Cairns, Queensland Australia, as far as i know there is not even a comic book store heredietpeachsnapple said:
Judging the Game
- Thread starter Archon
- Start date
This is one of the main problems with giving players full control of their choices. What seems completely obvious for one can easily be misjudged as a detail by others. Being able to swing with this is one of a DM's most important abilities if you ask me. It's also something I still struggle with.bjj hero said:
Somehow Vampire parties more easily break up into arguing players than most other rpg-systems. White Wolf just wants their players to take everything so serious I guess. And the system also revolves around making the player feel important, upping the stakes quite a bit. I can deal with a dnd character dying far more easily than a vampire character myself as well, its weird.bjj hero said:
Anyway, I never think too hard on the theory behind DM-ing. I always make sure to have a general plot and a layout of the world in my head/drawn up and then set to it from session to session.
Yet we always seemed to get through more vampires than fantasy hero charecters. I found Vampire far more draining than anything else I've DM'd. The players seemed to love it though, until everyone fell out and went to their seperate factions. Is it really that hard to stay on the same team? One of the players explained his reasoning for the split along the lines of:Vortigar said:
"Im a Ventrue and antagonist X is a Ventrue so I'm backing him".
Even though he'd give the party the shaft in the past and X had not yet found out that it was the party who'd been steadily burning his businesses down. Only one other player would follow his lead and it all got messy.
He never said storytelling wasn't important. Read the article everybody. What he said was some people may not have fun with it. Try to design a game in which everyone CAN have fun, but don't screw with your game and story halfway through because Victor had a shitty day at the office and is pissed at everyone, or Chelsea keeps rolling fours. Design the game in a way where fun is very probable, but don't change the game in the middle to try and appease pissed-off people. Read the article before tearing him a new one, please.
I think the linking of Storytelling and that elusive Fun Factor is perhaps a bit misconstrued. The fun players and GM have out of a game grows out of all the four factors, Wold Builder, Judge, Adversary and Storyteller, and not just from the story iteself. This is why the most railroaded of plots can lead to brilliance (and frustration).
The GMs attention to fun can perhaps be said to stop when the game session starts. Before you begin play, during your preparation, you should bear this in mind in all you do: Game groups are very different, and even within a group, some may revel in social intrigue, while others just want to show off their ability to make things bleed. Ideally your group is in agreement on what aspect of the game they want to mostly do, and that is where the GM must consider fun. if the players prefer high court intrigue and skullduggery, an epic quest to kill an unnamed terror will not work, if you spend all your time trudging through swamps and caves to track the beastie down. The lesson for GMs is: talk to your players. I always like to hold a short debriefing after each session, and get some feedback on what worked and what didn't.
I'm a big proponent of always having player death (well, their characters anyway, though sometimes.....
) an option on any given fight, and to avoid fudging dice, I will typically always provide a way to flee any given fight. The players don't always consider this option, at least until the first character goes down. After that, they tend to learn.
My group and I tend to joke about obvious railroads by the GM as the exposure to naturally occuring Plott-DeVice radiation. A seasoned RPer can usually spot these a mile off, and I agree with the articlae that adherence to freedom of choice and consequence can go a long way towards maintaining suspension of disbelief in the face of this. The danger with consequence comes from the fact that the GM has absolute power, and what you, with your suprior knowledge, might consider a stupid and fatal mistake, might to the players be seen as maybe not the greatest plan in the world, but not something worthy of a Total Party Kill. If as GM you suspect you are in such a situation, the adherence to story can take precedence over your responsibilities as judge and adversary. You fudge the dice, to avoid spending the next session making 5 new characters.
Fun comes then when all four roles (and a few other probably) come to expression in a reasonable and balanced way. As a GM you must trust to your planning and understanding when the session starts, and do the fudging off-screen between sessions based on feedback (what I think the author calls "changing the rules"). Storytelling is the least of the GMs jobs, because it is the one least likely to sour the game and detract from the enjoyment of the group as a whole. A bad judgement, or an gamebreaking enemy can do a lot more harm in the short term (which is where a game session takes place), than starting each story in a tavern can ever do. Players are all masters of derailing plots anyway, never fear.
