And you say “change the course of the campaign” as if it was already predetermined and it got effed up. How.?!? Nothing in any campaign is set until it has already happened.
I think this is a really important point.
Even when I have some things more solidly planned than normal, the players still do things I did not expect, and what happens in play is what was "supposed" to happen.
What is that line from Star Trek VI? Valeris asks Spock about the future and Spock says, "We must have faith." She then asks, "Faith in what?" and he answers, "That the universe will unfold as it should."
You can apply that to a D&D campaign... have faith that the campaign will unfold as it should. That what happens, once it has happened, was what should have happened, and what else might have occurred if the players made different choices or the dice rolled a different way... really doesn't matter.
Even if all the characters die in a glorious TPK (or an ignominious one)... the campaign doesn't necessarily end. You can make up new PCs who can go and beat the boss and get revenge on him for killing the first party. And after all that -- the 2nd party winning after the first one died, was the campaign unfolding "as it should."
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And you say “change the course of the campaign” as if it was already predetermined and it got effed up.
The specific example he used was exactly that: "the plot calls for you to get through that door, so...". He might have used a bad example that implied more than he meant, but if you achieve the exact same outcome despite failing multiple rolls, that means those rolls weren't important and shouldn't have been made in the first place.
And you say “change the course of the campaign” as if it was already predetermined and it got effed up.
The specific example he used was exactly that: "the plot calls for you to get through that door, so...". He might have used a bad example that implied more than he meant, but if you achieve the exact same outcome despite failing multiple rolls, that means those rolls weren't important and shouldn't have been made in the first place.
The plot of a movie is out of the character’s hands. Not so with a campaign, in fact quite the opposite. The Players control their Characters’ actions, not the DM. If the DM makes a challenge with only one possible means of success, that’s a problem right there. If Indy hadn’t made it through the door, he would have found another way, if he had lost his hand going for his hat, the movie would have gone differently too. In fact, the only thing it couldn’t have continued without was that hat. 😜
The plot of a movie is out of the character’s hands. Not so with a campaign, in fact quite the opposite.
For clarity: what I was objecting to isn't what you've said. What I was objecting to was what Matt Coville was saying in that video, because he wasn't talking about failing the campaign, he was talking about failing the scene.
The plot of a movie is out of the character’s hands. Not so with a campaign, in fact quite the opposite.
For clarity: what I was objecting to isn't what you've said. What I was objecting to was what Matt Coville was saying in that video, because he wasn't talking about failing the campaign, he was talking about failing the scene.
That’s funny, I thought he was talking about how to narrate a failure (check, combat, whatever) in a way that makes that failure still count so as to not cheapen it, while simultaneously building drama as the tension mounts, while still allowing the PC to find a way to continue onward dispute that failure. That way it allows things to proceed without breaking verisimilitude.
If the players notice their DM overturn, dismiss, or ignore a single failure, it cheapens every success that all of their characters have ever had because even if they had failed, the DM would have just fixed it anyway. No bueno. However, if the DM can instead find some plausible reason for that character to suffer consequences because of that failure while still having an opportunity to overcome the greater challenge they suddenly find themselves faced with that player gets to feel like a boss when they succeed. Or if another PC gets to save them then that player gets to feel like a boss. Either way, the entire party now has a means to celebrate the achievement of one of their own, the players got the exhilaration of white-knuckled tension followed by the relief of success, and faith in the world, game, and DM was upheld. That’s a win, win, win, win in my book, al because of a single failure.
Yes, he used an example consisting of a series of checks. But that was just one example of the premise. It really doesn’t matter what ta PC (or whole party) fails to accomplish as long as they can find another avenue by which to proceed. Yeah, sometimes PCs die, and should. But if that PC’s death is “unheroic,” their player will often feel some type of way about it. But if their PC died a heroes death then at least their sacrifice had meaning.
In the campaign I am currently DMing the party has given me three different occasions to use this principle of “multiple fail states” and one of them was a combat scenario, the first one in fact. One of the PCs went off half cocked and started a fight that the party had no way of winning.* And by the end, they found themselves backed up to a cliff with law enforcement starting to hem them in. Now, we all know how that usually goes, whether by cliff or by cops most parties would Thelma and Louise that situation. But instead of their failure immediately devolving to a “death or capture” situation, instead there were multiple fail states including:
Attempt to talk their way out of it on the spot.
