Hot answers tagged players
116
I'm a consultant IRL, and run into this kind with every client I have - So, I have a standard practice in life: whenever I encounter a situation where someone has made an important declaration that I think might be in error, I say something like:
"I think I'm confused." - I always assume that I might be wrong (even when I'm pretty sure I'm not.) I would ...
54
I don't think it's anything to really be dealt with, unless you object to the idea of torture in your games. Of course, there are detriments to using torture, which is why it's a case of last resort (or no resort) for many intelligence agencies. What detriments?
People will say anything to get out of pain. You end up with a lot of dross to sort through, ...
53
Congratulate your player on solving a problem without fighting. Really. It does not often happen in FRPGs and yet even ancient cultures managed to avoid fighting most of the time.
Talk to the group about whether they would like you to craft encounters where not-murdering-everyone was a viable solution.
Incidentally this seems very much the way a bard ...
38
Sometimes a skill-focussed player can bypass entire obstacles with that skill. This is a shining moment for them (which you don't want to step on), but boring for the rest of the group.
The general principle I'd follow here is "Yes, but...", useful throughout GMing: Don't say no, but do say what obstacles arise as a result.
First, take a look at the ...
35
Let's say I have a campaign where I
want to put the players in a
challenging spot by putting them in a
no win situation and having them
captured and stripped of their
equipment (assuming they might get it
back as they make their escape, so as
not to complete make the players mad.)
If this is not a natural consequence of previous actions ...
30
Player creativity should always be rewarded!
Adding on to what RS Conley has written (and it is an excellent response), as a player of a campaign, you never, ever want to feel like you're non-participatory. As the master of the campaign, it's your responsibility to adapt to good, solid role-playing.
If the players are clever enough to outfox a given set of ...
30
My girlfriend and I have played 4E D&D and she is completely blind. Here are some of the things I did to help her out:
I obtained a PDF copy of the rules and copy/pasted enough of it so she could print enough of the core rules out in Braille. I also made a plain character sheet for her as well that was also printable in Braille.
I bought her a set of ...
24
Try this one: every PC has one chit representing a "+1" bonus to any roll.
They can only use it once for session, and they can only use it to influence some other PC's roll. Make it a +2 if the Player can come up with a reasonable explanation. E.g.:
I cover him with suppressive fire while he sprints toward the enemy (+1/+2 to dodge)
While she tells her ...
23
It's probably useful to distinguish between playing more than one character sequentially and more than one character at once. I'm assuming from your question that you mean at once.
I'd say it's acceptable any time your group is comfortable with it. Some games explicitly call for this: Apocalypse World gives players the ability to play multiple PCs as part ...
23
Well, obviously, there's the Dragon Ball option. Somehow a Bigger Bad shows up, hands them their asses (that can be tough, though) and sends them back to the training montage.
Also in the same vein is the "invulnerable" monster. Not unbeatable, but not without some element that will send them on a quest. To take a popular example, think Harry Potter and the ...
23
Sometimes combat is just long and boring. Try a more exciting game system, or house-rule the more long and annoying parts. Some game systems are tuned towards long combat rounds and grind. There's some system specific tips out there for speeding combats, see Speeding Up Combat for 3.5 as an example. Time limits etc., not going to list them all here as ...
22
This exact setup happens all the time in movies, so let's examine how they handle it.
If they are the only character, then as a GM, completely tune the story to them. They shouldn't have to do hacking, or at best they have to shoot their way in to where the Russian hacker who already knows stuff is. James Bond doesn't use keyboards. Avoid his minimums ...
22
Roles Really Aren’t That Important in 3.5
To begin, spells are the most powerful class feature in the game. Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 doesn’t really care much about roles: you will be more powerful the more magic you have. You will never be more powerful going for a non-magic class, even if the rest of your group is already magical. So I call ...
22
This is not a great answer
This is a very general question, with a specific example given, and this answer addresses the example very specifically. I think there are lessons that can be drawn from this answer, and I think this answer is probably useful to the question-asker, but it may not be as helpful to others with the same question, which was part of ...
20
Young children are interested in different things than you are. The D&D that they play will not be what you're used to. I've read various threads where fathers played D&D with their kids and they share a few things in common:
Length of play is fairly short. 30-60 minutes seems to be typical. If you can hold their attention longer, great, but don't ...
