I am still slowly but surely working my way through the DMG (for the uninitiated that is a Dungeon Master’s Guide – a book about running D&D games). The sections on 3d combat were somewhat confusing to me – most likely because I could not quite visualize what the book was saying about how to track spaces above and below. I read the section on disease and it seemed to me that a diseased person would probably just keep taking “extended rests” so that they could roll endurance over and over until they were cured or killed.
I watched the DMs very carefully during the Game Day event. I studied their every move – analyzing and critiquing so that I might learn how to DM myself. I also watched them for differences in style – how did the same exact published scenario differ in the hands of someone else? Were there things I could have handled differently?
I’ve already noted in previous posts some of the issues I had with these two. Reading the DMG lead me to a few more observations about the way they handled the games. I am not attacking the two gentlemen specifically, as people or DMs. Everyone had a good time. I am simply using this experience as a learning tool.
Kick them while they’re down. The DMG advises the DM to turn the focus of the monster’s wrath to other players when the player they were attacking becomes unconscious. The Fumbles DM (as he will henceforth be named) seemed intent on attacking a player that had fallen. There was a dead PC and three unconscious PCs by this point in the encounter. Two monsters were left (skeleton and construct). I had to race across the room to engage the skeleton stabbing the dying guy. Fortunately, I killed the skeleton in one enraged blow and was then able to stabilize the two dying PCs at his feet before zipping back across for a similar action against the construct standing over the last PC. I have mixed feelings about the kick them while they’re down decision of the DM. On the one hand, I cannot understand why he was set on killing everyone off (except that it was a one adventure scenario, so the events here would not have larger consequences). On the other hand, it allowed for some of my most heroic moments of the adventure where I’d spent much of it tripping over my beard and hitting myself in the head. I destroyed both creatures while stabilizing my friends.
WTF is with the XP? Both DMs (Fumbles and Bumbles) were weird about XP. They awarded XP according to who actually hit the monster. If you took a swing at the monster, you were awarded XP. If you did not take a swing at that particular monster because you were busy flanking another monster, you did not get XP for the monster you did not actually hit. The DMs did not actually track who hit which monster so this method of XP rewarding became rather silly as people had to try to piece together who hit what.
Additionally, there was a lot of complaining about how unfair this type of XP rewarding was to melee characters. Ranged characters could get a whack on all monsters on the field where melee could not. This would give ranged characters a huge advantage. I questioned why you would divide the XP in this way. Each person there helped overcome the obstacle in some way, therefore should be granted equal XP. The players would all advance at the same rate and no advantage would be given to a particular type of player (ranged).
I wanted to say that they were doing XP weird because there needed to be a winner of the scenario so that a prize could be awarded. However, Fumbles and Bumbles tried to explain why equal division of XP would not work – a point I completely missed. I later read the DMG which says “simply divide the xp total for the encounter by the number of characters present” on page 41. In this case, I will thumb my nose at their stupidity because they made a big issue over nothing and in doing so may have warded off a couple people on the fence about 4th Edition.
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In case you're like "Who the heck is this?", I go by "Felonius" for most of my online presence, but google has me by my "real name" (since I use my gmail account for things like looking for jobs, and other more professional contexts, for which "Felonius" doesn't seem as appropriate).
Ok, starting with Disease. The "short answer", as I said on Chatty's Blog, is that you can only take one extended rest per day. You then need to wait at least 12 hours before you take another. (I mistakenly said 14 on Chatty's blog. This is from page 263 of the PHB). The other reason is to avoid the disease worsening. Any disease that has a "Final State" tends to be incurable via Endurance checks at that point. This means that if your not doing well on the Endurance rolls, you may be better off waiting until you get to town and have access to the Cure Disease Ritual (which carries its own risks, of course...).
3d Combat *is* a bit flaky. I'm not sure exactly what's tripping you up, but... The way I'm thinking of it so far is that battle field also has 5' squares that are over the battle field, so it would be like setting up another battle mat perpendicular to the "flat mat" you usually play with. Because this would be a difficult endeavor at best, they're recommending using a die of some sort to indicate how many 5' squares you're dealing with in difference between two objects (or with the ground, as the case may be). I'm not sure that helped at all, but I'll be happy to explain better if you'd like (and if I'm capable).
It sounds like you had some real winners for DMs at the WWDDGD... I hope they didn't ruin your experience at all. Honestly, I'd say take more advice from some of the bloggers on the web (Chatty, and most of the commenters with blogs all seem solid) than from those two. Also, the 4e DMG does have some solid stuff in there, mixed in and hidden amongst all the other stuff about flying and diseases. Some of it is going to come down to (a) your own personal style and (b) what your players seem to enjoy.
The XP distribution thing is a throw back to a few things, including older editions of D&D, and some video games. I don't agree with "You only get the XP if you hit the creature" because it doesn't work well in practice, and you were right to doubt it. I have a friend (and fellow DM) with a great story about his idiotic fighter who always did the stupidest thing, but always got the most experience because he was in every fight. He, of course, did it to prove exactly the point that you're arriving at: that system doesn't work. I'd imagine that their arguments were along the lines of rogues that avoid fights, and that sort of thing... I've found that most players don't typically avoid the combat, and the only time to "penalize" them at all is if they don't participate at all. Otherwise, you were helping that fighter take down whatever he was fighting by making is so he didn't have to fight whatever you were fighting, so it works out.