Submit to questioning at that location in a secure area.
Accompany the officers to their HQ and submit to questioning there.
And each of those fail states had two different “sub-states” of turning over their weapons or merely peacebonding them.
In the end things settled with them peacebonding their weaponry and submitting to questioning at HQ which bought me a week to figure out a plausible reason for the Party to not only avoid immediate arrest, but also continue their mission. So the party lost a battle, but the campaign continued. It is a nearly identical situation brought up in this thread, and I managed it using the exact same techniques suggested in that video. Seeing as how it actually worked for me when I used it, I still don’t understand why you say that advice is ether objectionable or inapplicable.
*(The party attempted to kidnap a prominent member of society, who they suspected of also being a powerful Necromancer. They attacked in what was presumably his lair where he would be most powerful, and likely guarded by an unknown number of the undead because hello, necromancer.... A lair which also happens to be a massive civilian facility staffed with its own security, and the local constabulary is headquartered only a 10 minute walk down the street. Not to mention they did it as noisily as they could in the middle of broad daylight with no plan, no backup, and no exit strategy A trusted NPC pointed out three times that the place is built like a fortress, and begged them to come up with any plan that didn’t involve the “direct approach.” How many hints does a DM have to drop? 🙄)
That’s funny, I thought he was talking about how to narrate a failure (check, combat, whatever) in a way that makes that failure still count so as to not cheapen it, while simultaneously building drama as the tension mounts, while still allowing the PC to find a way to continue onward dispute that failure. That way it allows things to proceed without breaking verisimilitude.
All his examples were "You continue the current scene and still get past it, just possibly at a cost", not "You stall out on the current scene and have to turn in a different direction".
I'm not saying that a single failure should be unrecoverable, it's certainly reasonable to have the PCs recover from certain failures and continue with their original plan, but there should be a point where it's "Sorry, your plan failed, go find a new plan", and that second is not something he mentions at all. Losing a fight is generally not a single failure, it's multiple failures, and thus it should usually put you to "Sorry, that plan failed."
But just because that one plan failed doesn’t mean the characters failed. I remember failing tests in school. I still graduated.
I get what you’re saying, I keep telling you there’s a forest around here and you want to believe me... but with all these darned trees in the way you just can’t seem to find it. But that’s only because you are equating “cross the chasm and get through the door” with “engage the enemy in combat and emerge victorious.” As such, since the video provided no examples of failing to get through the door and needing to find an alternative exit, therefore there is no parallel one can draw to the possibility of the party loosing combat and needing to find an alternative victory.
Much like combat in D&D, that was an abstraction and not a simulation. In this instance I was equating “get through the door” with “continue the campaign.” However, “the door” is whatever causes a DM to think “oh, crap... they weren’t supposed to fail this, or at least not that bad.”
In that example I gave above about the first time I employed this concept in the current campaign, “get through the door” meant convince the party they have an alternative to suicide by cop because the plot requires they don’t throw themselves onto their TPK on principal.
The second time I found it helpful to employ this technique “get through the door” meant to find some way (any way) to not have >50% of the party die from a comedy of errors.*
The party needed to shimmy around a corner on a crumbling, narrow ledge and then jump across a 5’ gap. (It just so happened that the narrow ledge overlooked a 1/2 mi drop into a large body of liquid hot magma.) Since they run around wearing lots of armor and bristling with weapons all over, I asked for an acrobatics check as they shimmied around the corner, mostly just on the off chance something might happen. To be honest, when I designed that part of the dungeon the only real reasons I noted to call for the checks were because it would convey the sense of risk, and because there was technically a remote possibility that one of them might fail.
The first two make it no problem, the next PC rolled borderline and I described the classic bit where the rock crumbles away under her boot but she catches herself, the PNPC made it, and then there was the last PC and an NPC. (I kept them out of jail by having that specific cop step up for them so they are technically under his recognizance.) Wouldn’t you know it but that last PC botched it. Luckily the cop caught his wrist. That’s okay I reasoned, he’s a mighty Barb with thews and such.... So a series of checks almost exactly like what Colville described.