The GMs attention to fun can perhaps be said to stop when the game session starts. Before you begin play, during your preparation, you should bear this in mind in all you do: Game groups are very different, and even within a group, some may revel in social intrigue, while others just want to show off their ability to make things bleed. Ideally your group is in agreement on what aspect of the game they want to mostly do, and that is where the GM must consider fun. if the players prefer high court intrigue and skullduggery, an epic quest to kill an unnamed terror will not work, if you spend all your time trudging through swamps and caves to track the beastie down. The lesson for GMs is: talk to your players. I always like to hold a short debriefing after each session, and get some feedback on what worked and what didn't.
I'm a big proponent of always having player death (well, their characters anyway, though sometimes.....
) an option on any given fight, and to avoid fudging dice, I will typically always provide a way to flee any given fight. The players don't always consider this option, at least until the first character goes down. After that, they tend to learn. My group and I tend to joke about obvious railroads by the GM as the exposure to naturally occuring Plott-DeVice radiation. A seasoned RPer can usually spot these a mile off, and I agree with the articlae that adherence to freedom of choice and consequence can go a long way towards maintaining suspension of disbelief in the face of this. The danger with consequence comes from the fact that the GM has absolute power, and what you, with your suprior knowledge, might consider a stupid and fatal mistake, might to the players be seen as maybe not the greatest plan in the world, but not something worthy of a Total Party Kill. If as GM you suspect you are in such a situation, the adherence to story can take precedence over your responsibilities as judge and adversary. You fudge the dice, to avoid spending the next session making 5 new characters.
Fun comes then when all four roles (and a few other probably) come to expression in a reasonable and balanced way. As a GM you must trust to your planning and understanding when the session starts, and do the fudging off-screen between sessions based on feedback (what I think the author calls "changing the rules"). Storytelling is the least of the GMs jobs, because it is the one least likely to sour the game and detract from the enjoyment of the group as a whole. A bad judgement, or an gamebreaking enemy can do a lot more harm in the short term (which is where a game session takes place), than starting each story in a tavern can ever do. Players are all masters of derailing plots anyway, never fear.
In Vampire? Sometimes, yeah.bjj hero said:
Loneliness and betrayal are far more prominent components of the "personal horror" genre than teams are. Also, games that try to emphasize dramatic moral conflict kinda need to create disagreement and tension between the protagonists. It's almost natural to want to break up the team (or, at least, threaten to) in a game about that stuff.
The problem is that RPG players (and many writers as well, including some writing for White Wolf) just can't see any way to play that doesn't involve a "party" of PCs. Broken trust, bitterness, and complicated love/hate relationships are all quite in-theme for a "World of Darkness" game, but folks have trouble playing adversarial characters and their game systems tend to give them very little assistance.
-- Alex (not the one writing the articles)
So, here's another way to say that: "The game's system is more sensitive to a GM's mechanical missteps than the game's players are to the GM's crappy ideas."GhostLad said:
I don't think that observation is incorrect or anything; but, to me, that's mostly a sign that you've got a fragile and fussy system on your hands.
-- Alex
Hey, I had a level 12 Rouge/Level 5 Sorcerer that died for a while but was brought back a ghost later when someone figured they could use "animate dead" but their roll was a ghost instead of a zombie. So I got to use some ghost template powers as well as some of my own. It made for an interesting adventure.
My GM was really inventive with the challenges after that. But we tended to fight a lot of astral style enemies...and wraiths....
My GM was really inventive with the challenges after that. But we tended to fight a lot of astral style enemies...and wraiths....
Becky B Collectibles‎ Cairns QLD 4870, Australia0418 828 123‎Captain Ninja said:
or
http://www.phoenixhobbies.com.au/contact_us.htm
or
Exchange Bookshop‎ 78 Grafton St, Cairns QLD 4870, Australia
or
You could link up with the WOTC living forgotten realms administrator that lives IN carins...
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=rpga/news/20071116a
Best of luck mate!
