sammytheman666 @ sammytheman666 @ttrpg.network

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18

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442

Joined

2 yr. ago

Indeed. I think you are thinking it the wrong way. If it doesnt make sense in the economic aspect, do you know where it does make sense ? The gameplay aspect. The best armors of the game should be behind dungeons or paywalls to guarantee a level 1 or 2 doesnt go straight to it.

It doesnt make sense when you think of it as anything but a game. And its still a game. Its why in RE games you constantly find ammo and helpful items where there is no in universe reason to have them there at all.

Just like treasures in dungeons. How long would a world need to exist to have every dungeon ramsacked by elite warriors and mages ? A few years top. And most worlds are older, so it makes no sense to still have dungeons and loot in them does it ?

But its fun. Its a game and its fun to go and explore a fresh dungeon even if its very existence doesnt make sense in universe.

... okay ? What does this says about anything ?

I kinda get what you are saying, but... for me improv is a skill that is hard to train or to master and relies a lot on luck. Will I think of something cool now and then ? Will I get ideas ? How will my brain interact with this exploration ? Its hard to say that improvisation isnt highly reliable on what you get at that moment between neurones.

How many times have I thought of better, cooler or more adapted ways to do what I had to improv days or weeks later ? Time is a finite resource, and when improvising time is your enemy. The longer or shorter you have to think, the better or worse it might end up with.

Step 1 : ask a player if they have any ideas Step 2 : do a google search for about 30 seconds to see if you can find something easily Step 3 : Rule with your guts, take a note of it to check between session, and MOST IMPORTANT STEP say this : I’m going to rule this like that for now and I’ll check in between sessions for a correct ruling. Do not use this here today as a final conclusion in a later session please.

YOU MEAN YOU GAVE A MAGICAL PLATE TO THE HALFLING BEFIRE GIVING A DECENT WEAPON TO YOUR BARB ????

What is hilarious is that a normal plate is like 1500 gold. This should be enough for at least 2 magical base weapons

Noice. You got this.

Very good job. Got the necessary items and a bit of flair. A few things I'd suggest to think about. 1- What's on the other side of that tunnel's start ? 2- How high is the ceiling ?

Indeed. Glad we agree. Recently they were making their way into an undead-assieged town and I straight up asked them : ok, where exactly to you go next ? And I just draw a line following their saying and I knew exactly what to prep. If the next time they would tell me : hey, we changed our minds, then my answer would be : ok no probs but I have zero preps. Enjoy your theater of the mind.

To be fair, if I had a week of preps between them making the king agree to send his forces with them against the cult in the woods and the actually woods themselves, I would be more opened to allow it to happen than if the session STARTED with this and then straight to the woods.

It might be actually the deal breaker/maker. When do they do this in the session, as arbitrary as it sounds. Do they give me time to plan this ? My answer to them will probably follow the answer to this question.

Nah, I just stand there and admire the cinematography. If you're gonna fuck up the rules, then make it enjoyable. Aka, the rule of cool, but represented by a talented artist.

Kinda. It's kinda of a cop-out. Which is a nice pun since we're talking about talking to cops of the medieval world.

In the end, it's about preps. If I prepare an adventure, I will not prep it with and without guards just in case they go and convince a department to come down the sewers to stop the cult with them. I'll only prepare one of them. If they go for the other, then I have to refuse for some reason or to redoe my preps, sometimes in the middle of the session. That, or you make the contribution insignificant. If you go down the sewers with the guards, then I would make them fight some cultists in the background while they fight the encounters I prepared for this number of combattants of this level.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying : I refuse anything that wasn't prepped in advance. Because of course I don't do that, that would be railroading. But at the same time, we all mostly agree in the TTRPG circles that it's a douche move to not do what the DM prepared for that session. The classic example is having Dracula's castle right there, but the players decide to go in the forest instead for no ingame reason. Should the DM improvise an entire other adventure for them right there and then ? Should he tell them there's nothing in there ? Should he let them wander off for no reasons ?

I think the sweet spot is between these 2. Between the players wanting to go randomly in the forest and the DM refusing to budge from his preps. You should devide where you wanna go and why as the players AND respect the preps the DM actually did. If you go off the preps, don't expect anything of quality already good to go. And as a DM, you should allow players to do stuff outside your preps as long as it fits your improvising skill and enjoyment and (ideally) doesn't make you waste hours of work. Because that stings so bad it takes away my will to even begin those preps.

And for me, calling the guards to your help when the quest never mentionned them or even needed them in the first place is big. Really big. Should you make guards with shitty blockstats to let the players shine and be cool ? Should they be overpowered and deal with the situation without help ? Should they be as good as the players and put in question why they are even needed ?