Next thing I know, the Barb is holding onto the cliff by his fingernails and the cop is dangling from him and one of the other players has his character picks up the end of an unsecured rope and declares that he’s going to dive off of the cliff to grab onto the cop. Not really sure what his plan was, I shook of my incredulity as fast as I could and called for an Acrobatics check to see if he would hit his mark. Wouldn’t you know that’s when the luckiest bastard I have ever known rolls a 1. (I mean, even with the -5 from sharpshooter his hit ratio is higher then my archer’s without it. He is the only person I know who has ever rolled triple 20s, but now it’s a 1. 🙄) Luckily, one of the other Players asked if her character could grab the diver before he leapt. I told them to both roll initiative and crossed everything I could cross. (No kidding I thought at least half the party were going down.) Thank goodness she beat his initiative and tackled him. After that the others were able to save the two that were in danger, although not without some injuries.
When the Barbarian failed that initial check it could have been curtains for him. I have no idea where the campaign would be now without him because he has affected so many things since then that it’s impossible to imagine. And if that cop had died when the only people around were the group of suspected terrorist that he was keeping an eye on...? All I know is that couldn’t have gone anywhere near the way things have progressed to this point. 🤷♂️
The third time was actually just last night. They were engaged in some sensitive financial negotiations involving a number of various parties that all wanted different outcomes, and not everyone knows all of the facts because one of the Characters is hoping that when all is said and done, that nobody will the difference between what their financial backer is paying compared to what the party is offering the seller, nor will they notice the difference between the items procured compared to the items delivered. But at one point their house of cards rocked a little, and I got worried because the players (not just their characters, the actual players themselves) absolutely H•A•T•E the NPC representing the seller, and half of the party only went to the meeting hoping for a chance to kill her. So last night, “get through the door” meant them not committing an cold blooded murder in front of witnesses that would force the cop that’s been one of their few allies in this town to do his job. So, there were “multiple fail states” in the negotiations which ended with the seller considering the value of some services the party has offered in lieu of a portion of the money, and the party sending a message to their backer requesting approval to up their offer by 20%.
So, the concept he was explaining was never meant to be taken quite as literally or finitely as I think you were interpreting. That was just the example he sighted, likely because he’s a middle aged nerd who loves Indiana Jones (in that we have much in common), and since was such a good example of the concept, and an action packed scene to grab his audience.
Make sense?
(The other reason I think he didn’t go into what happens when something goes pear shaped on the party and they need to move to a plan B is because if I remember correctly that was a different episode.)
Besides, his campaigns are completely sandbox. As I also run player directed sandbox campaigns I can tell you that we never write a point in a campaign where the only direction is through a specific door to the rest of the campaign because we have absolutely no guarantee that they will ever even find that door. I don’t write solutions at all. (Yeh, a puzzle has to have an answer but that’s not what I mean.) I’m the one that has to come up with all the challenges all of the incidental things, and all of the environmental things right down to the weather. They each got one character to manage and all they gotta do is “overcome the challenge” however they can. In this campaign they outnumber me 4:1. If they can’t come up with their own solutions that ain’t my problem.
Now, there may only be one rout to a specific thing, and if that rout were to become closed to the players it would absolutely preclude them from accessing that thing. All that means though, is something different is “the next thing” instead of that thing. Honestly the only reason I have any clue what to prepare for next Wednesday night is because at the end of session last night I asked them what they want to do next. They tell me what’s next on a week to week basis. So the players’ decisions and their characters’ relative degrees of success and failure cannot possibly “change the direction of the campaign” any more than they already do since the entire course of the campaign is already dictated that way. They’re the ones steering this ride, I’m just the one tellin’ what happens when they get there.
