Adversaries Are Made of People!
- Thread starter Archon
- Start date
Your title really made me chuckle, Mr. Archon.
(I'll read the article and edit in a moment, I swear.)
(I'll read the article and edit in a moment, I swear.)
Apart from a few references to the previous article (which I've already responded to in that thread), this is the first of your articles that I agree 100% with. 
I like you mention of rival parties, because they are indeed awesome adversaries. I've had some fun using them in little ways in past D&D campaigns, and in the Dark Heresy IRC campaign I'm currently runningBy the way, I'm still looking for 1-2 extra players for that one - anyone reading this interested in joining, feel free to send me a PM. We usually play Sundays between 10am and 6pm, central European time. I'm planning to give a pretty big role to a group of acolytes serving a different Inquisitor. I wish I could go into detail about it but I don't want to risk any of my players being an Escapist and finding out things they can't know about at this moment.
I remember one D&D campaign where the players got so fed up with their rivals that they abandoned their quest, hunted down the rivals, and challenged them to a battle where the losing party would go into exile. The rival party lost the battle, but for me as a DM it was a victory to be proud of.
I like you mention of rival parties, because they are indeed awesome adversaries. I've had some fun using them in little ways in past D&D campaigns, and in the Dark Heresy IRC campaign I'm currently runningBy the way, I'm still looking for 1-2 extra players for that one - anyone reading this interested in joining, feel free to send me a PM. We usually play Sundays between 10am and 6pm, central European time. I'm planning to give a pretty big role to a group of acolytes serving a different Inquisitor. I wish I could go into detail about it but I don't want to risk any of my players being an Escapist and finding out things they can't know about at this moment.
I remember one D&D campaign where the players got so fed up with their rivals that they abandoned their quest, hunted down the rivals, and challenged them to a battle where the losing party would go into exile. The rival party lost the battle, but for me as a DM it was a victory to be proud of.
Excellent article as always. I really appreciate your view of the game as a fun challenge with the GM as a narrator (not an author). Just reading this column has made me interested in playing D&D again and is even spurning me on to try my hand as a GM (since I don't have any close friends who are up to the task).
The rival party is such an excellent idea! It certainly breaks the typical fantasy mold of an evil tyrant or cult. In fact, it's the perfect setting for a game with no end and one where there is a constant escalation of power. Try explaining the same thing for your evil tyrant without making it cheesy. It also opens the door for neutral and evil PCs, which rarely fit in well with the "do good and fight evil" motif of most adventuring parties.
With that in mind, I bet you could have a lot of fun with a Lara Croft/Indiana Jones-type storyline. The party are treasure hunters who either run into heated competition for their ill-gotten gains or angry antagonists who want to keep their prized possessions. Each adventure can be entirely separate, but an overarching story can grow around it. I like it.
On that token, do you have suggestions for some fun situations? Most situations I've seen always come down to "group comes together to fight back against evil menace which is ravaging the lands". The rival party is a new one that intrigues me and the outlaw one I mentioned is a bit of a different spin on that. Anything else you can think of? I wonder if TVTropes would be a reasonable place to look these up (along with remarks on how to NOT make them cliched).
The rival party is such an excellent idea! It certainly breaks the typical fantasy mold of an evil tyrant or cult. In fact, it's the perfect setting for a game with no end and one where there is a constant escalation of power. Try explaining the same thing for your evil tyrant without making it cheesy. It also opens the door for neutral and evil PCs, which rarely fit in well with the "do good and fight evil" motif of most adventuring parties.
With that in mind, I bet you could have a lot of fun with a Lara Croft/Indiana Jones-type storyline. The party are treasure hunters who either run into heated competition for their ill-gotten gains or angry antagonists who want to keep their prized possessions. Each adventure can be entirely separate, but an overarching story can grow around it. I like it.
On that token, do you have suggestions for some fun situations? Most situations I've seen always come down to "group comes together to fight back against evil menace which is ravaging the lands". The rival party is a new one that intrigues me and the outlaw one I mentioned is a bit of a different spin on that. Anything else you can think of? I wonder if TVTropes would be a reasonable place to look these up (along with remarks on how to NOT make them cliched).
Having read your brilliant column, I have realized that I have the greatest GM ever (and it's only his first time)
One of my former GMs ran a campaign where we all started by individually applying for a mercenary guild, and then all our adventures were contracts. Sadly, he had decided he wanted us to do a simple 'good vs evil' story after dragging us in with a great premise, but the idea's there. It'd be even better with rival groups, giving a background of the groups competing for contracts or even just notoriety (it'd definitely make describing attacks more vital if they want a reputation for brutality or clean kills...)ReverseEngineered said:
Dammit, I wanna run a pen & paper game now...
