adapting to the situation. He was following the module.




Absolutely 100% wrong. A sandbox is a wide open field in which the PCs have freedom to do what they wish, and is generally designed with verisimilitude and simulation in mind. The drainage pipe exists because it has to -- the construction of the keep or castle demands some way to get the glacial melt or whatever out (lest its inhabitants drown and/or erosion causes the place to fall down). The PCs found it and decided  to explore it.  that the DM allowed them to do so is the perfect example of sandbox DMing -- the players make the choices and the DM relates the situation and/or setting.

And, quite frankly, I find it more than a little distressing that anyone would say the DM did the wrong thing here. While it *might* have led to a more entertaining evening if the DM had some encounter occur in the tunnels are just "let them" get through and into the castle, it sets a bad precedent. A) It obviates the importance of player choices by removing consequences for those choices, and b) encourages the DM to ignore verisimilitude and good sense and do whatever, whenever - -which can just as easily be very unfair to the players as it can benefit them.

Of course, I am not suggesting the players did anything wrong, either.  It was a good plan -- go in the back door. But they shouldn't have been expecting the door to just be open for them. Maybe they should have scouted, realized the situation, then withdrew to replan or acquire resources that would allow them to take advantage of the back door.  But no player should expect a "gimme" just because they chose to spend many real-world hours on an activity.


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## Cadfan (Mar 2, 2009)

Reynard said:


> And, quite frankly, I find it more than a little distressing that anyone would say the DM did the wrong thing here.



The players didn't waste part of the evening because they like wasting time.  They did it because they didn't realize they were wasting time.

I'd put the odds at... lets say 95% chance that was the DMs fault.

You might not like a particular solution, but the fact that a problem occurred should be self evident.


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## billd91 (Mar 2, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> The players didn't waste part of the evening because they like wasting time.  They did it because they didn't realize they were wasting time.
> 
> I'd put the odds at... lets say 95% chance that was the DMs fault.
> 
> You might not like a particular solution, but the fact that a problem occurred should be self evident.




I'm not certain that it is self-evident that a problem _has_ actually occurred. I don't see characters spending time doing unproductive things in an in-campaign plot line or adventure as being a problem.


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## Reynard (Mar 2, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> The players didn't waste part of the evening because they like wasting time.  They did it because they didn't realize they were wasting time.
> 
> I'd put the odds at... lets say 95% chance that was the DMs fault.
> 
> You might not like a particular solution, but the fact that a problem occurred should be self evident.




I'm not sure it is even possible to "waste time" playing an RPG.  But then I think that the primary draw of the RPG as an entertainment medium is the freedom it allows, but for there to be freedom there needs to an internally consistency regarding the results of making choices.  Sometimes, that means hunting down a false lead or having to "waste" an entire session exploring.

More to the point, in  this situation the players wanted to investigate an avenue.  It didn't pan out. It happens. But, as I stated before, they could have used the information to their advantage anyway.


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## jbear (Mar 2, 2009)

Umbran said:


> Well, you're free to have that opinion. And I don't agree with it. Here's why...
> 
> The DM does not know for sure that it is going to be a complete dead-end before the PCs go up and decide to do nothing when they get up there. Even if I expect it'll be nothing, I cannot count on it.
> 
> ...



Although I see where you are coming from with what you say, it seems in this case it was a dead end with no solutions, and the DM had decided that, knowing that any attemts to break through to the other side by any means would result in an unresistable jet of water hurling their bodies thousands of feet down the mountainside onto the rocks below.

Which is why I would advocate for summing up the situation with a few sentences like 'after several hours of climing you realise this is a hopeless dead end. Frustrated and weary you climb back through the water pipe cursing your bad luck.' Meanwhile what were you other 3 doing? 

And so 5 seconds later the game is back on track, or if not on track at least not bogged down in a dead end.


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## lin_fusan (Mar 2, 2009)

Kzach said:


> Again, not saying to change the world to suit the players. Saying don't waste everyone's time with something pointless. If there's a dead-end, say it's a dead-end. But if you're going to start rolling dice and spending fifteen minutes in complex explanations of opening gates and climbing up slimy tunnels, then have a reason for it.




I've DMed similar situations. It's a 'Catch-22'. If I say right away it's a dead end, then I'd be accused of railroading. So to avoid that stigma, I'd have to let them make choices that would appear to be 'wasting time'.

The main problem I see here is the actual splitting of the party.

Once a party splits up, not only does the load double for the DM to provide entertaining choices, but the amount of danger increases for the characters. 

The first instinct I'd have is to throw a monster (the forementioned ooze) at the piping-PCs. But, what about the other PCs? They'll need something entertaining. A fight for them is one answer, such that everyone is rolling initiative and participating, but sometimes throwing in a fight feels arbitrary and 'railroady'. 

But, having one group in a fight, and another group in another situation (non-fight) creates its own problems:
- Some players feel like a fight is a reward, especially since there is XP involved. The non-piping PCs would feel ripped off unless you presented them with a fight and/or Skill Challenge.
- Often times, however, the non-piping PCs will feel like they should deserve some reward because they are actually progressing plot while the piping-PCs aren't. By 'rewarding' the piping-PCs with a fight or information or treasure, you are establishing a precedent: this game isn't about teamwork.

So let's say both groups get an encounter. Now, if the piping and non-piping PCs are in their own separate fights, there's the danger of overwhelming them with encounters that are too difficult. Since 4th ed is designed for team play (at least in combat), I could easily see a half-PK.

Of course, I probably would have thought to myself 'screw it' and had the pipe open (and rewrite the adventure to have the pipe open at that precise time), then present it as a Skill Challenge to escape unharmed, but some players can see through this decision and think the DM is trying to kill them, instead of making the whole situation interesting.


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## Umbran (Mar 2, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> You might not like a particular solution, but the fact that a problem occurred should be self evident.




Maybe, but I am not at all convinced it is where you think it is.

Consider - we've got a bunch of folks hanging out with friends, probably eating snacks, drinking soda and maybe a few beers, pretending to be someone they aren't.  This is an atmosphere where _productivity_ should be a primary concern?  

I mean, honestly, the whole thing is a waste of time!  Surely, I don't want a player to be sitting around bored for an entire evening, but if a player finds 15 minutes of unproductive time to be a notable problem in their overall gaming experience, I am not at all sure the issue is with the DM.


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 2, 2009)

I understood that they spent much more than 15 min of real time in the tube, because the DM thought attacking the party with orcs inbetween is a good idea...

(maybe it is) but then those 2 persons in the pipe should have had to do something...

maybe better timing does the trick... let those other players just be attacked, when the PC´s returned frustrated, wet and unprepared... or make those attacking orc party minions only with maybe one scout which has to be captured before beeing able to flee... it just has to be done fast...


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## lin_fusan (Mar 2, 2009)

jbear said:


> Which is why I would advocate for summing up the situation with a few sentences like 'after several hours of climing you realise this is a hopeless dead end. Frustrated and weary you climb back through the water pipe cursing your bad luck.' Meanwhile what were you other 3 doing?




I have players that would call this railroading...


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## Mallus (Mar 2, 2009)

Some observations...


There's nothing wrong with the drain pipe being a dead end.

However, there is something wrong with spending a lot of table time on a dead end (if that happened).

If I were the DM, I probably would have whipped up an improvised encounter for inside the pipe.

Or I would have fast-forwarded over _not_ finding anything useful while exploring it ("It takes 6 hours to climb up and then back down the drain. You find no entrance into the citadel").

As for the top of the drain pipe being a potential death trap if the player's monkey with it... that's just bad form. How are the players supposed to _know_ they couldn't survive the Big Flush, maybe hang on and then somehow gain entrance?

Surviving the drain pipe is no more ridiculous --or heroic/creative-- than any one of a number of commonplace D&D occurrences, for instance, the jumping off of high places and not dying of one's injuries at the bottom (assuming one is mid-level or above), or surviving the frequent exposure to explosive _fire_.

So it's often hard to tell the fatally ridiculous from the strategically sublime, without the DM's help.

(This is largely the product of D&D simulating the frequently ridiculous and almost always contrived worlds of adventure stories, in which logically absurd actions are often effective -- see Indiana Jones and Co. jumping out of plane using an inflatable raft as a parachute/wing.)

Which leads to another issue: tedium is never a smart outcome in a game that's supposed to be about adventure. If player choices lead to nothing exciting happening, there's no need to play it out in detail. Move on. Lingering over dead-ends for the sake of verisimilitude is probably something called the mimetic fallacy (I think).

One last thought (finally). Simulation in an RPG a laudable, even enjoyable, thing. But it's a means to an end. At the point it becomes the end itself, the DM needs to start rethinking his priorities.

And by 'some' observations I obviously meant 'a lot'.


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## jbear (Mar 2, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> I have players that would call this railroading...



oO??? Call it what you like. You let them go up the pipe. You knew nothing was there. You tell them just that. Move along. If that supposes a problem because either you or the players prefer to bang your head against a pipe wall with thousands of tons of water waiting to mash your bones on the other side, splitting the party and feeling generally frustrated and useless while the others merrily slaughter heards of orcs... umm then I think THAT is a problem. 

My idea of railroading is: Players don't want to follow a storypath, they want to take the story or adventure somewhere else; DM obliges them to follow his story by any means possible.

I don't believe what I suggest is the case. I don't oblige them to face the orcs. I just briefly let them know that the path they chose to explore was a dead end in a way that doesn't waste real world time.


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## Umbran (Mar 2, 2009)

jbear said:


> If that supposes a problem because either you or the players prefer to bang your head against a pipe wall with thousands of tons of water waiting to mash your bones on the other side, splitting the party and feeling generally frustrated and useless while the others merrily slaughter heards of orcs... umm then I think THAT is a problem.




Well, in general, it is not the DM's job to save the players from less-than-optimal decisions.  This is most obvious in combat, where the character's bacon is on the line.  Fudging to make sure they aren't killed by their own choices is generally seen as poor DMing.  Some think it is okay to save them from poor die rolls, but from their own decisions is a different issue.

Now, when the only thing at stake is their own time, the DM is supposed to step in and save them from themselves?

I can see an argument for that - however, I don't see as there is a clear choice of where the line should be drawn.  When do you save players from themselves, and when don't you?  That's not something we can generalize, I think.


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## lin_fusan (Mar 2, 2009)

jbear said:


> 'after several hours of climing you realise this is a hopeless dead end. Frustrated and weary you climb back through the water pipe cursing your bad luck.'
> 
> 
> and
> ...




What I meant was that a few of my players would argue that: a) if I mentioned a water pipe, then it has to serve some important purpose, and b) they deserve some skill rolls for more description about the pipe. The more skill rolls would then lead to more description, explanation, and eventually wasted time until I gave them something to bite on, such as an encounter, treasure, or a way into the keep.

Basically, these players I mentioned would see this pipe as a major plot point and any attempt on my part to tell them that it's not important or a dead end would be met with accusations of railroading.

In effect, this means that unless I provide something "important" for every decision these players make then they could accuse me of railroading.

Once a player attempted to interrogate an NPC that, according to my notes, had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. So I invented what I thought was important information, but the player ignored it, threw up his hands in disgust, and said that he hit a dead end. 

I've run two pure sandbox games before, once with Shadowrun and another with Mage: The Ascension. Individual moments were fun, but eventually the players felt like there wasn't an overarching narrative, which there wasn't, and lost interest in the games.


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## S'mon (Mar 2, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> Basically, these players I mentioned would see this pipe as a major plot point and any attempt on my part to tell them that it's not important or a dead end would be met with accusations of railroading.




Your players are foolish.


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## Cadfan (Mar 2, 2009)

Umbran said:


> Maybe, but I am not at all convinced it is where you think it is.
> 
> Consider - we've got a bunch of folks hanging out with friends, probably eating snacks, drinking soda and maybe a few beers, pretending to be someone they aren't. This is an atmosphere where _productivity_ should be a primary concern?
> 
> I mean, honestly, the whole thing is a waste of time! Surely, I don't want a player to be sitting around bored for an entire evening, but if a player finds 15 minutes of unproductive time to be a notable problem in their overall gaming experience, I am not at all sure the issue is with the DM.



Look.

The DM believes that he adequately communicated to the players that climbing up the pipe was a waste of time.

But they didn't get the message, or else they wouldn't have climbed up the pipe and wasted time.

Either this is the fault of the players for not listening or reasoning well, or, this is the fault of the DM for not communicating as well as he intended.

I happen to think that the latter is more likely.

This is _no different_ from many other similar situations.

The DM intends to communicate that a certain fight is too dangerous and the characters should retreat, they don't get the message, and a TPK occurs.

The DM intends to communicate that a certain NPC is someone the characters can negotiate with instead of fight, the players don't get the message, and kill an important NPC.

The DM intends to communicate that a certain plot element is frightening or dramatic, the players instead interpret it as hilarious, and the session suffers from the mismatched expectations.

I could go on for a while here.

All the fancy arguments about D&D being inherently a waste of time or dead end pipes needing to be dead end pipes for verisimilitude are completely missing the point.

The DM didn't intend for the session to go this way.  The players were annoyed that it did.  We know this because the argument spread to ENWorld, which is usually a pretty huge clue.  Obviously a problem occurred.  Even if everyone had a great time, a small problem still occurred, in the sense that the DM intended to communicate something to the players and the message was not received.  Even if the results had been amazing, it would still indicate room for improvement.

A freaking Knowledge: Architecture check, possibly prompted by the DM, could have nipped this whole thing in the bud.  Never thought I'd hear myself saying _that._  "You've seen this sort of thing before, its a waste pipe and its probably impenetrably barred from the inside."


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 2, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> What I meant was that a few of my players would argue that: a) if I mentioned a water pipe, then it has to serve some important purpose, and b) they deserve some skill rolls for more description about the pipe. The more skill rolls would then lead to more description, explanation, and eventually wasted time until I gave them something to bite on, such as an encounter, treasure, or a way into the keep.
> 
> Basically, these players I mentioned would see this pipe as a major plot point and any attempt on my part to tell them that it's not important or a dead end would be met with accusations of railroading.
> 
> ...



You deffinately need new players!

Noone should actually force the DM to change the story... he should adapt it as he sees fit...

And one last time: where does the big flush come from at the top of the pipe? The preasure can´t be that high up there... at least after the first flush is done (water falling through the empty pipe, the pipe will fill if no whirl is created and the preaure will so low at the top that you may be able to climb upwards...

if the flush however is so short, that the water can´t create a backwater, then its also no problem...


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## jbear (Mar 2, 2009)

Umbran said:


> Well, in general, it is not the DM's job to save the players from less-than-optimal decisions.  This is most obvious in combat, where the character's bacon is on the line.  Fudging to make sure they aren't killed by their own choices is generally seen as poor DMing.  Some think it is okay to save them from poor die rolls, but from their own decisions is a different issue.
> 
> Now, when the only thing at stake is their own time, the DM is supposed to step in and save them from themselves?
> 
> I can see an argument for that - however, I don't see as there is a clear choice of where the line should be drawn.  When do you save players from themselves, and when don't you?  That's not something we can generalize, I think.



I don't believe I generalized at any moment. I have been referring to this specific case. The DM was faced with a very tricky situation: a party splitting.

This I think is fundamental in the following decisions made.

If the DM is simply saving them from boredom, and saving himself from the uncomfortable situation of splitting his attention and time between two groups, especially having decided that one path is a dead end and any persistence trying to bust through that dead end will turn it literally into a DEAD end. 

From my point of view, giving them information that lets them know this is acceptable. They have done it. It was fruitless. You tell them as such. 

If you want to let them have a chance to bang their head against a wall for a while in real time, because you think they should be allowed to make bad decisions, in that case at least let them know they are making a bad decision from the start. 

However, I still don't see the point to punish them for this fairly banal 'error', by having them sit out of a combat + the other 15 minutes of climbing up to the dead end. 

I also think knowing when to 'step in' and when to 'step back' is part of the art.

Also, how much real time do you really want to spend describing everything to miniscule detail when its of no importance? Do you want your players  describing how they wake up, eat their breakfast, wash their privates and do their business? Aren't you brushing over these very natural and important details with brief sentances like' we wake up and get ready', in order to get to the interesting part more quickly in real time? Isn't this similar to saying:'you explore the tunnel for five hours and discover its a dead end' ?

I didn't advocate fudging, railroading or generalizing this decision for every situation. If a bad decision leads to something dangerous or exciting, then step back, take your time. If a bad decision leads to an uncomfortable situation with the party splitting, frustration and boredom. Then move it along swiftly. I'm sure there are other situations bad decisions might lead to, and as a DM you have to make the best call you can.

I do think the situation the DM was put into was tricky. I think its useful and positive to read the two sides of the story (both, from my point of view, understandable.). It helps me think with the benefit of hindsight what I would do if I find myself in that situation in the future ( a luxury he didnt have). Given that I now have that luxury, I think I would do as I said above.


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## Umbran (Mar 2, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> The DM believes that he adequately communicated to the players that climbing up the pipe was a waste of time.
> 
> But they didn't get the message, or else they wouldn't have climbed up the pipe and wasted time.
> 
> Either this is the fault of the players for not listening or reasoning well, or, this is the fault of the DM for not communicating as well as he intended.




Um, you are leaving out one important possibility - it could be a little of both.  I'd say it is _probably_ a bit of both, given how common such is in human communications.  The DM could have been more clear, they could have paid more attention to what it meant.  Call it "no fault", consider how both sides could improve a bit, and move on.


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## Silver Moon (Mar 2, 2009)

Storytelling has always been considered an art.

Serving as a referee is generally considered a skill.

And sometimes a drain pipe is only a drain pipe.


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## jbear (Mar 2, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> What I meant was that a few of my players would argue that: a) if I mentioned a water pipe, then it has to serve some important purpose, and b) they deserve some skill rolls for more description about the pipe. The more skill rolls would then lead to more description, explanation, and eventually wasted time until I gave them something to bite on, such as an encounter, treasure, or a way into the keep.
> 
> Basically, these players I mentioned would see this pipe as a major plot point and any attempt on my part to tell them that it's not important or a dead end would be met with accusations of railroading.
> 
> ...



I think there is a big distinction here from the start: your whole party wants to investigate that tunnel.

That would be a whole new ball game for me. If they really want more info and I have decided noone is getting in there (not my case - the DM in this case's decision). I'd probably have them make history rolls (since in 4e there is no Knowledge: Architecture check available in 4e) or even Dungeoneering. The information gleaned here would let them know this is not a weak point in the fortresses construction and that unwary prodding could result in a swift and pointless death.

Personally I wouldn't have a tunnel like that into a fortress be impenetrable in the first place. Dangerous, risky, but breachable sounds like more fun to me. I use WotC adventures as I don't have the time available to build my own from the bones up. I do however give each and everyone major reconstructive surgery. I also enjoy building in plot hooks and skill challenges that allow the PC's wipe/defeat/conquer/bypass large parts of the dungeons in one fowl swoop. I love roleplay and creative thinking and probably would have tweaked this tunnel in a way that if discovered gave a chance for just that.

But that's me and my style. Everybody has their own way. That's great. I do think though as a vast majority we want our players going away from our game table with anyother feeling, be it awe, fear, enjoyment or excitement, than frustration and boredom. that's not always possible. But learning from past experiences is important and necessary to avoid that feeling again in the future.


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Charwoman Gene said:


> So basically you and some other members of your party decided something the rest of the party thought was stupid and you came on here to get people to massage your ego.  i liked the dressing it up in philosophical terms.  DM's are under no obligation to customize an adventure on the fly.




Wth? *I* posted this, not the DM or the players of that game.

I'm not involved in their game other than to hear the results since I'm friends with the DM. I happened to disagree with him on a minor point and figured it'd make an interesting discussion.

That's it. Where are you getting this 'massaging ego' thing?


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## Kzach (Mar 2, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Some observations...




Agree 100%.


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## Kzach (Mar 3, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> The DM didn't intend for the session to go this way.  The players were annoyed that it did.  We know this because the argument spread to ENWorld, which is usually a pretty huge clue.  Obviously a problem occurred.  Even if everyone had a great time, a small problem still occurred, in the sense that the DM intended to communicate something to the players and the message was not received.  Even if the results had been amazing, it would still indicate room for improvement.




Although I agree with everything else you've said, in his defence he never intended it to spill here. Again, I have nothing to do with the group. I left because I didn't get along with the host of the game.

*I* was the one who brought it here and I only did so because I thought it'd be an interesting discussion point. Which I feel it has been.


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## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

jbear said:


> I think there is a big distinction here from the start: your whole party wants to investigate that tunnel.




In truth, this is probably the crux of the issue anyway. Three hours wouldn't have been "wasted" if the party was together -- 15 minutes of "The pipe smells bad, is uncomfortable and really long... at the end is a really big plug you can't seem to open... No, that didn't work either... you broke your axe... are you sure you want to use the torchbearer as a battering ram?..." and so on and the party would crawl back down the pipe, irritated that they "wasted" 15 minutes and the adventure would have moved along (and, hey, the pipe might have come in important later after they got in; quick exits from dungeons are always useful).

But because the party split up, "game time" had to be kept equal between the  two groups. So now you've got one group doing "interesting" things while the other group is doing "pointless" things. This is, without a doubt, the players' fault. If there'd been any justice, the PCs out fighting the orcs would have been overwhelmed and the ones in the pipe would have emerged to find themselves sorely outnumbered in an enemy encampment on full alert.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

Umbran said:


> Consider - we've got a bunch of folks hanging out with friends, probably eating snacks, drinking soda and maybe a few beers,



What! I'm supposed to be getting snacks and beers? Ripped off, all I got was a Tim Tam (although, admittably, double chocolate coated).


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## lin_fusan (Mar 3, 2009)

jbear said:


> I think there is a big distinction here from the start: your whole party wants to investigate that tunnel.




I'd like to note that in a previous post I suggested the real problem of the OP is that the party split up. If the whole party had gone into the pipe and the same thing happened, there would be some slightly different issues. 

Deep down you can frame the issue to be: should the DM turn every player decision important and meaningful? The 4th ed DMG suggests in a couple of examples that the DM should make every decision important and meaningful. 

There is value in that sort of play, especially if you have a group that is incredibly indecisive. They eventually learn that it doesn't matter what you do only that you do it.

In a weird way, this kind of play is great for a group that has strong, decisive player goals. Because strong player goals means strong interests which makes it easier for the DM to create on-the-fly stories since he/she has something concrete to latch on to.


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## Kzach (Mar 3, 2009)

Varis said:


> What! I'm supposed to be getting snacks and beers? Ripped off, all I got was a Tim Tam (although, admittably, double chocolate coated).




Most Americans don't know what a Tim Tam is; I feel this is their loss


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## merelycompetent (Mar 3, 2009)

FWIW, I think it was handled well by the DM in question. Sure, some things probably could have been done better. Or not. I wasn't there. I certainly think an after-the-game chat with the players to make sure everyone's on the same page as far as game expectations goes would be a good idea. Because misunderstanding and mistaken assumptions have been around since the early days of gaming.

As for DMing being a skill or an art, put me in the It's Both camp. DMing ability can certainly be improved through practice, greater understanding, and improved insight. Most people, IMO, can be good at it. A few can be great. Most of the time I just do the best I can, take as much advantage of the high points as possible, and learn how to avoid the low points. I imagine most DMs are like that.

If your play style includes cooperation with the players, then the players bear some (or greater) responsibility for the game - all parts of it, including the not-so-fun parts. If your play style gives the players the freedom to have their characters insist on doing foolish, pointless, or suicidal acts, then it's up to the DM to determine how far he or she is going to go to keep them from throwing their PCs off a cliff. Or climbing up a sewage drain pipe.