Sandbox DMs always expect the players to turn left in the strangest ways that we often have little to no way to predict, and not enough time to waste trying to plan for them. Instead we shift our focus to understanding the pieces in play well enough that when the butterflies flaps their wings, in the aftermath we can comprehend the ripples and move those pieces accordingly. The players control the direction the campaign follows, not the DM, and sometimes players do the darnedest things. Because if it wasn’t that way, then it wouldn’t be a sandbox.
But just because that one plan failed doesn’t mean the characters failed. I remember failing tests in school. I still graduated.
I get what you’re saying, I keep telling you there’s a forest around here and you want to believe me... but with all these darned trees in the way you just can’t seem to find it. But that’s only because you are equating “cross the chasm and get through the door” with “engage the enemy in combat and emerge victorious.” As such, since the video provided no examples of failing to get through the door and needing to find an alternative exit, therefore there is no parallel one can draw to the possibility of the party loosing combat and needing to find an alternative victory.
Exactly. The link didn't address the problem at hand.
If the characters don’t die, and the campaign continues, the players win. It’s still another version of “failing forward.” In that Colville vid I embedded, when he talks about Indy not dying because of a series of failed saves when the “bad guy” took the whip and abandoned him. Like I said, if the PCs don’t die and the campaign continues, the players win.
Maybe the players do, but the characters didn't, and the campaign could easily wind up turning in a very different direction. The Indiana Jones example he gives, none of the kerfuffle with multiple rolls actually mattered, because in the end he was trying to get through the door, and he succeeded. Yes, there were some dramatic moments, but he still made it. If on the other hand he saved himself but the door closed before he got there, at best he has to find a different way, at worst he has to return home empty handed, and either way the course of the adventure changed in a meaningful way.
I think you just proved my point. No matter whether it’s combat or something else, if the character fails at the task but doesn’t die, the campaign goes on. So Indy crosses the chasm but the door closes before he can get through leaving him trapped could change the course of the campaign just like him losing a fight and getting captured could.... Oh, wait a minute... Remember later in the movie when he’s down in the pit and everyone else gets out but they throw Marian down and trap them with the snakes, or when the Nazis beat him up and captured later in the movie.... So both of those exact things you mentionedhappened to him later in that exact campaign movie, and he still won!! Huzzah!!
And you say “change the course of the campaign” as if it was already predetermined and it got effed up. How.?!? Nothing in any campaign is set until it has already happened. Not unless your campaign is on tracks to a destination no matter what. But I don’t want my players riding Blane the Train, and I don’t want to ride either when I’m a player. So if the party win the fight, the next things that happen will be as a result of that, and if they lose but don’t die then the following part will be as a result of that too. But neither of those following bits have already been decided, so nothing “changes,” it just went the way it went is all.
I mean Indy is a bad example as if he had just stayed at home the nazis would have ended up dead when they opened the chest :).
But just because that one plan failed doesn’t mean the characters failed. I remember failing tests in school. I still graduated.
I get what you’re saying, I keep telling you there’s a forest around here and you want to believe me... but with all these darned trees in the way you just can’t seem to find it. But that’s only because you are equating “cross the chasm and get through the door” with “engage the enemy in combat and emerge victorious.” As such, since the video provided no examples of failing to get through the door and needing to find an alternative exit, therefore there is no parallel one can draw to the possibility of the party loosing combat and needing to find an alternative victory.
Exactly. The link didn't address the problem at hand.
Well, if you had looked at the entire rest of the post and not cut off there, you would have seen how it does in fact address the problem at hand as long as one adjust how they conceive of “get through the door.” Heck, if you had included even just one more paragraph of my last post you would have seen the answer:
Much like combat in D&D, that was an abstraction and not a simulation. In this instance I was equating “get through the door” with “continue the campaign.” However, “the door” is whatever causes a DM to think “oh, crap... they weren’t supposed to fail this, or at least not that bad.”
I will give you the same advice I find myself frequently giving my wife:
Stop taking it so literally.
Stop getting hung up on the example given and look at how the lesson applies to the bigger picture.
What I’m trying to explain is that the equation you have drawn is what is too limited, not the advice given. “Get through the door” doesn’t have to mean “win the battle,” just “survive the battle.” Because you wanna know what’s on the other side of that door? Next week’s session.
