I am going to offer a cautionary tale. Something very like this happened in one of my games. I introduced a tiny insignificant detail, and stopped my game in it's tracks.
My last session ended just after a hard combat session. The characters took a Long Rest to recover and the next session would begin with them already moving. All went fine. I hit them with another tough fight right after they began, in the early morning and they used most of their limited use abilities. I had another rough fight planned out and ready for right before noon, so I wanted my players to have their characters take a Short Rest. The problem was how to suggest it to them? If I told them directly, there would be no surprise at all. I wracked my brain and all I could come up with was to do something miniscule to remind them that they were *not* on Earth and maybe should apply a little caution in an environment already proven to be dangerous. I told them that they were passing along through the woods in the bright sun shine and off to the side there was a tree with bright purple leaves.
Boom. They stopped dead on the spot. They clearly felt that since the DM had taken the trouble to inform them of something strange it *had* to be important and they were darned well going to find out what. The Fighter was sure the tree was a monster. He wanted to attack it. The Druid wasn't having any of that. The Druid figured it had to be a sign from the Powers Of Nature they worshipped and they would protect that tree with their life. The Wizard and the Rogue saw it as a chance to pick up alchemical reagents, the Rogue was thinking Poisons, the Wizard was thinking Potions.
So there I am and I can't think of a thing to satisfy them all. Now the Wizard wants to get samples of every bit of the tree, including digging down under the roots, and then getting further samples from a few of the other trees around them for comparison. The Druid is *not* going to allow that under any circumstances. My Fighter is bored to nearly to death. I'm frustrated and we don't have all day for this session. If I run a combat of any kind, there is the same problem I had before. They aren't ready. If I run something trivial enough not to challenge them they are going to be mad at me for wasting their time and they will still march right into the meatgrinder.
Maybe there could be something of value monetarily? Then they strip the tree of everything they think they might be able to sell, leaving it bare of leaves and bark. The Druid isn't going to be happy about it, and of course, they might want to kill a few other trees in case they are also worth a silver or two, or they will search the whole forest for any hint of purple. In the end, they got the combat they wanted. The tree was a trap by a bandit gang, there was nothing valuable or special about the tree, but it got people to stop long enough for an ambush. The characters barely survived, used up everything they had and couldn't take a Long Rest for another 20 hours or so.
I've wasted the entire session. I'll have to run that carefully prepared combat encounter I had next time. I'm pretty tired of combat at this point, so I may not bother. I know my players won't enjoy doing nothing but roleplaying. They do plenty of that as it is and we have had fun up until this point. So I have to come up with something to do with hazardous environmental factors or difficulties in exploring that don't involve fighting. This isn't trivial in a largely pastoral forest in the throws of an invasion by nasty humanoids. Perhaps a storm with winds strong enough to blow away those stupid purple leaves and lightning enough to kill things the way my plot was killed?
When they get too close or touch the leaves, they all fall asleep. When they wake up, the tree is gone and a note, etched on a piece of bark reads "Rushing along with your tank on empty is certain death"
Why don't they get to make a save? Because the DM said so. Period. Message from a god or some such. OR, let them hit a big encounter again, get their butts whupped and MAYBE be smarter for it. I have "saved' the group I am running once already and after session, we discussed. I advised it wasn't going to happen again if the cause for a potential TPK was their fault. I'll still fudge rolls in their favor if I overestimated the group, or the dice gods get cranky, but if the players do something they should know better.....prepare to meet your Gods, little adventurers!!
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
It is the Tree of Portents, a strange spirit-guide which only ever appears once in a persons lifetime.
When they touch the leaves, nothing happens. The DM informs them that they can't really see anything special about this tree except that it has purple leaves. Tell them OOC (to get things moving) that it is just a fantasy tree because they are in a fantasy forest.
When they arrive at the next combat, make it too powerful - up the danger considerably. Have them fight to the death, and lose badly because they were lacking their abilities.
When the first one who had touched the tree dies, turn to them and say "You pull your fingers from the purple leaf as if electrocuted. The vision that blazed in your mind for only a few seconds is burned into your memories as if it had really happened - you quickly check yourself for the wounds that you so clearly remember sustaining, but find nothing. The sun is lower in the sky than you remember - it still seems like it's morning. A wind suddenly blows through the trees, and the leaves of the tree are blown away with it, leaving behind the sun-bleached skeleton of a long-dead tree."
The players are back at the tree, and it has shown them a vision of the future, of what happens if they do not rest before they move on. This will spin your players out for a moment, and they will probably go into the next encounter well rested and with some tactics on how to deal with the monster they think they know is coming!
Anyway, you've made it to the point where they have had a fight with bandits and are almost dead. Have they finally had their short rest?
I agree that if they're 2 fights in, then you need to give them some more skill related challenges ahead to keep them from just dying! Perhaps save your encounter until the next day?
When you see that the players are taking a session off the rails with RP, it is perfectly reasonable to step out of "DM character" and say "Guys, sometimes a tree is just a tree." If they persist, it is on them. Yes, they waste a session. Yes, they waste your time. Next time maybe they will learn.