I find your article to be a considered and reasonable approach to the Old School of thought on role-playing: let the dice fall where they may. Your central idea seems to be that fun is always better when it is earned, that making choices resulting in real impact is the most fun you can have, even if you die. It isn't a bad thought and it has certainly made a generation of RPG fans happy but I think it is limited mostly because there is more than one player.
For example, lets say someone in the group you are playing with has a bad day. A very bad day. And they decide to do something suicidally foolish, such as tell off a major demon to his face while you are standing next to him. By the agency of fun idea, the consequence should be clear: you die and perhaps next time you won't have such foolish friends. That seems to take a lot of the fun out of the game. I'm not saying you support this idea, but that seems to be what your article supports.
Likewise, your advice to young GMs leads straight to the pitfalls of power-gamers ruining games. If I am better at manipulating the rules than you, I can build a more powerful character and have a greater control of the story than you. By allowing me agency in the game, the DM has taken away yours which can be far more frustrating. It's one thing if we all ride a train together, it is quite another if only I get to drive and you do not.
Finally, agency of fun necessitates the death of long-term story. If a bad choice leads to failure, and anyone can have a bad day, failure is inevitable. A story critical event, then, can never be guaranteed so you cannot have any guaranteed story elements. If we are honest, we all know games have a script. Throwing that script out means a lot more work for the GM, already the hardest working guy at the table. And it can often lead boring courses: too scared at the powerful enemies, the party can just hold up in a defensive position and do very little or wander aimlessly because their seems to be point to life other than what they make for themselves.
I propose a different core idea for GMs to avoid these and other pitfalls: make LONG TERM fun your goal. This means your job as a GM is to challenge the party, provide a framework and keep the story moving. Failing occasionally is fine, but if they fail constantly you don't need to change the rules immediately. In general, players should feel like they are in control, even if they are not. They do not need to know that either underneath the dark citadel or on the peak of the lonely mountain they find the same set of guardians. Just as suspension of disbelief is required for all games, so too is the illusion of agency.
When it comes to RPGs, there is no right or wrong way so you need to measure the game by fun of the group. A "let the dice fall as they may" is fun for some but other can be caught up in a good roller coaster and have a blast. Good advice to new GMs is to get to know your players and have a game you can have fun with. It doesn't have to be railroad, it can have branching paths to the same place. The game can be very open, free to explore all the consequences you want. You are very right when you say "If you're the GM, it's not your job to make sure people have fun. The belief that when a player doesn't have fun it's the GM's fault has caused more GMs more grief and heartburn than any other myth in gaming." But how can you know if you are a good GM if you don't have way to measure?
For example, lets say someone in the group you are playing with has a bad day. A very bad day. And they decide to do something suicidally foolish, such as tell off a major demon to his face while you are standing next to him. By the agency of fun idea, the consequence should be clear: you die and perhaps next time you won't have such foolish friends. That seems to take a lot of the fun out of the game. I'm not saying you support this idea, but that seems to be what your article supports.
Likewise, your advice to young GMs leads straight to the pitfalls of power-gamers ruining games. If I am better at manipulating the rules than you, I can build a more powerful character and have a greater control of the story than you. By allowing me agency in the game, the DM has taken away yours which can be far more frustrating. It's one thing if we all ride a train together, it is quite another if only I get to drive and you do not.
Finally, agency of fun necessitates the death of long-term story. If a bad choice leads to failure, and anyone can have a bad day, failure is inevitable. A story critical event, then, can never be guaranteed so you cannot have any guaranteed story elements. If we are honest, we all know games have a script. Throwing that script out means a lot more work for the GM, already the hardest working guy at the table. And it can often lead boring courses: too scared at the powerful enemies, the party can just hold up in a defensive position and do very little or wander aimlessly because their seems to be point to life other than what they make for themselves.
I propose a different core idea for GMs to avoid these and other pitfalls: make LONG TERM fun your goal. This means your job as a GM is to challenge the party, provide a framework and keep the story moving. Failing occasionally is fine, but if they fail constantly you don't need to change the rules immediately. In general, players should feel like they are in control, even if they are not. They do not need to know that either underneath the dark citadel or on the peak of the lonely mountain they find the same set of guardians. Just as suspension of disbelief is required for all games, so too is the illusion of agency.