I mean Indy is a bad example as if he had just stayed at home the nazis would have ended up dead when they opened the chest :).
I’ll do you one better, if Indy had stayed home the Nazis might have never found the Ark. But Marian might have died and we wouldn’t have had one of the best movie trilogies of all time.
I think this is a really important point.
Even when I have some things more solidly planned than normal, the players still do things I did not expect, and what happens in play is what was "supposed" to happen.
What is that line from Star Trek VI? Valeris asks Spock about the future and Spock says, "We must have faith." She then asks, "Faith in what?" and he answers, "That the universe will unfold as it should."
You can apply that to a D&D campaign... have faith that the campaign will unfold as it should. That what happens, once it has happened, was what should have happened, and what else might have occurred if the players made different choices or the dice rolled a different way... really doesn't matter.
Even if all the characters die in a glorious TPK (or an ignominious one)... the campaign doesn't necessarily end. You can make up new PCs who can go and beat the boss and get revenge on him for killing the first party. And after all that -- the 2nd party winning after the first one died, was the campaign unfolding "as it should."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The specific example he used was exactly that: "the plot calls for you to get through that door, so...". He might have used a bad example that implied more than he meant, but if you achieve the exact same outcome despite failing multiple rolls, that means those rolls weren't important and shouldn't have been made in the first place.
The plot of a movie is out of the character’s hands. Not so with a campaign, in fact quite the opposite. The Players control their Characters’ actions, not the DM. If the DM makes a challenge with only one possible means of success, that’s a problem right there. If Indy hadn’t made it through the door, he would have found another way, if he had lost his hand going for his hat, the movie would have gone differently too. In fact, the only thing it couldn’t have continued without was that hat. 😜
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For clarity: what I was objecting to isn't what you've said. What I was objecting to was what Matt Coville was saying in that video, because he wasn't talking about failing the campaign, he was talking about failing the scene.
That’s funny, I thought he was talking about how to narrate a failure (check, combat, whatever) in a way that makes that failure still count so as to not cheapen it, while simultaneously building drama as the tension mounts, while still allowing the PC to find a way to continue onward dispute that failure. That way it allows things to proceed without breaking verisimilitude.
If the players notice their DM overturn, dismiss, or ignore a single failure, it cheapens every success that all of their characters have ever had because even if they had failed, the DM would have just fixed it anyway. No bueno. However, if the DM can instead find some plausible reason for that character to suffer consequences because of that failure while still having an opportunity to overcome the greater challenge they suddenly find themselves faced with that player gets to feel like a boss when they succeed. Or if another PC gets to save them then that player gets to feel like a boss. Either way, the entire party now has a means to celebrate the achievement of one of their own, the players got the exhilaration of white-knuckled tension followed by the relief of success, and faith in the world, game, and DM was upheld. That’s a win, win, win, win in my book, al because of a single failure.
Yes, he used an example consisting of a series of checks. But that was just one example of the premise. It really doesn’t matter what ta PC (or whole party) fails to accomplish as long as they can find another avenue by which to proceed. Yeah, sometimes PCs die, and should. But if that PC’s death is “unheroic,” their player will often feel some type of way about it. But if their PC died a heroes death then at least their sacrifice had meaning.
In the campaign I am currently DMing the party has given me three different occasions to use this principle of “multiple fail states” and one of them was a combat scenario, the first one in fact. One of the PCs went off half cocked and started a fight that the party had no way of winning.* And by the end, they found themselves backed up to a cliff with law enforcement starting to hem them in. Now, we all know how that usually goes, whether by cliff or by cops most parties would Thelma and Louise that situation. But instead of their failure immediately devolving to a “death or capture” situation, instead there were multiple fail states including:
In the end things settled with them peacebonding their weaponry and submitting to questioning at HQ which bought me a week to figure out a plausible reason for the Party to not only avoid immediate arrest, but also continue their mission. So the party lost a battle, but the campaign continued. It is a nearly identical situation brought up in this thread, and I managed it using the exact same techniques suggested in that video. Seeing as how it actually worked for me when I used it, I still don’t understand why you say that advice is ether objectionable or inapplicable.
