Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

[Bret Ripley]

... what could have been a banal encounter with a handful of goblins ...

Heh. It would be fair to say that at its heart it *was* a banal goblin encounter; I saw it as part of my job to try to keep the players from noticing. My primary weapon-of-choice was window dressing.

The platform was a feature in one of those "obstacle course under the Thieves' Guild" deals full of improbable traps and don't-think-too-much-a-wizard-did-it civil engineering.

(I'm only quoting this out of admiration for the sentence -- you got your money's worth out of that one.)

The player asked if he could instead simply call his roll in advance, to be some number other than 20. He wanted to pick his lucky number 17. I said OK, he'd survive if he rolled 17 instead of 20. And he rolled 17.

Ha! I've never heard anything like that before, and I'm sure it would have made me suspicious. There are tons of 'sleight-of-hand' tutorials on YouTube and other places, and it is remarkable what folks can get away with after a very little practice. Some of the moves are so simple that once you are aware of them it's hard to believe that we fall for them ... but we do. (for what it's worth -- after thinking about it a bit more I think it is improbable that *if* your player cheated it was through some sleight-of-hand trick -- why raise suspicion by asking to roll a 17 rather than simply producing a 20? Your suggestion of a slightly loaded die seems much more likely.)

Your story also reminded me of this: 17 Is The Most Random Number. (17 is also the most frequently chosen number when folks are asked to pick a number between 1 and 20, which probably reflects an interesting bit of psychology. Maybe.)

[Xenophon]

Bret I apologize it has taken me this long to getting around to posting a big thank you for your write up, it was entertaining as hell (even if it puts mine to shame). I'm really impressed with the amount of work that you put into your preparation, clearly a labor of love. Between you and honor I've got more than enough inspiration and fodder for another turn on the DM side of the table.

To the "bad roll" discussion: I can never tell if I actually roll terribly more often than not or if they just stick so perfectly in my mind. You'll go through several encounters that play out about exactly as planned. You burn some cooldowns, take a bit of damage, vanquish the foe and move on... nothing really to remember, just another fight like the 1000 you've had before. It is the ones where you watch a comically overleveled group get blasted by a set of enemies that should be a cake walk or vice versa when the BBEG gets instantly obliterated that are truly memorable. It is watching a player trying to recover from her multiple failed persuasion rolls placing them in a ridiculous scenario and the like that my brain latches on to.

One of these days I'll actually record all my rolls and see how they shake out but that is starting to sound more like work than fun. For those that use more digital means to play are those stats that are available to you? I'd be curious to see the results.

[honorentheos]

I am slow to post here, but wanted to say this is easily my favorite thread these days. Whenever I see someone has posted in it I'm excited to read it, whatever it turns out to be.

Our work game is heading for session 6, and we added a spontaneous new player, too. One of the women invited her fiance to check it out, and rather than have him sit and watch, we rolled up a blue dragonborn artificer and dropped him into the game. Everyone was back, and it was yet again a ton of fun.

I realized I am pretty lucky to have players in that group who are instigators, looking for chances to make something happen. I was missing them last session and could really feel how easy they made my job as DM by being engines of action. It's helped me think about what I can do as a player to make the game fun for the DM as well as the other players.

A couple of sessions back I took a chance and used the new Warriors of Krynn boardgame in my regular campaign to run a bigger battle between hobgoblins and sahuagin. Overall, I was very happy with it. I don't know what possessed me to do it since I'd never played it as written. But I spent a good month working out the rules, play testing a scenario from the game, and then homebrewing the battle scenario for my game. But I'm glad I did. I'm definitely using it going forward for big war/battle scenarios. Wizards has done almost nothing to support learning it to my knowledge. It took finding an actual play on YouTube with 100 views or so to see someone legitimately play it which helped figure out the mechanics. And almost every review I've read suggested it would be difficult to customize to a campaign outside of the Dragonlance book it supports. In my limited experience, I think after learning the rules and figuring out the mechanics it was about on par with building a big boss encounter in terms of planning.

[honorentheos]

I was also thinking today how diverse my tables are. My long running campaign includes my daughter and her chinese-american best friend, a guy with Mexican heritage, a dual citizen Norwegian-American, and a transgender dude who I knew when they were a high school freshman friend of my daughter and identified as female.

My work group includes two white women, two Hispanic women, two Hispanic gents, and the finance who just joined is African American.

It's come a long ways from the stereotype of white dudes with neck beards.

[Bret Ripley]

Between you and honor I've got more than enough inspiration and fodder for another turn on the DM side of the table.

Do it! I enjoyed reading your thessalhydra adventure -- it's fun seeing how different DMs handle various aspects of the game, and I'd love to read more. (I will say that I'm glad not all my players were new to gaming; without the two who were already comfortable with 5e, it would have made things much more difficult.)

To the "bad roll" discussion: I can never tell if I actually roll terribly more often than not or if they just stick so perfectly in my mind. You'll go through several encounters that play out about exactly as planned. You burn some cooldowns, take a bit of damage, vanquish the foe and move on... nothing really to remember, just another fight like the 1000 you've had before. It is the ones where you watch a comically overleveled group get blasted by a set of enemies that should be a cake walk ...