For my Game Day, the problem at my table (unless I was a jerk and didn't realize it, which is possible) was one of the players. He was the guy who's read up on *every* rule for 4e, and "knows" everything about every supplement that's due to come out, and when they're coming out. He spent most of his time telling the other players how to play their characters, and forgetting how to play his. I told him to back off a few times, and he would at first, but would back at it a few minutes later. Fortunately, I'll never have to deal with him again, and I think that's one of the best things about that environment... If you didn't like someone, you never deal with them again (but if you met someone you got along with, contact information is only a question away).
Anyway... I think my comment is as long as your post by this point... I hope it wasn't too much, and if wasn't enough, let me know and I'll try my best to answer any other questions. If you get my email from this post, feel free to email me, too. D&D, as much as it's played by anti-social nerds, is mostly about community.
I hope they didn't ruin your experience at all.
There's a saying we have in the military that applys here: you learn as much from a bad supervisor as you do a good one.
Analyze what they did wrong and how you would try to avoid the same pitfall when you become a supervisor (DM). She does that already which is another reason I know she'll be a good DM when we start playing in a few months here.
I played the same demo, and I was actually mostly annoyed by the GM's decision not to kick us while down. I can understand the constructs not wasting extra actions on an unconscious PC, sure, but the automatic kick is an extension of the attack that drops the target in the first place - it strains credibility that a creature that slow and lacking in free will is going to take the time between a punch and a follow up kick to say 'Um, hm, he's kind of hurt, best leave him behind then', at least in my opinion.
Of course we managed to trigger both encounters at the same time and only avoided a total party kill through the good graces of the GM, so I probably shouldn't complain too much. (Although a TPK would have been pretty funny.)
@Patrick: The construct I could have understood given their attacks but it was actually the BBEG's skeletons that were continuing to stab at dying people while an alive, albiet bumbling, dwarf breathing down their...kneecap?
One thing that this whole story has made me think about is "classic D&D expectations".
Back in the 70s and 80s in particular, a lot of DMs use to pride themselves for the difficulty of their modules (adventures). This is at least due in some way to Gary Gygax and others from the old guards, who invented roleplaying games and came from a challenging background of wargames.
Wargames are extremely competitive and ripe with tactical/strategic elements.
As weird as this might sound, many gamers considered it a badge of honor to fight against unfair odds. Some DMs even built a reputation for that and would attract a lot of gamers because of this, I kid you not. Tales such as "My character was killed in a session run by Gygax" are sort of like war stories for gamers.
Even though there's been more emphasis on fairness recently, this sort of mentality can be seen today. It is particularly noticable in tournament play and one-shots.
Now, I don't know about the two DMs you met, Heather. And I continue to think they failed to communicate and adjust properly. But I wonder if there isn't a possibility that they were inflexible because of the format. In a long-term campaign, maybe things would have been different, maybe they'd listen more. Maybe they wouldn't impose house rules so bluntly. I really don't know.
In any event, I dug up a link that will probably interest you. I mentioned "social contracts" for gamers on Chatty's blog but for those who don't know about them, here's one of many essays on them. You can google more on social contracts. We discussed them on message boards many years ago, picking at different issues that creep up in play and I've found them helpful to articulate some things and organize campaigns.
http://www.treasuretables.org/wiki/index.php?title=Social_Contract
As weird as this might sound, many gamers considered it a badge of honor to fight against unfair odds.
I don't mind fighting unfair odds, but I wouldn't like a continual Battle of Thermopoly stlye campaign/ single session play.
At some point you have to let the players win in order to give them a sense of satisfaction, accomplishment and progression. If you're constantly killing them, or giving them nearly impossible winning games, at some point the player is going to get tired/ frustrated and will eventually just stop playing, or will look for some other group to play with.
I can see your point about over the duration of the long term campaign everything will even out, but that's something the DM/ GM needs to take into consideration when designing the module.
Hello Mike!
The thing is, I hate the DMing style I described above. It's just that in conventions and events, I think there's still this vibe for many people that "giving your players a hard time" is "cool".
After 3rd edition was released, Jonathan Tweet himself slaughtered a lot of gamers DMing his design in conventions. Following Gygax's footsteps, I guess :)
Also, at D&D experience earlier this year, there were apparently several TPKs (total party kills) when 4th edition was played there.
Really, I think that sort of play is counter-productive but I'm wondering if the guys who gave Heather a hard time weren't just awkwardly trying to pursue this tradition.
In any event, there's no excuse for them to ignore players' concern. That was crappy.
Patrick-
I can understand the constructs not wasting extra actions on an unconscious PC, sure, but the automatic kick is an extension of the attack that drops the target in the first place - it strains credibility that a creature that slow and lacking in free will is going to take the time between a punch and a follow up kick to say 'Um, hm, he's kind of hurt, best leave him behind then', at least in my opinion.
I've always read constructs as being very computer like. The fact that they have little to no decision making power on their own means that most wordings of a command like "Kill everything that moves in this room except for me" should have the construct attacking things until they appear dead and then moving on to the next target. Unless you tell it to make squeeshy adventurer paste out of anything that comes in the room, it should probably immediately move on to the next target when its current target drops. (Essentially I doubt a construct's ability to differentiate such abstracts as alive but unconscious vs dead. As soon as a character goes from a valid target to an invalid target, the construct would, in my conception, and since it has neither free will nor abstract thinking abilities, move on to the next target that fits its targeting parameters.
Amusingly, this can lead to wonderful bits like someone being beaten unconscious then left alone until they heal back to consciousness again and move, whereupon they get smacked again until they fall into unconsciousness until they heal again and move, wash rinse repeat.
(Taking things a step further, you probably would give the construct a minimum threshold of movement, so it doesn't chase after spiders or a pile of treasure that has succumbed to entropy/gravity and collapsed.)
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