Mmm... Druid make Nature check *ROLL* " You think boiling some of theis fresh bright purple leaves to make a Tea would allow the group to make a short rest in half the time due to their natural restorative properties"
Are you sure your players would really get mad at you if you ran the odd easy battle? I've seen them suggested as upbeats and downbeats of play and anyways some players quite enjoy showing off their characters uber power
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
*laughs* That's brilliant Jusin. I'd have to make sure the leaves spoiled very quickly so I didn't have to deal with half hour Short Rests again, but that's the only problem I see.
Whether or not my players got mad at me is something I have no way of knowing beforehand. It would depend entirely on the players involved. I have known a couple who would be quite upset if they got an easy fight when they were expecting something more. A good friend was a Classic Munchkin type and was all about combat and loot, and resented anything that took time out of the game which failed to provide one or the other, preferably both, and a lot of it.
(Garr? Yeah. Just a tree. Scenery. You can go about your business. Move along. :-) )
On time while playing RoleMaster, our characters were on our way to stop some BBEG from conquering a kingdom or something. We knew we were under a time limit, but we had some time (many days), so it wasn't a huge rush. The GM described how we came across this large 10' wide hole in the ground. Below it went down for a long way and then we saw terrain there and what looked like some sort of odd grass. So we went down to look, and there was this whole other world down there with its own light source far away, and some pyramid on the far horizon that had something on it, I don't remember now, that made us think it was important. So we thought OK, this must be part of the adventure. We all climbed down, and started going along. It took days and days of time. Finally we reached the pyramid, had whatever adventure we had there, and when we got back to the surface, so much time had passed that the BBEG won. The GM never thought we'd go down there and start adventuring -- he was just laying the seed for a future possible adventure. He was sure we'd look at it, mark it on our map, and come back later. But he never once told us that, so we just assumed...
Yeah, be careful what details you point out to the players.
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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 issue you have and this is an issue I see a lot of DM's creating for themselves is that you are working under the assumption that it is your job as the DM to "create the fights/problems" and "make sure they are balanced" and "have a solution to the problem or to ensure the group is prepared to deal with the problem/fight".
None of these things are true. This is a concept born out of trying to turn a role-playing game into a board game incentivised by lame duck concepts like CR and "encounter building" and the never ending quest for the WOW generation to "make the game balanced".
Your a DM. Present your world as you believe it to be, describe it as it is and above all else, don't try to steer your players. The fights, the problems, the things they encounter in the world and how to deal with them is not your problem to solve, its theirs. Let the game emerge naturally, don't try to design solutions for your players. If they aren't prepared for a fight, that is not your problem, that is there's. If they can't handle a fight they should know to run and escape it.
I'm not trying to pick on you or anything, but basically, you created this problem by trying to control the game. Your players are doing exactly what they should do, explore their surroundings, investigate things, try to find resources and ways that will make dealing with the worlds troubles easier for them. This is not a bad thing, its a good thing. The way you describe "the problem" is effectively saying "my players aren't doing what I want them to, so I have a problem"... That is not a problem, that is the definition of role-playing. How could "exploring the world" in a game about exploration be quantified as "wasting time"?
This!
I rarely spend time at all making my encounters balanced - I present a world and denizens of each area ... and it’s up to the players to decide after that.
I do agree that as a DM, I never try to convince my players to take rests. It's up to them to decide they want to take a rest. I don't track their resources, so I don't really even know, other than HP, what they have left or not (I use a VTT -- I could look, but I don't bother). Their reaction to the world is their problem, not yours. If they're too overconfident to take a short rest, then I guess that next encounter may be too hard for them. Not my problem.
I just had my party mostly finish (they are cleaning out the treasure now) the old D2 module, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa. I put every K-T in there that Gygax presented -- something like 360 of them. They had guard posts and would alert each other and they can sense invisible characters so it is very hard to stealth through. Then I put 3 treasures the players needed in there, in 2 places. I had no idea how they were going to solve it -- that was up to them.
They almost got themselves surrounded and killed. They backed out, went back to town, and got the Roman Century and temple priests and druid circle to come back with them and fight a huge battle against the whole temple. That was one possible solution. But there were many other ways to go about it.
At the end, one of the players asked, "How were we *supposed* to solve this?" I said, I don't know. I put the obstacle in front of you, that's my job. Solving it is your job.
Yes, I had the troop combat stuff ready, because I knew it was possible they might bring the troops with them (if the Romans knew the temple was down there, they absolutely would go down and clean it out). But BTW, this presented another moral problem. I warned them once the Century was on the move, that their characters would know that once the battle starts, the Romans would show absolutely no mercy. Everyone, and everything, in that temple was going to be slaughtered. They weren't sure how they felt about that. But once the Romans were told, there was no stopping it.
My point is -- my job was not to figure out how they get a treasure away from 350 Kuo-Toa. That was their job. My job was to build the temple (or in this case, steal it from Gygax), populate it with all the enemies, and write down notes to myself (based on the module) as to how the K-Ts would react to incursion. And then have them react accordingly.
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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.