Wow its like you know exactly how my DM plays. Its the fucking worst thing ever. You have pointed out tons of negatives that DMs do and so far my DM has done every single one of them.
It has been a LONG time since I have DMed (or even played), but, dammit, you've resown the seeds. Just be assured that, when my friend as who to thank for the reawakening of this retired DM, I will site you. Dork!
I always find it stupid when enemies are clearly outgunned by the PC and they still try to attack us (Ex: 6 guys open a door with two unarmed guys talking on the other side. The two guys jump for their weapons instead of asking us what do we want).
Thinking of them like people that may have a wife and kid will help the credibility of the game world. In from of a really powerful enemy, a city guard will most likely flee or get bribed than fight for his life. For a religious fanatic, it might be something different tough.
Thinking of them like people that may have a wife and kid will help the credibility of the game world. In from of a really powerful enemy, a city guard will most likely flee or get bribed than fight for his life. For a religious fanatic, it might be something different tough.
I really enjoy your advice, and have a bit of a DM question. I figured this is a good place to ask, because even if the author doesn't reply, there are plenty of talented Gamemasters out there who can help me with it. I'm running a 4th edition D&D campaign, with the theme that the entire party uses the arcane power source and goes adventuring on behalf of the guild that trained them. However, one of the biggest problems I've run into is that because there's an overwhelming number of ranged players in the group, they're sometimes tempted to abuse terrain advantage in ways that I can not react to in order to provide a reasonable challenge. For instance, I intended for my party to drop down into a cavern from a chamber that came out on its wall and fight a large slime. Because they spotted the slime with perception, they decided that the best thing to do would be for one person to stand in the doorway and blast it with magic until it died.
I had to make a tough decision as a DM, and I begged my players to go along with the encounter as intended. Everyone had a lot of fun fighting it, but it got me thinking: How can I engage a party that likes to stand as far back as possible without arbitrary ranged enemies that the two melee characters quickly take out anyway or having arbitrary events such as cave-ins or doors that lock behiind them? I want to find a middle-ground where the party has some lee-way (6-10 squares) without wanting to stand outside of doors and fire inside, safely out of any perceived danger.
I had to make a tough decision as a DM, and I begged my players to go along with the encounter as intended. Everyone had a lot of fun fighting it, but it got me thinking: How can I engage a party that likes to stand as far back as possible without arbitrary ranged enemies that the two melee characters quickly take out anyway or having arbitrary events such as cave-ins or doors that lock behiind them? I want to find a middle-ground where the party has some lee-way (6-10 squares) without wanting to stand outside of doors and fire inside, safely out of any perceived danger.
To Nevrus02:
If they fought intelligent opponents, who likewise used cover, that would certainly make it a more interesting fight. Also, using environmental effects such as darkness, narrow, bendy tunnels, fog (steam or natural), heavy rain, etc. would all work.
Overall, though, I get the feeling the PCs are more heavily geared than they should be for the encounters they're facing. It's up to you if you want them to be high-powered, but with high power, comes high challenges.
You might also want to use some of the advice (bent and twisted, as a good DM should) from the article--have enemies appear who've heard of the PCs and their ranged prowess. Have those enemies specifically set up to fight against the PCs. This is not something you'd want to do too much of since that would be totally unfair. But it would probably be nice to make the players think outside their comfort zones once in a while for a fight.
I'm sure others will pipe in with advice as well.
As for the article (and the series)--it's good. Like others, it makes me want to take up the mantle of DMing again, if not just plain old PnP roleplaying.
I would recommend a rather unorthodox book for anyone becoming a DM: Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People"--written in 1937 or so. Much of the content is now common knowledge, but you will find some great ways in there to motivate your players. It's also just fun to see that self-help and motivational speaking are not modern constructions.
If they fought intelligent opponents, who likewise used cover, that would certainly make it a more interesting fight. Also, using environmental effects such as darkness, narrow, bendy tunnels, fog (steam or natural), heavy rain, etc. would all work.
Overall, though, I get the feeling the PCs are more heavily geared than they should be for the encounters they're facing. It's up to you if you want them to be high-powered, but with high power, comes high challenges.
You might also want to use some of the advice (bent and twisted, as a good DM should) from the article--have enemies appear who've heard of the PCs and their ranged prowess. Have those enemies specifically set up to fight against the PCs. This is not something you'd want to do too much of since that would be totally unfair. But it would probably be nice to make the players think outside their comfort zones once in a while for a fight.
I'm sure others will pipe in with advice as well.
As for the article (and the series)--it's good. Like others, it makes me want to take up the mantle of DMing again, if not just plain old PnP roleplaying.