To me, the players made their choices to split the party, proceed along separate paths, and one group got bored and wasted time. They made the choices. If their playstyle is such that they expected the DM to alter the encounter/setting for more enjoyment, then a talking-to is in order. If no such expectation was set, implied, or understood, then I'm not going to try and tell that group how to play. (Although from what I've read so far, it looks like fun to me.)

If Varis is open to a recommendation, here's a technique I use in my games to try and warn players that their character is about to do something foolishly suicidal or wasteful, in the DM's opinion:

"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Are you *SURE* you want to do this?"
"Alright guys, I'm asking you, the players, one last time: Are you really, really sure you want to do this? Yes? OK." At that point the dice fall where they will, I make no alterations to the situation, and if they complain about getting flushed off the side of a mountain, I refer them to the above three warnings.

Please feel free to modify the above suggestion so that it fits with your play style and group.


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## the Jester (Mar 3, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> Nonsense.
> 
> Look, its really simple.
> 
> ...




Nonsense right back atcha.

All the stuff in bold I disagree with. Dead leads are a perfectly reasonable use of the party's time, aren't necessarily boring and often result from the fact that they _have not yet figured out enough about the situation_ to recognize that they're pursuing a dead lead. 

Look, when pcs are investigating things, dead leads are a perfectly valid part of the experience. Otherwise, there's no investigation; they look at something, you tell them whether to bother and then they know. It's not the dm's job to decide what the pcs poke at and what they bypass, it's up to the pcs. A lot of players cry foul when the dm tells them what their character does- and rightfully so!- how is this any different? And if the party splits up, it's certainly not the dm's bad if each half of the group has to wait their turn. 

It's the same principle as "the dm occasionally rolls random dice to make the pcs nervous." Which, actually, is not to make the players nervous per se, but is more so that they don't know what it means when you roll dice. 

This is a playstyle difference, but it seems like some people are trying to make it a badwrongfun issue here. If my group likes spending half a game session wandering back and forth trying to decide which way to go at a crossroads, what's wrong with that? If your group doesn't, then don't do it, and if splitting up is the issue and it spoils your fun, don't split up.


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## FireLance (Mar 3, 2009)

Silver Moon said:


> Storytelling has always been considered an art.
> 
> Serving as a referee is generally considered a skill.



And here is what I believe to be the crux of the disagreement, although I would use the word "entertaining" rather than "storytelling" as the latter term has a few other connotations in gaming circles.

If you think a DM should be an entertainer, then he should try his best to ensure that the players are having a good time. 

If you think that a DM should only be a referee, then it is not his responsibility to do so.


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## Dausuul (Mar 3, 2009)

The way I see it, a DM is not obligated to make every choice the players make fruitful. However, the DM also should not be wasting the players' time.

If my players announce their intention to explore a dead end, I don't have them roll a bunch of skill checks and spend a lot of time climbing and exploring only to say, "Nope. Nothin' there." Instead, it goes something like this:

*Players:* "Okay, we're going to go explore the sewer and see if we can find a way into the fortress. We go in the mouth of the sewer. What do we see?"

*Me:* "Nothing of interest. You explore for a while, but as far as you can tell, there's no way in. All the pipes leading up into the fortress are too small to fit through. By the way, y'all smell really, really bad now."

No decision the players make while in the sewer is going to matter, so I'm not going to waste their time or mine asking them to make such decisions. Instead, I "fast-forward" through it and move on to the interesting bits.

Now, if your players actually enjoy exploring dead ends, more power to you. Mine, as far as I can tell, don't. Keeping them entertained is quite enough work as it is.


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## Cadfan (Mar 3, 2009)

the Jester said:


> This is a playstyle difference, but it seems like some people are trying to make it a badwrongfun issue here. *If my group likes spending half a game session wandering back and forth trying to decide which way to go at a crossroads, what's wrong with that?* If your group doesn't, then don't do it, and if splitting up is the issue and it spoils your fun, don't split up.



Nice try with the attempt at shutting down the debate at invoking badwrongfun.  But I don't actually believe your group enjoys that.

They might enjoy something else that happens simultaneously with wandering around at a crossroads.  But the actual useless wandering, they don't like that part for itself.


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## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

FireLance said:


> If you think that a DM should only be a referee, then it is not his responsibility to do so.



I've always wondered how a DM can be only a referee when it's also his job to play the other team, often manufacturing them whole cloth, not to mention the people manning the concession stands, all the fans in the bleachers, and the stadium itself.


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## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

Mallus said:


> I've always wondered how a DM can be only a referee when it's also his job to play the other team, often manufacturing them whole cloth, not to mention the people manning the concession stands, all the fans in the bleachers, and the stadium itself.




It is an interesting question, the answer to which would likely be the ultimate marriage of the OP's "skill vs art" dichotomy.  I do think it is the ultimate goal, however -- though I'd take out the word "only" because clearly the DM is not "only" a referee and hasn't been since the G first acquired the RP prefix.  Interestingly, I think, is that in order to be a "referee" one's skill and artistry as a DM needs to be at a level of mastery: you cannot be fair and unbiased so long as the game that you present to your players is in some way flawed (as I think all games we do present to our players are). But if you could achieve a flawless presentation, what you would ultimately be is a fair and unbiased referee adjudicating the actions of the players.


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## DrunkonDuty (Mar 3, 2009)

Most important topic first: Tim Tams. Yuck. Hate the over-sugared bloody things.  Gimme a Scotch Finger to dunk in my tea any day. Contraversal aint I?

DMing: Art or Skill? Call me Grandpa Simpson: a little from column A, a little from column B. Having the technical know-how is important. Having the 'art' or possibly 'meta-skill' required to use the technical know-how is important. 

To put it another way: Possibly the 'skill' being referred to is the knowledge base that needs to be built up: Knowledge Skills. The art is _using_ the Knowledge Skills, or Process Skills.

Regarding the example given I side with Varis' interpretation. The pipe was there as defence, most folk seem to have ignored the fact that it was there for a reason, just not the reason of giving the PCs an easy back door. Detail is nice, it's the crinkly bits that make the game interesting. Not every detail is a plot point. And as several people pointed out: ya never know how something is going to come into play at a later stage. I like the quick exit idea. 

ya know, I hope that tim tam comment of mine doesn't spark a flame war.
cheers all.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:
			
		

> But if you could achieve a flawless presentation, what you would ultimately be is a fair and unbiased referee adjudicating the actions of the players.



I agree 100%.



			
				Cadfan said:
			
		

> Look.
> 
> The DM believes that he adequately communicated to the players that climbing up the pipe was a waste of time.
> 
> ...



I think you're overlooking another possibility: players who are used to playing with a DM who _makes sure_ they don't "waste time" often won't realize (when playing with a non-interfering DM) that "climbing up the pipe" is a waste of time, no matter how clearly the DM describes the "pipe," because what they are used to is a DM just coming right out and _telling_ them that what they want to do is a waste of time.

In this case, the only way to avoid the "miscommunication" is for the DM to come right out and tell them it's a waste of time (in which case, he wouldn't be a non-interfering DM anymore), or for the players to realize that some DMs won't prevent them from wasting their time (and that it is _their_ responsibility when playing with such a DM to make sure they don't wind up wasting their time).

In short, I see the "problem" as simply a clash of play-styles.  Some people think that just because _they_ like to play the game a certain way, that's how _everyone_ likes to play it (or would if only they could be shown the One True Way).  But it just ain't so, as this thread clearly demonstrates.


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## aboyd (Mar 3, 2009)

jbear said:


> I would advocate for summing up the situation with a few sentences like 'after several hours of climing you realise this is a hopeless dead end. Frustrated and weary you climb back through the water pipe cursing your bad luck.'



Wow, that's so railroady.  Here, someone else had a much better approach:



Dausuul said:


> If my players announce their intention to explore a dead end, I don't have them roll a bunch of skill checks and spend a lot of time climbing and exploring only to say, "Nope. Nothin' there." Instead, it goes something like this:
> 
> *Players:* "Okay, we're going to go explore the sewer and see if we can find a way into the fortress. We go in the mouth of the sewer. What do we see?"
> 
> *Me:* "Nothing of interest. You explore for a while, but as far as you can tell, there's no way in. All the pipes leading up into the fortress are too small to fit through. By the way, y'all smell really, really bad now."




And now for something completely different:



Cadfan said:


> The DM believes that he adequately communicated to the players that climbing up the pipe was a waste of time.
> 
> But they didn't get the message, or else they wouldn't have climbed up the pipe and wasted time.
> 
> ...



I happen to think that the former is more likely, for one obvious reason: at least _some_ of the players got the hint.  Don't forget, this is the moment that the party split.  The DM describes it, half the group says, "Sounds like it's not worth exploring," and the other half says, "Are you kidding?  Let's explore!"  The half of the group that is sure it's a waste of time is so confident, they refuse to go up -- they let the group split.

To me, that means some players not only failed to pick up the clues from the DM, but they were oblivious to the other _players_ too.  Final verdict?  The DM could have found a way to shorten their exploration time, but other than that he correctly DM'd a sandbox game.  I'd like to join his game, if he's in the San Jose area.


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## Gimpoloshe (Mar 3, 2009)

aboyd said:


> To me, that means some players not only failed to pick up the clues from the DM, but they were oblivious to the other _players_ too.  Final verdict?  The DM could have found a way to shorten their exploration time, but other than that he correctly DM'd a sandbox game.  I'd like to join his game, if he's in the San Jose area.




In my understanding, the exploration time was roughly 15 minutes, which is not too much, but could've been shortened, that's true. 
The problem lies in the in-game time of the pipe-exploration, which took a couple hours, AND the other players deciding to move on and explore their route alone, instead of waiting for the party to proceed together. 
Even if the DM says "dead end, no way to get through", the party seperated anyways and this leads to boredem of 2 players. But they (the group of players) forced this situation completely upon theirselfs.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 3, 2009)

Anyone ever heard of Chekhov's Gun? It's a literary/dramatic rule, which can be paraphrased as "If you show the audience a gun, it needs to go off an act or two later."

In other words, it's a basic law of storytelling that when an element is introduced into the story _that seems like it might be important_, it probably should be. Maybe not right away, but at some point.

Given that this rule is embedded in virtually every movie or book (and probably most RPG adventures) the players have ever experienced, how can anyone be surprised that some of the players persisted in the suspicion that the pipe was important, even if the GM attempted to dissuade them? At best, the players were getting mixed messages: "Here's something that might be important. But you shouldn't check it out."

If the pipe was there for a real, story-related purpose (not entering the keep, but something else--an escape route, a trap that comes into play later, or whatever), the GM needs to convince the players to move on through gameplay. Maybe the pipe entrance is barred or too high in the cliff-face to reach. Maybe the rogue or a dwarf could identify its role as the business end of a trap. Maybe there was a rumour about this defense in the town the PCs passed through.

Or maybe they do explore it, but it's handled with a gloss: "OK, you spend a couple hours climbing the slimy, wet tube. It ends in a sealed door. Clearly this is a regularly used outlet for water, but there doesn't seem to be a way in. Two hours later, you rejoin your friends." Or whatever.

If the pipe does not serve the story, why is it there? If it's just an exercise in the GM's dungeon engineering skills, well, the players can be forgiven for finding that less than compelling. If it's purely a fulfillment of the simulationist creed that "some roads are just dead ends," then why are we even having this conversation--except that clearly this simulationist creed didn't result in a very satisfactory session for the players or the GM.

Either way, I point you back to Chekhov's Gun. If you put something in your adventure that seems important, your players are going to assume that it is.

And, to answer the OP, using Chekhov's Gun effectively is both a skill and an art.


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## Kzach (Mar 3, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> Either way, I point you back to Chekhov's Gun. If you put something in your adventure that seems important, your players are going to assume that it is.






Kzach said:


> In our argument (between Varis and I), he used the example of "So you're saying if there was a wall and the players wanted to go through it, I should provide a door?" No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that if you show the PC's a door, don't have it be a concrete wall behind it



Wise men


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## Aeolius (Mar 3, 2009)

Kzach said:


> I'm saying that if you show the PC's a door, don't have it be a concrete wall behind it




Of course not. That's what the gelatinous cube is for.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

Nightson said:


> Couldn't one of the adventurers tied off the rope to a point outside the tube while the other end was around the one inside the tube. One inside breaks stone cap (if he can, damages cap so it starts to break then jump out of tube), water pressure pushes him out, rope makes him pivot, he exits water stream and loses momentum fast although he might still take some damage when he hits the cave wall. Not a lot though, we're talking maybe 20-30 feet of falling damage maximum if they do it right.



They travelled 3 hours inside the tube (admittably at half speed) before they got to the cap - not enough rope for it.


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## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> Anyone ever heard of Chekhov's Gun? ...
> it's a basic law of storytelling that when an element is introduced into the story _that seems like it might be important_, it probably should be. ...
> If the pipe does not serve the story, why is it there?




All this assumes that an RPG session/adventure is a story.

Which it isn't.


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## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> All this assumes that an RPG session/adventure is a story.
> 
> Which it isn't.



It assumes there are similarities between RPG's and stories (particularly with regard to how detail functions).

Which, BTW, there are...

... actually details like that in an adventure function exactly the same way as in fiction. Broadly speaking, detail is either relevant to the action of the story (Chekov's gun), or it exists to convince the reader of the realness of the scene (verisimilitude). 

The difference is the effect of confusing the two. When reading fiction, mistaking the significance of a specific detail might lead to some confusion, usually corrected as the reader progresses and the overall context becomes apparent. 

When gaming, mistaking a decorative detail for a relevant one can result in faffing around pointlessly for several hours instead of play-acting out a life of high adventure.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> All this assumes that an RPG session/adventure is a story.




No. It assumes that players' responses are conditioned by the rules of fiction in which we're all so thoroughly indoctrinated.

Your game may or may not be storylike. And your goal may or may not be related to story. Regardless, there is so much similarity in the experience of how events unfold in an RPG and how they unfold in a film or book that the rules of drama are still going to sway people's expectations and responses, if only subconsciously.


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## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> Your game may or may not be storylike.



I'm going to go out on a limb here Charles and say everyone's game is story-like, whether they're inclined to describe it that way or not. 

You can't have a game based around the portrayal of fictional characters leading fictional lives of high --or base-- adventure in fictional settings without it being story-like. RPG's have too many common features w/fiction _not_ to be story-like (using any reasonable definition of 'like').


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> You proudly proclaim what the players knew, and proclaim that obviously they knew enough not to waste fifteen minutes of game time pursuing nothing at all. Technically they didn't know it was a dead end, but you claim that they knew enough to know they shouldn't pursue it.





I never said that the players knew the pipes were a dead end. 
What the players were given was the observable information around them.
Based on this information, two players wanted to go up the pipes. The remaining three were staunchly against the idea. 



Cadfan said:


> But obviously you are wrong.




I just described what the players saw. I have simply communicated to readers on the forum what information the players had before they committed themselves, as well as drawing the readers attention to the fact that the party members were prepared to committ a 3-5 hour journey (in the worlds time) and split the party for a minimum of that time.

It wasn't about me being right or wrong.

The players are free to make whatever decisions they want. 




Cadfan said:


> If they HAD known, they wouldn't have wasted the time. The fact that they pursued the red herring for so long conclusively proves that they didn't know it was a red herring.




Fair enough, if they HAD known that all the orcs in the citadel were dead or dying because the dwarves spiked their water with poison, the players wouldn't have wasted their time climbing up the mountain in the first place (This didnt actually occurr btw)... 

If they HAD known that a +10 Vorpal Greatsword was buried along with 100,000 gp just 1 km away, unguarded, they would not of climbed the mountain...

If they HAD known that the god of madness would destroy all other gods in 2 years time and subsequently kill all life on the planet, they would of stayed in the local taven, gotten drunk alot and 'entertained' some lady/man friends all day long...

My negligence in this matter is starting to be apparent to me. I haven't told the players anything about what they HAD to know,... 



Cadfan said:


> DMs, particularly DMs with simulationist bents, tend to forget that the game world exists only within their head. And by "their head," I mean the DM's. Not the player's. The details of the game world have to get from the DM's head to the player's heads, and that doesn't always go as well as you think. Clearly, in this case, you failed to get across what you had hoped to get across.




I just described what the players saw and what they experienced in the tunnel (eg, slime on the walls, the cramped conditions etc). 



Cadfan said:


> The proof is undeniable- had you communicated what you intended, this never would have happened; it did happen, therefore, you did not communicate what you thought.




You are absolutely 100% right in this aspect. It is not my job to communicate what 'I' think. I'm not a player. Its up to the players to act on what 'they' think,..classic DM error, I know,..especially the DM's with a simulationist bent...but we all have our burdens I guess. 



Cadfan said:


> At least in this situation you only lost fifteen minutes of game time.



What? No comment about the players splitting/weakening the party for 3 hours in the game world? Nah, why would we talk about that,... 



Cadfan said:


> Change a few words, and your post becomes a classic "The TPK was totally the players fault and not mine and they're mad at me anyways!" post. We see those about every other week around here.



Yep, correct here as well,...and I'd be mad at them for taking actions that, despite the observable information provided, they nonetheless took that resulted in a TPK. I wouldn't stop them though, or tell them what I think,...there's an orc army out there, if they stroll into it, the 'great sheltering hand of the DM' won't protect them,...they'll get ripped to pieces unless the players provide a damn good reason they shouldn't be. 

My apologies for the delay and tone of this reply. It's not my intention to cause offence to you personally, just to attack your argument.


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## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> No. It assumes that players' responses are conditioned by the rules of fiction in which we're all so thoroughly indoctrinated.
> 
> Your game may or may not be storylike. And your goal may or may not be related to story. Regardless, there is so much similarity in the experience of how events unfold in an RPG and how they unfold in a film or book that the rules of drama are still going to sway people's expectations and responses, if only subconsciously.




The dissimilarities are for more pronounced, IMO. First of all, there's the issue of interactivity. Second, there's the issue of non-linear and emergent progression. Third, there's the issue of information dissemination and interpretation. Finally, there's the issue of the social construct.

What you are talking about, i think, is the tropes of traditional, linear storytelling that do not apply to RPGs.  Story with RPGs is constructed out of, often after, play.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> Nonsense.
> 
> Look, its really simple.
> 
> ...




Knowing the information I gave the players (detailed in my previous posts)  would you, as a player, be willing to split the party for possibly 5 game hours and go up the pipe?

Do you think 15 minutes actual game time pursuing this appropriate?

Do you think the remaining party members, who, based on that same information I provided, refused to go into the pipe should be left vulnerable/idle? Would it be fun?

Whatever choices you would of made, know that as your DM, I would of done my best to exercise them.


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## Cadfan (Mar 3, 2009)

*shrug*

I'm not offended.


> Yep, correct here as well,...and I'd be mad at them for taking actions that, despite the observable information provided, they nonetheless took that resulted in a TPK. I wouldn't stop them though, or tell them what I think,...there's an orc army out there, if they stroll into it, the 'great sheltering hand of the DM' won't protect them,...they'll get ripped to pieces unless the players provide a damn good reason they shouldn't be.



What you intend to communicate and what the players perceive you as communicating aren't necessarily the same thing.

When this happens, and something bad results, there are three possibilities.  You didn't communicate as well as you thought, your players didn't listen as well as they should have, or your players hate your game and want it to suck.

You seem to be the sort who defaults to the second.  I, as a DM, tend to default to the first.

I find that it results in a lot less blaming my friends for being stupid, and a lot more improvement in my own skills.  

Maybe it has to do with my career.  I get paid to convince people of things.  If I spent my time after every loss lambasting the fools for not listening better and agreeing with me, I'd go out of business.  I guess your mileage varies.  Good luck with that.


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## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> What you are talking about, i think, is the tropes of traditional, linear storytelling that do not apply to RPGs. Story with RPGs is constructed out of, often after, play.



The point being made is that both are constructed out of similar bits. A point, I notice, you aren't trying to refute. 

As I've said a number of times around here --incessantly, one might say-- a story in the process of being told (collaboratively) is still a story. It doesn't magically become a story upon completion, nor is mystically something else during the process of its telling.


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## Cadfan (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> The dissimilarities are for more pronounced, IMO. First of all, there's the issue of interactivity. Second, there's the issue of non-linear and emergent progression. Third, there's the issue of information dissemination and interpretation. Finally, there's the issue of the social construct.
> 
> What you are talking about, i think, is the tropes of traditional, linear storytelling that do not apply to RPGs. Story with RPGs is constructed out of, often after, play.



CharlesRyan is completely right and you're completely wrong.

There may be dissimilarities between RPGs and stories, but Chekhov's Gun is the biggest similarity of all.  The DM sorts the infinite descriptions he could give for the myriad of details in a game, and focuses them based on relevance.  If the DM spends a lot of time on a detail, the players can be forgiven for assuming its important.  

The interactivity just makes this sometimes spiral out of control- lets call it Chekhov's Railgun.  The DM describes some detail that isn't actually important but which, for whatever reason, he thinks is cool.  The players investigate that detail.  The DM responds with more description, but nothing useful.  The players, sensing the focus of the game centering on this item, investigate even further, determined not to miss whatever the DM has hidden there for them to find.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

UngeheuerLich said:


> 1. If they players try, you didn´t discourage them enough.



No, I just communicated the observable facts.



UngeheuerLich said:


> Did they actually see this pipe in action?



No, but they did see evidence of the water erosion on the stone path they were using. The stone was smooth.



UngeheuerLich said:


> As I understand, it only used once in a while during the day, exactly to discourage someone using water breathing and cimbing up.



Yes, to clarify, it's used once at midnight, 7 days a week.



UngeheuerLich said:


> So when your PC´s try to get up there, you could tell them something like:
> It is used for flushing down water etc. The walls are damp, so it seems still to be in use. Probably closed.



I told them this, except for the 'Probably closed' part. There was no observable way for them to know this, except for the fact that water wasn't actually gush out of the pipe.



UngeheuerLich said:


> Alternatively you could let them see how it works, either before they climbed up, or just at the moment they tried... allowing them to cut themselves free from their rope... this would have ended their expedition quite early.



If they had arrived at the pipe at midnight on any other night, they would of observed this. 



UngeheuerLich said:


> Traps in the pipe don´t make sense: because noone expects anyone to climb up there when it is in use, and it is locked when not...



Agreed


UngeheuerLich said:


> so you could give some advice like: interestingly noone even bothered to put some bars at the lower end...



 By the same token, saying this could be construed by the players to me that theres 'nasty' in the pipe waiting to be killed. The players had the pipes described to them, they knew the pipes had no bars on them.



UngeheuerLich said:


> And lastly, maybe you could have them observe the use of the pipe, allowing them to recognize if it is used regularly, so that the can meet just the right moment to be at the top of the pipe when it is opened, i am certain the preasure on the top is not too much (only the height of the water above your position contributes to the preasure)



 The clues to that were the slime on the pipe inner walls (as opposed to the pipe being bone dry), the waste nature of the water itself (which they were informed about), and the fact that it is servicing a citadel which is still used by the dwarves to this day.



UngeheuerLich said:


> So: it could have been made an interesting entrance into the fortification, or you could have discouraged them even more, but:
> 
> *Now they know an escape route out of the fortification, this is not so bad.* *If they use it, you can give them XP afterwards.*



Correct. 



UngeheuerLich said:


> UngeheuerLich said:
> 
> 
> > Allowing PCs to contribute to your world however is important, because they also play the game.
> ...