Lots of questions that I don't really have fun answering live during a game.

I'm curious for your example thought : Guards finds who gave them their quest tells them to hire a better adventuring party because again why not go to guard in first place if not?

Well, why not go to the guards in the first place then ? The answer out of game is obvious : the fun is having a quest be done by the players. Ingame, it would be a reason that the person cannot go to the guards. Which sure, you can plan ahead in case your players have the very bad habit to go and get help everytime they have a challenge to do. But it's more work. More work for the DM already doing so much for everyone's fun, including his own.

So you are correct. It's a cop-out. But if I were to always plan everything all the time just in case my players went to the guards, I'd probably eventually just say fuck it, and tell my players guards will not help you solve quests because I do not want to keep doing this.

And I think calling upon the guards is like going into a forest randomly. And that how YOU deal with this at YOUR table with YOUR players are 3 things that will make the answer to : what do you do when this happen ? very differents. My players, at my table, will be dealt a certain way with these things that will not work elsewhere. Because it's tailored made for them.

In the end, remember. If you're not having fun doing something, don't do it. Even if that thing is always having to find a reason for why guards won't help you.

To be explicit, I never meant : never go talk to the guards, ever. What I mean is that using the authorities as a magic button to solve problems is bad.

What is GOOD is using authorities to create adventures. If for example, you want the guards to raid a bandit camp that is currently the objective of the quest, then convincing them to do so should be as hard and as fun as raiding the camp itself.

But decent guards wouldn't need convincing. They would at least check it out. Unless they suck as guards, or are bad guys's guards. So either they have no reason to refuse straight up "until you convince us tee hee hee", or they are incompetent, or they are the bad guys.

This is a blanket statement btw, I'm sure it's possible to do something that proves me wrong. But we're talking generalities here, not exceptions.

I'll end by saying that even thought players can always go talk to the guards and get help from them, there is an unwritten rule that if the DM gives a task to the players to do, they aren't really supposed to ship it to the guards and call it a day. There has to be something done by the players that makes the session fun and adventurous.

The fact that a dnd movie, nowadays, is pretty good is what is fucking amazing.

Tiberius wanted to call his daddy the king for an army against bad guys to resolve the situation in a few shakes. The daddy, aka the DM, said politely to fuck off.

This was in Critical Roll.

Welp, what happens when your players have a side quest to do, for example finding a young girl, and go straight to the guards ? Not A guard, I mean the whole department of the guards. What then ?

Try "druid escape scene" with the movie on youtube and check that out. Its an amazing camera shot with wild shapes

I'm listening :)

Depends to what you are comparing to. Sure, in old times they offered up bounties seriously to people around, and pest control is a thing. But half of most quests in early level would normally be dealt with with the equivalent of the cops and the army before they ever reach up to the public to ask for help.

When you put a bounty in the public, you are also saying : we can't be bothered to do it ourselves, so yeah, if you do it we'll give you money. That's your image that is tarnished if you are supposed to be powerful and dangerous.

Another problem of a lawless land that employs bounty hunters ? There's not a lot of cops or guards to deal with your players too. It's the opposite situation of the silver dragon under disguise : not ENOUGH consequences to the players.

In the old west, sure there were bounties, but there were also posses ? When the sheriff, the only representation of the law, gathered people to deal with a bigger problem. Now THAT could work in a game : I'm a guard but I'm also the only guard around cause we're lost as fuck and I need help please. That would totally work.

See, I think that even asking for help induces things in your world. And if you can make them fit into your narrative it's cheff kiss good planifications. But sometimes, you just need guards to be incompetent and to bullshit a reason as to why for an adventure to even exist.

Because now it's more a problem of having to prep reasons for the authorities NOT to deal with the problem at hand, everytime. It can be tiredsome to prepare for the DM. Hence the guards-are-incompetent unwritten contract between players and GM : we don't go ask for help everytime because it's a game and we're the ones having fun.

Remember the time Tiberius wanted to call for an army to deal with another player's backstory ? Yeah like that.

I cannot believe this comment right here, someone somewhere said : yeah fuck this, downvote.

Well I mean then you are a corrupt guard, willing to send other do your job for a pay you yourself provide.

If its from the guards as a whole then they suck in general. Imagine a cop paying a young adult to deal with a rabbit dog. That doesnt make sense does it ? Or paying someone to go into a dark alleyway as there are rumors of people disappearing ?

The guards-are-incompetent is the nicest paradox name. It could also be named guards-are-lazy-cowards or also guards-are-corrupted but this then changes the context of the quests, no ? Which is why being incompetent remains the best worst kind of guards IMO.

Yeah shes back !