When it comes to RPGs, there is no right or wrong way so you need to measure the game by fun of the group. A "let the dice fall as they may" is fun for some but other can be caught up in a good roller coaster and have a blast. Good advice to new GMs is to get to know your players and have a game you can have fun with. It doesn't have to be railroad, it can have branching paths to the same place. The game can be very open, free to explore all the consequences you want. You are very right when you say "If you're the GM, it's not your job to make sure people have fun. The belief that when a player doesn't have fun it's the GM's fault has caused more GMs more grief and heartburn than any other myth in gaming." But how can you know if you are a good GM if you don't have way to measure?
Thanks for the well-considered response. You have certainly highlighted many of the challenging aspects involved in running a game in the manner I have described. To reply to your three points, let me break them up:lokidr said:
1) Bad Day - Certainly, it's possible for a person to have an exceptionally bad day out of game and bring his personal rage/anger/disgust to bear in a way that causes horrible problems for the game. I once had a player in Cyberpunk 2020, who'd had a fight with his girlfriend, deliberately trigger an atomic explosion to kill everyone's characters, just because.
2) Power Gamers - It can certainly be the case that a power gamer in a party of non-power gamers can wreak havoc by making his character better than everyone's.
Both #1 and #2 are just special cases of "player problems" and player problems are endemic to all campaigns. For example, in a more directed, narratively-driven story setting, a player having a bad day could also insult and abuse a critical NPC - say, a major noble whose alliance must be gained. How does the GM handle it? If he doesn't impose consequences on the party, he's made it clear that what the players say doesn't really matter and the railroad becomes apparent. Likewise, in more RP-centric campaigns, we've all seen the "amateur actor" with a high Charisma character who talks so much that more introverted, numbers-driven players can't participate.
I believe, for all types of GMs, the best way to handle the "griefing because of a bad day" problem is to immediately stop the game, pull the player aside, and ask him to leave the session to cool off, and have his character suffer whatever fate normally happens to absent players - in my campaigns, they become NPCed for that session. I have generally handled this with a "you'll thank my later" approach, and, in fact, the players always have thanked me for intervening. I'm sure other experienced GMs have their own methods. But the one thing I never do is alter the game to accomodate someone being a jerk for any reason.
Likewise, with power gamers, it's an issue best handled outside the game. The GM should talk to the player about expectations of his game. The GM is entitled to play with people of his choosing who play in ways he likes, and the best answer to a genuinely problem player is to not play with him. Most people, when confronted with bad behavior, will tone it down, though, I've found.
As far as #3) Story - Long-term story plans can absolutely be disrupted by an unexpected failure. But this is why I argue against long-term directed story in favor of emergent story. To be fair, however, my games are almost always set in campaigns that follow the Tolkienesque theme of the "long defeat" - i.e. it's not that the good guys are guaranteed to win, it's more inevitable that evil will one day win. The good guys are just hoping it won't be today. If your GM tastes run towards lighter fare, though, there are plenty of rule sets and optional rules that can stack the odds in the player's favor without needing to eliminate their agency. Mutants & Masterminds is brilliant at this.
When it comes to RPGs, I think Lajos Egri's conception of storytelling is far preferable to Plato's: the characters come first, and their attitudes, choices, and motivations create everything else, including the plot. Instead of laying out a plotline to follow, get together and write characters with strong beliefs and a reason to go out and test them.lokidr said:
Failure is an essential component of dramatic stories. It's what makes the protagonists' struggle credible, interesting, and sympathetic. Don't be afraid of failure in your game, just make failure interesting! Of course failure sucks if all you get is "You die" or "Nothing happens"(*) -- but imagine how much success would suck if you just phoned it in like that, too. Someone failed a die roll? There's your chance to introduce something tense or scary or emotionally trying.
If you know what you're doing, collaborative on-the-spot improvisation is far, far less work than a scripted "story", and produces a superior experience to boot. The catch is that it's a different set of skills from the story-railroad or this-is-my-dungeon-go-explore-however-you-want styles of GMing -- one that, in my opinion, most RPG books teach poorly if they teach it at all. And the whole point is not just to do less work, but to distribute the work (and the authority, and the fun) between everyone at the table.