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

weem said:


> For me, I feel DM-ing well is an art. You can know all the rules and have all the DM-ing skills needed to run a game, but that in no way translates to a fun or engaging game. You need to know your players and be able to tell a fun and compelling story that draws those people into it based on their individual needs/desires. I consider writing (well) an artform and for me DM-ing is the same, if only in audio book format and much more interactive? haha.



I'm sold.



weem said:


> Draw your players into the story - make them feel as though their actions matter... that's what I feel my job is basically as a DM... I am damaging those efforts if I do not reward players for trying... had your DM let them discover something, or at least have some fun getting up there (encounters, etc) you teach the players that taking chances and adventuring off the beaten path is a good thing.




I agree that I'm far from perfect as a DM. I did try to introduce a skill challenge for them, by they circumvented it by taking 10 on the checks (see previous post).



weem said:


> To me, if I didn't want them to get in that way, I would either sum it up (as has been mentioned) "You move your way up the smelly, dirty tube only to find your path blocked... but you make your way back safely enough, if not smelling good"



To discover this, the PC's would of had to of travelled 3 hours in game time. The remaining 3 PC's wanted to take actions during those 3 hours.



weem said:


> Again (as has been mentioned) a reward does not have to be treasure... it could simply be a combat encounter, or some kind of insight into the story - maybe they can not go any further, but they CAN see through a grate and gain some information about what is inside that they otherwise wouldn't have had, etc.



I agree.

They have discovered a potential escape route if they need it if they can get the mechanism to divert the water flow to another pipe/s and manipulate the mechanism to then open the cap. (however , they wont know this is an option until they get inside the citadel).


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## Shadeydm (Mar 3, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> If the DM spends a lot of time on a detail, the players can be forgiven for assuming its important.




You are assuming that the DM spent a lot of time on a detail. It sounds to me like a couple players decided to pursue more detail. This an important distinction. The fact that the majority of players felt it was not worth pursuing further exonerates the DM of being some how "in the wrong" in this specific situation. IMO


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

jbear said:


> Which is why I would advocate for summing up the situation with a few sentences like 'after several hours of climing you realise this is a hopeless dead end. Frustrated and weary you climb back through the water pipe cursing your bad luck.' Meanwhile what were you other 3 doing?
> 
> And so 5 seconds later the game is back on track, or if not on track at least not bogged down in a dead end.




The only problem here, is that for those 3 hours, the other three players proceeded up the mountain road and took on nine orcs. The other two PC's were at least 2 hours away by this time. The two players had to wait out the fight.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> I've DMed similar situations. It's a 'Catch-22'. If I say right away it's a dead end, then I'd be accused of railroading. So to avoid that stigma, I'd have to let them make choices that would appear to be 'wasting time'.
> 
> The main problem I see here is the actual splitting of the party.
> 
> ...



Yes, a fair analysis of my thinking at the time (except for the last paragraph - I didn't think 'screw it' etc, etc).


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 3, 2009)

Shadeydm said:


> You are assuming that the DM spent a lot of time on a detail. It sounds to me like a couple players decided to pursue more detail. This an important distinction.




Not in the presence of Chekhov's Gun. Chekhov's Gun is a noteworthy detail even if it is only present as a brief glimpse in passing. Consciously or subconsciously, Chekhov's Gun compels attention.

The players are approaching a mountain keep. The GM presents them with what appears to be an alternate way of getting in. _Of course_ the players want to pursue more detail. It doesn't matter how much or little detail the GM initially gave it.


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## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

Mallus said:


> It doesn't magically become a story upon completion




Actually, it does. A story requires a resolution to be a story. Until there's a resolution, it is something else. More importantly, that thing it is doesn't likely follow the conventions a story during the process of play. There's starts and stops, dead ends, "wasted time" and irrelevent detail.  It only becomes a story when everyone is sitting around with a beer, talking about how awesome it was when they assaulted that orc stronghold.  They modify the details, at least through inclusion and omission, and give it a narrative.  Then it becomes a story.

As to whether the DM can be "blamed" for providing the players detail when they ask for it -- well, that's just silly. Castigating the DM for *not* railroading the players makes no sense at all.  I mean, imagine:

DM: You see a few people around the tavern.
Player: Are there any women?
DM: Sure, there's a pretty half elf sipping a glass of wine.
Player: What's she wearing?
DM: A dress.
Player: What color is it.
DM: It doesn't matter. She;'s not important to _the story I am trying to force you to play_.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

UngeheuerLich said:


> I understood that they spent much more than 15 min of real time in the tube, because the DM thought attacking the party with orcs inbetween is a good idea...



Actually, the three party members out of the pipe instigated the fight. The orcs were not on patrol, they were defending the entrance to the citadel.
I said something along the lines of "There are 9 of them" to which they replied "yep, we know, it'll all good, we'll wipe the floor with them".
And they actually did too. I was certainly surprised.




weem said:


> maybe better timing does the trick... let those other players just be attacked, when the PC´s returned frustrated, wet and unprepared... or make those attacking orc party minions only with maybe one scout which has to be captured before beeing able to flee... it just has to be done fast...



I wasn't going to alter the strength and compisition of the orcs due to actions of the PC's, of which the orcs had no knowledge.


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## Kraydak (Mar 3, 2009)

Chekhov's Gun is an important point:
In RPGs, you need the DM to provide guns that the PLAYERS shoot.

If the players had climbed up, burned a magic item that let them travel through 5' of stone and used some waterbreathing effects, they would have bought themselves a stealthy entrance.  The other <5' thick walls would probably have all been guarded.

Of course, DMs can never guess where the players will drill holes, which holes the players will fill with gunpowder, and, even then, which holes filled with gunpowder the players will bother to set off.  Or whether they will bother taking cover first, even after using multiple barrels of gunpowder.

Side note: I have, as a player, been in a party that used a token of pit to open a hole connecting a shallow, boiling lake to volcanic tunnels below... to sweep an enemy party off a narrow mountain trail as part of an ambush.  

Sometimes the players will arrive at a dead-end and blow it up.  Other times they will grouse.  As has been noted elsewhere, the biggest problem was splitting the party.

Second side note: while I agree with the DM on almost everything, I feel that any action that deserves XP deserves the same XP if done intelligently, even if doing it intelligently removes the risk.  Being smart shouldn't punish you, being dumb shouldn't reward you.  Taking 10 on the climb shouldn't reduce any xp reward.


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## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> The players are approaching a mountain keep. The GM presents them with what appears to be an alternate way of getting in. _Of course_ the players want to pursue more detail. It doesn't matter how much or little detail the GM initially gave it.




I don't disagree with this part.  but, as a literary device, CG can't be applied and players should be able to figure that out.

They don't, of course, but that's players for you.  They also tend to want to make sure your big bad is dead Dead DEAD, rather than let him reappear later and rarely, if ever, purposefully fail in order to increase the drama.

Nor should they.


----------



## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> Until there's a resolution, it is something else.



Suggest a better term. 



> As to whether the DM can be "blamed" for providing the players detail when they ask for it -- well, that's just silly.



Who said this?


----------



## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

Varis said:


> I wasn't going to alter the strength and compisition of the orcs due to actions of the PC's, of which the orcs had no knowledge.




For what its worth, this is the exact right way to run the game in order to preserve meaningful choices for players.

Have some XP.


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## Reynard (Mar 3, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Suggest a better term.




Playing?




> Who said this?




More than one poster has suggested that the DM is at fault for "allowing" the PCs to "waste time".


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## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> For what its worth, this is the exact right way to run the game in order to preserve meaningful choices for players.



Correction... it's _one_ way to preserve meaningful choices for players. Others exist.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> I don't disagree with this part.  but, as a literary device, CG can't be applied and players should be able to figure that out.
> 
> They don't, of course, but that's players for you.  They also tend to want to make sure your big bad is dead Dead DEAD, rather than let him reappear later and rarely, if ever, purposefully fail in order to increase the drama.
> 
> Nor should they.




I won't disagree with your conclusion, except to point out that with a strictly simulationist/sandbox approach ("The tunnel is there because that's where the dwarves dug it, dammit; if the players mistakely react to the Chekhov's Gun expectation, that's their problem") you end up with unsatisfactory game sessions and contentious ENWorld threads.

Alternatively, you could respect the fact that everyone has preconceptions, and avoid the problem by either
Incorporating some sort of payoff for exploring the dead end; or
Not putting an apparently important but actually unimportant element in the adventure.


----------



## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> Playing?



Too vague. Doesn't convey that the thing being discussed is a kind of narrative. 



> More than one poster has suggested that the DM is at fault for "allowing" the PCs to "waste time".



Ah, sorry... I misread your paraphrasing. Yeah, I'm in the camp that says a DM isn't just a referee, they're also part novelist and theater/film director. They need separate the atmospheric details from the actionable ones and they certainly need to move the action along from time to time.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 3, 2009)

Reynard said:


> It only becomes a story when everyone is sitting around with a beer, talking about how awesome it was when they assaulted that orc stronghold.  They modify the details, at least through inclusion and omission, and give it a narrative.  Then it becomes a story.




I hesitate to react to this, because it's entirely tangential to my point, but I can't help myself.

I completely reject this notion. I'm running a campaign now that is following a very distinct story arc. We've been playing for a year and a half, and there's likely another year of play ahead of us before we reach the conclusion.

You're basically saying this campaign is a tree falling in the forest--that if nobody talks it out after it's done, the story never existed. That's hogwash. The story exists within the minds of the players, regardless of whether they write it down or talk it out.

Completion has nothing to do with it either. An unfinished story may be unfinished, but that doesn't mean it's not a story. If I sit down with a novel, does it fail to be a story until I finish the last page? It may fail to be a _complete_ story, but it's a story nonetheless.


----------



## billd91 (Mar 3, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> There may be dissimilarities between RPGs and stories, but Chekhov's Gun is the biggest similarity of all.  The DM sorts the infinite descriptions he could give for the myriad of details in a game, and focuses them based on relevance.  If the DM spends a lot of time on a detail, the players can be forgiven for assuming its important.




There are tremendous metagame implications with this analysis. Players may assume he's describing based on relevance _to the adventure_ and act accordingly. But that's a metagame assumption that may not be true. Players are, in fact, advised away from that sort of metagaming.

But what if the DM is describing based on relevance _to the location_? In that case prominent features get described even if they have no relevance to the plot whatsoever. The difficulty here, as with Chekhov's Gun, is that in a non-visual medium, the entire scene is set by the words of the describing author or DM. He _must_ describe the visuals in the scene including things both relevant to the adventure and non. But by introducing objects into the scene, _everything_ is in danger of being called Chekhov's Gun. 

The question is what's relevant to the background scene and what's relevant to the story? I would say that not everything intended for the background should really be considered appropriate for the Chekhov's Gun label. If they were, you'd end up with nothing but extremely spare set design. 



Cadfan said:


> The interactivity just makes this sometimes spiral out of control- lets call it Chekhov's Railgun.  The DM describes some detail that isn't actually important but which, for whatever reason, he thinks is cool.  The players investigate that detail.  The DM responds with more description, but nothing useful.  The players, sensing the focus of the game centering on this item, investigate even further, determined not to miss whatever the DM has hidden there for them to find.




At some point, this reaches behavior lampooned brilliantly in _Knights of the Dinner Table_. Bob, Dave, and Brian are constantly engaging in this kind of behavior and treating everything BA describes as important, including random cows standing in fields. But whenever BA responds by either trying to shut them down by declaring the situation irrelevant or impossible to actually and directly investigate further, it only inflames the players to investigate even further until BA finally gives in by making the situation relevant or include a payoff.

In other words, they're always expecting Chekhov's Gun to fire and do so immediately. They're looking at everything in view, from gazebos to cows to piano-players with funny eyes, and investing in it as relevant. Now while they may be fictitious characters and exaggerated for satire, you can see how their behavior matches what you describe above. And like the KoDT fellows, not every player is dissuaded with a simple explanation that the element isn't relevant to the adventure at large or that its relevance will depend on other events or will only be apparent later.


----------



## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Some observations...
> 
> 
> There's nothing wrong with the drain pipe being a dead end.



Agreed.



Mallus said:


> However, there is something wrong with spending a lot of table time on a dead end (if that happened).



Agreed.



Mallus said:


> If I were the DM, I probably would have whipped up an improvised encounter for inside the pipe.



I attempted to introduce a skill challenge. They decided to take 10 (see my previous posts for more details on this)



Mallus said:


> Or I would have fast-forwarded over _not_ finding anything useful while exploring it ("It takes 6 hours to climb up and then back down the drain. You find no entrance into the citadel").



The issue here is that during that time, the remaining three PC's out of the pipe wanted to push forward up the mountain road,..and they encountered orcs (see my previous posts for more information on this).



Mallus said:


> As for the top of the drain pipe being a potential death trap if the player's monkey with it... that's just bad form. How are the players supposed to _know_ they couldn't survive the Big Flush, maybe hang on and then somehow gain entrance?



It was 5 pipes adjacent to one another, that evenually connect to become one large pipe that can accomodate 3-4 people abreast. The pipe is sealed with a large slab of rock at the very top, water trickling down the sides. This was drawn out a described. What would you conclude? 


Mallus said:


> Surviving the drain pipe is no more ridiculous --or heroic/creative-- than any one of a number of commonplace D&D occurrences, for instance, the jumping off of high places and not dying of one's injuries at the bottom (assuming one is mid-level or above), or surviving the frequent exposure to explosive _fire_.




So it's often hard to tell the fatally ridiculous from the strategically sublime, without the DM's help.[/quote]
Agreed. Players should question, and DM's should point out the obvious observable facts, without drawing conclusions for the players.


Mallus said:


> (This is largely the product of D&D simulating the frequently ridiculous and almost always contrived worlds of adventure stories, in which logically absurd actions are often effective -- see Indiana Jones and Co. jumping out of plane using an inflatable raft as a parachute/wing.)



{Insert FUN here}


Mallus said:


> Which leads to another issue: tedium is never a smart outcome in a game that's supposed to be about adventure. If player choices lead to nothing exciting happening, there's no need to play it out in detail. Move on. Lingering over dead-ends for the sake of verisimilitude is probably something called the mimetic fallacy (I think).




The only problem with this is that both the players in the tunnel and the players outside the tunnel wanted to continue on their chosen course of action (for more detail, see my previous posts), which used hours of PC game world time, where other things were done.


Mallus said:


> One last thought (finally). Simulation in an RPG a laudable, even enjoyable, thing. But it's a means to an end. At the point it becomes the end itself, the DM needs to start rethinking his priorities.



I set the scene and act as a conduit for the players to act in that. If you consider that as a the end itself, then I'm guilty.
My first priority is ensuring the players enjoy themselves.
My second priority is protecting the integrity of the scene, so when the players earn their victories, they can savour the fact that those victoies were legitimate ones, not just 'gimmes' or 'gifts'.
For instance, in the second half of the game, the 5 players got together and had an extended rest, buying the time for the orcs to gather more forces together (the orcs thought that there was potentially a small army on the way, and took defensive measures)They party eventually took on 18 orcs and 2 ogres - I managed to send 3 players into negatives, with the 4th on 1 hit point,..but they won! A great victory, hard fought, and well earnt. And well enjoyed,..as a team. I couldn't stop them grinning. They beat me and stomped on my ego to boot. Ah well,..plenty more orcs out there...


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## LostSoul (Mar 3, 2009)

I think Varis handled everything well, including the fight with the orcs.  The only thing I would have done differently is that I _probably_ wouldn't have run a skill challenge.

I say "probably" because maybe Varis' players are really interested in exploring things like old dwarven drainage systems.  They might have enjoyed the inclusion of something that makes the game world seem more real, appreciate the time Varis put into it, enjoy his description and working with it, etc.

So maybe, for Varis' players, that time spent crawling through the pipe wasn't wasted?  I don't know, I wasn't there.


I probably would have done the climb with a handwave until they make it to the cap, and then see what they do.  Either way they wouldn't have been able to catch up with the other PCs fighting the orcs - meaningful choice needs consequences (especially if it's a gamist sandbox).



Sammael said:


> If the DM had changed the pipe to become an entrance into the keep, that would have been an example of narrativist play - the players believe that there should be an entrance, even if there wasn't one before, and so the DM changes the world to fit the players' belief.




I don't think you'd have enough information about the game to say it's narrativist.  I think you could say, "This is an example of a technique used in some games designed to facilitate narrativism", but that's about it.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

UngeheuerLich said:


> And one last time: where does the big flush come from at the top of the pipe? The preasure can´t be that high up there... at least after the first flush is done (water falling through the empty pipe, the pipe will fill if no whirl is created and the preaure will so low at the top that you may be able to climb upwards...
> 
> if the flush however is so short, that the water can´t create a backwater, then its also no problem...



My apologies for not responding sooner.

Think of the mountains in Lord of the Rings. Large snow capped mountain range.

Before the dwarves dug their citadel into the side of the mountain, the ice flow melted down the side of the mountain and fed into the start of a river in the valley below. 

The dwarves dug an elaborate hydrosystem to serve all the needs of the citadel. The water has been channelled into the mountain by yet more pipes. They have a main mechanism that relys on moving gears and counterweights to control/divert the water flow as they require. 

At midnight, they use this mechanism to divert all the flowing water to one main drainage pipe (which the PC's discovered), in order to flush out the collected waste and smell.


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## Ydars (Mar 3, 2009)

This thread just shows how important it is that the DM makes the players aware of his preferred playstyle before the game begins.

Actually, both styles presented in this thread are valid and I shift back and forth between them, but only when I change campaigns I am DMing. 

And when I do change styles, I ANNOUNCE that I am doing it and what that means for how they players should approach the game.

Here are some issues you should deal with Up front, when you start a game:

1) Magic: are magic items bought and sold or are they rare and can only be swapped.

2) Detail: Is the game austere and gritty where encumberance matters and every gold piece accounted for, or is it epic and the details glossed over.

3) Game type: is it RIGID or REACTIVE. In a rigid game, the dice are never hidden and if a PC dies because of a roll, they die and the DM never changes his deisgn to satisfy a player (except if the players find a hole in the design: see later). In a reactive game, there is far more fudging going on, usually because of the needs of a story or situation and the game is usually not so tactical as a result, and is less about the mechanics.

In fact, most games are somewhere in between (often the game is stated to be RIGID but is in fact more reactive than the players realise).

The problem the OP posits is not a problem that the DM is right and the players are wrong or vice versa: it is that they failed to communicate and come to an agreement about how the world they are jointly exploring functions.

The DM is working from the assumption that his world has some "integrity" and doesn't just exist to satisfy the player's whims. Such a world is fixed and only reacts to the actions of the PCs when it is logical to do so. So to the DM, the pipe exists because undergound cities have to have some way to get rid of waste, not because it is a cool way in.

The players who went up the pipes were indeed working from the principle that anything in the world that exists, does so solely for them to interact with: Chekov's Gun. Also sewers are a common way of circumventing danger in fantasy novels, CRPGS and other media that deal with pseudo-medieval stories.

Working from this premise, the mistake the DM made, from his point of view, was in DESIGN! Since the sandbox type of DM tends to adhere rigidly to his design, then his design had better be very good. It should be very flexible: by this I mean that there should be multiple ways of achieving any particular outcome/aim or getting to any particular place. Otherwise, sticking rigidly to the design combined with only a single path can quickly equal a railroad.

If I were designing this adventure, I would have made it possible for PCs to enter via the pipe, at the design stage, as there is no particular reason for water pressure to be enormous in a waste pipe (in fact I can think of some good reasons why this is NOT a good idea).  If the DM had no other way for the PCs to enter the city, and this is his normal way of designing adventures, then I would say he needs to start with the "rule of 3": there should be at least 3 ways into and out of every important location that the PCs might visit and at least 3 ways of getting past any obstacle they might encounter or of dealing with every monster.

The other issue with the rigid game is that, if the PCs try something where the DM has NO design: i.e they try to interact with something that has not been planned, the DM is NO LONGER justified in being rigid when dealing with that obstacle and should allow the players actions to succeed if they could reasonably do so. You cannot just make something up on the fly and then be rigid with it unless you are an extremely talented and quick thinking DM because you will likely make a mistake in adjudication unless you are incredibly careful. Rigidity is only justified in highly planned and prepared games, which is why everyone is now tending towards more reactive games, because they are so much easier to prep.

Just my two pennies worth!


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 3, 2009)

Varis said:


> My apologies for not responding sooner.
> 
> Think of the mountains in Lord of the Rings. Large snow capped mountain range.
> 
> ...



Ok, that is actually a problem 

Sometimes there is just nothing you can do as a DM... i also wouldn´t change such a significant construction on the fly...

I also ran my party into dead ends, once it was such an epic failure, because my red herring was a bit too attracting...
sometimes i even tried to disencourrage my players to do follow it... and sometimes i can´t do anything to get them into the pipe, which is actually a possible entrance...


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## Shadeydm (Mar 3, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> Not in the presence of Chekhov's Gun. Chekhov's Gun is a noteworthy detail even if it is only present as a brief glimpse in passing. Consciously or subconsciously, Chekhov's Gun compels attention.
> 
> The players are approaching a mountain keep. The GM presents them with what appears to be an alternate way of getting in. _Of course_ the players want to pursue more detail. It doesn't matter how much or little detail the GM initially gave it.




I'm sorry but I don't believe this applies to the DMs playstyle. You are essentially saying that you cannot describe anything unless it is relevant. In your world of GMing apparently I cannot describe the grass in the clearing as green just in case some PC wants to delve into the theory of Photosynthisis or I cannot describe that the room the PCs have entered has a painting unless it has some relevant information on the mission at hand. In your world a painting cannot just be a painting and a drain pipe cannot just be a drain pipe, and while i'm sure you enjoy this sort of game for your group, I say thanks but no thanks.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

jbear said:


> This I think is fundamental in the following decisions made.
> 
> If the DM is simply saving them from boredom, and saving himself from the uncomfortable situation of splitting his attention and time between two groups, especially having decided that one path is a dead end and any persistence trying to bust through that dead end will turn it literally into a DEAD end.
> 
> From my point of view, giving them information that lets them know this is acceptable. They have done it. It was fruitless. You tell them as such.



The issue here is that in that 6 hour period, the other 3 players walked off and did their own thing,..and ran into orcs, who are stationed in front of the citadel entrance. The players decided to attack. 



jbear said:


> If you want to let them have a chance to bang their head against a wall for a while in real time, because you think they should be allowed to make bad decisions, in that case at least let them know they are making a bad decision from the start.




Please, read the decriptions I provided the players (see previous posts) and consider that they also had to a. Invest significant game world time b. Split the party in do so. 

From the facts presented, they can draw their own conclusions.



jbear said:


> However, I still don't see the point to punish them for this fairly banal 'error', by having them sit out of a combat + the other 15 minutes of climbing up to the dead end.



I didnt 'punish' anybody. Why would I even think like that?
They were given the facts, they made decisions, and took action. 



jbear said:


> I also think knowing when to 'step in' and when to 'step back' is part of the art.



Agreed. The players still have the final say though.



jbear said:


> Also, how much real time do you really want to spend describing everything to miniscule detail when its of no importance? Do you want your players describing how they wake up, eat their breakfast, wash their privates and do their business? Aren't you brushing over these very natural and important details with brief sentances like' we wake up and get ready', in order to get to the interesting part more quickly in real time? Isn't this similar to saying:'you explore the tunnel for five hours and discover its a dead end' ?




