/tg/ - Traditional Games » Thread #43357140

[21 / 2 / ?]

17KiB, 408x286, hmm.jpg

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 18:26:21 No.43357140 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43357174 >>43357323 >>43358407 >>43359002 >>43359442 >>43359451 >>43364775 >>43364851 >>43367238

No right choice situations? If I, as a DM, set them before the players, am I being an unreasonable dick, or am I giving them a chance to make a choice that impacts the setting in absence of a clearly right direction to go in.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 18:28:00 No.43357174 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43358381

>>43357140
The latter

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 18:30:55 No.43357223 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43358381

I'd steer away from any GM prep that divides player choices into wrong and right. Try to anticipate all possible outcomes from any choice you present, and then think of interesting or exciting consequences that could result from those choices.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 18:36:16 No.43357323 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43358381

>>43357140
The latter.
As long as you don't make paladins fall or force to change alignments, there's no fucking issue.
It's just an oppertunity for the PCs to impact the world and weigh their morals.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 19:24:10 No.43358346 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43358381

The latter. You're not forcing anything, and it gives the PC's a chance to weigh in on what they believe to be right/wrong. You're basically giving them a choice, whether that choice is the best of whatever many options you give them is up to them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 19:26:01 No.43358381 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43358538 >>43368975

>>43357174
>>43357223
>>43357323
>>43358346

Then I guess the question is how do I deal with the fact that these situations are almost always going to have some sort of negative consequences to the party, and what to do about allegations of railroading when the axe falls?

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 19:27:26 No.43358407 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43357140
Don't you think it always feels like a railroad? I do. Feels bad.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 19:35:46 No.43358538 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43358818

>>43358381
Choice. Simple things like which road to take for example leads to a preset place, obviously. What they do once they get there is, for the most part up to the player. They can have a road which is clear cut, or they can suggest going off the main road into the forest, even if they weren't given an option to do so. Just roll with what they give you.

>Players arrive at a house after veering off the main road.
>There's no one inside.
>Players decide they want to steal everything.
>You didn't plan that.
>Turns out the house is loaded with loot.
>Players go to the nearest town
>News of them being thieves spread quite quickly.
>PC's are now labeled as thieves, no one likes them, or wants to sell to them.

Point is, try to make it somewhat realistic, but not always negative. More so reactive to whatever comes their way, really. That's just my opinion though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 19:50:32 No.43358818 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43358958

>>43358538

Yeah, but players (at least in my experience) tend to think that if a problem results from their choice, especially when they're thrust into a choice where they have to pick between two bad options, they're being railroaded into trouble.

So like from a thread I saw earlier, which got me on this line of thinking.

>Party has just saved a woman who is to be turned over to a tribe of lizardmen to sacrifice to maintain their city's alliance with said lizardmen.
>If they opt to save her, it means war with the lizardmen, and lots and lots of shit goes down.

And while the guy posting the story didn't say what would have happened if they kept their bond and sacrificed the girl, I'm sure some sort of really bad shit, maybe civil war from the people who didn't want to continue playing blood tribute would have happened instead.

I can very much see players claiming they're being set up for failure in a situation like that.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 19:58:30 No.43358958 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43358818

Honestly? I'd think that making choices that affect the story that much should be kept to something major, then. Perhaps make things smaller.

>Player killed a bandit earlier.
>Bandit was harassing villagers.
>Everyone celebrates.

Sometimes, you need to railroad to progress the story along, so I'd suggest leaving the "This-or-that" stuff for the major choices that can affect the campaign as a whole, and leave some minor stuff for them to roam around with. Give them multiple smaller options to do things that change the story around a little more, but not a much as the former.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 20:01:07 No.43359002 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43359205

>>43357140
I think it's something of a moot question. I have yet to have players respond exactly as I intend, and this almost always leads to me wadding up my carefully laid plans and throwing them away.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 20:13:24 No.43359205 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43359002
Exactly.
I barely plan anymore. I get a vague notion of where we might go, and then wait for the players to do things. Meanwhile, the world turns around them, and they often don't know when they have a setting altering choice, and at that I rarely make it a black or white choice.

Generally, I say, "Here's a thing. What do?"

I then wait for my players to demolish the world, because PC logic. Then, I make the destruction interesting.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1405716264133.png, 376KiB, 907x720

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 20:26:59 No.43359442 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43357140
I think it's best to consider these things more from a point of view of "goals" than of "right or wrong"

of all the options available to your players is there still one where they can potentially accomplish their main goal, even if it sacrifices a newer goal? (EX: campaigning to gather the pieces of an ancient macguffin, players get into a sidequest involving a friendly NPC who becomes an ally, later they find out a piece of the macguffin is inside the NPC, the only means of extraction kills the NPC)

If so then you're fine, those sorts of decisions make the player weigh what there character really finds important, and helps build depth.