I am mostly a Seat-Of-The-Pants type of DM. It is rare that I take the trouble to design an encounter or draw a map ahead of time. My setting suffers from a tendency to have the distance between points change because I forgot to write down what I told the players, or worse, discovered after running things that I'd underestimated and the players got there much sooner than I'd wanted. Names of people and places changed too. Having done the extra work, I really wanted to use it. I could have let things alone and let the players walk into the sharp end, but I'd have had real trouble keeping them alive without pulling the kind of deus ex machina that players tend to hate. I've never enjoyed a TPK.
Justin's idea was great. I wish I'd been half so clever.
I presented a cautionary tale. A mistake I had made in the past, in hopes that others would find it useful. It was something I got to thinking about when a critter started posting about a game they were going to run. They had never played or DMed, I don't think their players had ever played, and they were talking about putting a whole bunch of Gritty Realism rules from the DMG in place. I haven't seen them around lately. It's a pity. I would have been quite interested to hear how it went down. With none of them having played before, I don't imagine they would know what they missed, so there is no telling if they would have had more, or less, fun with a standard game.
My own setting is much like yours Bio. A version of the Ancient Roman Empire. I ran my players into an entire army of Orcs once, with only a vague idea what they would do about it. I envisioned them killing scouting expeditions made by the Orcs, keeping them from moving, maybe leading other monsters into them to play the ever popular "Let's You And Them Fight" game. What I got was baffled players who decided to punt and went off to fetch the Legions. The soldiers stomped the Orcs, took all the loot, and the only thanks the players got was from the mayor of the nearby city, who said he "owed them one". My players were not especially interested in the social side of the game, my Munchkinish Pro From Dover especially so, and they never considered what a favor from the mayor of a major city of the Empire could be used for.
Having done the extra work, I really wanted to use it.
This is the danger.
HARD, damn hard, not to feel that way. But sometimes you just have to let that hard work go and either forget about it or use it somewhere else later some day, maybe even in a future campaign.
Hard to do, as I say.
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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.
Having done the extra work, I really wanted to use it.
This is the danger.
HARD, damn hard, not to feel that way. But sometimes you just have to let that hard work go and either forget about it or use it somewhere else later some day, maybe even in a future campaign.
Hard to do, as I say.
Yep, it takes a while but if you follow Bio's advice, your own game after actions, reviews, meditation, reflection, whatever will get to the point, where you're mind will just go "Well, we didn't use that ... yet." In the group interaction post session, one of my favorite responses to a "Encounter X, was so cool, where did that come from?" is "Well, actually, I had to rejigger it, remember that time where you all spent an entire session at a chocolate stand talking to the vendor .... so instead I had it happen here instead."
For the broader point in the initial post, I'm generally a DM who will allow PCs to go off on a snipe hunt or spend the session literally chewing scenario if it keeps me engaged too. Some of my players are aware of when I shift into this "ok, I'm letting this happen mode" as opposed to "actual plan mode," so there may be some meta reading of tells on their end that may cut things short, but I only nudge players if I feel the larger scenario they're involved in is somehow time sensitive. In those last cases I just narrate senses of urgency they have about "larger matters" to attend to if the PCs look like they're going full on creation of the Order of the Purple Leaf or whatever.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
"As you reach out and brush the purple leaves, they flake and begin to disintegrate. The particles swirl in the air, and a feeling of drowsiness comes over you. The world around you fades to inky black darkness, before the horrific form of a(n) (Insert monster here) appears before you. The creature (Does something horrific to the players), killing you. But then you wake up, lying amongst wilted leaves underneath a dead tree."
Having done the extra work, I really wanted to use it.
This is the danger.
HARD, damn hard, not to feel that way. But sometimes you just have to let that hard work go and either forget about it or use it somewhere else later some day, maybe even in a future campaign.
Hard to do, as I say.
Yep, it takes a while but if you follow Bio's advice, your own game after actions, reviews, meditation, reflection, whatever will get to the point, where you're mind will just go "Well, we didn't use that ... yet." In the group interaction post session, one of my favorite responses to a "Encounter X, was so cool, where did that come from?" is "Well, actually, I had to rejigger it, remember that time where you all spent an entire session at a chocolate stand talking to the vendor .... so instead I had it happen here instead."
For the broader point in the initial post, I'm generally a DM who will allow PCs to go off on a snipe hunt or spend the session literally chewing scenario if it keeps me engaged too. Some of my players are aware of when I shift into this "ok, I'm letting this happen mode" as opposed to "actual plan mode," so there may be some meta reading of tells on their end that may cut things short, but I only nudge players if I feel the larger scenario they're involved in is somehow time sensitive. In those last cases I just narrate senses of urgency they have about "larger matters" to attend to if the PCs look like they're going full on creation of the Order of the Purple Leaf or whatever.
If you can manage (I know it’s hard for some DMs), but don’t tell your PCs where it came from or what you rejigged. It can sometimes ruin the immersion and also tips off to your PCs that a campaign may not be as well-oiled as they are lead to believe. It’s really hard keeping those secrets as a DM, but if you can it will pay off dividends with your PCs. 🙂
Having done the extra work, I really wanted to use it.