-- Alex
__________
* - And, yeah, I know some games tend to encourage sucky failure mechanically. Boo for them.
Yes, it does seem a bit like stating the obvious. The system we are currently running is not to fault, though. It's Exalted by White Wolf, and if anything it's a bit too robust in the rules department. We try to stick to it as much as possible, but there are some small aspects that we skip over for now. Stuff like jumping in combat giving you penalties to actions taken in the same round: that one get's tossed to make it easier to create dramatic combat actions (called stunts in the game) without accidentially handicapping yourself. But I digress..Alex_P said:
The situation I was getting at with that statement was the power-gamer aspect of a game. Some people are idiots and will power-game because they can. Most, however, are doing it by accident. It's only natural for each player to want their character as good as he can be, especially if the GM isn't loath to kill them off if it benefits the story. The danger comes when the GM doesn't say no, or worse, when the GM is the power-gamer.
That's one situation where the GM must put story behind judging. The particular power-gaming trick they try to pull might be quite cool. It might even solve a particular problem. Heck, it may spark all sorts of ideas for further plothooks and stories. But even then, a GM should be careful about letting it slide, because it can set a dangerous precedent. A player is very unlikely to forget what they can pull off, and will expect (naturally) to be able to do something similar later on again. If the original feat f.inst required a certain Atheletics score that the character doesn't have, nor any in the party have, the GM should put a stop to it, and refer the rules about what you can do with such-and-such in a score. Let the player find another way to do it, if possible, with the stats they have.
If the GM can stop players in this fashion, the players should also be able to hold the GM accountable. Say a GM wants to introduce his favorite NPC, come hell or high water. The PCs need to get from A to B, and the GM has decided to take away choice by making it impossble to get to B without said NPC. If the players don't want that (maybe they don't trust the guy), if they have the skills (able to navigate cross-country, or high investigation scores to find the secret the NPC knows), they absolutely should be allowed to tell the GM "the rules say we can do this without him. Stop being an arse and let us try" or words to that effect.
The GM has absolute power within a world. The only recourse the players have when he starts overtsepping what is reasonable is to refer the rulebook, and for that argument to carry weight, the rules (as agreed upon between the GM and PCS) should be upheld on both sides, sometimes to the detriment of dramatic flair or story. In the longer run, this breeds internal consistency within the setting, which is pretty damned important if you want to make believable stories. But it sacrifices "fun", because saying "no you cannot do that" is unlikely to ever be fun for the recieving part, be that PC or GM. Still, it sometimes has to be done.
Thanks for your reasonable response, Archon.
Your style of game is valid, but hardly the only style and I don't think it is the easiest or even the most fun. Modern players know video games and know there are limits on choices but still have fun with these games. Open choice has more pitfalls, more possibility for conflicts. If you set the expectations of the game to the framework of "this is the direction" and work with players to understand they should try to move in the direction, you will get less wandering, less boredom and more interesting games for new players, especially those coming from video games. I think the open game can be more rewarding but I think we both know it can be hard. If I didn't know I was playing in an open, player-driven game with no pre-set story or direction I could easily grow bored or frustrated.
I think "talk about expectations" is better advice than "let the dice fall where they may". Your approach to problems makes it clear you know expectations are important. I would say new GMS should start with expectations and find the style they think is the most fun. After all, it's easier to start with a published adventure than make something up whole-cloth.
May all your games be fulfilling.