I would recommend a rather unorthodox book for anyone becoming a DM: Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People"--written in 1937 or so. Much of the content is now common knowledge, but you will find some great ways in there to motivate your players. It's also just fun to see that self-help and motivational speaking are not modern constructions.
Excellent article, containing some good (if obvious) points. Your views on how to be the adversary are getting a bit clearer now, although it's not all 100% clear yet. In one article, you pushed for more and clearer rules that everyone agrees on, so as to remove dice fudging and player-centric rule interpretation that would remove agency from the PCs - all well and good, until you start roleplaying the enemies. So, you say, the orcs charge like barbarians and then flee when their morale breaks. Is there a function for morale in these games? I doubt it, which means it's up to the GMs discretion to decide when they've suffered enough casualities. Or any of the other situations you've described where it'd make more sense for the NPCs to do this or that to overcome their enemies, but they don't due to 'roleplaying' reasons: how, exactly, is this not fudging the dice, except by other means?
Yes, you can make it fairer in your mind by deciding in advance that "this group of 20 orcs will lose their will to fight when they've lost 50% of their numbers or their leader" - but then there's the situation where there's only one PC left alive and that PC kills the 10th orc: now it doesn't make any sense the orcs would flee. So you make it more complicated? "this group will flee if 50% of their numbers are dead, or their leader, and there are more than 3 PCs still alive" etc. Unfortunately you can't do that ad infinitum, so as any good GM, you improvise. And, preferably, you'll want to improvise it in favour of the PCs - what if you realize half way through this encounter was far too difficult, but they all fight like fiends nonetheless and are about to win, unless you follow through with your original plan of sending in reinforcements (which would mop them up in a few rounds)? They'd never know you had 'fudged' these particular encounter-dice; you don't get a nasty look for building too powerful encounters; and the PCs get to feel like they've made it through a hard-won fight. Everyone wins.
In short, all GMs, through the simple act of building a world and then roleplaying the enemies in that world, are fudging the dice. Not the actual dice rolls - I'd never do that myself either, although the WoD Storytelling system allows for a lot more of it than D&D - but the encounters and the way the NPCs react. And this is -fine-, it's all right, it's the way it's meant to be! As you pointed out in your The GM is Satan article, the GM (God) secretly wants the players to win. And it's here, rather than anywhere else, through roleplaying the adversaries, that the GM can fudge the dice (in a sense) to create an as enjoyable playing experience as possible, without it being transparent. Because no matter what you or anyone else says, the GM is still God, and working in mysterious ways -must- shape the world. With some input, for sure, but still.
There, big rant over. Thank you for an edifying set of articles, good reads and good ideas!
Yes, you can make it fairer in your mind by deciding in advance that "this group of 20 orcs will lose their will to fight when they've lost 50% of their numbers or their leader" - but then there's the situation where there's only one PC left alive and that PC kills the 10th orc: now it doesn't make any sense the orcs would flee. So you make it more complicated? "this group will flee if 50% of their numbers are dead, or their leader, and there are more than 3 PCs still alive" etc. Unfortunately you can't do that ad infinitum, so as any good GM, you improvise. And, preferably, you'll want to improvise it in favour of the PCs - what if you realize half way through this encounter was far too difficult, but they all fight like fiends nonetheless and are about to win, unless you follow through with your original plan of sending in reinforcements (which would mop them up in a few rounds)? They'd never know you had 'fudged' these particular encounter-dice; you don't get a nasty look for building too powerful encounters; and the PCs get to feel like they've made it through a hard-won fight. Everyone wins.
In short, all GMs, through the simple act of building a world and then roleplaying the enemies in that world, are fudging the dice. Not the actual dice rolls - I'd never do that myself either, although the WoD Storytelling system allows for a lot more of it than D&D - but the encounters and the way the NPCs react. And this is -fine-, it's all right, it's the way it's meant to be! As you pointed out in your The GM is Satan article, the GM (God) secretly wants the players to win. And it's here, rather than anywhere else, through roleplaying the adversaries, that the GM can fudge the dice (in a sense) to create an as enjoyable playing experience as possible, without it being transparent. Because no matter what you or anyone else says, the GM is still God, and working in mysterious ways -must- shape the world. With some input, for sure, but still.
There, big rant over. Thank you for an edifying set of articles, good reads and good ideas!
I haven't DMed DnD 4th, but I've been playing it since it came out. Our games are not dungeon crawling so we don't fight monsters that much. Our enemies are more like armies of dragonborn right now, so they have powers like PCs and not monster powers.Nevrus02 said:
Anyway, here are some ideas:
- Lots of minions that flank and restric their movements. Minions are pretty cool to make cool fights and make the players feel good to slay hordes of critters. They can also pose a threat in large number since they restrict and surround the players.