This is the danger.
HARD, damn hard, not to feel that way. But sometimes you just have to let that hard work go and either forget about it or use it somewhere else later some day, maybe even in a future campaign.
Hard to do, as I say.
Yep, it takes a while but if you follow Bio's advice, your own game after actions, reviews, meditation, reflection, whatever will get to the point, where you're mind will just go "Well, we didn't use that ... yet." In the group interaction post session, one of my favorite responses to a "Encounter X, was so cool, where did that come from?" is "Well, actually, I had to rejigger it, remember that time where you all spent an entire session at a chocolate stand talking to the vendor .... so instead I had it happen here instead."
For the broader point in the initial post, I'm generally a DM who will allow PCs to go off on a snipe hunt or spend the session literally chewing scenario if it keeps me engaged too. Some of my players are aware of when I shift into this "ok, I'm letting this happen mode" as opposed to "actual plan mode," so there may be some meta reading of tells on their end that may cut things short, but I only nudge players if I feel the larger scenario they're involved in is somehow time sensitive. In those last cases I just narrate senses of urgency they have about "larger matters" to attend to if the PCs look like they're going full on creation of the Order of the Purple Leaf or whatever.
If you can manage (I know it’s hard for some DMs), but don’t tell your PCs where it came from or what you rejigged. It can sometimes ruin the immersion and also tips off to your PCs that a campaign may not be as well-oiled as they are lead to believe. It’s really hard keeping those secrets as a DM, but if you can it will pay off dividends with your PCs. 🙂
I appreciate the intent of your prescription, but if I'm asked "where did that come from?" I'm not going to shut that discussion down by evoking or protecting the mysterious DM's screen as my personal curtain of the great and powerful Oz. I just find that mode too precious. I am a DM who is very invested in "the show" in session but once the session's over, the smoke and mirrors and put away as well and we can just talk and go pretty meta. To be fair, I'm also starting to start sessions with "centering/grounding exercises" I've seen used in both theatrical as well as mental health dynamics (DM tells the party where they are and then each character provides a count down of what their character is specifically feeling through their five senses and then what they're "feeling" emotionally or why they're character is where they're at). And at session's end, it's a switch. I guess also maybe my players are more the sorts that may love a particular movie or franchise and not only consume the narrative but invest a lot in the "behind the scenes" media too. I don't see using those moments to talk sources and methods of storytelling any more injurious to good play than talking about some mechanical challenges that occurred in the game. Insulating the players from the guts of the game hinder the most important question a DM can ask of their players, "how am I doing?" So anything that has happened is up for discussion. Spoilers don't happen, though foreshadowing does. Sometimes "where did that come from" I'll say "King Crimson, this album, this track; but careful, there's other songs on there that may give you a sense of where the stories going." No one's upset or spoiled the game ... ever actually in my decade of play. But I can also appreciate players who prefer to regard the DM as a magic box who also happens to be a human being with firm boundaries when it comes to creative process. One can appreciate reverence and also enjoy irreverence in the same game. ;)
Having done the extra work, I really wanted to use it.
This is the danger.
HARD, damn hard, not to feel that way. But sometimes you just have to let that hard work go and either forget about it or use it somewhere else later some day, maybe even in a future campaign.
Hard to do, as I say.
Yep, it takes a while but if you follow Bio's advice, your own game after actions, reviews, meditation, reflection, whatever will get to the point, where you're mind will just go "Well, we didn't use that ... yet." In the group interaction post session, one of my favorite responses to a "Encounter X, was so cool, where did that come from?" is "Well, actually, I had to rejigger it, remember that time where you all spent an entire session at a chocolate stand talking to the vendor .... so instead I had it happen here instead."
For the broader point in the initial post, I'm generally a DM who will allow PCs to go off on a snipe hunt or spend the session literally chewing scenario if it keeps me engaged too. Some of my players are aware of when I shift into this "ok, I'm letting this happen mode" as opposed to "actual plan mode," so there may be some meta reading of tells on their end that may cut things short, but I only nudge players if I feel the larger scenario they're involved in is somehow time sensitive. In those last cases I just narrate senses of urgency they have about "larger matters" to attend to if the PCs look like they're going full on creation of the Order of the Purple Leaf or whatever.