*(The party attempted to kidnap a prominent member of society, who they suspected of also being a powerful Necromancer. They attacked in what was presumably his lair where he would be most powerful, and likely guarded by an unknown number of the undead because hello, necromancer.... A lair which also happens to be a massive civilian facility staffed with its own security, and the local constabulary is headquartered only a 10 minute walk down the street. Not to mention they did it as noisily as they could in the middle of broad daylight with no plan, no backup, and no exit strategy A trusted NPC pointed out three times that the place is built like a fortress, and begged them to come up with any plan that didn’t involve the “direct approach.” How many hints does a DM have to drop? 🙄)
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All his examples were "You continue the current scene and still get past it, just possibly at a cost", not "You stall out on the current scene and have to turn in a different direction".
I'm not saying that a single failure should be unrecoverable, it's certainly reasonable to have the PCs recover from certain failures and continue with their original plan, but there should be a point where it's "Sorry, your plan failed, go find a new plan", and that second is not something he mentions at all. Losing a fight is generally not a single failure, it's multiple failures, and thus it should usually put you to "Sorry, that plan failed."
But just because that one plan failed doesn’t mean the characters failed. I remember failing tests in school. I still graduated.
I get what you’re saying, I keep telling you there’s a forest around here and you want to believe me... but with all these darned trees in the way you just can’t seem to find it. But that’s only because you are equating “cross the chasm and get through the door” with “engage the enemy in combat and emerge victorious.” As such, since the video provided no examples of failing to get through the door and needing to find an alternative exit, therefore there is no parallel one can draw to the possibility of the party loosing combat and needing to find an alternative victory.
Much like combat in D&D, that was an abstraction and not a simulation. In this instance I was equating “get through the door” with “continue the campaign.” However, “the door” is whatever causes a DM to think “oh, crap... they weren’t supposed to fail this, or at least not that bad.”
In that example I gave above about the first time I employed this concept in the current campaign, “get through the door” meant convince the party they have an alternative to suicide by cop because the plot requires they don’t throw themselves onto their TPK on principal.
The second time I found it helpful to employ this technique “get through the door” meant to find some way (any way) to not have >50% of the party die from a comedy of errors.*
The party needed to shimmy around a corner on a crumbling, narrow ledge and then jump across a 5’ gap. (It just so happened that the narrow ledge overlooked a 1/2 mi drop into a large body of liquid hot magma.) Since they run around wearing lots of armor and bristling with weapons all over, I asked for an acrobatics check as they shimmied around the corner, mostly just on the off chance something might happen. To be honest, when I designed that part of the dungeon the only real reasons I noted to call for the checks were because it would convey the sense of risk, and because there was technically a remote possibility that one of them might fail.
The first two make it no problem, the next PC rolled borderline and I described the classic bit where the rock crumbles away under her boot but she catches herself, the PNPC made it, and then there was the last PC and an NPC. (I kept them out of jail by having that specific cop step up for them so they are technically under his recognizance.) Wouldn’t you know it but that last PC botched it. Luckily the cop caught his wrist. That’s okay I reasoned, he’s a mighty Barb with thews and such.... So a series of checks almost exactly like what Colville described.
Next thing I know, the Barb is holding onto the cliff by his fingernails and the cop is dangling from him and one of the other players has his character picks up the end of an unsecured rope and declares that he’s going to dive off of the cliff to grab onto the cop. Not really sure what his plan was, I shook of my incredulity as fast as I could and called for an Acrobatics check to see if he would hit his mark. Wouldn’t you know that’s when the luckiest bastard I have ever known rolls a 1. (I mean, even with the -5 from sharpshooter his hit ratio is higher then my archer’s without it. He is the only person I know who has ever rolled triple 20s, but now it’s a 1. 🙄) Luckily, one of the other Players asked if her character could grab the diver before he leapt. I told them to both roll initiative and crossed everything I could cross. (No kidding I thought at least half the party were going down.) Thank goodness she beat his initiative and tackled him. After that the others were able to save the two that were in danger, although not without some injuries.