Three factors resulted in my actions not reflecting the above.

a. I was suddenly dealing with 2 groups, so I had to divide my attention to understand the PC actions in game world time. One group of auomatically burnt 6 game world hours had I simply said "You go there, and come back". 

b. I was attempting to provide the players with an additional opportuny to turn back early and allow the two group to reunite sooner. The second group (out of the pipe) proceeded up the mountain path. By switching between the two groups, I was hoping that the 2 PC's in the pipe would begin to understand the scope and difficulty of the path they wanted to go down, especially when I described to cramped, slimy pipe going vertical up to the limit of the drows dark vision. But they were adament.

c. Since they 'were' adament, I decided to set up a skill challenge,..they were burning real time anyway, and they were doing a dangerous activity, they might as well earn xp. But they circumvented this process by taking 10 on all the checks. Defeating the point of a skill challenge. I have since read up on this very issue and learnt that you can't do that, but at the time, I wasn't about to waste 'game time' resolving an unknown rule issue (which for all I knew could of taken another fifteen minutes to make an accurate determination). So I allowed it, because they were potentially in a life or death situation, and they at least had the wisdom to be cautious.





jbear said:


> I didn't advocate fudging, railroading or generalizing this decision for every situation. If a bad decision leads to something dangerous or exciting, then step back, take your time. If a bad decision leads to an uncomfortable situation with the party splitting, frustration and boredom. Then move it along swiftly. I'm sure there are other situations bad decisions might lead to, and as a DM you have to make the best call you can.



I agree.



jbear said:


> I do think the situation the DM was put into was tricky. I think its useful and positive to read the two sides of the story (both, from my point of view, understandable.). It helps me think with the benefit of hindsight what I would do if I find myself in that situation in the future ( a luxury he didnt have). Given that I now have that luxury, I think I would do as I said above.



Except for the last line, for reasons stated above, I agree.
I dont contend I had the ideal solution, only that I did my best in the given circumstance and with the knowledge I possessed.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

merelycompetent said:


> If Varis is open to a recommendation, here's a technique I use in my games to try and warn players that their character is about to do something foolishly suicidal or wasteful, in the DM's opinion:
> 
> "Are you sure you want to do this?"
> "Are you *SURE* you want to do this?"
> ...



Whilst I didnt use these requesions,I did say things like:

"You realise that it's a 3 hour trip, and you'll move at half speed, and that your in cramped conditions that will hamper your ability to fight, and it IS a water drain?'

Having said that, I like your technique better.

Hell, I was second guessing if I was SURE I really wanted to answer your post. 

Top recommendation.

Thanks.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

aboyd said:


> I'd like to join his game, if he's in the San Jose area.



Alas, I'm in Melbourne, Australia. Buy I'd like to visit sometime, assuming of course, there's nice beer to be had in San Jose? (err, where exactly IS that, anyway?).


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

Kraydak said:


> Second side note: while I agree with the DM on almost everything, I feel that any action that deserves XP deserves the same XP if done intelligently, even if doing it intelligently removes the risk. Being smart shouldn't punish you, being dumb shouldn't reward you. Taking 10 on the climb shouldn't reduce any xp reward.



I agree with your sentiment. However, consider the following points.

a. Taking 10 in itself earns no xp (all other things being equal).
b. I am inclinded to award them some xp, because they did face some non life threatening risk (Unless they both rolled 1's), and yes they were smart in 'getting around' the in built risk of the skill challenge (albiet, some reading, by an unallowable meathod as per the rules i.e. can't take 10 in a skill challenge).

My question to you, is should I given them full xp as if they had successfully completed the skill challenge, even though they did not face the challenges inherent risks?

I'm open to doing so, but currently my thinking is that they should be getting xp equivallent to an easy skill challenge encounter, and no more.

Btw, it's got nothing to do with punishing anybody,..I'm just trying to figure the appropriate logic on this one.


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## Varis (Mar 3, 2009)

reynard said:


> for what its worth, this is the exact right way to run the game in order to preserve meaningful choices for players.
> 
> Have some xp.




woot! Xp! :d


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## Umbran (Mar 3, 2009)

Varis said:


> My question to you, is should I given them full xp as if they had successfully completed the skill challenge, even though they did not face the challenges inherent risks?




I would normally only do so if the method they used to bypass the risk was clever.  If you out-think the GM, you get XP.  If they did so in a mundane, routine fashion, then no, they don't get full XP.


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## aboyd (Mar 3, 2009)

Varis said:


> Alas, I'm in Melbourne, Australia. Buy I'd like to visit sometime, assuming of course, there's nice beer to be had in San Jose? (err, where exactly IS that, anyway?).



San Jose is in northern California.  We do have The Faultline Brewing Company, so there is definitely a good community for sampling various beers.  

I'll treat a few if you treat a game.

-Tony


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 3, 2009)

Shadeydm said:


> I'm sorry but I don't believe this applies to the DMs playstyle. You are essentially saying that you cannot describe anything unless it is relevant. In your world of GMing apparently I cannot describe the grass in the clearing as green just in case some PC wants to delve into the theory of Photosynthisis or I cannot describe that the room the PCs have entered has a painting unless it has some relevant information on the mission at hand. In your world a painting cannot just be a painting and a drain pipe cannot just be a drain pipe, and while i'm sure you enjoy this sort of game for your group, I say thanks but no thanks.




The theory is called Chekhov's Gun. Not Chekhov's Grass or Chekhov's Painting. It's about a gun because a gun, just by virtue of being there, suggests that it might itself be relevant.

Nobody--not me, and not Chekhov--is suggesting that anything you include has to be relevant, and that you must exclude all irrelevancies. But Chekhov's Gun states that if something is naturally suggestive of relevance (like a pipe that might be an alternate entrance into a heavily guarded keep), it should either be relevant (now or later) or should be edited from the scenario.

Ignore Chekhov's advice if it clashes with you playstyle--that's certainly your right. But don't be surprised if your players waste time, you all have an unsatisfying game session, and you end up talking about it in an 8-page ENWorld thread.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 3, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Like the KoDT fellows, not every player is dissuaded with a simple explanation that the element isn't relevant to the adventure at large or that its relevance will depend on other events or will only be apparent later.




An entirely valid point. But don't lose sight of what's being discussed here: We're not talking about cows, gazebos, or even cross-eyed pianists. We're talking about what seems like a potential alternate entrance into a mountain keep heavily guarded by orcs. Who _wouldn't_ suspect that it was relevant?


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## DonTadow (Mar 3, 2009)

Is it just me, or did anyone else think about the gazebo? Because that's what it seems like. Regardless of the PCs tangent thinking, it is essentially a non-functioning part of the dungeon.  TO have a realistic dungeon environment, there SHOULD be things that have nothing to do with the adventure.  Unless you're used to linear convention adventures that is?  And its perfectly ok for PCs to spend some time investigating that.  

In I see all the fault on that of the DM.  Two things happened. ONE, 
This feels like a breakdown of the DM doing his/her job.  There is no problem with the party splitting, that's there decisions.  There is a problem with spending too much time on one set of players. There;s also a problem with the DM not moving the game along in a timely manner. 

The major problem is that the PCs outsmarted the DMs and, instead of adjusting, the DM just closed up.  

This happens to ever DM, and , going back to the original question, it takes experience to handle these situations.  The DM obviously didn't think of this pipe as a means to get into the fortress.  His goof, it happens to us all.  How you adjust determines your skill.  I think its great the DM provided a skill challenge of sorts to open the the valve, the key is, was it fair.  If the initial description of the pipe is that it is used to flush things, it is reasonable to believe that there's a moderate chance of a pc reversing the opening.   The problem occurs with what happens after the skill challenge.  There was no finality to the encounter.  The PCs need that in order to receive the que to move on.  What I would have done.  You attempt to jimmy the lock and realize tat the mechanism is beyond your skill to open.  Back to the other players.  I'll spend some time with the other players and go back to the original players asking them did they want to catch up.  If they are still whining about the pipe Id explain how the roll was a roll to determine your skill to open it, and that there wouldnot be another attempt.  They should catch up with the rest of the group so not to be shortmanned.  

If the players have a good idea, then they should be able to explore the idea, no matte rhow it breaks the dungeon.  HOwever, once you give this this opportunity then they should move on.  I think the players assumed they'd gotten one over on you and even after failing at it, they played off of your need to appease them.  Which, as a DM, sometimes you have to be cold and just say lets move on. 

From the answers in the thread, I"m starting to notice how enworld is usually divided along party lines.  If you're use to a more straightforward 4e style then the pipe should not be there, its useless to the adventure and thus useless to the story or game.  Whereas if you enjoy the 3.5 style of gameplay then youre perfectly okay with elements that can be intereacted with in non-combat ways.


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## Mallus (Mar 3, 2009)

Varis said:


> The issue here is that during that time, the remaining three PC's out of the pipe wanted to push forward up the mountain road,..and they encountered orcs (see my previous posts for more information on this).



I hate to admit this, but I probably would have just asked the players not to split up. Or if not that, I would've handled the pipe-climb in a minute or so and then turned my attention back to the half of the group exploring the more fruitful path. Neither are ideal solutions, but they have a certain expediency about them.



> It was 5 pipes adjacent to one another, that evenually connect to become one large pipe that can accomodate 3-4 people abreast. The pipe is sealed with a large slab of rock at the very top, water trickling down the sides. This was drawn out a described. What would you conclude?



I'd conclude it's some kind of waste-water disposal system. But the details you just added don't help answer the larger question: is this a waste-water disposal system in a realistic world, or is it kind found in the world of adventure stories and action films? If it's the former then it can't be used as a means of ingress, if it's the latter it surely can and, moreover, should be used as such.



> Agreed. Players should question, and DM's should point out the obvious observable facts, without drawing conclusions for the players.



But the obvious, observable facts don't usually reveal what level of realism is currently in effect.



> {Insert FUN here}



Now far be it from me to deny a man his god-given right to a little snark, but I think I raised an interesting point. How does you determine the plausibility of a course of action in a world created to enact implausible adventure narratives (settings which are often governed by the logic of adventure stories).



> My first priority is ensuring the players enjoy themselves.



Can't set your priorities higher than that.



> They party eventually took on 18 orcs and 2 ogres - I managed to send 3 players into negatives, with the 4th on 1 hit point,..but they won! A great victory, hard fought, and well earnt.



Sounds like fun!


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## Varis (Mar 4, 2009)

Umbran said:


> I would normally only do so if the method they used to bypass the risk was clever. If you out-think the GM, you get XP. If they did so in a mundane, routine fashion, then no, they don't get full XP.



They took 10 on all the checks.

I later learnt that you can't do this via the rules, but in order to save time and considering their potential life or death predicament, I allowed it.

So they passed the challenge, but did not face any real risk.

Would you consider what they did worthy of having full skill challenge xp awarded?


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## Varis (Mar 4, 2009)

aboyd said:


> San Jose is in northern California. We do have The Faultline Brewing Company, so there is definitely a good community for sampling various beers.
> 
> I'll treat a few if you treat a game.
> 
> -Tony



Geez, I wanted a beer, and he offers a brewing company!
JOY! 
I'll get my gaming gear sorted asap


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## Kzach (Mar 4, 2009)

Varis said:


> woot! Xp! :d




Awesome! Now you can upgrade with that brain you've always wanted 



CharlesRyan said:


> Ignore Chekhov's advice if it clashes with you playstyle--that's certainly your right. But don't be surprised if your players waste time, you all have an unsatisfying game session, and you end up talking about it in an 8-page ENWorld thread.




Thread winnar!

Lucky, 'cause I'd just run out of popcorn.


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## billd91 (Mar 4, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> The theory is called Chekhov's Gun. Not Chekhov's Grass or Chekhov's Painting. It's about a gun because a gun, just by virtue of being there, suggests that it might itself be relevant.
> 
> Nobody--not me, and not Chekhov--is suggesting that anything you include has to be relevant, and that you must exclude all irrelevancies. But Chekhov's Gun states that if something is naturally suggestive of relevance (like a pipe that might be an alternate entrance into a heavily guarded keep), it should either be relevant (now or later) or should be edited from the scenario.




One irony of all this is that Chekhov wasn't talking about a gun either. That was just a metaphor he was using to tell another playwright to cut out a superfluous monologue. 

But I'm not really sure a dwarven fortress's sump drain really fits my definition of naturally suggestive of relevance.


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## Varis (Mar 4, 2009)

Kzach said:


> Thread winnar!
> 
> Lucky, 'cause I'd just run out of popcorn.



Heh, you wish.

I've seen some interesting point in this thread so far, including:

Narritive play v's sharing DM plot authority v's Verisimilitude/simulationism
Bordom v's Fun
Skill v's art
Meta gaming v's railroading
Current players v's new players
Insta kills v's skill checks
Being Dumb and smelly 
Doors v's dead ends
Being a 'douche' v's contributing
Sandbox gaming
Communication v's percieved communication
Punishing players
Gazebo
Chekov's Gun (or mini gun or rail gun or whatever)
Differing DMing styles
Dungeon design and planning
Plot hooks v's cows
Beer v's getting enough of it 
and Social contracts

...to name but a few.

Whilst interesting, and not without particular merit, all this could be avoided if the players had done 1 thing...

STAYED TOGETHER AS A GROUP.

Had they done this, then yes, I could of said "After 3 hours of climbing, you reach an dead end,..blah, blah, blah"

2-5 minutes spent on it at max,..unless they tried breaking through of course.

In hindsight, I'm glad it happened. The players all learnt something.

So,...

Varis and his supporters 1
Kzach and his popcorn   0

Time for me time get on my 'high and mighty' warhorse and ride off into the sunset.

Thank you all for your participation in this matter.

Hmmm,..I wonder how many pipes the players have to ride by next week,..., eh, who cares, they're just pipes.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 4, 2009)

billd91 said:


> But I'm not really sure a dwarven fortress's sump drain really fits my definition of naturally suggestive of relevance.



Bingo.  Some posters here think that the pipe was "naturally suggestive of relevance" -- I imagine because they are used to DMs who only mention things like the pipe when they _are_ relevant.  Other posters (myself included) are used to a play-style in which details like the pipe are mentioned _all the time,_ so there is nothing "naturally suggestive of relevance" about it.


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## Kzach (Mar 4, 2009)

Varis said:


> Varis and his supporters 1
> Kzach and his popcorn   0



Sigh, how little you learn, Grasshopper. This was never a competition. This was about you learning your art.

I guess I'll just have to keep teaching 



Varis said:


> Hmmm,..I wonder how many pipes the players have to ride by next week,..., eh, who cares, they're just pipes.



Until, of course, the pipe is not just a pipe and no matter what subtle hints you give, you can't convince your players to go up it... Grasshopper.


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## Cadfan (Mar 4, 2009)

Vegepygmy said:


> Bingo. Some posters here think that the pipe was "naturally suggestive of relevance" -- I imagine because they are used to DMs who only mention things like the pipe when they _are_ relevant. Other posters (myself included) are used to a play-style in which details like the pipe are mentioned _all the time,_ so there is nothing "naturally suggestive of relevance" about it.



I think that most people, in fact, possibly everyone, are accustomed to the DM subtly redirecting the party away from wastes of time.  Its a natural, human thing to do.  It can be done using game mechanics (skill check, knowledge check).  It can be done by having the DM bring up character knowledge ("you're pretty sure that won't work.").  It can be done by telling the players what's going on.  It can be done by altering your intentions so that something which would have been a waste of time is no longer so.  It can be done by _subtly altering the tone of your voice in response to a player's question._

I think one of these is more likely than the idea that you or anyone else has got the ability to always detect whether drainage pipes can or cannot be used as secret entrances.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 4, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I think that most people, in fact, possibly everyone, are accustomed to the DM subtly redirecting the party away from wastes of time. Its a natural, human thing to do. It can be done using game mechanics (skill check, knowledge check). It can be done by having the DM bring up character knowledge ("you're pretty sure that won't work."). It can be done by telling the players what's going on. It can be done by altering your intentions so that something which would have been a waste of time is no longer so. It can be done by _subtly altering the tone of your voice in response to a player's question._



I don't disagree with you on this point. I think where our disagreement lies is whether DMs should strive to _avoid_ their natural, human tendency to "subtly redirect" the players or _embrace and develop_ it. (Or at least, whether only one or both of these are valid play-styles to enjoy.)

As a DM, I strive to be more of a neutral referee than a subtle director, and as a player I prefer DMs who do the same. What I am sensing from you and some of the other posters to this thread, however, is hostility toward my preferred play-style, and not a little bit of "you don't even realize that you're influencing your players." Both of which insult me. (If I've misinterpreted your position or motives, I apologize.)



			
				Cadfan said:
			
		

> I think one of these is more likely than the idea that you or anyone else has got the ability to always detect whether drainage pipes can or cannot be used as secret entrances.



That's a nice straw man you just made there.


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## Varis (Mar 4, 2009)

Kzach said:


> Sigh, how little you learn, Grasshopper. This was never a competition. This was about you learning your art.



Huh, so now it's an art! 




Kzach said:


> Until, of course, the pipe is not just a pipe and no matter what subtle hints you give, you can't convince your players to go up it... Grasshopper.



Like for instance, footprints, a locked grate, handgrips running along it,...those sort of hints? Fear not, pipes are my speciality,..err,..that came out wrong.


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## Lanefan (Mar 4, 2009)

Late to the party as usual, I am; but a few thoughts...

1. As played, Varis got it right.  Period.

2. Chekhov's Gun really should, in a D+D-type game, be an illusion more often than not.  Dead ends exist.  So do death traps.  Characters will insist on exploring both regardless.  In this particular case, if the outfall end of the pipe is obvious enough that the PCs can't help but notice it as they walk by, then it pretty much has to be described along with the rest of the scenery.  If they want to explore it, more power to 'em.

Why should it sometimes be an illusion?  To avoid the horrible sound of players saying "The DM mentioned it, it must be important!" whenever something unusual does get mentioned in a scene or description.  Sometimes, unusual things are there just to, well, be unusual; and the players/characters have to spend effort and look for the important stuff among the irrelevancies.

3. I have no problem with the party splitting up.  When my players do this they know damn well there's going to be some downtime involved for each group and that it might not be evenly divided; they accept that, and split anyway.  Fine with me.

4. Those who fought the Orcs get the ExP for that battle.  Those who weren't there - or who were there but did nothing - get nothing.  I highly recommend this as a standing rule for all situations - if you're not involved in it, you don't get ExP for it, regardless what "it" is.

Lan-"the art lies in making the skill look like art"-efan


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## Varis (Mar 4, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> Late to the party as usual, I am; but a few thoughts...
> 
> 1. As played, Varis got it right. Period.
> 
> ...




I like your thoughts. In respect with item 3, the players obviously too late realised the consequences of splitting the party in terms of xp lost. 
I 100% agree with your sentiment in respect to the party splitting, so long as they players realise that there will be real world roleplaying 'downtime' and it might result in an uneven xp split. 
If I were a player, I wouldn't want the party splitting. 
As a DM though, all options are open. 


Lanefan said:


> Lan-"the art lies in making the skill look like art"-efan



Wow, that's deep.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 4, 2009)

billd91 said:


> One irony of all this is that Chekhov wasn't talking about a gun either. That was just a metaphor he was using to tell another playwright to cut out a superfluous monologue.




Right. But he chose a gun as a metaphor because it makes the point very nicely.



> But I'm not really sure a dwarven fortress's sump drain really fits my definition of naturally suggestive of relevance.




Well, perhaps, but let me then put the question to you: Why was a _climbable_ drain included in the adventure?

If the answer is "because the keep needed to be realistic," I don't buy it. I live in England and have visited scores of real castles. Not one had a climbable drain. More to the point, how many thousands of dungeons have been designed and successfully played with no attention to realistic plumbing?

If the answer is "because the designer really wanted to exercise his engineering skills," then I suggest he's putting a secondary interest ahead of the his DMing duties.

If the answer is "because sometimes there are just dead ends," well that's fine, but again why is he surprised that including dead ends means players will waste time (perhaps in ways that aren't fun for him or them)?

If the answer is "because it's significant, but not as a way to get in," that's great! But again, why was it climbable? Why wasn't the hole too small to crawl into, or too high in the cliff, or whatever? Or, if it needed to be climbable (for the players to know it was a potential escape route, for example), why is anyone saying it was a waste of time for the players to climb it?

Did I miss something? Seriously, not trying to be snarky, what other reasons might there be to include this _climbable_ drain in the adventure?


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## Ydars (Mar 4, 2009)

Sorry Charles; no offense, but many castles had a drain from the "jakes" and some were climbable. You can't see them anymore because the upper works of most castles are badly weathered now, but they did have them. In fact, at least two castles in the UK were taken by someone climbing up the "gong channel" and at least one King evaded capture by climbing down one. 

However, I do agree that having a climbable drain with no real dramatic purpose was a bit pointless and is an example of what I talked about earlier; poor design.


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## Varis (Mar 4, 2009)

*Spoilers from Bordrin's Watch*



CharlesRyan said:


> Well, perhaps, but let me then put the question to you: Why was a _climbable_ drain included in the adventure?
> 
> If the answer is "because the keep needed to be realistic," I don't buy it. I live in England and have visited scores of real castles. Not one had a climbable drain. More to the point, how many thousands of dungeons have been designed and successfully played with no attention to realistic plumbing?
> 
> ...




Once alerted, the orcs open this drain to prevent/delay further reinforcements from the city and to cut off the PC's they have spotted.

THATS its purpose in the game.

And yes, it also 'could' be used as an escape route by the PC's provided they correctly divert the water flows elsewhere (this can only be done from the control room in the citadel inself).



CharlesRyan said:


> If the answer is "because it's significant, but not as a way to get in," that's great! But again, why was it climbable? Why wasn't the hole too small to crawl into, or too high in the cliff, or whatever? Or, if it needed to be climbable (for the players to know it was a potential escape route, for example), why is anyone saying it was a waste of time for the players to climb it?
> 
> Did I miss something? Seriously, not trying to be snarky, what other reasons might there be to include this _climbable_ drain in the adventure?[/




To answer this, I need to provide more setting detail.

Bordrins Watch is a fortification and wall which spans the length of a pass in the middle of a snow capped mountain range (think, Lord of the Ring in terms of scale of this Mountain range).

On one side, is a lush firtile valley and river, the city of Overlook, half a dozen townships and serveral Dwarven structures built high in the mountains,..one of which, the PC's are investigating.

The other side is Orc territory. Bordrins Watch has never fallen to an orc attack, although its walls are now almost completely black as a result of the blood of eons of orc assults.

Bordrins Watch is the main defensive structure for the region. The pipes are on the 'safe' side of the mountain range.

Furthermore, the citadel was built in an era when the dwarves first cast aside the chains of slavery and forged their first mighty dwarven nation,..which spanned BOTH sides of the mountain range. At the time, the pipes were built without an emphasis of defence against a serious seige (their ememies were broken, there lands vast, and the mountain range was in the center of their territory).

As time went on, the orcs began to rise in numbers and slowly pushed the dwarves back towards the mountain range. Bordrins Watch was built as a means to defend the remaing half of the dwarves territory.

The citadel served as a place of training for (mainly) dwarven paladins, who servered at Bordrins Watch. The city of Overlook supplies all of the merchantile needs of this ancient defensive fortification.

So,..to answer your question, the pipes were not created with an empahsis on defence. It was sufficient if they denied access to the average NPC. 

A non PC level character would of had a greater deal of difficulty in;
a. Climbing up the mountainside to the pipes
b. Travelling through the pipes without slipping and falling to their death.
c. Would of found it far more difficult to travel vertically up the pipe.
d. Would of been denied access by the cap anyway.
e. Would of had sufficient common sense not to try.  

Some people feel it was a waste of time because:
a. The pipe was a dead end, the part spit up (2 opting to explore the pipe, 3 opting to continue up the road).
b. It took the PC's 3 game world hours to get up the pipe, in which the other three players managed to pick a fight with some orcs. 