If you can manage (I know it’s hard for some DMs), but don’t tell your PCs where it came from or what you rejigged. It can sometimes ruin the immersion and also tips off to your PCs that a campaign may not be as well-oiled as they are lead to believe. It’s really hard keeping those secrets as a DM, but if you can it will pay off dividends with your PCs. 🙂
I appreciate the intent of your prescription, but if I'm asked "where did that come from?" I'm not going to shut that discussion down by evoking or protecting the mysterious DM's screen as my personal curtain of the great and powerful Oz. I just find that mode too precious. I am a DM who is very invested in "the show" in session but once the session's over, the smoke and mirrors and put away as well and we can just talk and go pretty meta. To be fair, I'm also starting to start sessions with "centering/grounding exercises" I've seen used in both theatrical as well as mental health dynamics (DM tells the party where they are and then each character provides a count down of what their character is specifically feeling through their five senses and then what they're "feeling" emotionally or why they're character is where they're at). And at session's end, it's a switch. I guess also maybe my players are more the sorts that may love a particular movie or franchise and not only consume the narrative but invest a lot in the "behind the scenes" media too. I don't see using those moments to talk sources and methods of storytelling any more injurious to good play than talking about some mechanical challenges that occurred in the game. Insulating the players from the guts of the game hinder the most important question a DM can ask of their players, "how am I doing?" So anything that has happened is up for discussion. Spoilers don't happen, though foreshadowing does. Sometimes "where did that come from" I'll say "King Crimson, this album, this track; but careful, there's other songs on there that may give you a sense of where the stories going." No one's upset or spoiled the game ... ever actually in my decade of play. But I can also appreciate players who prefer to regard the DM as a magic box who also happens to be a human being with firm boundaries when it comes to creative process. One can appreciate reverence and also enjoy irreverence in the same game. ;)
Fair enough, we all have our own takes. If your table likes it, then do it.
Well, you learned that if you make something too interesting, the players are going to investigate it. But, you didn't want them to investigate the tree because it was a throw away. Now you want to ease out of it. I have seen it happen before, and I'll see it happen again, and I might well be in the DM chair when it does.
So you have a mysterious tree with purple leaves. I'm not to sure what else you threw in there and I don't know how far the party has gone to study the darn thing, but it sounds like some bit with the druid.
If I wanted to get the players to forget the darn tree and move on, I might have an interesting bird land in the tree. Then the tree shudders and a number of purple leaves fall off, and then all the leaves (on and off the tree) turn green. The bird lets out a squawk and hops to another branch. The bird lets out another squawk and takes flight and heads off generally in the direction you want the players to go. The tree has become a "normal tree" and now the bird is more interesting.
After a little bit of time spent chasing the bird ask them, how long has it been since you ate? About six hours. What do you want to do? Hopefully they stop for lunch and a short rest.
If they stick around the now normal tree anyway, I'd just hit them with an obvious random encounter. Two bear cubs are spotted a short distance away. Loud stomping sounds are heard further into the woods. A large bear appears and runs toward you. It stops between you and the cubs and lets out a holler. The bear stands up on its hind legs and hollers again. It lands gently on its front paws and takes two more steps closer to you.
They'll either move on from the momma bear (and the tree) or kill the darn thing in front of her cubs.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Dang that is a great idea - if the players fixate on something random, let that lead to the next interesting thing. Don't try to shut it down, make it a stepping stone.
Dang that is a great idea - if the players fixate on something random, let that lead to the next interesting thing. Don't try to shut it down, make it a stepping stone.
Sometimes, but the world is just that a living breathing world so not everything has to be something. Sometimes it can just be a tree, I have had 5 year long campaigns where at the end when we where doing the postmortem the players have asked me about a specific stone circle they kept going back to, I explained it was just a circle of stone, no hidden meaning, no secret, no magic, I simply added it for flavour and they latched onto it but it was way more fun to just keep it mundane and watch them try and come back and screw with it. It almost became a right of passage when they leveled, let’s go back the the stone circle. Sometimes some random beastie might be hanging out there.
In my afterward for the campaign I actually said that stories of the brave adventurers and the stone circle had turned it into a place where young adventurers came to test their strength, the stories told (by the party bard) of the stone circle that helped give them power. In the next campaign set 50 years later that stone circle had become the center of a thriving large villiage that was growing, holding annual competitions for individuals to prove themselves worthy. The look on the players faces when they realised what I had done to their private little, isolated, innocent circle of stones.
I am going to offer a cautionary tale. Something very like this happened in one of my games. I introduced a tiny insignificant detail, and stopped my game in it's tracks.
My last session ended just after a hard combat session. The characters took a Long Rest to recover and the next session would begin with them already moving. All went fine. I hit them with another tough fight right after they began, in the early morning and they used most of their limited use abilities. I had another rough fight planned out and ready for right before noon, so I wanted my players to have their characters take a Short Rest. The problem was how to suggest it to them? If I told them directly, there would be no surprise at all. I wracked my brain and all I could come up with was to do something miniscule to remind them that they were *not* on Earth and maybe should apply a little caution in an environment already proven to be dangerous. I told them that they were passing along through the woods in the bright sun shine and off to the side there was a tree with bright purple leaves.
Boom. They stopped dead on the spot. They clearly felt that since the DM had taken the trouble to inform them of something strange it *had* to be important and they were darned well going to find out what. The Fighter was sure the tree was a monster. He wanted to attack it. The Druid wasn't having any of that. The Druid figured it had to be a sign from the Powers Of Nature they worshipped and they would protect that tree with their life. The Wizard and the Rogue saw it as a chance to pick up alchemical reagents, the Rogue was thinking Poisons, the Wizard was thinking Potions.