This is where I think you and I differ. I do not believe problem players are endemic to all campaigns, I think they are made by a lack of understanding and poor expectations. For example, if you were to play in published adventure you could easily be a problem player yourself by taking more control of the story and forcing more work for the GM as they just try to run the adventure. At the heart of every published adventure is a track and and if you get too far off, the published material is useless. If you expect free-range and you don't understand published adventures you could be a problem for the game. In this case, I think you are a smart player and would see the nature of the campaign is something you aren't interested in, or at least understand other players have other interests. Judging by sales of Paizo adventure paths, others are interested.Archon said:
I think we have different understandings of Tolkien. Your understanding sounds more like my understanding of Warharmer or Cthulhu. If we were to play in a game together, that would be problem, we'd be trying to work in different directions. Your understanding of a Tolkienesque game would be much more open-ended. Mine would be "the good guys win the epic struggle, I hope I live that long".Archon said:
Your style of game is valid, but hardly the only style and I don't think it is the easiest or even the most fun. Modern players know video games and know there are limits on choices but still have fun with these games. Open choice has more pitfalls, more possibility for conflicts. If you set the expectations of the game to the framework of "this is the direction" and work with players to understand they should try to move in the direction, you will get less wandering, less boredom and more interesting games for new players, especially those coming from video games. I think the open game can be more rewarding but I think we both know it can be hard. If I didn't know I was playing in an open, player-driven game with no pre-set story or direction I could easily grow bored or frustrated.
I think "talk about expectations" is better advice than "let the dice fall where they may". Your approach to problems makes it clear you know expectations are important. I would say new GMS should start with expectations and find the style they think is the most fun. After all, it's easier to start with a published adventure than make something up whole-cloth.
May all your games be fulfilling.
Thanks Alex, that sounds like one decent approach. In that case, the story would be driven by NPC characters with their own goals to which the players can react. After all, if the world contains no characters with motivations and attitudes you might as well skip the GM.Alex_P said:
But let me propose a different style, one that is rather popular: action movies. If you are watching the latest Bruce Willis or Michal Bay movie, do you really expect character motivations to drive the plot or do you just want see various interesting fights? I feel tension in these fights, even if I know the good guys will win in the end. I know it is scripted, but it is still a fun ride because I didn't read the script ahead of time.
Likewise, a campaign can be driven by slight character motivations (you need at least some) and more driven by set-piece encounters. Dungeons and Dragons 4e follows this idea. It isn't for everyone, but clearly that level of story has interest for someone.
You say collaborative on-the-spot improvisation is less work than scripted story? I say reading is pretty easy but teaching players uninterested in improvisation is hard. I know the game you are talking about, I know it can be great fun, but I also run three games a week, one with any person off the street. I encourage improvisation as much as I can but in the end the script makes it easier to wrap up the adventure and move on. It is still fun and it is less work than teaching the kind of deep role-playing you talk about. And sometimes, when I'm lucky, I get the true improvisation you advocate and I can throw out the script and run with it. Those are are truly great moments I wouldn't have gotten unless I had that script.
Like it or not, scripted story has a valuable function for many groups.
Totally off-topic to the main point, but Lord of the Rings is about the good guys losing, only to be saved by God. The story reflects the inherent tension between Tolkien's appreciation for pagan themes of hopeless courage, and his belief in Christian salvation. He reconciles the two by having Frodo fail in his quest, and then having an act of Christian mercy (sparing Gollum) save the day.lokidr said:
In suggesting that my DM style works well in the context of Tolkien's themes of the "long defeat", I'm drawing upon the purely pagan element of hopeless courage. This is the same source that RE Howard draws on for Conan, and I think it underlies Warhammer and Cthulhu, too. In pagan epics like the Iliad and Beowulf, and fiction and gaming inspired by them, there is no sense of the inevitable victory of good. And I think games where there isn't an inevitable victory for good are better as games (leave aside better as fiction) for all the reasons noted in my article.
So I guess if the DM is God, the notion of the triumph of heaven clearly represent DM fudging!