So the 2 players were left waiting in real time for the fight to be resolved. Some people think that this was due to my failing (Kzach for example), and I that I had a resonsiblity to make things exciting for the 2 players in the pipe, or somehow prevent the party from splitting up in the first place.

Have a read of the previous posts. Tell me what you think, based on all the information provided.

My opinion is simple,..it was just a pipe.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 4, 2009)

Ydars said:


> Sorry Charles; no offense, but many castles had a drain from the "jakes" and some were climbable.




Sorry, you're quite right. I was caught up in the context of this thread, and when I said "drain" I was really thinking about a sort of underground tunnel that lets out at some distance from the keep itself--like what was described here.

Most castles do, in fact, have rudimentary plumbing, and some of that is climbable. Most, however, leads only to the base of the wall, well within the castle's defensive infrastructure.

But I refer back to the larger point I was making: 99.98% (not a verified number) of dungeons and castles designed for RPG adventures have served that role with distinction in the absence of any form of realistic plumbing. Maybe the realism of plumbing details is interesting to you (often, realistic details are interesting to me, so I'm not condemning that). But if you make the pipe _climbable_, why be surprised when the players actually want to climb it?


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 4, 2009)

Varis said:


> My opinion is simple,..it was just a pipe.




Fine, nothing wrong with that. And there's certainly nothing wrong with your plans to have the orcs use the pipe to cut off the players. In fact, that's exactly how, as a Chekhov's Gun type element, it works well.

But as the DM, you invented the pipe. And you invented a pipe that was accessible and climbable, as opposed to a pipe that could serve all the same goals without being accessible and/or climbable.

The price you paid for that design decision is a few hours of wasted time and possibly some disgruntled players. And a big debate on ENWorld.

If there's a reason the pipe was accessible and climbable (even if that reason is just "that's the way I imaged it, so that's the way it is"), the question is simply one of whether the reason was worth that price. It may well be; if so, end of discussion.

If not, I posit that Chekhov's Gun illustrates that the price was inevitable. So you can't blame your players for wasting time.


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## Varis (Mar 4, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> Fine, nothing wrong with that. And there's certainly nothing wrong with your plans to have the orcs use the pipe to cut off the players. In fact, that's exactly how, as a Chekhov's Gun type element, it works well.



All Good.



CharlesRyan said:


> But as the DM, you invented the pipe. And you invented a pipe that was accessible and climbable, as opposed to a pipe that could serve all the same goals without being accessible and/or climbable.



Thats how it was built.



CharlesRyan said:


> The price you paid for that design decision is a few hours of wasted time and possibly some disgruntled players. And a big debate on ENWorld.



There was a time cost paid, not because of the pipe, but because of the fact that the player split up. 
They were provided the necessary information to know that splitting up at this juncture would cost time. 

Frankly, there wasn't any reason for them to go up the pipe. They were supposed to evacuate the citadel. They did not know at that time that it was overrun. So why climb up a pipe? Why split to party to do so? Why spend 6 game world hours apart in order to explore a pipe? Because it was there?..ok, if you really want to... they decided to do it, despite knowing the costs involved timewise and the greater risk to the party simply because they have split. Would you choose to do this?

The design decision was based on the historical context of the citadels construction, NOT on how I might imagine the players reacting to it. The only reason this thread exists, is because THE PARTY SPILT UP. If they had for example, all gone up the pipe, 6 games hours would go by in about 2 minutes. 

There are other citadels and other roads, and other pipes for that matter, and they are free to explore them all whenever they want. I shall serve their needs to the best of my ability in this respect. Its my job to provide the setting, and allow NPCs to interact/react to the players in the setting. Simple.




CharlesRyan said:


> If there's a reason the pipe was accessible and climbable (even if that reason is just "that's the way I imaged it, so that's the way it is"), the question is simply one of whether the reason was worth that price. It may well be; if so, end of discussion.



The price had nothing to do with the pipe. For all intensive purposes, the pipe could of been another road. The time cost resulted from the party splitting up. Period.



CharlesRyan said:


> If not, I posit that Chekhov's Gun illustrates that the price was inevitable. So you can't blame your players for wasting time.



For all intensive purposes, Chekhov's gun exists all over the setting. Roads, houses, bridges, pipes, streams - I'll describe them at times, even if not relevant, just to complete the setting,..and i'll give more feedback if more questions are asked about a certain road for example. It doesnt mean its important as a road, and therefore deserves further exploration. It means i'm providing the players with the observable facts in front of them. Its up to the players to decide on a course of action. 

If the players are expecting me to guide them by virtue of 'placing' things in front of them and nudging them in a certain direction, they will be waiting a long time. This to me, is artificial.


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## DrunkonDuty (Mar 4, 2009)

Random thoughts on the Chekhov's Gun thing.

Sometimes the not using of a the gun is what creates the dramatic tension. Or, better: the option to use/not use the gun causes the dramatic tension.

How do we know what the audience will consider significant and what they wont? 

If we're creating a full mis-en-scene for the sake of making a lush/full/realistic setting we're going to include a lot of stuff that is just detail for the sake of detail. (as a GM I am soooooo guilty of this.)

A thing's significance may not become obvious until it is 'interacted' with. (I put interacted in inverted commas because in an RPG it's interacted with by the audience but in a traditional narrative the author has to interact with it on the audience's behalf.) In fact by drawing attention to the gun for no other purpose than to say 'this is significant' the author/GM/whatever is being bloody ham fisted.

In order to create any sort of mystery there needs to be red herrings. (Where did that phrase come from? ) ie: things that are by definition not Chekov's Gun. 

A good tight narrative will focus only on those things that are necessary to the narrative: everything is a Chekhov's Gun. In an RPG I can see this leading to accusations of the dreaded railroad. But in a novel I do prefer it.

We were attacked by a tribe of literary critics but we fired a few bursts from our chekov guns and the blighters took to their heels.

I don't know how important any of the above is (except that last one), as I said just some random thoughts.


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## DonTadow (Mar 4, 2009)

Vegepygmy said:


> Bingo.  Some posters here think that the pipe was "naturally suggestive of relevance" -- I imagine because they are used to DMs who only mention things like the pipe when they _are_ relevant.  Other posters (myself included) are used to a play-style in which details like the pipe are mentioned _all the time,_ so there is nothing "naturally suggestive of relevance" about it.



This situation reminds me of a time when i had players do a very similiar thing.  And, giving the dm more credit, it may come down to a difference in playstyles depending on how long you've been playing with this player. 

We had brought in a new girl to our group and she had been playing with us for a few months.  She was use to a style where whatever was in the dungeon was obviously apart of solving the dungeon.  Over the few months, I had clearly demonstratd that my design style was not like that, and that everything i describe is not a peg on the linear path to solving the puzzle.  THe last game I played with her (and it was the last because it had become evident that our styles were too far apart) was when the PCs were in this old grand magical library.  Because some magics often went "bad" there, they created an interdeminsional hole, hidden by a pentagram with a written warning of dangerous.  While the other pcs were fighting the big 5 head dragon, she decided that she'd go off by herself and investigate the pentagram.  But her idea of investigation was to take a running leap into the middle of it.  As the other players tried to figure out tactics for the dragon, they flat out stopped and was amazed by her decision.  She looked at them and told them her reasoning. It's in the dungeon, and thus it must be a way to get out here or figure out how to get out of here.  She had encountered something like this before, and pentagrams are usually switches to turning on and off things. 

LIke i said earlier, the dm did everything right except move on after the encounter.  However, if the dm is diverting from his usual playstyle, this may have confused his players.  Does not sound like, though, that the DM has deviated from anything he has done in his past.


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## Cadfan (Mar 4, 2009)

Varis said:


> Thats how it was built.



This is the DM's version of "I don't know why everyone's mad.  I had to do that.  It was my character's personality!"


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## Kraydak (Mar 4, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> This is the DM's version of "I don't know why everyone's mad.  I had to do that.  It was my character's personality!"




Well, I'm not the DM, I almost invariably side with players, and I *still* don't grok why people are complaining.

Lets look at the suggested "solution" (I'm still not granting that there is a problem):
split the party, have BOTH groups take up lots of time that the other part of the party can't contribute to.

Frankly, having only one part of the party eat up game-time (and that by their deliberate action, not forced by the DM) is better than having both parts of the party doing that.


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## billd91 (Mar 4, 2009)

DonTadow said:


> We had brought in a new girl to our group and she had been playing with us for a few months.  She was use to a style where whatever was in the dungeon was obviously apart of solving the dungeon.  Over the few months, I had clearly demonstratd that my design style was not like that, and that everything i describe is not a peg on the linear path to solving the puzzle.




I wonder if she played a lot of computerized adventure/puzzle games like the Indiana Jones, Zork, or Gabriel Knight ones. In those just about anything that you can interact with really is something you will need to solve a puzzle in the course of the game.


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## jmucchiello (Mar 4, 2009)

The problem with saying Chekov's Gun applies to RPGs is the difference in medium. If you go to an Improv show and they show you a gun in the first scene, they can easily forget about it by the third act. Chekov was talking to playwrights. For all that RPGs are similar to theater, they lack a playwright. The DM is not an author. He is an improvisational actor. A playwright can accidentally place a meaningless "gun" in act one and the actors, the director, heck the stagehands all have the opportunity to ask "Hey, why is this gun here?" before the curtain rises on the first night.

The DM has no such opportunity for editing. Even when working from a prepared adventure, you never know what minor detail, improvised or not, is going to catch the ear of one of the 4-5 players sitting around the table. If the player is charismatic, he can easily send the party off on a wild goose chase.

"The statue is pointing east? Let's go to Eastgate City 200 miles away right now instead of going through the door to the next room."
"What's the phase of the moon?"
"No one wears red cloaks! He's wearing a red cloak?"


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 4, 2009)

jmucchiello said:


> The problem with saying Chekov's Gun applies to RPGs is the difference in medium.




OK, but go back to my original point. It's not that GMs must slavishly adhere to the rules of storytelling.

It's that the rules of storytelling inevitably influence player perceptions. The players thought the pipe mattered because of Chekhov's Gun. Because the GM didn't account for that reaction, everyone had a bad time.

That's not the same as saying the GM must deliberately employ Chekhov's Gun. Even if the GM _meant_ for the pipe to be relevant, it might not come into play, as you say. That's fine, but it's not my point.


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## lin_fusan (Mar 4, 2009)

Personally, I'd give Varis a little more credit. He attempted to make the climb up the pipe interesting for the two piping PCs with a Skill Challenge, including XP awards for surviving the challenge. That's not punishing players, in my opinion.

Whether or not he should have put in something more is a different matter that I am not ready to comment on.

The mistake Varis did make was allowing the Take 10 rule, which turned what might have been a dramatic moment into a boring non-issue.

So I will restate that the two real problems in this situation was the splitting of the party (which is always an additional load on the DM) and the accidental turning of a possible dramatic event into a non-event with a mistaken ruling.

That said, I feel that Varis did as much as he could to entertain his players within his own personal philosophy concerning Chekhov's Gun. His mistakes were honest mistakes and not of a DM trying to screw the players.


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## Cadfan (Mar 4, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> His mistakes were honest mistakes and not of a DM trying to screw the players.



I do agree with that.

I also agree that the party shouldn't have split up.  That's their bad.

I just don't think that the DM did a very good job of communicating what he meant to communicate to his players, and I also don't think that you can really use simulationism to justify events outside of the player's meaningful control that lead to a bad play session.

If I have incredibly good simulationist reasons for having a dangerous high level dragon in a particular region, but the players don't know enough about the situation not to blunder into the dragon and get their characters killed before they can retreat, that's still my fault.  Their actions led them there, but their actions were made based on the information available to them.  And assuming that my players didn't actually WANT to get killed by a dragon, that suggests that I didn't give them the information they needed.

The scenario in this thread is about a hundred times less serious than that since all it cost was a few moments of time.  But its a similar principle.


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## Ydars (Mar 4, 2009)

Hi Cadfan! 

I agree with you, up to a point, but would like to ask if you have never had inept players who refuse to take notice of blatant danger flags? I have certainly gamed with people who just have an odd set of assumptions about how the game functions and often refused to respond to gentle prompting.

And gentle prompting is ALL you have as a DM; unless you want to go down the route of pushing your players into the "right" answer all the time. I sometimes prod a bit harder if the Players have misinterpreted something, putting 2 and 2 together to make 5, but the rest of the time, you really have to accept that some people just think differently.

The one thing I do sometimes do if I sense that the players are tired or if one particular player is in a certain mood, is use description extremely carefully to slant and make safer options more attractive, but I don't like to do this too much. It is just that I have one player who can make a TPK out of anything when he is in a certain, completely fearless and foolhardy mood.

Your argument reminds me of the modern fad of always blaming teachers for poor school results, when in fact, the student is the person who is often at least as much to blame.

The modern trend is for players to want more and more power and I am fine with this, but with power comes responsibility.


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## Mallus (Mar 4, 2009)

Ydars said:


> And gentle prompting is ALL you have as a DM...



When gentle prompting fails you have people kick in the door and start shooting. And thus we move from Chekov's advice to Raymond Chandler's (if I'm remembering this right...). 

note: to make this more appropriate for D&D, replace 'people' with 'orcs' and 'shooting' with 'chopping with their axes'.


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## Cadfan (Mar 4, 2009)

Ydars- The reason to focus on DMs is because yelling BE LESS DUMB at your players is a failure as a plan.  I'm the DM.  I can learn to communicate more effectively, provide more comprehensible clues, focus the game session in entertaining directions, and in general do a better job.  I can't wave a magic wand and make my players understand Basic Principles of Mountain Citadel Plumbing 101 well enough to make logical decisions based upon it.  I can, however, use things like foreshadowing, character knowledge, glossing over of unexciting details, and other techniques to make sure that my players know what they need to know to grasp what's going on.

The teacher issue is actually very illustrative.  There's a certain drive to assign blame, and people who are blame-oriented want to blame lazy and inattentive students.  People who are solution-oriented tend to look around for the best lever available to them to fix the problem, and that tends to be teachers.  Because, as mentioned above, yelling BE LESS DUMB is not a plan.  Educating teachers about how to instill interest or work ethic in lazy and inattentive students, is.  Amongst the many factors that affect a student's achievement (the student, the student's parents, the student's classmates, the student's teachers), ONLY ONE is actually in our control.

So... how does that apply to the discussion?

Lets assume that this guy's players are genuine morons.  Not only are they incapable of making even the simplest logical deducation, they don't even pay much attention to what he's saying.  They probably aren't, but lets assume.

So what are his options?

1. Get new players.
2. Run crappy gaming sessions because he refuses to learn to DM for inattentive morons.
3. Learn to DM for inattentive morons.

Even in this, the most extreme and ridiculous scenario, he's the one who's going to have to step up to the plate.  Because he can't wave a magic wand and make everyone less dumb.  The blame may lie with the players for being inattentive morons, but what good does that do anybody?


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## Reynard (Mar 4, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I also don't think that you can really use simulationism to justify events outside of the player's meaningful control that lead to a bad play session.




Nothing of the described situation makes this applicable. What happened was completely in the hands of the players -- they had absolutely meaningful control.



> If I have incredibly good simulationist reasons for having a dangerous high level dragon in a particular region, but the players don't know enough about the situation not to blunder into the dragon and get their characters killed before they can retreat, that's still my fault.  Their actions led them there, but their actions were made based on the information available to them.  And assuming that my players didn't actually WANT to get killed by a dragon, that suggests that I didn't give them the information they needed.




Right, but your failure is not being very good at simulation and/or verisimilitude, not placing the dragon. A massive, ancient predator like a dragon has an impact on a region. It's presence isn't going to go unnoticed. And if the players "blunder" into the dragon -- meaning, most likely, that they wandered off in the general direction of the dragon without bothering to find out how powerful it was, just assuming it must be a Level Appropriate encounter because that's how the game "works" then it is the players' fault.  On the upside, they got to make a meaningful choice.

And the question of whether the players didn't "want" their characters to get killed by a dragon is sort of irrelevent. Did they want to go on an adventure, in an area in which a dragon might be found? Did they want to have the opportunity to gain treasure, XP and fame?  If so (and the answer would seem to be "yes" given they are playing D&D) then they also know that there is *always* a possibility of "blundering" into an encounter with a deadly dragon (or liche, or demon or whatever).

Let's take the example of the good old fashioned Random Encounter Chart, something that seems to have fallen out of favor in the modern era. A random encounter chart (for, say, a wood haunted by dark fae) serves both a play purpose and a setting purpose.  It provides potential interesting things during an otherwise rote activity (travel and/or exploration), as well as describing the micro-cosm of the fae haunted wood. The DM need not spend thousands of words describing the wood (though he still can) if he has a well developed random encounter chart for the place.  In addition, the random encounter chart for the wood provides information to the players -- assuming the bother to ask or look. While the DM might not give the players the chart to read, he can (and should) relate its general contents and various probabilities through NPCs to inquiring players.

For example, the PCs arrive at a little town on the edge of the Wytchwood and need to follow the road through the wood to get to their next destination.  While having a few ales in the inn that night, the locals regale them with "ghost stories" about the wood and warn them to stick to the path, etc... Intrigued, the PCs ask why.  At this point, the DM looks at the encounter chart for the wood -- 

likelihood of encounter:
Day one road: 1 in 12 per 4 hours
Night on road: 1 in 6 per 4 hours
Day off road: 1 in 6 per 2 hours
Night off road: 1 in 4 per hour

roll 1d12
1-4 Goblins (2d4+2)
5-7 Forest Gnomes (1d4+1)
8-9 Pixies (evil (1d4)
10 Treant (evil)
11 Dryad (good)
12 Green dragon (roll 1d4 for age category)

-- and has an NPC, for the price of an ale, tell how goblins haunt the woods, hunting the poor gnomes, but the real dangers are the unseelie fey and angry trees, but there's hear-tell of a helpful forest spirit.  And there's this story of a green dragon laying her clutch of eggs in the forst some genrations back... Travelers on the road don't usually have much trouble during the day, but those who venture into the forest day or night sometimes never return... Etc.

Now the PCs have information.  With this information they can do whatever they like. They might do the "sensible" thing and wait till morning and make a hard push to get through the forest by nightfall. They might go in straight away, hoping to kill themselves a dragon. That choice is the players' and whether the woods constitutes a "Chekov's Gun" or not doesn't matter at all. The DM's job is to adjudicate the choices the PCs make and answer the questions they ask.

If the PCs have more pressing issues at hand but decide to go dragon hunting (or looking to help the gnomes, or whatever) instead, that's there business.  if they do so because they "assume" everything is an adventure hook, they have been playing with railroady DMs for far too long and should get used to the wonderful feeling freedom and stretch their wings a bit.


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## merelycompetent (Mar 4, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> Lets assume that this guy's players are genuine morons. Not only are they incapable of making even the simplest logical deducation, they don't even pay much attention to what he's saying. They probably aren't, but lets assume.
> 
> So what are his options?
> 
> ...




Aside from this assumption being unforgivably insulting to the players in question, the assumption doesn't work from the start - they have already proven that they are not genuine morons. Genuine morons would have succeeded in opening the drain plug just as the other three members of the party crossed the washout area on the trail, resulting in a TPK. Even then, only two of the players decided to split off from the party - leaving the others marked as somewhat more intelligent.

Even given this aberrant assumption, I am concerned that you offer only three options, all of which are demeaning to either the players, the DM, or both. Life's too short to spend it gaming with... we all know the rest.

What's the real critical point here, in the situation described by Kzach and Varis?

Player expectations?
Players splitting the party?
DM not giving enough description?
One or more players having an off day?
The DM having an off day?
Something else?

All of these have been addressed (with the possible exception of Something else). None of us were there (with the possible exception of Kzach or the players), so we don't know what the player expectations were. They split the party, in or near enemy territory - that's a big screwup right there. I don't have the module, so I'm going from the description the DM has given here - If the entire party had taken the side-trip, it would be no big deal. "Guys, you all take 10 on the climb checks and help eachother? OK. You come to this really big drain plug at the end..." Then move on with the adventure. Seems to me that there was certainly enough description, and the Players should NOT have split the party. Problem solved. One or more players having an off day? Two of them certainly did. Maybe all five - they still split the party, and three of them went on under-strength in enemy territory. DM having an off day? Possibly. Various posters have covered alternative, more efficient, and more fun ways of handling an awkward situation - including talking with the players afterwards to help clear up misunderstandings. Something else? We've gone into literary mystery analysis.

Frankly, I like sprinkling in a few out-of-place items here and there to see what the players do with them. Other DMs don't. It adds to the fun for the groups I DM, provides plothooks I didn't see before (The Duke has a secret lover in this city?! Cool!), sometimes gives the players another way to interact with the game world, or comes to nothing other than an interesting dungeon feature. Sometimes the PCs spend ten minutes exploring a dead end corridor for a secret door. Sometimes I have to drop in a major clue (Are you SURE you want to do this?) because I don't think a player really groks how suicidal, dangerous, or time-wasting his character's actions are.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

*Bordrins Watch Spoilers*


Cadfan said:


> This is the DM's version of "I don't know why everyone's mad. I had to do that. It was my character's personality!"



Ok, lets address this. 

If, in your mind, my DMing style equates to my personality, then I'm guilty. Using the term 'personality' also implies that I was doing things on a whim,..however, there is a reason why the pipes are as they are. THAT was a determining factor, and of course, as a game mechanic.  

Please read:

"Bordrins Watch is a fortification and wall which spans the length of a pass in the middle of a snow capped mountain range (think, Lord of the Ring in terms of scale of this Mountain range).

On one side, is a lush firtile valley and river, the city of Overlook, half a dozen townships and serveral Dwarven structures built high in the mountains,..one of which, the PC's are investigating.

The other side is Orc territory. Bordrins Watch has never fallen to an orc attack, although its walls are now almost completely black as a result of the blood of eons of orc assults.

Bordrins Watch is the main defensive structure for the region. The pipes are on the 'safe' side of the mountain range.

Furthermore, the citadel was built in an era when the dwarves first cast aside the chains of slavery and forged their first mighty dwarven nation,..which spanned BOTH sides of the mountain range. At the time, the pipes were built without an emphasis of defence against a serious seige (their ememies were broken, there lands vast, and the mountain range was in the center of their territory).

As time went on, the orcs began to rise in numbers and slowly pushed the dwarves back towards the mountain range. Bordrins Watch was built as a means to defend the remaing half of the dwarves territory.

The citadel served as a place of training for (mainly) dwarven paladins, who servered at Bordrins Watch. The city of Overlook supplies all of the merchantile needs of this ancient defensive fortification.

So,..to answer your question, the pipes were not created with an empahsis on defence. It was sufficient if they denied access to the average NPC." 

I.E. THATS HOW IT WAS BUILT.

The players are responsible for their own decisions.

If the players climb up that mountain, they will find whats there,..no more,..no less. It's not because of my personality, or fickle nature, or because I think the party needs a cull, or because I wouldnt mind seeing a half orc fly. Its because its there. The consequences of that are dependant on player actions. 

I gave them the observable facts, no more no less. 

Things exist in the world where they exist, and I certainly won't 'change' that part of the world just because the PC's are stomping through it. The pipes serve a simple purpose as game mechanic - that purpose was a secondary design consideration when it was built.

It was a pipe, they decided to take a closer look, I gave feedback, two of them decided it was important to proceed up 3-5 hours up a pipe (did they consider water trapping them and drowning? It was never mentioned, but I'm betting the other three that didnt go, were certainly thinking about it). I gave feedback, they decided to committ more time to it, I gave feedback. 