- "Chest-high walls" to provide cover. In a ruin, there can be lots of buildings that get in the way. In a cave, stalatites and stalagmites can do that too. It can be cool if missed attacks can weaken stalagtites and make them fall. When the scenery get collateral dmg and change accordingly, it makes pretty cool fights. Trees in a forest.
- Have more mobility on your enemies. I don't know if spiders can throw webs, but you can make them do it. Ardents have a paragon path that can immobilise. Slow can also help. Wardens can make terrain around them difficult terrain. Avengers can be bitches if they got Censure of pursuit. Warlords can move their allies to quickly close the gap. Flying enemies over difficult terrain. Fey wild habitants (Eladrins and gnomes for the PC races) seems to be able to teleport often.
- Pulling, pushing, sliding and free move powers.
- Block line of sight. There can be a corner in the tunnel so the PC have to be bunched together in the corner th fire at the enemies. The wizard's spells wall of fire and poison cloud (and i'm sure there's more) block line of sight and are sustained by a minor action. Some of them can be moved so the PC have to be relatively close to the enemies to attack them or else they're in the cloud and can't see.
- A mage's guild can easily have a rival mage's guild can't they? Good reason to have a good amount of ranged characters.
- Flank them.
- To keep them on their toes, instead of a closing door behind them, a working and moving trap can work. They can back up, but if they do, they have to dodge automatic sword swings at regular intervals.
- Some WoW fights have good ideas. Loken's aura does dmg the farther away you are from him. Sapphiron has moving ice storms chasing random players. Keristraza forces players to move constantly. May not seems like much, but it makes it harder to maintainable spells since you can't attack, maintain your spell and move it at the same time since you have to move or you take some dmg. Force them to run around because of environmental hazards like the Heigan the Unclean fight. One of the enemy target the farthest PC like Skarvald in UK.
- Darkness or fog that make you see 5 square around you.
- Wizard's blur spell. You're invisible to enemies more than 5 squares away.
- Outrange them. Most spells have range 10 or range 20. Bows have range 20/40.
In Exalted, we call that a valor check. Better trained troops or exalts are likely to have a high valor. There's also modifiers because of the perceived threat. If the PC at first seems like normal humans, the Dragon-Bloods will have a bonus to their valor check since they don't look that tough (DB > mortals) but when they show their anima and start mowing the DB, the DB do another roll with a heavy penalty (Solars >> DB).Wolfrug said:
In DnD, you could always do a wisdom check (or maybe insight?).
I want to try Exalted at some point, but it does look like a very, very high powered game. The mechanics look a bit complicated too. Dex + Melee + Modifier + NegModifer + MagicModifer + NegMagicModifer + SituationalMod + NegSituationalMod (have I missed anything?), and that's just to hit something. Next you have to work out the damage... I think it's something I'd rather be in than run.
On topic, I definitely like the idea of a rival group. I've just started a DnD 4e game with a group of new players, so I''ll see how it goes.
On topic, I definitely like the idea of a rival group. I've just started a DnD 4e game with a group of new players, so I''ll see how it goes.
It is high powered, and from my experience, that's what players like about Exalted. They don't feel afraid to lose their character to an unlucky roll so they do more daring stuff. In my current game, the characters' goal is to conquer the world to guide it to a prosper future and eternal peace.Deathlyphil said:
Well, it's not that complicated. Players usually have their Dex+Melee+Weapon Accuracy already calculated and it's already calculated for all NPC in the books. That's the first 4 that you don't have to worry about. The magic modifier is only used if the character used a magic power (most likely the 1st Melee excellency). The negative magic modifier is only used if the enemy is an abyssal and used a defense charm. I usually mix the last 2 as a overall "is it a favorable or unfavorable situation to do that".
Also, most numbers in that are between 1 and 10.
The damage is also pretty simple. Strength + weapon dmg (usually, this is already calculated) + number of additionnal successes on the attack - soak.
Maybe I've been playing it for too long. (Almost 10 years now)
Wolfrug brings up an excellent point - all adversarial role-playing decisions are liable to fudging, at least within the bounds of what a DnD group will accept as realistic (e.g., always being saved by reinforcement fails the smell test; a group of orcs breaking morale a little earlier than usual? Not so much).Wolfrug said:
I agree with this article, though - indeed, failure to keep in mind the advice in the column makes certain types of game-play impossible. That is to say, I seriously doubt that subterfuge, bluffing, sneaking, etc. can play a big part of a campaign in which the DM uses all the resources at his disposal to thwart the players. Such games seem like they must always degenerate into an endless series of brute force match-ups.