20
I've gamed with my kids, I think most importantly you have to look at RPG gaming as you would playing a board game or any other "traditional" gaming. #1 you should be having fun and using the time together to create future fun memories. How would you act if you play Monopoly, or Sorry, or Scrabble with your kids? Obviously you try to win and do it in a ...
20
Welcome and great question! You have two major paths you can try.
More Social Characters
One of the joys of roleplaying is trying out things different from yourself. And personality types are as much a part of that as being an elf or a dwarf. You can do research (read How To Win Friends and Influence People, watch some of those personal-makeover shows, ...
20
Sounds like they need to feel some consequences. If there are no consequences to kidnapping and torture, then there's no reason for them not to do it. You just need to take some real world examples and apply them to your game. Here's some ideas:
Limit the people. The people that are easy to kidnap are the ones with the least amount of useful ...
20
Is there maybe some sort of trick to encourage resource spending?
Yeah - have a look at real life first. What prevents you from hoarding anything you can afford to acquire? Two things:
storage space/costs.
some goods have a "best before" date (or require even more storage resources)
Note that 2 applies even to non-physical things. I.e. if you learned ...
19
You're definitely doing all the right things; it's hard if your players don't cooperate. Let's see.
The first thing I'd try is starting sessions in media res. You can sort of force a bit of momentum if the night starts with the characters under fire in the middle of a combat, or pleading for their lives in front of a judge, or what have you. At the very ...
19
If you forgive me, the odds are that this is a perception thing, not a reality thing - unless you own biased dice.
The sane way to determine which is true is test, test, test: take a dice, and roll it a thousand times. Keep a tally of how many times you roll each number.
That will do one of two things:
Most likely, it shows that there is no substantial ...
18
This is probably not your fault but the game system's fault. If a game system offers only a few stable "optimum" configurations for characters, those are what most players will end up creating, because nobody likes to be less than what they could be.
The d20 system of the Saga Edition is one of those systems with few optimum configurations, and relies on ...
18
I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago, in the role of the newly-come player. The party, all around 20th level and with a couple of years of familiarity with the world, had found my new character embedded in magical rock and awakened me deep inside a Drow city. Now, the DM had to work on integrating me with the party and with the world.
There ...
17
In the case of your example, rolling a 1 or 20 doesn't mean any more than rolling a 2 or a 19 or a 3 or an 18. In 3.5 at least, there are no automatic successes or failures with skill checks. Regardless, in most rolls there is not an automatic success or failure. Sure, if they roll a 20 they're going to be confident that they have succeeded. But that's ...
17
I think you're always OK to say "Hey, shouldn't it be X instead?" No one gets offended at this unless the person is coming off like a know-it all (e.g. "Well I rolled this instead because per the book that's what it is nyah"). Maybe it's a mistake, maybe it's a specific thing to that encounter, maybe it's a house rule, maybe you're wrong, whatever. If you ...
17
I was interested in D&D in the '80s, but I never got to play. Now, I have been playing with my wife, my children and their boyfriends, and some other friends (usually 9 in the group) for about six months. The GMs went easy on us at first. They didn't get too technical, and we all knew we were bending (or ignoring) the rules at times. But the object ...
16
I would say this is bad practice. You've just had the players roll alertness when they should be rolling empathy. Say one of your characters has Empathy as a Superb skill. They get a huge bonus on the roll. Say they also have only an Average Alertness. You've just denied them a +4 on that roll and they don't even know it! (If they find out they will be ...
16
"A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?" The Pirates of Ersatz, Murray Leinster
From your question I noticed a few things. Nominally, I completely agree with ...
16
There is no reason to have the PC do anything interesting while captured. He may look at the walls or if he's lucky they give him a ball like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape. There is also no reason why the PC should know anything about the NPC staging his escape.
But there is no reason to have you player being bored 3 days just because his character is ...
16
On the one occasion we started a new group from scratch, we all went out to dinner together, during which we talked about what we were looking for in a game and did some basic worldbuilding. Also, it meant hanging out in a social situation and just getting to know each other. If it didn't end up working out, I believe it would be a softer rejection this way, ...
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