Thats my job. 

The PC's are free to draw there own conclusions, and I facilitate/co-ordinate their observable world and actions, even then the PC's are in error.

Its not about Punishment, personality, blame, ego, malice, vengence, angry tomatoes, power tripping, favouratism, Chekhov's gun, or whatever.

They split up and paid a time/risk cost for it.

Two players are too new at the game to have known about the implied costs listed above (btw 1 chose to go up the pipe, 1 chose to stay on the road), the other three are seasoned players - they knew the inherent price, and they paid it.

Cool,..they are free to do that. They are not kids, they are in the real world now,..(well,..the real 'fantasy' world,..err,..you know what I mean).

It cost them 15 minutes of their time and it exposed half the party to a greater risk of being killed.

If they want to do it again,..they can.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> The mistake Varis did make was allowing the Take 10 rule, which turned what might have been a dramatic moment into a boring non-issue.




Agreed. *Smacks head repeatedly against the wall "why did I allow it!"*


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## billd91 (Mar 5, 2009)

Varis said:


> Agreed. *Smacks head repeatedly against the wall "why did I allow it!"*




I disagree here. Taking 10 is supposed to speed up play and reward PCs for being reasonably competent with their skills rather than subject them to the whim of the dice.

I would say that if their skills are so high that they could manage the task without substantial risk then the XP awards should be low. But I wouldn't conclude that because they *actually took 10* rather than rolled. I would make that decision because *I had set the task DCs so low* compared to their ability. To me, there's no significant difference between taking 10 and rolling save in the ease and speed of task resolution.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I just don't think that the DM did a very good job of communicating what he meant to communicate to his players,



Why do you believe this? Three players, based on the feedback provided, opted not to go. Why couldn't the other two players simply of 'jumped into the void in the pentagram' so to speak? 


Cadfan said:


> and I also don't think that you can really use simulationism to justify events outside of the player's meaningful control that lead to a bad play session.



Agreed.



Cadfan said:


> If I have incredibly good simulationist reasons for having a dangerous high level dragon in a particular region, but the players don't know enough about the situation not to blunder into the dragon and get their characters killed before they can retreat, that's still my fault.



Agreed.



Cadfan said:


> Their actions led them there, but their actions were made based on the information available to them. And assuming that my players didn't actually WANT to get killed by a dragon, that suggests that I didn't give them the information they needed.



Disagree.
In this example, the players would of acted because of a 'lack' of information, and thus got themselves killed. 
Lets change the senario a bit. Lets say you have 5 PC's. Two of them, despite the information you provide, decide to go walk towards the region where the dragon is. 
The other three, say "No way,..even if it means splitting the party'", and they say this, based on the SAME information you provided.
Does this indicate you didnt give enough information?


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> make my players understand Basic Principles of Mountain Citadel Plumbing 101



Dungeoneering gave them the description and the probable source and function of the pipes. They knew the citadel was still occupied by the dwarves.


Cadfan said:


> well enough to make logical decisions based upon it.



Hmmm, logic, it would seem, is a very elastic term in D&D



Cadfan said:


> I can, however, use things like foreshadowing, character knowledge, glossing over of unexciting details, and other techniques to make sure that my players know what they need to know to grasp what's going on.



Ok the pipe drew attantion as a possible trap or sniper post. So two of them went and checked it.
Then, they started getting ideas. I was providing the details THEY requested of me. 
My saying "Its just a pipe" could be as big a teaser for them as if I had said "Its dark and gloomy,..it looks interesting." In other words, player can and have been suspicious of the DM glossing over things, because they are of the impression I'm setting them up. For me its a no win situation. The solution I employ, is to approach each particular item/issue on a neutral basis and allow the players to make up their own minds based on the observable information around them.



Cadfan said:


> The teacher issue is actually very illustrative. There's a certain drive to assign blame, and people who are blame-oriented want to blame lazy and inattentive students. People who are solution-oriented tend to look around for the best lever available to them to fix the problem, and that tends to be teachers. Because, as mentioned above, yelling BE LESS DUMB is not a plan. Educating teachers about how to instill interest or work ethic in lazy and inattentive students, is. Amongst the many factors that affect a student's achievement (the student, the student's parents, the student's classmates, the student's teachers), ONLY ONE is actually in our control.



Following the logic of this example, half the students agreed to a solution to a problem that the teacher has written on the board. The other half disagreed and storm out, determined to prove the like fish, people don't drown, and like birds they can fly. 




Cadfan said:


> Lets assume that this guy's players are genuine morons.



Which they are not. I know your only using it to illustrate a point. 



Cadfan said:


> Not only are they incapable of making even the simplest logical deducation, they don't even pay much attention to what he's saying. They probably aren't, but lets assume.
> 
> So what are his options?
> 
> ...



Heh, there is a fourth option.

The players themselves (as apart from the PC's) have earnt xp.
Will they make the same choices given a similar senario?
Lets use the classroom senario. They are students who learn from their mistakes. Just like a DM who learns from HIS mistakes (like taking ten in a skill challenge).

Life goes on.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

billd91 said:


> I disagree here. Taking 10 is supposed to speed up play and reward PCs for being reasonably competent with their skills rather than subject them to the whim of the dice.
> 
> I would say that if their skills are so high that they could manage the task without substantial risk then the XP awards should be low. But I wouldn't conclude that because they *actually took 10* rather than rolled. I would make that decision because *I had set the task DCs so low* compared to their ability. To me, there's no significant difference between taking 10 and rolling save in the ease and speed of task resolution.



Ah, but the rules state you can't take 10 during a skill challenge. I'm trying to remain as faithfull as possible to them (but theres a lot out there already). 
At the time I wasn't sure, so I allowed it. For all I knew, it could of taken another half hour to work it out had I tried to look it up on the spot.
As things are, they will be getting xp for it, albiet a lower amount.


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## Cadfan (Mar 5, 2009)

merelycompetent said:


> Aside from this assumption being unforgivably insulting to the players in question,



I don't think the actual players in the OPs scenario are morons.  I was responding to the specific argument of Ydars with a hypothetical unrelated to the OP.  It was part of a discussion of why I don't find blaming the players to be fruitful.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I don't think the actual players in the OPs scenario are morons. I was responding to the specific argument of Ydars with a hypothetical unrelated to the OP. It was part of a discussion of why I don't find blaming the players to be fruitful.



Its all good. There was no intention to offend here. You were illustrating a hypothetical.


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## Ydars (Mar 5, 2009)

Cadfan said:


> I don't think the actual players in the OPs scenario are morons. I was responding to the specific argument of Ydars with a hypothetical unrelated to the OP. It was part of a discussion of why I don't find blaming the players to be fruitful.




Hi Cadfan!

I know what you mean about "more profitable" to focus on the DM or the teacher's role but I can tell you as a University Lecturer that we are paying a price for spoon-feeding our pupils and the same is true of our players.

If all the motivation and all the work is just coming from the person delivering the material, then there is a real limitation on how much you can ever actually educate people, or in game terms, how deep the game can go.

Sure, they might pass some exams, but develop real skills, a passion for learning and most importantly, initiative: I am not seeing this where I work or in my games either. You can lead someone to knowledge but you can't make them think.

The new system, in games and in society, teaches people that someone will kick them up the rear all the time and that there will always be a next time anyway so failure or reverse doesn't matter.

When I was in school and playing RPGs, the world was different. You KNEW that if you didn't take responsibility then you would just fail, fail, fail and no-one would care. It kind of made me push myself very hard in all aspects of myself, both educationally and gaming wise.

I guess the problem with this latter approach is how many people didn't used to make it through the system (and the same is true of gamers who dropped out of gaming as well), though in all honesty 70% of people at University here in the UK probably shouldn't be.

I guess I am saying I see exactly where you are coming from and there is probably nothing else we can do but make the leaders of games and education more skilled, but I would also assert that something has been lost in the process.


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## Zimri (Mar 5, 2009)

Varis said:


> The answer is, 'no, after all,...its just a drainage pipe'.




Right and a gazebo doesn't ever eat people, PCs don't summon animal companions to put the head of Vecna on their shoulders either.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

Zimri said:


> Right and a gazebo doesn't ever eat people, PCs don't summon animal companions to put the head of Vecna on their shoulders either.



Yes, and all pipes should be explored, all trees should be climbed, all orcs should be killed (actually, there's an arguement for that), and all roads must be travelled. Chekhov's crossbow awaits them at every turn and black dragons help little old grannies across the road.

Yes, the pipe COULD of been something, but in this case it wasn't. The party splitting up caused a waste of 'real' time. If it had not occured, the pipe would be a non issue.


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## DonTadow (Mar 5, 2009)

billd91 said:


> I wonder if she played a lot of computerized adventure/puzzle games like the Indiana Jones, Zork, or Gabriel Knight ones. In those just about anything that you can interact with really is something you will need to solve a puzzle in the course of the game.




No, she played dungeons and dragons for some 15 years,m but her DM before me was the kinda person who was straght forward hack and slash, what is there is what can be interacted with.  Essentially she was used to monopoly without free parking.


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## Zimri (Mar 5, 2009)

Varis said:


> Yes, and all pipes should be explored, all trees should be climbed, all orcs should be killed (actually, there's an arguement for that), and all roads must be travelled. Chekhov's crossbow awaits them at every turn and black dragons help little old grannies across the road.
> 
> Yes, the pipe COULD of been something, but in this case it wasn't. The party splitting up caused a waste of 'real' time. If it had not occured, the pipe would be a non issue.




Yes but because of the time spent in describing the pipe there was certainly a "reasonable" expectation that it would be noticed. If it is reasonable that it would be noticed then it is not unreasonable to expect some action to be taken regarding it otherwise why have it noticed ? I also find it verisimilitude breaking that such a regular dramatic expulsion of water is not talked about by the locals  ie " Wow you should see how the moonlights sparkles through the ...." or " It's pretty alright pretty noisy and stinky"

I only ever recall drainage/sewage/aqueduct/plumbing at all being mentioned in gaming as means of ingress or egress . This drain didn't need to be climbable to serve the purposes you've mentioned it serving.

to the people that mentioned "paintings" et al as being redundant if you follow this path to you I say a painting won't cause a party to split up, doesn't take 3 hours of game time to examine, etcetera.

If there is a garden filled with gazebos not each one nor likely any need sat in or burned down, in a forest you don't climb every tree. But put one gazebo or one tree someplace where attention is drawn to it that can't be explained away (as was the case with this drain) then as I stated in the beginning it is not unreasonable to expect an examination to occur.

sorry editted to add

as an aside it's "intents and purposes"

and free parking is only supposed to be a free resting spot there is no "pot" you get for landing there.


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## korjik (Mar 5, 2009)

Varis said:


> Hi Korjik,
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts.
> 
> ...




All this discussion over _fifteen minutes_?

Since it was only 15 minutes of play time, and since you threw in a skill challenge to offset the orcs, I would have done the exact same thing as you did, Varis.

I was under the impression that this was some big deal that wasted a large portion of the game session. In that case, letting the group split up means sitting around doing nothing for too many for too long. When it is something that is resolved in 15 minutes, and gives you a fight that was extra hard cause half the group is missing, that is a good thing. 

The only thing that I would maybe have changed is the XP, but that is more because I dont want to have to keep track of differing levels among the players. That is just personal preference as DM.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 5, 2009)

Varis said:


> THATS HOW IT WAS BUILT.
> 
> The players are responsible for their own decisions.
> 
> ...




I think this perspective is at the crux of a great deal of the cross-talk here.

What I read here--and maybe this isn't what you meant--is that the integrity of the world you created is paramount; more important than how good a time everyone has at the game table. This is emphasized to me by the way you express yourself: You say "that's how the world was built," not "that's how I designed the scenario (or world)." It's like you're distancing yourself from your own input as a DM--the world has been created; every detail is immutable; how the players interact with it is out of your hands.

As for "I gave them the observable facts," that's a statement that completely disregards every nuance of human perception--or indeed, the very concept that human perception might be nuanced.

I'm not saying your players were right--they might have made a completely boneheaded decision based on what you presented them. But I for one would not want to play in a game where the GM's vision of is so utterly fixed beforehand that not a single detail, or even the nuances of how that detail is presented, can be altered on the fly. Or where I will be held "responsible" for decisions based on "the observable facts, no more no less."


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## S'mon (Mar 5, 2009)

Ydars said:


> though in all honesty 70% of people at University here in the UK probably shouldn't be.




Hi Ydars!  I too am a UK University lecturer, so I found your analysis intriguing.    I have had one or two D&D players at my public D&D club, aged ca 20-22, whose gaming attitudes (and English language abilities) appeared to have been corrupted by our dire educational system.  

Off-hand though I wouldn't put the % of students who shouldn't be at University at more than 40%, but I do teach a fairly rigorous subject.  My understanding is that US Universities traditionally have had an easy-entry easy-exit approach but that they are going more towards an "every student who drops out is a failure of the University" approach, which IMO has been highly destructive to UK education.  You make an interesting comparison with current trends in GMing advice and game design.  I was just looking at some of the advice in WotC publications like Dungeon and it does tend in that direction.  It seems like players are supposed to be pampered, rather than challenged to step-on-up.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

Ok.


Zimri said:


> Yes but because of the time spent in describing the pipe there was certainly a "reasonable" expectation that it would be noticed.



The pipe was originally checked as an ambush site, or a trap. The players asked for greater detail about the pipe, and did a dungeoneering check.
They discovered
1. It was fit one person at a time.
2. It probably connnected with the citadel
3. It probably travelled in a direct route to it, but moving inside the pipe would be at half speed.
4. There was evidence that the pipe carried high pressure waste water out of the citadel.
5. it would take 3-5 hours to get to the citadel if they tried to travel inside the pipe.

Each point detailed above was given in response to a question. THEY wanted to know more.

Two of them decided it would be fun to go up the pipe. The other three did not. This resulted in a split party.



Zimri said:


> If it is reasonable that it would be noticed then it is not unreasonable to expect some action to be taken regarding it otherwise why have it noticed ?



It got noticed initially because a player has a passive perception of 24.

It was remarkable because 
1. Its an distinguishing feature, compared to the otherwise barren rockface of the mountain.
2. It does serve a game purpose, just not the one the players imagined



Zimri said:


> I also find it verisimilitude breaking that such a regular dramatic expulsion of water is not talked about by the locals ie " Wow you should see how the moonlights sparkles through the ...." or " It's pretty alright pretty noisy and stinky"



Ok, this is a good thought. 

There are several reasons why this did not occur. 

The first is that there is a orc war going on. One of the party members is a half orc. When the party is in his compay, nobody wants to do anything other than stick a knife in him. However, there are reasons (which I won't go into) why he is still breathing.

As for your example, they did ask about the citadel,..but who's going to talk about the plumbing? It's like asking a Priest about the Vatican and getting feedback about its toilet facilities. They were informed that dwarves trained paladins there, that served at the watch, and that weapons were also made at the citadel (this information was used to correctly form the theory that pipe water was used to flush out waste, including slag, metal shavings and whatnot, which a simple check of water traces confirmed). 



Zimri said:


> I only ever recall drainage/sewage/aqueduct/plumbing at all being mentioned in gaming as means of ingress or egress . This drain didn't need to be climbable to serve the purposes you've mentioned it serving.



This a mistake made by the players. It was just a pipe. It was still a good idea to check it, but it was a dead end. I don't care what they experienced in other games,..it has no bearing on this game and its unreasonable for them to expect it to.



Zimri said:


> to the people that mentioned "paintings" et al as being redundant if you follow this path to you I say a painting won't cause a party to split up, doesn't take 3 hours of game time to examine, etcetera.



I'm not sure I understand this. Exploring the pipe took 3 hours of the characters time (About 15 minutes in real time to resolve). The three PC's who refused to go in the pipe, seeing that the other two PC's were adamant about exploring the pipe, decided not to wait around, and continued walking up the path. Hence a split party. Did I address this issue?



Zimri said:


> If there is a garden filled with gazebos not each one nor likely any need sat in or burned down, in a forest you don't climb every tree. But put one gazebo or one tree someplace where attention is drawn to it that can't be explained away (as was the case with this drain) then as I stated in the beginning it is not unreasonable to expect an examination to occur.



The purpose of the drain was explained,...as a drain. Two players obviously imagined it was something more. Three players saw,...at best a drain, at worst, a death trap.



Zimri said:


> sorry editted to add
> 
> as an aside it's "intents and purposes"
> 
> and free parking is only supposed to be a free resting spot there is no "pot" you get for landing there.




Sorry, I don't understand this.


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## Varis (Mar 5, 2009)

CharlesRyan said:


> I think this perspective is at the crux of a great deal of the cross-talk here.
> 
> What I read here--and maybe this isn't what you meant--is that the integrity of the world you created is paramount; more important than how good a time everyone has at the game table. This is emphasized to me by the way you express yourself: You say "that's how the world was built," not "that's how I designed the scenario (or world)." It's like you're distancing yourself from your own input as a DM--the world has been created; every detail is immutable; how the players interact with it is out of your hands.



I disagree, and have stated previously that fun comes first, then the integirty of the world. 

This is because no one wants to win in a 'fudged' world. Winning in a world with integrity makes the victory all the sweeter. The players know that I adhere to this belief.



CharlesRyan said:


> As for "I gave them the observable facts," that's a statement that completely disregards every nuance of human perception--or indeed, the very concept that human perception might be nuanced.



Huh, what am I supposed to do? Just give them all the answers. Make it REALLY obvious, ALWAYS (since that's what they'll end up expecting),...no thank you.

Of course different people percieve differently, this is actually my point. Three players had the wisdom to say no, based on the same information provided. Frankly, I wouldnt care if they explored the pipe or ignored it,..so long as they had done it as a team. It would of saved a lot of time. 



CharlesRyan said:


> I'm not saying your players were right--they might have made a completely boneheaded decision based on what you presented them. But I for one would not want to play in a game where the GM's vision of is so utterly fixed beforehand that not a single detail, or even the nuances of how that detail is presented, can be altered on the fly. Or where I will be held "responsible" for decisions based on "the observable facts, no more no less."



Strange, I wouldnt want to play in a game where the DM makes it up on the spot, changing details to fit the situation and his motives at a whim. 
There ARE fluid elements in the game. Opponents for example, react to decisions made by the party, (they wont just stay in one room if they hear fighting down the hall), and obviously the players actions and thoughts can influence events elsewhere.
Descriptions of what the players see, I do re-word if necessary,..I'm not THAT bad.
However static things, like structure, yes, I won't change. I make no applogies for that. 

I certainly wouldnt make the pipe an access point, just because the players decide to walk down it. It was a good idea, which in this case, didnt work out.


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## Odhanan (Mar 5, 2009)

"DMing is a Skill, not an Art."

I don't know if anybody adressed this in this thread, but I actually think this statement is nonsensical. The practice of an art implies skills you develop over time. Ergo, the statement above basically confuses the end and the means. 

If anything, I would think of DMing as a Craft. As such, it requires the development of a set of various skills you then use for greater performance. Just like any Craft, DMing may become "art". It's all in the eye of the beholder. 

If a craftsman makes shoes for a living, he may go at it competently, albeit mechanically, without pretense or soul, or, on the contrary, put all his being, ambitions and passion into the work. 
The former ain't an artist, the latter definitely is.


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## Mallus (Mar 5, 2009)

S'mon said:


> It seems like players are supposed to be pampered, rather than challenged to step-on-up.



Challenged to do what, exactly? Make smart choices in a context largely defined by implausible, if not outright absurd, kinds of fiction?

Is there any real consensus on what smart, challenging play _is_? Seems to me D&D has always been about doing the clever and stupid in equal measure. Which is the main reason I'm not a big fan of just relaying the observable facts when I DM. Sometimes you need a bit more to establish context (ie the level of realism currently in effect). This go round are things more 'real' real or 'action movie' real?

And as for prodding the in-game action along... the whole shebang is designed to produce contrived fantasy action stories. Those are the things the _simulator_ was built to _simulate_. So pretending the DM is just some sort of elf-happy documentarian pointing the camera whenever his subject choose to amble never made much sense to me. 

But YMMV and all.


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## LostSoul (Mar 5, 2009)

S'mon said:


> I was just looking at some of the advice in WotC publications like Dungeon and it does tend in that direction.  It seems like players are supposed to be pampered, rather than challenged to step-on-up.




That's one of the few times I've heard that D&D is moving _away from_ gamism!


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## Zimri (Mar 5, 2009)

Varis said:


> It got noticed initially because a player has a passive perception of 24.
> 
> It was remarkable because
> 1. Its an distinguishing feature, compared to the otherwise barren rockface of the mountain.
> 2. It does serve a game purpose, just not the one the players imagined




Yay let's use the fact that a player has a high perception against them. Do you also point out which flower in a field has the largest stamen, or the heights and weights of everyone in a village, the general size and consistency of dragon droppings ? a high perception would notice those things as well. Perception in game is for finding things that are useful, in the real world we all have our own filters to determine what is or isn't important in the game world you are that filter.



Varis said:


> Ok, this is a good thought.
> 
> There are several reasons why this did not occur.
> 
> ...




So they didn't spend any time in a bar or walking through the city at all ? a 24 perception can get you to see moss growing on a hole 3 hours up a mountain side but nothing lets you overhear conversations or rumors ? If the plumbing is extraordinary then I would sure mention it. "Hey you may not want to be on the road at midnight cause this happens" I assume the vatican of today has the common plumbing of today or something similar. If the type of drain found at the citadel is "common" then there is no reason it should have been something so out of the ordinary that it raised any "flags" when noticed. If it is extraordinary then it should have been mentioned by someone who had noticed it prior.



Varis said:


> This a mistake made by the players. It was just a pipe. It was still a good idea to check it, but it was a dead end. I don't care what they experienced in other games,..it has no bearing on this game and its unreasonable for them to expect it to.




Or the fact that historically this maneuver has been used in the real world by countless civilizations ? Using the sewer system as a form of ingress/egress is a brilliant strategy both in game and in the real world. If you are going to ask them to "turn off" every experience they have had or read about in the past then  better communication will be paramount. 



Varis said:


> I'm not sure I understand this. Exploring the pipe took 3 hours of the characters time (About 15 minutes in real time to resolve). The three PC's who refused to go in the pipe, seeing that the other two PC's were adamant about exploring the pipe, decided not to wait around, and continued walking up the path. Hence a split party. Did I address this issue?




Repeatedly by insulting the two that went up the pipe and refused to address what historically both in the RL and in gaming worlds has been a great stealth tactic. I fail to see how "hey the 5 of us should just walk up the main road pound on the main gate and deal with whatever answers" is the more reasonable approach



Varis said:


> The purpose of the drain was explained,...as a drain. Two players obviously imagined it was something more. Three players saw,...at best a drain, at worst, a death trap.




Two players saw an atypical and stealthy way to perhaps gain entrance and have the upper hand/surprise  on whatever was waiting in the citadel three wanted to blindly follow the road up to the part where the enemy had defenses ready and likely should have seen them coming and have been prepared. Were I in your party given the information you had given me, none of which appears to have included (to the players at the time) anything about high pressure water shooting out this hole, but did include "it will be a long difficult trek" which in my mind translates to "they won't have bothered guarding this area" I know precisely what I would have done.




Varis said:


> Sorry, I don't understand this.




A few times I saw you use  "for all intensive purposes" I was pointing out for your edification that the phrase is actually "for all intents and purposes" not being snarky about it just thought you might like to know the difference. The monopoly reference was to a post after yours because well someone brought up free parking.