So there I am and I can't think of a thing to satisfy them all. Now the Wizard wants to get samples of every bit of the tree, including digging down under the roots, and then getting further samples from a few of the other trees around them for comparison. The Druid is *not* going to allow that under any circumstances. My Fighter is bored to nearly to death. I'm frustrated and we don't have all day for this session. If I run a combat of any kind, there is the same problem I had before. They aren't ready. If I run something trivial enough not to challenge them they are going to be mad at me for wasting their time and they will still march right into the meatgrinder.
Maybe there could be something of value monetarily? Then they strip the tree of everything they think they might be able to sell, leaving it bare of leaves and bark. The Druid isn't going to be happy about it, and of course, they might want to kill a few other trees in case they are also worth a silver or two, or they will search the whole forest for any hint of purple. In the end, they got the combat they wanted. The tree was a trap by a bandit gang, there was nothing valuable or special about the tree, but it got people to stop long enough for an ambush. The characters barely survived, used up everything they had and couldn't take a Long Rest for another 20 hours or so.
I've wasted the entire session. I'll have to run that carefully prepared combat encounter I had next time. I'm pretty tired of combat at this point, so I may not bother. I know my players won't enjoy doing nothing but roleplaying. They do plenty of that as it is and we have had fun up until this point. So I have to come up with something to do with hazardous environmental factors or difficulties in exploring that don't involve fighting. This isn't trivial in a largely pastoral forest in the throws of an invasion by nasty humanoids. Perhaps a storm with winds strong enough to blow away those stupid purple leaves and lightning enough to kill things the way my plot was killed?
<Insert clever signature here>
When they get too close or touch the leaves, they all fall asleep. When they wake up, the tree is gone and a note, etched on a piece of bark reads "Rushing along with your tank on empty is certain death"
Why don't they get to make a save? Because the DM said so. Period. Message from a god or some such. OR, let them hit a big encounter again, get their butts whupped and MAYBE be smarter for it. I have "saved' the group I am running once already and after session, we discussed. I advised it wasn't going to happen again if the cause for a potential TPK was their fault. I'll still fudge rolls in their favor if I overestimated the group, or the dice gods get cranky, but if the players do something they should know better.....prepare to meet your Gods, little adventurers!!
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
It is the Tree of Portents, a strange spirit-guide which only ever appears once in a persons lifetime.
When they touch the leaves, nothing happens. The DM informs them that they can't really see anything special about this tree except that it has purple leaves. Tell them OOC (to get things moving) that it is just a fantasy tree because they are in a fantasy forest.
When they arrive at the next combat, make it too powerful - up the danger considerably. Have them fight to the death, and lose badly because they were lacking their abilities.
When the first one who had touched the tree dies, turn to them and say "You pull your fingers from the purple leaf as if electrocuted. The vision that blazed in your mind for only a few seconds is burned into your memories as if it had really happened - you quickly check yourself for the wounds that you so clearly remember sustaining, but find nothing. The sun is lower in the sky than you remember - it still seems like it's morning. A wind suddenly blows through the trees, and the leaves of the tree are blown away with it, leaving behind the sun-bleached skeleton of a long-dead tree."
The players are back at the tree, and it has shown them a vision of the future, of what happens if they do not rest before they move on. This will spin your players out for a moment, and they will probably go into the next encounter well rested and with some tactics on how to deal with the monster they think they know is coming!
Anyway, you've made it to the point where they have had a fight with bandits and are almost dead. Have they finally had their short rest?
I agree that if they're 2 fights in, then you need to give them some more skill related challenges ahead to keep them from just dying! Perhaps save your encounter until the next day?
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When you see that the players are taking a session off the rails with RP, it is perfectly reasonable to step out of "DM character" and say "Guys, sometimes a tree is just a tree." If they persist, it is on them. Yes, they waste a session. Yes, they waste your time. Next time maybe they will learn.
Ok I'll bite.
WHAT'S WITH THAT TREE MAN!? WHY IS IT PURPLE? PURPLE!?
Everybody needs to know.
Mmm... Druid make Nature check *ROLL* " You think boiling some of theis fresh bright purple leaves to make a Tea would allow the group to make a short rest in half the time due to their natural restorative properties"
Are you sure your players would really get mad at you if you ran the odd easy battle? I've seen them suggested as upbeats and downbeats of play and anyways some players quite enjoy showing off their characters uber power
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
*laughs* That's brilliant Jusin. I'd have to make sure the leaves spoiled very quickly so I didn't have to deal with half hour Short Rests again, but that's the only problem I see.
Whether or not my players got mad at me is something I have no way of knowing beforehand. It would depend entirely on the players involved. I have known a couple who would be quite upset if they got an easy fight when they were expecting something more. A good friend was a Classic Munchkin type and was all about combat and loot, and resented anything that took time out of the game which failed to provide one or the other, preferably both, and a lot of it.