Heh. I remember once as a player (AD&D) we had recently reached the lofty heights of 7th - 8th level -- rare air to us -- and we were in a fight with some unusually large (but not giant) wild pigs. We thought it would be some quick-and-easy experience points, but it was almost a TPK. One player expressed what we all felt when he yelled: "I'm 8th level! I should be able to hit a $%$#@^ pig!" The dice were determined to prove us wrong. To your point: this was some 40 years ago, and I remember almost nothing about the campaign but I remember the cold dice and those damnable pigs ...

[Res Ipsa]

I came so close to a perfect moment in a recent D&D session. A giant roc (are there any other size) had attacked the party and grabbed me with its claws. As the other party members chopped away at its HP, the Roc prepared to fly off. I was all ready to cast feather fall when it inevitably would drop me, but another party member finished it off before it left the ground. The DM confirmed that the Roc would have dropped me after getting far enough off the ground to kill me. He had forgotten about my feather fall spell.

So close….

[honorentheos]

I came so close to a perfect moment in a recent D&D session. A giant roc (are there any other size) had attacked the party and grabbed me with its claws. As the other party members chopped away at its HP, the Roc prepared to fly off. I was all ready to cast feather fall when it inevitably would drop me, but another party member finished it off before it left the ground. The DM confirmed that the Roc would have dropped me after getting far enough off the ground to kill me. He had forgotten about my feather fall spell.

So close….

uh, wait. I had almost this exact scenario play out in my regular campaign where the rogue was being brash, climbed on the roof, and tried to solo fight a Roc in the city of Cara's Valle where the issues caused by a pending incursion by Zuggtmoy were being investigated by the party. The Roc (one of three) grappled him, took off, and dropped him the next round only for the player to grin and remind me that the party had decided he should take the ring of feather fall they'd discovered four months before. I admit, I felt a bit cheated as the Roc's defense seemed deserved. But again, it's very D&D to pull that kind of stunt and I had to respect it.

Good times!

[Res Ipsa]

That’s awesome! I love moments like that.

[Bret Ripley]

Our work game is heading for session 6, and we added a spontaneous new player, too. One of the women invited her fiance to check it out, and rather than have him sit and watch, we rolled up a blue dragonborn artificer and dropped him into the game. Everyone was back, and it was yet again a ton of fun.

Very cool.

I realized I am pretty lucky to have players in that group who are instigators, looking for chances to make something happen. I was missing them last session and could really feel how easy they made my job as DM by being engines of action. It's helped me think about what I can do as a player to make the game fun for the DM as well as the other players.

I've been reflecting on that as well. I've come to realize that I wasn't the type of player that made things easy for the DM -- if I get a chance to be a player again, I will do much better.

Having instigators at the table is huge. Watching gameplay videos (mostly Dimension 20 stuff) has really driven this home for me. As long as the DM is flexible enough to roll with it -- and I've played with one or two who were clearly uncomfortable going off-script -- it makes DMing so much easier and tons more fun.

A couple of sessions back I took a chance and used the new Warriors of Krynn boardgame in my regular campaign to run a bigger battle between hobgoblins and sahuagin. Overall, I was very happy with it. I don't know what possessed me to do it since I'd never played it as written. But I spent a good month working out the rules, play testing a scenario from the game, and then homebrewing the battle scenario for my game. But I'm glad I did. I'm definitely using it going forward for big war/battle scenarios. Wizards has done almost nothing to support learning it to my knowledge. It took finding an actual play on YouTube with 100 views or so to see someone legitimately play it which helped figure out the mechanics. And almost every review I've read suggested it would be difficult to customize to a campaign outside of the Dragonlance book it supports. In my limited experience, I think after learning the rules and figuring out the mechanics it was about on par with building a big boss encounter in terms of planning.

I'll have to check out Warriors of Krynn. Large-scale combat has always been a pain to deal with, and I mostly steered clear of it due to the intimidation factor. On the very few occasions where the story and circumstances demanded participation in army-scale combat, I scripted in broad strokes anything happening outside of what was happening with the players themselves (when and where cavalry would charge and to what effect -- that sort of thing) and tried to avoid getting caught up spending too much game time on things that didn't directly involve the players. Rolling for things that don't necessary affect the players directly can definitely be good, though -- "the city gate will be breached on roll of 16 or higher" kind of thing can be used to ratchet up the drama.

But having a D&D compatible board game that involves the players to handle large battles -- sounds intriguing!

[Bret Ripley]

I was also thinking today how diverse my tables are. My long running campaign includes my daughter and her chinese-american best friend, a guy with Mexican heritage, a dual citizen Norwegian-American, and a transgender dude who I knew when they were a high school freshman friend of my daughter and identified as female.

My work group includes two white women, two Hispanic women, two Hispanic gents, and the finance who just joined is African American.

It's come a long ways from the stereotype of white dudes with neck beards.

That is awesome. It seems that D&D culture has become much more inclusive, and that is definitely for the best. I mostly stopped paying attention to D&D after 2e; with that for a frame of reference, I think just about everything about 5e is so much better.

Remember the old gender-based stat caps? Dudes with neck beards was apparently the target demographic. I ... don't miss it.