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## Bloosquig (Mar 5, 2009)

It does sound like you might have made a mistake in pointing it out just enough to get them interested and then sat on them when they tried to explore it.

The problem with games like this is they can only rely on you to tell them what's important.  When you describe a pipe next to a fortress it sounds like your rewarding them for a high skill check or giving them a clue how to get in. Do you describe the bathroom at the inn or go into detail about the silverware they use to eat their meals?

If you still feel like putting it in because you have went to all the trouble of designing a realistic citadel (which IS cool by the way  ) be prepared to stomp on them when they try to explore it further so things don't go sideways or be prepared to let them find something worth wasting more time on.

"Its a fairly standard looking drainage pipe, obviously still in use.  And it looks stupidly dangerous and slippery to climb into.  In fact a truly impressive gush of sewage blasts out of it as you watch and doesn't land till it's halfway down the mountain."

If they still want to climb in then flush em down the mountain.  

And I agree that they don't get xp for the orc fight.  They took their chances with the pipe.  Though I'd probably give them smarty-pants xp equal to the orc fight.  At least they TRIED to do something innovative.


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## lin_fusan (Mar 5, 2009)

I have a concrete example from my own game that I want people to comment on so I can better understand the arguments presented:

I'd like CharlesRyan, Cadfan, and others who believe in the entertain-first camp to comment specifically, but of course anyone can contribute...

In this 3.5 scenario, my PCs were exploring a partly sunken ship and encountered a giant living mass of seaweed. I described the creature as vaguely anthropomorphic including a gaping maw where a person's mouth would be.

The halfling wizard player glomped onto the idea of the gaping maw and on his initiative said, "I throw myself into the gaping maw!"

(I knew he was going to do the "activate a Swan Boat inside a monster" and instantly kill it cheese...)

Now, I knew the creature didn't really have a mouth. It was a detail to create an image of horror. Since it's a plant, it simply absorbs, not chews.

Here were the issues I had:
1) The player was expecting that the Swan Boat trick would instantly kill the creature.
2) The player didn't know know that the gaping maw wouldn't lead into the stomach of the creature. 
3) By all rights, I should have gotten a free attack on him, and I think the creature's Grapple check was so high against the weak, small halfling wizard he would be toast. In essence, the player was unwittingly going to kill himself.
4) The player was getting frustrated because he thought he was not be effective. (I don't know where this was coming from. I think he prepared all utility spells or something.)

Now, I fully understand how Chekhov's Gun worked here. The player heard a detail, thought it significant, then acted on that knowledge.

The dilemma I had was that I wanted this to be entertaining to the player, but the monster, by the combat rules, would have ripped him a new one.

What should I have done? Ignore the combat rules to allow him to do something suicidal? Please note that all of the other players were trying to talk him out of it.

Allow him to do this impossible maneuver ( since he had no Tumble skills or even spells to ease this maneuver he would fail)?

Lastly, since he was expecting the Swan Boat to instantly kill the creature, do I give in to that expectation?

From the discussion with Varis, it sounds like some of you would, as DMs, allow this maneuver to automatically succeed because the "Chekhov's Gun" of the gaping maw was such an important detail that it must be the monster's weakness. And because the player thought it was true, then it must be true.


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## Darkthorne (Mar 5, 2009)

*Axe to grind?*

Some people are coming across as having an axe to grind for whatever reason. They seem far too eager to tell Varis he screwed up or did it wrong. It's HIS game, HIS players and if he was so horrid I believe they would have bailed long before now. As for the people who like to pick apart each instance out of context for his explanations of what and why he did something I have one question are you that perfect? If so, that must be nice. Or a question to the people that seem to want to blame him no matter what he explains, did you have a DM that screwed you over consistently due to lack of info or only giving useless info? If that's the case maybe you should keep that between you and that person.
I DM/ref and also play and I would be psyched to have a DM from my perception of his thought and caliber in my group. If you game with the same people long enough only putting items out there that only further the main plot gets boring but hey that's my POV. I think he did an excellent job of handling the situation he was given, trying to accomodate both groups of players and what was THEIR desired course of action. Remember seeing a problem with 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing but trying to handle a group of people and accomodate them while keeping things challenging is no simple task, expect mistakes to happen and not everything ever comes out "perfect".
Btw for the record I don't know Varis from a hole in the wall. As for the thread title, pulling the rules together and thinking how to handle the mechanics I would see as skill, keeping your players enganged and have the plot flowing is an art, but that's my POV.


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## Bloosquig (Mar 5, 2009)

My apologies to Varis if he feels I was picking apart his decisions thats not what I intended.  I merely was saying what I would have done in his case with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.  In reality I probably would have let them find a way in and improvised a horrible side entrance to my original map that ruined the adventure   But thats neither here nor there.

In the case of lin_fusan's giant seaweed monster I think you have a slightly different problem.  Seeing a sewer opening and thinking, "thats a great spot to look for a sneaky entrance." is well supported by just about every movie where sewer entrances appear.  On the other hand jumping into the maw of a giant monster hoping to find the big red button marked "self destruct" is a different beast altogether. 

I would do my best to encourage the player that that would be a foolish idea but if he persisted he would get shredded.  Or maybe I'd be nice and just have the monster drag him off to his underground lair for a unique rescue mission.  Maybe the seaweed needs fertilizer for it's little pods back home so it goes and buries the halfling up to his neck in the seasilt where the weed makes its home.

Or maybe the seaweed is enchanted by a sea witch who is enamored with a party member so when the halfling makes the "jump" he gets captured and you have an interesting lil side quest in store as the witch bargains for the prisoner for her love interest.  Depends on how rat-bastardy of a DM you want to be.


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## Zimri (Mar 5, 2009)

Darkthorne said:


> Some people are coming across as having an axe to grind for whatever reason. They seem far too eager to tell Varis he screwed up or did it wrong. It's HIS game, HIS players and if he was so horrid I believe they would have bailed long before now. As for the people who like to pick apart each instance out of context for his explanations of what and why he did something I have one question are you that perfect? If so, that must be nice. Or a question to the people that seem to want to blame him no matter what he explains, did you have a DM that screwed you over consistently due to lack of info or only giving useless info? If that's the case maybe you should keep that between you and that person.
> I DM/ref and also play and I would be psyched to have a DM from my perception of his thought and caliber in my group. If you game with the same people long enough only putting items out there that only further the main plot gets boring but hey that's my POV. I think he did an excellent job of handling the situation he was given, trying to accomodate both groups of players and what was THEIR desired course of action. Remember seeing a problem with 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing but trying to handle a group of people and accomodate them while keeping things challenging is no simple task, expect mistakes to happen and not everything ever comes out "perfect".
> Btw for the record I don't know Varis from a hole in the wall. As for the thread title, pulling the rules together and thinking how to handle the mechanics I would see as skill, keeping your players enganged and have the plot flowing is an art, but that's my POV.




1) I've no particular axe to grind against yaris don't know him , makes no difference to me

2) I find that part of that module to be poorly written. IF the drainage happened at the same time every day like clockwork in as phenomenal a way as has been described here (after the fact) then somebody in the outlying area would have said something as the PCs were passing through. Probably not to the party themselves but they surely would have overheard something. If on the other hand that method of drainage wasn't out of the ordinary then it should tend to fade into the background much like the 100th gazebo or 500th  tree that stretches hundreds of feet up.  There is always scat on a path if your perception gets you to notice a particular piece of scat it should have something to do with something.

3) That he had planned to give them XP and now doesn't know if he will because he let them use a rule that he shouldn't have and that let them "avoid the dangers" because the d20 didn't roll a 1 strikes me the wrong way. I like keeping the group together xp wise they don't get the orc xp obviously but they should get equivalent from the pipe, or in terms of story awards or something so everyone levels together.


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## Darkthorne (Mar 5, 2009)

Zimri
1) "Yay let's use the fact that a player has a high perception against them. Do you also point out which flower in a field has the largest stamen, or the heights and weights of everyone in a village, the general size and consistency of dragon droppings ?" Seems to me as a sarcastic reply in the extreme and out of context for what he was using the perception check for. If this makes no difference to you, why the tone? (intended or not)
2) Drains do not come out of moutainsides, regardless of it's actual importance to plot it should be something of note
3)That's your playing style and you are entitled to it, nothing wrong with that. However I would feel cheated (for a lack of a better term) if my character risked his neck, defeated the bad guys & came up with solutions to problems then I was awarded the same xp's as the guys who just climbed the pipe w/o any risk. At that point why should I put in the effort if no matter what I do I get the same xp? I can see this being a non issue if everyone is trying to pull their weight, but if you have someone just showing up for attendance as it were, why do I risk anything if I'll still get the same reward?


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## Maggan (Mar 5, 2009)

Zimri said:


> Using the sewer system as a form of ingress/egress is a brilliant strategy both in game and in the real world.




Sometimes, in the real world. Not every time. Not even the majority of times, I suspect. Maybe once in a while.



Zimri said:


> Repeatedly by insulting the two that went up the pipe and refused to address what historically both in the RL and in gaming worlds has been a great stealth tactic.




Well, it's not as if there is a historical fact that every time someone climbs up a pipe, they break into the castle with great success.

It has happened. And I bet that 999 times out of 1000 pipes climbed, it didn't pan out for the intruders. But those occasions don't make it into the history books, I guess.

In my campaigns, if a player try to pull a trick and expect it to work because it did once when the world was young, if historical records are to be believed, he will often be sorely disappointed.

If it works, it's because the the circumstances are right. Not because a history book said it would work.

Regarding the "situation" ... the players split up. The minority chose to leave the majority. That group would not be long for the world, in my campaigns.

Not because they spent 15 minutes spent on something which didn't pan out.

But because they split the party. 

That's intraparty trouble brewing, right there. No clear leader, no clear idea of a common goal, no clear ideas on how to achieve it together ...

To me, that sounds way more serious than the pipe being just a pipe.

/M


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## Maggan (Mar 5, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> From the discussion with Varis, it sounds like some of you would, as DMs, allow this maneuver to automatically succeed because the "Chekhov's Gun" of the gaping maw was such an important detail that it must be the monster's weakness. And because the player thought it was true, then it must be true.




I don't think those who talk about Chekov's Gun also are saying "auto succes for everything that follows!".

I think they are saying "that which follows should be interesting".

I don't actually agree a full 100% with that, but I do think it carries some weight, and is a very good thing to think about for any DM thinking to run an adventure.

/M


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## billd91 (Mar 5, 2009)

Darkthorne said:


> 3)That's your playing style and you are entitled to it, nothing wrong with that. However I would feel cheated (for a lack of a better term) if my character risked his neck, defeated the bad guys & came up with solutions to problems then I was awarded the same xp's as the guys who just climbed the pipe w/o any risk. At that point why should I put in the effort if no matter what I do I get the same xp? I can see this being a non issue if everyone is trying to pull their weight, but if you have someone just showing up for attendance as it were, why do I risk anything if I'll still get the same reward?




My answer to this one is simple. All PCs get all the same XPs, whether the player is there or not. I've tried it the other way, where only the present players get XP for their characters or giving out different XPs when split up, yadda yadda yadda.

It all ended up just being a big headache. It's a lot easier when the PCs all advance together, for both me as DM and for the other players. All XPs won by the party are put in a big hopper and simply divided out across the whole party. If someone feels cheated by it, they can find another game.


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## C_M2008 (Mar 5, 2009)

I agree that the area/world shouldn't change because a player goes there, but if the players came up with a creative way to get past the plug that should be fine  (maybe heat boreing a smallish hole to drain the water and relieve the pressure before opening it).

It might be a deadend but it's the DMs job to accept the fact that players can come up with ways to get around/negate them.


One thing I thought was odd was that I though "taking 10" was gone with 4e. If it's still there surely it's not allowed in risky situations (like climbing a slick, slimy drain pipe).


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## Reynard (Mar 5, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> I have a concrete example from my own game that I want people to comment on so I can better understand the arguments presented:
> snip




While I think this case is altogether different than Varis' situation, I'd like to comment.

What the player did here was act impulsively.  The player didn't ask further questions, didn't examine the istuation more closely and didn't listen to his fellow players.  instead, he got an idea, grabbed hold of it, and jumped.

This hapopens in real life, too, often with the same disappointing or even tragic consequences.

If I were GMing that session, the monster would have done what the monster does -- grappled and torn into tiny little pieces the halfling wizard.  Now, it would have done it by the rules -- an initiative roll, an attack roll, etc... -- but by your description the outcome would have been the same: a dead PC and an unhappy player (probably -- I know some players that would laugh it off as their own stpud mistake; I also know players that would cry foul and claim "DM fiat" or rules breaking).

While I want the players to succeed in havinga  good time, I want the PCs to suffer adversity and danger around every corner. Players and their characters that act rashly tend to get killed.

But I also don't play favorites or "cheat" in favor of the monsters or even my beloved BBEGs.  If the 4th level party rushes the Lich and manages -- through luck and/or tactics -- to destroy it, they get the XP and the treasure.  There's no such thing as a "level appropriate" world, either in favor of or hedged against the PCs.  The world is the way it is, with a demon haunted ruin here and a goblin warren there. Players must make an effort to figure out which is which: through research, "gathering information" and *careful* exploration.

But jumping into the gaping maw of a monster?  I don't care how many times you've seen it in a movie or how cool it was. Chances are, you're dead.

And, if you're not dead, if you pull it off and cut your way out of the purple worm's stomach holding its still beating heart in your hand, good for you! You just created one of those awesome memorable moments we all game for. Giving those moments away cheapens them and cheapens the game.


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## lin_fusan (Mar 5, 2009)

Reynard said:


> While I think this case is altogether different than Varis' situation, I'd like to comment.
> 
> What the player did here was act impulsively.  The player didn't ask further questions, didn't examine the istuation more closely and didn't listen to his fellow players.  instead, he got an idea, grabbed hold of it, and jumped.




I feel like situation is similar to Yaris because of the following points:
1) There was an obvious difference between my conception of the situation and the player's conception. What I saw was narrative text, he saw as a detail that stood out and meant something.
2) Because of this conception, the player thought there was an instant win situation, such as the weak spot in a video game shooter.
3) If I don't reward him for this "innovative thinking" or "attention to detail" the player would probably be pissed.

Obviously, the situation is different because there are direct, dangerous consequences for failure in my example than in Yaris's, but I feel the core issue is the same.


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## jmucchiello (Mar 5, 2009)

Actually, having been on Yaris' side all through this thread I have a question: How did you describe the area under the drain pipe? If the runoff from the mountain is collected and used to flush the waste out of the citadel daily at midnight there would tons of detritus and the beginnings of a river bed under the drain pipe. Has this thing been here for centuries? A deep hole or precipice should have been carved into the mountain side by this daily flush. Did you describe this to the PCs as well?


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## S'mon (Mar 5, 2009)

LostSoul said:


> That's one of the few times I've heard that D&D is moving _away from_ gamism!




4e and to a large degree 3e focused on challenging the PCs, not the players, IMO.

You're right that that approach is not really Gamism, challenging the players as players.  

I suppose you could say the main Challenge in 3e & 4e is to Build your PC right, a la building a MagicTG deck.


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## S'mon (Mar 5, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Challenged to do what, exactly? Make smart choices in a context largely defined by implausible, if not outright absurd, kinds of fiction?




I think the original D&D approach, the one that Yaris follows; is that the GM impartially simulates a world that is internally consistent, although not all its laws are those of the real world.  There are obervable clues whether in a particular case the PCs are dealing with reality-based reality (the default), fairy tale-based reality, pulp swords & sorcery based reality, and so on.  The players interact with the environment, the GM impartially arbitrates success or failure.

For original D&D the impartial simulation fundamentally enables the game - the challenge - as I have said elsewhere (so GDS and GNS theory don't really work since they posit this as 'incoherent' and dysfunctional play). The players make their choices, the GM makes rulings as an impartial referee, the dice fall as they may, the PCs succeed or fail.


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## S'mon (Mar 6, 2009)

Mallus said:


> C
> And as for prodding the in-game action along... the whole shebang is designed to produce contrived fantasy action stories. Those are the things the _simulator_ was built to _simulate_.




Well, uh no.  Not necessarily.  The way Varis is doing it, the D&D way at least pre-Dragonlance, is to simulate *an environment*, not to create a type of story.

Before Ron Edwards mucked it up, the GDS Threefold Model he borrowed distinguished environment-simulation (Simulation) from story creation (Dramatism).  Edwards conflated those two as a messy Sim category in order to create room for his special favourite, Narrativism (Premise-based story creation), a particular subset of Dramatism.

In any case, like I said, the D&D way was to impartially simulate a comprehensible though fantastical environment in order to create a fair challenge for the playing skills of the players.

(edit:  For fairness' sake I guess I should point out that per GNS theory, Gamism or Sim are technically supposed to describe only the stance of the player - playing to win or playing to experience - and then you design a game to facilitate that.  They (G, N and S) are technically not supposed to describe what the game itself is doing, but that seems to be the more common useage).


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## S'mon (Mar 6, 2009)

jmucchiello said:


> Actually, having been on Yaris' side all through this thread I have a question: How did you describe the area under the drain pipe? If the runoff from the mountain is collected and used to flush the waste out of the citadel daily at midnight there would tons of detritus and the beginnings of a river bed under the drain pipe. Has this thing been here for centuries? A deep hole or precipice should have been carved into the mountain side by this daily flush. Did you describe this to the PCs as well?




I was wondering this too.  The area of the path where the high pressure jet sweeps it would to my mind be swept clear of all debris and look quite different from the neighbouring areas; that (and the lack of smell) might be a warning this wasn't just a sewer drain.


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## Hypersmurf (Mar 6, 2009)

Varis said:


> ... an issue of 'what I could of done...'





Varis said:


> ... had I been a player, I would of considered this completely selfish behaviour...
> 
> They could of easily been killed in this fashion.





Varis said:


> Had it been open, water would of been gushing out of it.
> 
> ... they would of had torrents of water crashing down on them...





Varis said:


> Heh, that certainly would of been the case if they tried breaking the stone.





Varis said:


> Had the timing been a little different, I would of had pleasure...





Varis said:


> ... they would not of climbed the mountain...
> 
> ... they would of stayed in the local taven...





Varis said:


> Whatever choices you would of made, know that as your DM, I would of done my best to exercise them.





Varis said:


> If they had arrived at the pipe at midnight on any other night, they would of observed this.





Varis said:


> To discover this, the PC's would of had to of travelled 3 hours in game time.





Varis said:


> ... which for all I knew could of taken another fifteen minutes...





Varis said:


> Had they done this, then yes, I could of said...





Varis said:


> A non PC level character would of had a greater deal of difficulty...
> 
> c. Would of found it far more difficult to travel vertically up the pipe.
> d. Would of been denied access by the cap anyway.
> e. Would of had sufficient common sense not to try.





Varis said:


> ... the pipe could of been another road.





Varis said:


> Why couldn't the other two players simply of 'jumped into the void in the pentagram' so to speak?
> 
> In this example, the players would of acted because of a 'lack' of information, and thus got themselves killed.





Varis said:


> For all I knew, it could of taken another half hour to work it out had I tried to look it up on the spot.





Varis said:


> Yes, the pipe COULD of been something...





Varis said:


> It would of saved a lot of time.




Gah!

-Hyp.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 6, 2009)

S'mon said:


> Well, uh no. Not necessarily. The way Varis is doing it, the D&D way at least pre-Dragonlance, is to simulate *an environment*, not to create a type of story.
> 
> Before Ron Edwards mucked it up, the GDS Threefold Model he borrowed distinguished environment-simulation (Simulation) from story creation (Dramatism). Edwards conflated those two as a messy Sim category in order to create room for his special favourite, Narrativism (Premise-based story creation), a particular subset of Dramatism.



I must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to S'mon again.


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## Vegepygmy (Mar 6, 2009)

lin_fusan said:
			
		

> If I don't reward him for this "innovative thinking" or "attention to detail" the player would probably be pissed.






Reynard said:


> If I were GMing that session, *the monster would have done what the monster does* -- grappled and torn into tiny little pieces the halfling wizard. Now, *it would have done it by the rules* -- an initiative roll, an attack roll, etc... -- but by your description the outcome would have been the same...
> 
> And, if you're not dead, if you pull it off and cut your way out of the purple worm's stomach holding its still beating heart in your hand, good for you! You just created one of those awesome memorable moments we all game for. *Giving those moments away cheapens them and cheapens the game.*



This sums up how I play and why I play the way I do.  For me, nothing sucks the fun out of D&D faster than the DM changing things in the game world to "reward" (or punish) the players.  IMO, it's not the *DM* who should be deciding what behavior gets rewarded or punished; the *game itself* should do that.

Jump into the _right_ monster's gaping maw?  You're a brilliant, daring hero!  Jump into the _wrong_ monster's gaping maw?  You're lunch.  When was the rightness/wrongness of your decision to jump determined?  When the monster was created/placed there in the game world, *not* after you decided to jump!

Now I know there are those who will argue that the *game itself* doesn't make decisions about what environment the PCs will encounter, the *DM* does that.  But the point remains: the DM determines the environment *before* the players encounter it.  What happens after that should be determined by the player's choice of actions and the rules of the game, not the DM's whim.  (IMO.)

If DM whim determines success or failure, the rules of the game become less important (in determining success or failure) than impressing the DM.  In that case, the real game being played isn't "D&D," but rather "Impress the DM."  And _that_ game is boring to me.


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

Odhanan said:


> "DMing is a Skill, not an Art."
> 
> I don't know if anybody adressed this in this thread, but I actually think this statement is nonsensical. The practice of an art implies skills you develop over time. Ergo, the statement above basically confuses the end and the means.
> 
> ...



I like this POV.


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## Lanefan (Mar 6, 2009)

billd91 said:


> My answer to this one is simple. All PCs get all the same XPs, whether the player is there or not. I've tried it the other way, where only the present players get XP for their characters or giving out different XPs when split up, yadda yadda yadda.
> 
> It all ended up just being a big headache. It's a lot easier when the PCs all advance together, for both me as DM and for the other players. All XPs won by the party are put in a big hopper and simply divided out across the whole party. If someone feels cheated by it, they can find another game.



You're lucky if you don't have any players taking shameless advantage of this, by having their characters hang back and let others take the risks knowing the ExP at the end will all divide the same.

If the DM of any game I was playing in decided to allocate ExP this way, I'd be gone; probably after a long argument.

I completely fail to see why it's a headache for anyone if characters advance at different rates.

Lanefan


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

Zimri said:


> Yay let's use the fact that a player has a high perception against them. Do you also point out which flower in a field has the largest stamen, or the heights and weights of everyone in a village, the general size and consistency of dragon droppings ? a high perception would notice those things as well. Perception in game is for finding things that are useful, in the real world we all have our own filters to determine what is or isn't important in the game world you are that filter.



Right, well,...

I should of ignored it, and if the party proceeds up the road and can't handle the orcs, (and thus retreat back down the road) from the players POV, a 'magical' pipe would of appeared (above the path they had already traversed and 'explored'), with water gushing out, effectively hampering their escape.

I can hear the accusations now,...like, for instance, "What! We DIDN'T noitce?! I'VE got a 24 perception, there's no way I would of missed it!" 



Zimri said:


> So they didn't spend any time in a bar or walking through the city at all ? a 24 perception can get you to see moss growing on a hole 3 hours up a mountain side but nothing lets you overhear conversations or rumors ? If the plumbing is extraordinary then I would sure mention it. "Hey you may not want to be on the road at midnight cause this happens" I assume the vatican of today has the common plumbing of today or something similar. If the type of drain found at the citadel is "common" then there is no reason it should have been something so out of the ordinary that it raised any "flags" when noticed. If it is extraordinary then it should have been mentioned by someone who had noticed it prior.