Some good links for those interested in a brief discussion of the theology behind Tolkien:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11790039/JRR-Tolkien-Beowulf-The-Monsters-and-the-Critics
http://hollywoodjesus.com/lord_of_the_rings_guest_03.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_defeat
http://confessionalgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/12/rereading-tolkein-long-defeat.html
http://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Perspective-Sifting-Gold-Glitter/dp/0971231168
Not necessarily. Depending on how your group deals with this kind of things, it can be the best part of the experience. If you see it as 'my character died', then yes, that sucks. But if you see it as 'Erik valiantly went to Kai'el's aid, and one of the enemy elves just got lucky, killing him instantly. However, his sacrifice allowed Kai'el to overcome his debilitation, and finish off the elf', or even just as 'holy shit, the enemy just rolled 24 out of a maximum 26 damage! (this retelling is surprisingly hilarious)' then the story (heck, the -legend-) of that character will be talked about in your group for years to come. Who remembers just another encounter with elves and a gnome? What people care about is the memorable events, whether they're good or bad.Alex_P said:
That's quite the philosophical tangent. My understanding of Tolkien's work was a desperate but not ultimately doomed mission. The difference between this and pagan epics was the concept of ultimate doom. The ancient world could seem petty and cruel but you did not get the sense that all civilization would end. Tolkien's christian-inspired mythology does have this element. If Odysseus fails in the Odyssey, it is a tragedy. If Frodo fails to destroy the One Ring it is an apocalypse. Narratively, only the most bitter of writers would destroy their own worlds so we know the one-ring will be destroyed. The only real question are what happens along the way. Even in the case of the Odyssey, Homer follows (or creates) the tradition of literary epic: the hero participates in a cyclical journey, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. If the hero is killed, you can't return home. In the Greek tradition of plays, remember, deus ex machina was not considered bad: that was how they saw the universe.Archon said:Totally off-topic to the main point, but Lord of the Rings is about the good guys losing, only to be saved by God. The story reflects the inherent tension between Tolkien's appreciation for pagan themes of hopeless courage, and his belief in Christian salvation. He reconciles the two by having Frodo fail in his quest, and then having an act of Christian mercy (sparing Gollum) save the day.lokidr said:
In suggesting that my DM style works well in the context of Tolkien's themes of the "long defeat", I'm drawing upon the purely pagan element of hopeless courage. This is the same source that RE Howard draws on for Conan, and I think it underlies Warhammer and Cthulhu, too. In pagan epics like the Iliad and Beowulf, and fiction and gaming inspired by them, there is no sense of the inevitable victory of good. And I think games where there isn't an inevitable victory for good are better as games (leave aside better as fiction) for all the reasons noted in my article.
So I guess if the DM is God, the notion of the triumph of heaven clearly represent DM fudging!
This all shows how important understanding the theme of a game is to enjoying it. A total-party-kill in my view of a epic story is virtually unthinkable. In your view, it should always be a reasonable option. Hamlet and the Odyssey are both good stories but you can't expect one to be the other.
To be clear, in my point of view, a total party kill should not be an impossibility if the application of the rules and dice result in it, again, for the reasons I already stated. I don't think the GM should "cheat" to save the party (or his NPCs, for that matter).lokidr said:
But I have no objection to games which provide for the players being heroes or survivable in their rules. There are certainly game systems and settings which allow for situations which might have resulted in a TPK to not do so, without the need for the GM to break the rules of the game.
For instance, in Mutants & Masterminds, it's virtually impossible to achieve a total party kill, regardless of what the GM or players do, by the nature of the rules. With the rules for Hero Points, Power Stunts, Extraordinary Effort, and so on, it just can't happen. Innocents may die, heroic reputations may be lost, but the good guys are almost certain to survive and have some level of victory.
I think if one wants to play D&D in such a manner, the way to do it is to build it into the mechanics of the campaign, rather than fudge the dice. For instance, I recently ran an "epic fantasy" campaign where each player had Fate Points. Spending a Fate Point let you avoid dying. You could get more Fate Points by making large sacrifices to your deity. So it turned death into a money sink. I didn't have to cheat to keep the party alive, and they accomplished their heroic quest, although some of them were poorer than they might have been, and their favorite temples much wealthier.
M&M even has an elegant mechanic for resolving GM fudging that benefits the bad guys. Their rule is that the GM can fudge as necessary for the plot to go forward, villains to survive, etc., but every time he does so, the heroes get Hero Points that they can spend. So what happens is that the early parts of any given story are "set up" by the GM, but by the end, the Hero Point-laden PCs can triumph.
Frankly I think the notion of DM fudging as a necessary element is just a holdover from before more elegant rules were developed to handle those situations where either the GM or the players ought to have more 'plot control' to fit a particular game's needs.