(Garr? Yeah. Just a tree. Scenery. You can go about your business. Move along. :-) )
<Insert clever signature here>
On time while playing RoleMaster, our characters were on our way to stop some BBEG from conquering a kingdom or something. We knew we were under a time limit, but we had some time (many days), so it wasn't a huge rush. The GM described how we came across this large 10' wide hole in the ground. Below it went down for a long way and then we saw terrain there and what looked like some sort of odd grass. So we went down to look, and there was this whole other world down there with its own light source far away, and some pyramid on the far horizon that had something on it, I don't remember now, that made us think it was important. So we thought OK, this must be part of the adventure. We all climbed down, and started going along. It took days and days of time. Finally we reached the pyramid, had whatever adventure we had there, and when we got back to the surface, so much time had passed that the BBEG won. The GM never thought we'd go down there and start adventuring -- he was just laying the seed for a future possible adventure. He was sure we'd look at it, mark it on our map, and come back later. But he never once told us that, so we just assumed...
Yeah, be careful what details you point out to the players.
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.
This!
I rarely spend time at all making my encounters balanced - I present a world and denizens of each area ... and it’s up to the players to decide after that.
I do agree that as a DM, I never try to convince my players to take rests. It's up to them to decide they want to take a rest. I don't track their resources, so I don't really even know, other than HP, what they have left or not (I use a VTT -- I could look, but I don't bother). Their reaction to the world is their problem, not yours. If they're too overconfident to take a short rest, then I guess that next encounter may be too hard for them. Not my problem.
I just had my party mostly finish (they are cleaning out the treasure now) the old D2 module, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa. I put every K-T in there that Gygax presented -- something like 360 of them. They had guard posts and would alert each other and they can sense invisible characters so it is very hard to stealth through. Then I put 3 treasures the players needed in there, in 2 places. I had no idea how they were going to solve it -- that was up to them.
They almost got themselves surrounded and killed. They backed out, went back to town, and got the Roman Century and temple priests and druid circle to come back with them and fight a huge battle against the whole temple. That was one possible solution. But there were many other ways to go about it.
At the end, one of the players asked, "How were we *supposed* to solve this?" I said, I don't know. I put the obstacle in front of you, that's my job. Solving it is your job.
Yes, I had the troop combat stuff ready, because I knew it was possible they might bring the troops with them (if the Romans knew the temple was down there, they absolutely would go down and clean it out). But BTW, this presented another moral problem. I warned them once the Century was on the move, that their characters would know that once the battle starts, the Romans would show absolutely no mercy. Everyone, and everything, in that temple was going to be slaughtered. They weren't sure how they felt about that. But once the Romans were told, there was no stopping it.
My point is -- my job was not to figure out how they get a treasure away from 350 Kuo-Toa. That was their job. My job was to build the temple (or in this case, steal it from Gygax), populate it with all the enemies, and write down notes to myself (based on the module) as to how the K-Ts would react to incursion. And then have them react accordingly.
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.
I am mostly a Seat-Of-The-Pants type of DM. It is rare that I take the trouble to design an encounter or draw a map ahead of time. My setting suffers from a tendency to have the distance between points change because I forgot to write down what I told the players, or worse, discovered after running things that I'd underestimated and the players got there much sooner than I'd wanted. Names of people and places changed too. Having done the extra work, I really wanted to use it. I could have let things alone and let the players walk into the sharp end, but I'd have had real trouble keeping them alive without pulling the kind of deus ex machina that players tend to hate. I've never enjoyed a TPK.
Justin's idea was great. I wish I'd been half so clever.
I presented a cautionary tale. A mistake I had made in the past, in hopes that others would find it useful. It was something I got to thinking about when a critter started posting about a game they were going to run. They had never played or DMed, I don't think their players had ever played, and they were talking about putting a whole bunch of Gritty Realism rules from the DMG in place. I haven't seen them around lately. It's a pity. I would have been quite interested to hear how it went down. With none of them having played before, I don't imagine they would know what they missed, so there is no telling if they would have had more, or less, fun with a standard game.
My own setting is much like yours Bio. A version of the Ancient Roman Empire. I ran my players into an entire army of Orcs once, with only a vague idea what they would do about it. I envisioned them killing scouting expeditions made by the Orcs, keeping them from moving, maybe leading other monsters into them to play the ever popular "Let's You And Them Fight" game. What I got was baffled players who decided to punt and went off to fetch the Legions. The soldiers stomped the Orcs, took all the loot, and the only thanks the players got was from the mayor of the nearby city, who said he "owed them one". My players were not especially interested in the social side of the game, my Munchkinish Pro From Dover especially so, and they never considered what a favor from the mayor of a major city of the Empire could be used for.
<Insert clever signature here>
This is the danger.
HARD, damn hard, not to feel that way. But sometimes you just have to let that hard work go and either forget about it or use it somewhere else later some day, maybe even in a future campaign.
Hard to do, as I say.
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.
Yep, it takes a while but if you follow Bio's advice, your own game after actions, reviews, meditation, reflection, whatever will get to the point, where you're mind will just go "Well, we didn't use that ... yet." In the group interaction post session, one of my favorite responses to a "Encounter X, was so cool, where did that come from?" is "Well, actually, I had to rejigger it, remember that time where you all spent an entire session at a chocolate stand talking to the vendor .... so instead I had it happen here instead."