When the Barbarian failed that initial check it could have been curtains for him. I have no idea where the campaign would be now without him because he has affected so many things since then that it’s impossible to imagine. And if that cop had died when the only people around were the group of suspected terrorist that he was keeping an eye on...? All I know is that couldn’t have gone anywhere near the way things have progressed to this point. 🤷♂️
The third time was actually just last night. They were engaged in some sensitive financial negotiations involving a number of various parties that all wanted different outcomes, and not everyone knows all of the facts because one of the Characters is hoping that when all is said and done, that nobody will the difference between what their financial backer is paying compared to what the party is offering the seller, nor will they notice the difference between the items procured compared to the items delivered. But at one point their house of cards rocked a little, and I got worried because the players (not just their characters, the actual players themselves) absolutely H•A•T•E the NPC representing the seller, and half of the party only went to the meeting hoping for a chance to kill her. So last night, “get through the door” meant them not committing an cold blooded murder in front of witnesses that would force the cop that’s been one of their few allies in this town to do his job. So, there were “multiple fail states” in the negotiations which ended with the seller considering the value of some services the party has offered in lieu of a portion of the money, and the party sending a message to their backer requesting approval to up their offer by 20%.
So, the concept he was explaining was never meant to be taken quite as literally or finitely as I think you were interpreting. That was just the example he sighted, likely because he’s a middle aged nerd who loves Indiana Jones (in that we have much in common), and since was such a good example of the concept, and an action packed scene to grab his audience.
Make sense?
(The other reason I think he didn’t go into what happens when something goes pear shaped on the party and they need to move to a plan B is because if I remember correctly that was a different episode.)
Besides, his campaigns are completely sandbox. As I also run player directed sandbox campaigns I can tell you that we never write a point in a campaign where the only direction is through a specific door to the rest of the campaign because we have absolutely no guarantee that they will ever even find that door. I don’t write solutions at all. (Yeh, a puzzle has to have an answer but that’s not what I mean.) I’m the one that has to come up with all the challenges all of the incidental things, and all of the environmental things right down to the weather. They each got one character to manage and all they gotta do is “overcome the challenge” however they can. In this campaign they outnumber me 4:1. If they can’t come up with their own solutions that ain’t my problem.
Now, there may only be one rout to a specific thing, and if that rout were to become closed to the players it would absolutely preclude them from accessing that thing. All that means though, is something different is “the next thing” instead of that thing. Honestly the only reason I have any clue what to prepare for next Wednesday night is because at the end of session last night I asked them what they want to do next. They tell me what’s next on a week to week basis. So the players’ decisions and their characters’ relative degrees of success and failure cannot possibly “change the direction of the campaign” any more than they already do since the entire course of the campaign is already dictated that way. They’re the ones steering this ride, I’m just the one tellin’ what happens when they get there.
Sandbox DMs always expect the players to turn left in the strangest ways that we often have little to no way to predict, and not enough time to waste trying to plan for them. Instead we shift our focus to understanding the pieces in play well enough that when the butterflies flaps their wings, in the aftermath we can comprehend the ripples and move those pieces accordingly. The players control the direction the campaign follows, not the DM, and sometimes players do the darnedest things. Because if it wasn’t that way, then it wouldn’t be a sandbox.
Edits: Spelling. (Gorram homonyms. 😠)
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Exactly. The link didn't address the problem at hand.
I mean Indy is a bad example as if he had just stayed at home the nazis would have ended up dead when they opened the chest :).
Well, if you had looked at the entire rest of the post and not cut off there, you would have seen how it does in fact address the problem at hand as long as one adjust how they conceive of “get through the door.” Heck, if you had included even just one more paragraph of my last post you would have seen the answer:
I will give you the same advice I find myself frequently giving my wife:
What I’m trying to explain is that the equation you have drawn is what is too limited, not the advice given. “Get through the door” doesn’t have to mean “win the battle,” just “survive the battle.” Because you wanna know what’s on the other side of that door? Next week’s session.
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I’ll do you one better, if Indy had stayed home the Nazis might have never found the Ark. But Marian might have died and we wouldn’t have had one of the best movie trilogies of all time.
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