Unless of course, you've lived with it your whole life,..it's just water being flushed out a pipe. If your going to talk to a tourist, you probably:
a. get them to buy one of your ales at double the price first.
b. Talk about the things that make you proud, like the strength of the battlements, the fact that the citadel trains the legendary dwarven paladins and the like.
c. Not even think about the waste water. 
d. Or simply (at best) not talk at all to the Half Orc and his friends,..since Orcs are attacking once again. 


Zimri said:


> Or the fact that historically this maneuver has been used in the real world by countless civilizations ? Using the sewer system as a form of ingress/egress is a brilliant strategy both in game and in the real world. If you are going to ask them to "turn off" every experience they have had or read about in the past then better communication will be paramount.



Yeah, something like, "Don't bother wasting your time, you can't get in."
Subtle enough for you? Now, if you go forward, mind the turn, the railway veers a little to the left,..oh, and get your weapons ready,..you never know what's around the corner ,..actually, let me clarify any misunderstandings you may have,...your going to get ambushed by nine orcs, but don't worry, you'll be ready, and 5 of them are minions,...look for the little minis,..yes the grey one,...don't worry, I'll mark them for you." 

Oh, what Joy.




Zimri said:


> Repeatedly by insulting the two that went up the pipe and refused to address what historically both in the RL and in gaming worlds has been a great stealth tactic. I fail to see how "hey the 5 of us should just walk up the main road pound on the main gate and deal with whatever answers" is the more reasonable approach



OMG, your right! I've corrupted the accuracy of pipe design 101 both historically and in gaming worlds. How could I of overlooked such an obvious flaw? 

The idea by itself is fine. But, coupled with,.. 3 'game world hours' crawling along in single file in a wet, slimey, pitch dark and verticle pipe which could be flooded anytime, resulting in me being flushed over the mountain,...hmmm,..I'll walk on the road thanks. 

But they are free to explore it. 



Zimri said:


> Two players saw an atypical and stealthy way to perhaps gain entrance and have the upper hand/surprise on whatever was waiting in the citadel



So now its an atypical entrance,...damn I'll have to call the architect again.



Zimri said:


> three wanted to blindly follow the road up to the part where the enemy had defenses ready and likely should have seen them coming and have been prepared.



True.



Zimri said:


> Were I in your party given the information you had given me, none of which appears to have included (to the players at the time) anything about high pressure water shooting out this hole, but did include "it will be a long difficult trek" which in my mind translates to "they won't have bothered guarding this area" I know precisely what I would have done.



Hmmm,..5 pipes adjacent to one another,...the stone on the road worn smooth by years of water erosion, no side barrier on this section of road, metal filings and slag residue found in water pockets, knowing weapons are made up there, snow capped mountains, a RIVER originating from the mountain underneath them, wet slime covering the pipe walls,...and you deduce that it must be perfectly ok to climb up the mountain side to the pipes, split and weaken the party, burn 3 hours in the trip, knowing you wont get flushed out because 5 PIPES only handle small volumes of water,..and find a trap door at the end of it, letting you in, because all architects include that in their design, don't they?" 

Thats the information the party had. 



Zimri said:


> A few times I saw you use "for all intensive purposes" I was pointing out for your edification that the phrase is actually "for all intents and purposes" not being snarky about it just thought you might like to know the difference. The monopoly reference was to a post after yours because well someone brought up free parking.



Oh! Thank you. I stand corrected.


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

Bloosquig said:


> "Its a fairly standard looking drainage pipe, obviously still in use. And it looks stupidly dangerous and slippery to climb into. In fact a truly impressive gush of sewage blasts out of it as you watch and doesn't land till it's halfway down the mountain."




5 days and 223 posts later I actually thought I that should of said something along the lines of "ok, just realise that for every 1 hour of the pipe, if it does flood, you'll have to pass 6 endurance checks to hold your breath with a successive penalty on each roll."

I'd love to of given them a demonstration, but doing so at that time of day would of been breaking my own rules (as to how and when the pipe is used).



Bloosquig said:


> And I agree that they don't get xp for the orc fight. They took their chances with the pipe. Though I'd probably give them smarty-pants xp equal to the orc fight. At least they TRIED to do something innovative.



True. I totally agree with that. Which is why I'm struggling to come to a decision,..because I can totally understand the other side of the arguement as well


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

Zimri said:


> 1) I've no particular axe to grind against yaris don't know him , makes no difference to me



It does to me. Critise me all you want, but leave 'Yaris' out of it 



Zimri said:


> 3) That he had planned to give them XP and now doesn't know if he will



True


Zimri said:


> because he let them use a rule that he shouldn't have and that let them "avoid the dangers" because the d20 didn't roll a 1 strikes me the wrong way.



Also true. It was simply a bad call by me. I take fully responsibilty fot this. The 1 on a d20 roll was to introduce 'some' risk, heck 'any' risk to justify xp.



Zimri said:


> I like keeping the group together xp wise



Me too.



Zimri said:


> they don't get the orc xp obviously but they should get equivalent from the pipe, or in terms of story awards or something so everyone levels together.



Ok, the Orc xp was a total of 926xp, divide by 3 players = 309 each.

To keep the xp equal, that would mean the two players would of earnt 618xp for the idea, the journey, the (take 10) risk, and come to think of it, the flood risk.

Does this sound appropriate?


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

Darkthorne said:


> Zimri
> 1) "Yay let's use the fact that a player has a high perception against them. Do you also point out which flower in a field has the largest stamen, or the heights and weights of everyone in a village, the general size and consistency of dragon droppings ?" Seems to me as a sarcastic reply in the extreme and out of context for what he was using the perception check for. If this makes no difference to you, why the tone? (intended or not)




Hmmm,..(hangs head in shame) I'm guilty of this tone too. Good point Darkthorne.


Darkthorne said:


> 3)That's your playing style and you are entitled to it, nothing wrong with that. However I would feel cheated (for a lack of a better term) if my character risked his neck, defeated the bad guys & came up with solutions to problems then I was awarded the same xp's as the guys who just climbed the pipe w/o any risk. At that point why should I put in the effort if no matter what I do I get the same xp? I can see this being a non issue if everyone is trying to pull their weight, but if you have someone just showing up for attendance as it were, why do I risk anything if I'll still get the same reward?



This is the issue I'm struggling with atm. If I were to adhere strictly to the DMG, how would I be required to award it?


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## Fenes (Mar 6, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> You're lucky if you don't have any players taking shameless advantage of this, by having their characters hang back and let others take the risks knowing the ExP at the end will all divide the same.
> 
> If the DM of any game I was playing in decided to allocate ExP this way, I'd be gone; probably after a long argument.
> 
> ...




We've long ago switched to "all characters are the same level" (dropped XP altogether, actually). The reasons for those are manyfold.

One reason was that we'll not "punish" people who cannot make a game - especially not if they have to miss a game or even 6 months worth of games because they are serving in our army. 

Another reason is that  I want people to do what they have fun with during the game, without worrying whether or not it'll give exp, and how much.


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

Maggan said:


> But because they split the party.
> 
> That's intraparty trouble brewing, right there. No clear leader, no clear idea of a common goal, no clear ideas on how to achieve it together ...
> 
> ...



Bingo.
This is my biggest concern in the entire situation.


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

C_M2008 said:


> I agree that the area/world shouldn't change because a player goes there, but if the players came up with a creative way to get past the plug that should be fine (maybe heat boreing a smallish hole to drain the water and relieve the pressure before opening it).
> 
> It might be a deadend but it's the DMs job to accept the fact that players can come up with ways to get around/negate them.



I Agree. It would of been fine if they had been able to get in (which they could of if a magic item was used). I have no issue with that.



C_M2008 said:


> One thing I thought was odd was that I though "taking 10" was gone with 4e.



Heh, I thought the same thing originally.


C_M2008 said:


> If it's still there surely it's not allowed in risky situations (like climbing a slick, slimy drain pipe).



Correct, you can't 'take 10' in a skill challenge. I wasnt aware of this at the time and allowed it - definately 100% my fault.


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## Varis (Mar 6, 2009)

jmucchiello said:


> Actually, having been on Yaris' side all through this thread I have a question: How did you describe the area under the drain pipe?



The road under the 5 pipes was eroded smooth, by, what the PC's correctly deduced, the water flowing over the road.



jmucchiello said:


> If the runoff from the mountain is collected and used to flush the waste out of the citadel daily at midnight there would tons of detritus and the beginnings of a river bed under the drain pipe.



Correct. To be specific, there is a river that forms from 4 artierials at the base of the mountain, one of wish, does have 
tons of waste.


jmucchiello said:


> Has this thing been here for centuries?



Yes


jmucchiello said:


> A deep hole or precipice should have been carved into the mountain side by this daily flush. Did you describe this to the PCs as well?



No. The description was limited to the road rock surface being smoothed because of the water flow over the mountain. The road was also described as having no raised side/edge built into it (unlike the reast of the road). No PC's looked over the cliff to examine if the side of the mountain had evidence of water erosion from the pipe.

Good questions.


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## billd91 (Mar 6, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> You're lucky if you don't have any players taking shameless advantage of this, by having their characters hang back and let others take the risks knowing the ExP at the end will all divide the same.
> 
> If the DM of any game I was playing in decided to allocate ExP this way, I'd be gone; probably after a long argument.
> 
> ...




What kind of advantage is there to take? Staying home while everybody else goes adventuring? 

The PC group either fails or succeeds as a group. I'm not interested in tracking XP separately in the cases when a player can't make a session or whose PC happens to be away scouting and misses the fight back at the camp with the wandering predator who ambled by. It's not worth the hassle.


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## CharlesRyan (Mar 6, 2009)

lin_fusan said:


> I'd like CharlesRyan, Cadfan, and others who believe in the entertain-first camp to comment specifically, but of course anyone can contribute...
> 
> In this 3.5 scenario, my PCs were exploring a partly sunken ship and encountered a giant living mass of seaweed. I described the creature as vaguely anthropomorphic including a gaping maw where a person's mouth would be.
> 
> ...




Here's what I'd do in this situation.

Principally, I'd address the character's perception of the situation. You're right, the maw might be a Chekhov's Gun, so I want to make sure the scene he perceives matches what I think I'm describing. Have I imagined the "maw" as a sort of dimple that suggests a horrific face? Or have I imagined something that actually looks like an opening?

If the former, I'd probably just clarify: "OK, you're considering that plan, looking for an opportunity to get closer, but the more you look the more you realize it isn't really a mouth."

If the latter, I'd ask myself why I pictured it that way, and does it really matter? If not, I'd amend my vision*, and clarify like above. If it does matter, I'd give the player a shot at a Spot check to realize the plan won't work. (Frankly, since I'm not out to instantly kill the character, I'd probably set the DC pretty low.) Even if there's a strong reason why the maw looked like a real mouth, I'd still call for some sort of check (perhaps with a higher DC) to realize the plan wouldn't work**--"It's a plant creature, and it probably absorbs its food, rather than chews. Based on your experience, you suspect that it might not actually swallow you if you jumped in."

If those checks were failed or the player pressed on anyway, I'd play things out. If there was another opportunity along the way to use a check or something to give him a more accurate view of his chances, I'd take it. But otherwise, let him play. Yeah, the character might go down--but he did just throw himself at a dangerous monster, so that was a risk.

In short, whenever I suspect a player is going to do something stupid _because he doesn't perceive the situation the way I think I'm describing it_, I look to sync up his perception with mine.


--

* When I suggested I prefer a less rigid play style than Varis's, this is exactly the sort of flexibility I had in mind. Not to redraw the map or change monster stats, but to examine the details I've set up in my mind and see if they're actually serving the game. If a superficial detail--like the shape of a nonfunctioning maw--is going to create an effect I wasn't going for, I have no problem changing it.

** One "strong reason" why the maw might look like a mouth is because I might want to teach the player a lesson for relying on insufferably cheesy tactics. If that's the case, the DCs to notice otherwise might be a bit higher . . . .


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## Darkthorne (Mar 6, 2009)

billd91,
It sounds like you have a group that stays more focused on furthering the end goal which is awesome. Also I think it's decent that you give people xp for when real life interrupts gaming. I think myself & a couple others have had instances where the player is not involved in the game itself, just showing up for attendance as it were and do nothing to futher the plot until it lands right in front of them. I'm currently in a Warhammer game that at the end of the night we get the same xp, however we get minor xp rewards to coming up with a clever idea/ stumping the ref/ doing something the saves the whole party's bacon etc or keeping the initiative chart and other tracking duties to help the ref. It's not anything that makes any one player far more powerful than another, it just keeps us on our mental toes

Varis,
As for the drain xp, maybe do 75% of what the skill challenge would have offered due to the oversight (these things happen) followed by further Xp if they are able to then use that specific knowledge to their advantage.


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## billd91 (Mar 6, 2009)

Darkthorne said:


> billd91,
> It sounds like you have a group that stays more focused on furthering the end goal which is awesome. Also I think it's decent that you give people xp for when real life interrupts gaming. I think myself & a couple others have had instances where the player is not involved in the game itself, just showing up for attendance as it were and do nothing to futher the plot until it lands right in front of them. I'm currently in a Warhammer game that at the end of the night we get the same xp, however we get minor xp rewards to coming up with a clever idea/ stumping the ref/ doing something the saves the whole party's bacon etc or keeping the initiative chart and other tracking duties to help the ref. It's not anything that makes any one player far more powerful than another, it just keeps us on our mental toes




It's also worth noting that I have a couple groups of players, none of whom will begrudge a PC getting XPs because their player wasn't there, was distracted with work or child care concerns and didn't always have their head in the game, etc. We all pretty much recognize that some people are just better at these sorts of games, from a build perspective, from understanding the genre conventions, from being able to get inside the DM's head, and so on and we're OK with letting the difference between more skilled and less skilled players slide.

It's also worth noting that these are games among groups of friends and not just people we meet to game with.

But I will also say that sometimes a game with individual rewards can be fun. I've had a DM who had us justify the XP we got at the end of a session by pointing out what achievements we had reached... and nobody could use the exact same achievement to justify the 100 XP/achievement we were getting. That was, however, also in 1e/2e where the difference in individual XP awards was less likely to make the difference in a level and would tend to become increasingly irrelevant in level differences as time went on.


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## Darkthorne (Mar 6, 2009)

Bill,
I understand your POV and see no prob with it with people that are trying to the best of their ability, something unforeseen occurs etc. I just have a different POV and a more dramatic one in comparison when a player isn't making any attempts to contribute (be it successful or not)


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## Ariosto (Mar 7, 2009)

I greatly appreciate a DM letting the environment be "as it is" rather than changing it arbitrarily. To me, the game is in my choices as a player. _Real _ choices are essential. The viability of bad options is what gives the good ones meaning.


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## Lanefan (Mar 7, 2009)

billd91 said:


> What kind of advantage is there to take? Staying home while everybody else goes adventuring?
> 
> The PC group either fails or succeeds as a group. I'm not interested in tracking XP separately in the cases when a player can't make a session or whose PC happens to be away scouting and misses the fight back at the camp with the wandering predator who ambled by. It's not worth the hassle.



There's about 6 different issues contained in those few sentences; I'll try to hit 'em one by one:

1. The "kind of advantage" there is to take is this: always making sure my character is facing the weakest opponent, or no opponent at all, or always just happening to be elsewhere (exploring pipes?  ) when trouble comes, or backing out of the fight and letting the others get hammered, or never going first in the marching order, or...  

2. I'm not staying home while everybody else goes adventuring; I'm going adventuring too, only as mostly a passenger - yet I'll still scoop my share of ExP and treasure.

3. A hockey team fails or succeeds as a team, yet some players get way more ice time than others (c.f. experience) while some get paid way more than others (c.f. treasure).

4. Just because a player is absent from the table for a session does *not* mean her character is absent from the party!  Everyone else looks after it as best they can, using instructions from the usual player if any were given.  A long-term absence usually means retirement of character, though.

5. Tracking separate ExP very much *is* worth the hassle.  It's important that the reward at least in some tangible way reflect the risk taken and-or conrtibution made.  If I'm off on a meaningless scouting trip while the rest of the party gets into a big battle, well, ::shrug:: guess it sucks to be me this time.  However, for all I know the next time I go scouting I'll find trouble of my own and get ExP for that.

6. There is no number 6. (though there probably should be)

Lanefan


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## Ariosto (Mar 7, 2009)

The thing about judging afterward that a course of action was "not fun" is that we considered it fun enough _at the time_ to stay the course. The DM's not _forcing_ us (in this kind of game) to do this or that. Sometimes conceptually sound plans don't (or even can't) have the expected results.

 However, my desire to go climbing, or talk with an NPC, or whatever, is _not_ a desire to get into a 4E skill challenge; I loathe skill challenges.

I'm not too keen on the notion of XP for risk, which seems to reward poor judgment. That's not a knock against dividing combat awards among the participants; I just don't see why it ought to be "better" to make a climb more dangerous by not taking precautions. XP for accomplishing an objective is good. The old standard of securing treasure is easy to grasp even in-character, but others can work.

I certainly don't see anything "fair" about getting XP for a fight in which I in no way participated!

It was interesting to read of this. All my 4E experience has been in scenarios that pretty heavy-handedly "railroaded" us from one fight to the next.


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## billd91 (Mar 7, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> 1. The "kind of advantage" there is to take is this: always making sure my character is facing the weakest opponent, or no opponent at all, or always just happening to be elsewhere (exploring pipes?  ) when trouble comes, or backing out of the fight and letting the others get hammered, or never going first in the marching order, or...




Trouble is - playing like that may actually reflect a higher level of play skill as long as it's a better portrayal of the character and their strengths. Remember the low-level wizard in 1e/2e. Short on spells, low on hit points. Never going first in the marching order. Squaring off against the weakest opponents because _that's what they can handle_ without draining a party's healing resources.


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## Varis (Mar 8, 2009)

FYI this is how I dealt with the XP issue.
(posted on Australian RPG Dungeon private forum)

"Encounter 1

Skill Challenge

Please not that after referring to the rules, you can not 'take 10' in a skill challenge. I have still provided xp for this because:
1. Innovative idea to look for alternate entrance.
2. Risk taken, (albiet diminshed (with take 10)), still represented a life or death situation if this went bad i.e. If they had failed, it would of been an 'auto kill' (there were at least 2 ways the players could of easily died had they taken the wrong decisions). 

Nonetheless, I was strongly leaning towards not awarding xp for the skill challenge. However, I had to also consider that asking to 'take 10' needs could be considered as an 'innovative solution' to the skill challenge (of course, this won't apply in the future), and since I treated as such, the skill challenge xp applies. Therefore,...

Encounter 1

500xp (6th level skill challenge complexity 2) divided by 2
250xp to Salinya and Urgodan each"


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## Lanefan (Mar 9, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Trouble is - playing like that may actually reflect a higher level of play skill as long as it's a better portrayal of the character and their strengths. Remember the low-level wizard in 1e/2e. Short on spells, low on hit points. Never going first in the marching order. Squaring off against the weakest opponents because _that's what they can handle_ without draining a party's healing resources.



That's fair.

Perhaps I should rephrase.

My concern is the player who intentionally holds their otherwise-capable character back, or sends it elsewhere, and leaves the other characters stuck with the risks; in full knowledge there is no loss of ExP for doing so.

As in: (party consists of Rick the Ranger, Fred the Fighter, Meg the Magician, Ted the Thief, and Chad the Cleric; all are at full health)

Rick returns from scouting: "Guys, there's signs of a Giant in the next valley; we've found the beast at last.  Let's get after it."  Rest of party agrees.
  (party plows into valley; it soon becomes obvious to all a Giant lives here)
Ted: "There it is!  Lookout, it's seen us!"
  (everyone gets ready for a battle except Fred)
Fred: "Uh, guys, I thought I saw someone following us a while back.  Maybe I'll just back off up the trail 100 yards and hide...you know, get the drop on him." (Fred retreats, leaving the other four to deal with the Giant) _(DM knows full well there is nobody following; that Fred has no in-character reason to think anyone is, and that Fred's player is making it up)_
  (a 4-on-1 battle follows, party get hammered; they come out victorious but Ted gets killed.  While remaining party are patching themselves up afterwards - in other words, as soon as the risk is over - Fred returns without a scratch on him)
Fred: "Didn't see a thing on the trail.  How'd things go here?  Where's Ted?"

By the logic being presented, Fred gets full ExP for this battle. (and Ted, I suppose, gets none)

Ridiculous.

Lanefan


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## Zimri (Mar 9, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> That's fair.
> 
> Perhaps I should rephrase.
> 
> ...




I type alot of things, some purposefully disingenuous, some playing devil's advocate, some just to foster the continuation of conversation and idea exchange. The following is none of those, it is unadulterated truth about how I feel regarding the quoted post.

I honestly can not say I have ever sat at a gaming table with someone that would play the way Fred the Fighter did in the previous example. Some had "bad ideas" (the monk that wanted to burn a village to stop a plague from spreading) , some who took "role-playing (acting)" way too far. Some who had to "be the best" at everything, and some number fudgers. But they all played to the best of their ability , to entertain everyone, keep things interesting, and for the over all "good" of the party.  The playstyle described above is completely unknown to me, and if discovered at our table I am fairly certain the player with it would not be invited back for game time, other socializing sure but not game time.


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## jbear (Mar 16, 2009)

Varis said:


> The only problem here, is that for those 3 hours, the other three players proceeded up the mountain road and took on nine orcs. The other two PC's were at least 2 hours away by this time. The two players had to wait out the fight.



yep, splitting a party is a problem. something i really dislike as a DM.

 I guess faced with a wide range of no win choices I would do as I said hoping that the other group seeing that no game time has been wasted decide to do something less direct as 'we attack the fortress by ourselves'; ie do reconnaisance etc to gain some kind of surprise advantage when the others get back 2 seconds (of real time) later.

Some people have accused that decision of being railroady. Be it so. I prefer anything over a split party. Do whatever you like, but do it together.


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## jbear (Mar 16, 2009)

Varis said:


> The issue here is that in that 6 hour period, the other 3 players walked off and did their own thing,..and ran into orcs, who are stationed in front of the citadel entrance. The players decided to attack.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I wasn't really directing my comments at you varis.

I was talking more in general using the situation to put it into context. I fully sympathise with the difficulty of the situation you found yourself in.

I really don't know how I would have handled it myself. Again with hindsight, I now have an idea of the way I would handle a similar situation. I'm grateful to have read all these opinions and thus found my own, which is positive and useful.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2009)

Zimri said:


> I honestly can not say I have ever sat at a gaming table with someone that would play the way Fred the Fighter did in the previous example. Some had "bad ideas" (the monk that wanted to burn a village to stop a plague from spreading) , some who took "role-playing (acting)" way too far. Some who had to "be the best" at everything, and some number fudgers. But they all played to the best of their ability , to entertain everyone, keep things interesting, and for the over all "good" of the party.  The playstyle described above is completely unknown to me, and if discovered at our table I am fairly certain the player with it would not be invited back for game time, other socializing sure but not game time.



The example I dreamed up was extreme, to make the point.  But I can truthfully say that I have both played with and DMed players who would, if given the chance in an ExP-for-all system, consistently do lesser versions of what Fred did: avoid known-to-be-risky situations and hang others out to dry knowing they'd still get full ExP.

Awarding ExP only to those who participate in an encounter only partly fixes the problem - even with that, it still happened - but it's a start.  I'm also glad to say none of those players are currently in my game or that which I play in.

Lanefan


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