If you are making situations where the players established goals are impossible regardless then that is no fun and a bad move.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 20:27:37 No.43359451 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43359781

>>43357140

You're being unreasonable, but not for the reasons you're thinking of. If you plan for these choices ahead of time, inevitably your players will trash it somehow. Things will not play out as you expect. They might have some magic or explore some unexpected line of thought to do something 'right' anyway. They might not even think about the problem the way you do, like their morality might find a certain course of action correct. Or they might have in-character justifications such as church teachings. Or maybe not. Point is, don't plan on there being X number of plausible outcomes. X always = infinite.

If you really force the players to stay on script, then you're railroading. You rob them of their agency. That's the unreasonable part.

My advice is not to think of these situations as branching paths. Discrete locations, npcs, and such are fine, but not decisions. Just present the scenario as you like, watch how your players adapt, and then react to that. It may turn out that you just happen to wind up with a no right choice scenario. Or not. Both are fine.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 20:46:25 No.43359781 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43359451

>You're being unreasonable, but not for the reasons you're thinking of. If you plan for these choices ahead of time, inevitably your players will trash it somehow. Things will not play out as you expect.

You know, I've heard this. I've DMed far more than I've played for the past 11 years, and I've never had this problem after 1-2 sessions with a group. Outside of the subset of That Guys who are deliberately looking to fuck over the game, it's often not that hard to predict players, and it's actually easier to do so in the larger scale than it is in the smaller scale.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 22:26:22 No.43361628 Report Delete

Quoted By:

The thing about railroads is, the GM sees them from the perspective of the rail company, and the players see them as passengers. The PCs don't want to be passengers, they want a car. They want to know they can drive over the horizon. They're not going to, but they don't want to apply to a job and find out that there isn't a train station near the new office.

The Gm doesn't know what to do without the rail, because now his world doesn't make any sense without any way to move mail and things around the country. So if you want to GM, you can't lock the players in the train, but that doesn't mean you have to dig up the tracks. Just think about where the average members of the populous want to go. The trick is, most small towns that you can't reach by train are pretty indistinguishable. They could appear anywhere.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 01:59:03 No.43364775 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>43368631

>>43357140
That depends on exact situation.
Are they both "you get fucked"? Then you're a dick. (Unless they HAD a good option but done fucked up by their actions.)
Are they both "kinda shitty, achieve something good at a bitter cost"? Then you're likely ok.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 02:03:19 No.43364851 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43357140
Typically the latter, but it also depends on what the players are expecting. Some games can be right or wrong, good or saturday morning cartoon evil, and those games can be fun. Make sure everyone is aware of expectations and you'll be fine.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 05:32:18 No.43367238 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43357140
if the thing they do actually impacts the setting then that should be fine. You would be a dick to slap them on the wrists no matter what if in the end, what they did was irrelevant.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 08:36:33 No.43368631 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43364775
This is the way to go. Also remember as a general rule to never give players all of the options at once. Just two - four or something like that. If they decide to go with something unconventional just roll with it. If your NPCs are fleshed out enough for the love of god make character bios for the important ones so that you have a reference for yourself you will know how to react in every situation even if you didn't specifically plan for it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 09:24:11 No.43368975 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>43358381

Play a game of 20 questions with them.
Twist is: you don't start with a thing in mind, but instead answer randomly unless that answer would contradict the previous answers. When they finally guess something appropriate and you roll a "yes" the game is over.

As long as you can ensure they believe you after revealing you generated the answers semi-randomly (use a table or an app with a history or something) you should never have to deal with the (unfounded) complaints again.

Subject

Name

E-mail

Password

Capcode	All Only User Posts Only Verified Posts Only Moderator Posts Only Manager Posts Only Admin Posts Only Developer Posts Only Founder Posts
Show Posts	All Only With Images Only Without Images Only Spoiler Images Only Non-Spoiler Images
Deleted Posts	All Only Deleted Posts Only Non-Deleted Posts
Ghost Posts	All Only Ghost Posts Only Non-Ghost Posts
Post Type	All Only Sticky Threads Only Opening Posts Only Reply Posts
Results	All Grouped By Threads
Order	Latest Posts First Oldest Posts First

On these boards

Your latest searches