For the broader point in the initial post, I'm generally a DM who will allow PCs to go off on a snipe hunt or spend the session literally chewing scenario if it keeps me engaged too. Some of my players are aware of when I shift into this "ok, I'm letting this happen mode" as opposed to "actual plan mode," so there may be some meta reading of tells on their end that may cut things short, but I only nudge players if I feel the larger scenario they're involved in is somehow time sensitive. In those last cases I just narrate senses of urgency they have about "larger matters" to attend to if the PCs look like they're going full on creation of the Order of the Purple Leaf or whatever.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
"As you reach out and brush the purple leaves, they flake and begin to disintegrate. The particles swirl in the air, and a feeling of drowsiness comes over you. The world around you fades to inky black darkness, before the horrific form of a(n) (Insert monster here) appears before you. The creature (Does something horrific to the players), killing you. But then you wake up, lying amongst wilted leaves underneath a dead tree."
If you can manage (I know it’s hard for some DMs), but don’t tell your PCs where it came from or what you rejigged. It can sometimes ruin the immersion and also tips off to your PCs that a campaign may not be as well-oiled as they are lead to believe. It’s really hard keeping those secrets as a DM, but if you can it will pay off dividends with your PCs. 🙂
I appreciate the intent of your prescription, but if I'm asked "where did that come from?" I'm not going to shut that discussion down by evoking or protecting the mysterious DM's screen as my personal curtain of the great and powerful Oz. I just find that mode too precious. I am a DM who is very invested in "the show" in session but once the session's over, the smoke and mirrors and put away as well and we can just talk and go pretty meta. To be fair, I'm also starting to start sessions with "centering/grounding exercises" I've seen used in both theatrical as well as mental health dynamics (DM tells the party where they are and then each character provides a count down of what their character is specifically feeling through their five senses and then what they're "feeling" emotionally or why they're character is where they're at). And at session's end, it's a switch. I guess also maybe my players are more the sorts that may love a particular movie or franchise and not only consume the narrative but invest a lot in the "behind the scenes" media too. I don't see using those moments to talk sources and methods of storytelling any more injurious to good play than talking about some mechanical challenges that occurred in the game. Insulating the players from the guts of the game hinder the most important question a DM can ask of their players, "how am I doing?" So anything that has happened is up for discussion. Spoilers don't happen, though foreshadowing does. Sometimes "where did that come from" I'll say "King Crimson, this album, this track; but careful, there's other songs on there that may give you a sense of where the stories going." No one's upset or spoiled the game ... ever actually in my decade of play. But I can also appreciate players who prefer to regard the DM as a magic box who also happens to be a human being with firm boundaries when it comes to creative process. One can appreciate reverence and also enjoy irreverence in the same game. ;)
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Fair enough, we all have our own takes. If your table likes it, then do it.
Well, you learned that if you make something too interesting, the players are going to investigate it. But, you didn't want them to investigate the tree because it was a throw away. Now you want to ease out of it. I have seen it happen before, and I'll see it happen again, and I might well be in the DM chair when it does.
So you have a mysterious tree with purple leaves. I'm not to sure what else you threw in there and I don't know how far the party has gone to study the darn thing, but it sounds like some bit with the druid.
If I wanted to get the players to forget the darn tree and move on, I might have an interesting bird land in the tree. Then the tree shudders and a number of purple leaves fall off, and then all the leaves (on and off the tree) turn green. The bird lets out a squawk and hops to another branch. The bird lets out another squawk and takes flight and heads off generally in the direction you want the players to go. The tree has become a "normal tree" and now the bird is more interesting.
After a little bit of time spent chasing the bird ask them, how long has it been since you ate? About six hours. What do you want to do? Hopefully they stop for lunch and a short rest.
If they stick around the now normal tree anyway, I'd just hit them with an obvious random encounter. Two bear cubs are spotted a short distance away. Loud stomping sounds are heard further into the woods. A large bear appears and runs toward you. It stops between you and the cubs and lets out a holler. The bear stands up on its hind legs and hollers again. It lands gently on its front paws and takes two more steps closer to you.
They'll either move on from the momma bear (and the tree) or kill the darn thing in front of her cubs.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Dang that is a great idea - if the players fixate on something random, let that lead to the next interesting thing. Don't try to shut it down, make it a stepping stone.
Sometimes, but the world is just that a living breathing world so not everything has to be something. Sometimes it can just be a tree, I have had 5 year long campaigns where at the end when we where doing the postmortem the players have asked me about a specific stone circle they kept going back to, I explained it was just a circle of stone, no hidden meaning, no secret, no magic, I simply added it for flavour and they latched onto it but it was way more fun to just keep it mundane and watch them try and come back and screw with it. It almost became a right of passage when they leveled, let’s go back the the stone circle. Sometimes some random beastie might be hanging out there.
In my afterward for the campaign I actually said that stories of the brave adventurers and the stone circle had turned it into a place where young adventurers came to test their strength, the stories told (by the party bard) of the stone circle that helped give them power. In the next campaign set 50 years later that stone circle had become the center of a thriving large villiage that was growing, holding annual competitions for individuals to prove themselves worthy. The look on the players faces when they realised what I had done to their private little, isolated, innocent circle of stones.