So I'm usually on the DM side of things but I decided to sit back for a bit and play a Divine Sorcerer. Now, my DM is currently running his first campaign and everything's good so far, however there is something that's bothering me: our party never fails. We constantly win, every single time and we get praised wherever we go.
The initial flaw of my character was that she lacked confidence and she felt she was good for nothing. That changed very quickly. Now I'm playing her as a cocky, spoiled brat because I feel that was the natural evolution of the character. I thought "well, she will get smacked in the face at SOME point and get back to earth" but that never happened.
Maybe it's just me (and that's why I'm posting this here) but when I DM, I expect my players to fail some and win some. What I mean is: some things must be just our of players' control. Bad things happen and you just have to deal with them sometimes. The bad guy is the bad guy for a reason. The bad guy is intimidating and you hate him because he keeps winning and you're just not powerful enough to stop him.
With this I'm not saying that a DM should railroad players to failure, I'm just saying that the opposite is also true and a good story -in my view- sees the characters struggling and achieving small victories until the end, when they can finally get their reward. If your heroes never lose anything of value, everything is inconsequential.
Am I wrong in thinking this? Should I tell my DM "ehi man, maybe we don't defeat the gargantuan sea serpent in the middle of the ocean, repair the boat and keep sailing like nothing happened this time. Maybe we actually lose something in the process."?
As I said he is a new DM and I don't want to discourage him, at the same time I'm not even sure this is a problem in the first place. Maybe I am doing something wrong. What do you think?
I expect to fail at times too, it makes the wins more significant.
I suggest you have a chat with the group next session and get their opinions on how things are going. It may be something others have noticed, or maybe not, but then you can all decide as a group whether you want more of a challenge. Your new DM might be struggling to find the right level of challenge for your party, so a little feedback could help.
It's a common misconception that the DM will provide encounters that you can win at every turn. So much so that if a DM throws an unbeatable encounter at the party, it will usually result in a TPK and the party asking the DM why they "gave them that to fight", as if they are entitled to win everything instead of learning their limits.
This is a topic best discussed in a Session 0 - which can occur at any point, though it's better at the start. What do the players want from the game - in this case, you want the world to be challenging enough that failure is an option. You're absolutely not wrong in this, as it's how you want to enjoy the game - you just need to make sure tha tthe whole group is on board with it, because otherwise people go running towards the enemy thinking they have no chance of failure, and then get punted off a cliff by the giant guarding the bridge who used a logical shove action.
I agree, but the caveat here is that the DM should never plan for the party to fail at a certain point. Failure should be based off of the choices of the party, whether they went with a poor combat strategy against a powerful opponent, or if they angered the wrong vengeful noble who will definitely sell them out to the bbeg.
If you ever, as a DM, find yourself writing a section where the heroes *have* to fail at a certain time, you risk breaking the player's immersion and taking their autonomy.
At most, the DM should provide the opportunity for failure, just as they provide opportunities for success. Sometimes however, when designing those opportunities, you can focus on opportunities for the players to fail and leave the solutions up to them. It's not always your responsibility to hand them a working solution.
I had a DM once who set us up with an encounter that was designed so that we would run away. We were getting too cocky so he threw something massive at us. We almost died before we retreated because we weren’t thinking.
I was a player in a campaign very similar to this a few years ago.
1: We always succeeded (and it was never really a challenge) which led our party to becoming SUPER cocky (in game) We were ok with this because this was our first ever ttrpg, and it was originally pathfinder that we converted to 5e. Our inexperience and PF's overabundance of magic items led to us players being REALLY OP.
2: This was a result of a similar mindset as this but more in line with what I think OP is experiencing which is a DM that has a course in mind and doesn't want to deviate. In the same campaign I described above, our party ALWAYS ran into the next "plot point" exactly where we were no matter where we were. Bad guy stole the mysterious, one-of-a-kind McGuffin? We run into him next door. We went to an island resort to relax, it just HAPPENED to have a special item needed for "main plot" I kinda channeled my annoyance at all this "convenience" into my character's development over the course of tier 3-4. My character became very adverse to the idea of FATE. He hated the idea of his decisions being made for him.
To subtly let the DM know my annoyance without calling him out, I RPed my character as slowly becoming more nihlistic. by saying stuff like (NOTE! i wasn't this direct about it and it was MUCH more subtle than my paraphrase):
Party: Where should we go to chase down BBEG? Me in character: "I suggest we stay right here. The Gods have our fate planned for us and the battle will inevitably find US first. At least if we stay here, we know the layout"
or
(in context of the party debating whether to accept a job involving the "main plot")
"As long as we exist, the universe will thrust us back in this conflict, so we might as well accept"
THE POINT: When newer DM's are afraid to have the party fail, I believe that it is because they more than likely have a progression of events already in mind and are afraid of what failure might do to that projection. In my experience, I fixed this by, in character, pointing out how tied to fate our party was and for his next campaign, the DM did not create a "main plot" and the whole game (currently at level 14 and started at 1) has been entirely player driven and more enjoyable for the whole table (DM included)
It's hard to run combat encounters where the PCs can fail without a TPK, because even if the PCs are willing to run, by the time it's obvious that you're going to lose a fight, it's often too late to successfully run away, particularly since the odds are at least one PC doesn't have special abilities that assist with rapid escapes.
THE POINT: When newer DM's are afraid to have the party fail, I believe that it is because they more than likely have a progression of events already in mind and are afraid of what failure might do to that projection.
Not always. As a DM, I want to translate more into encounters that failure is a legitimate option, but my players are used to being able to handle everything because it's 'at their level'. If failure becomes an option, I'm afraid it will turn into a TPK because my group wouldn't know when to run away or resolve the conflict through roleplay. How would you handle this change?
Not always. As a DM, I want to translate more into encounters that failure is a legitimate option, but my players are used to being able to handle everything because it's 'at their level'. If failure becomes an option, I'm afraid it will turn into a TPK because my group wouldn't know when to run away or resolve the conflict through roleplay. How would you handle this change?
You could try and tackle this in game by throwing a more dangerous encounter at them. Then if your players find themselves at risk of a TPK and aren't able to recognise or react to it, you add a high level NPC to the fight to assist them. You then use the NPC to deliver your message to the players, namely that they should have run away or tried to resolve the situation through role-play, because the NPC won't be around to save them next time.
Alternately, like much of the advice here suggests, you just talk to your players before or after a session and say you want to increase the difficulty, and they will need to consider different options instead of fighting every time.
A lot of players will recognize straight up overwhelming opponent and back off. The problem is the maybe-beatable encounters, or the fights where it's not all that clear how strong the opposition is. If you have a fifth level party and they run across an Ancient Red Dragon they'll know 'nope, not winning this one', but if it's a Young Red Dragon, well, that's a maybe-winnable (I suspect statistically it favors the PCs, but if the dragon wins initiative and breathes on the entire party that's likely game over).
Another option having victory taken away from the players when they expect it. Very few creatures will really fight to the death unless they have to. A bad guy with the dimension door or teleport spell will hold a spell slot back to use is to try and escape if things are looking bad for him (and if he can he will try to get out of sight of anyone who might have counterspell before using it). In some encounters the bad guy is a success fo rthe party but in the most meaningful encounters it is almost a defeat as it means they will have to hunt him down again.
One way to potentially humble the characters (if they're not murder-hobos) is to present them with a challenge that even if they prevail, has no sweetness in victory.
I ran one game where the party was protecting a village from werewolves, and after an attack they tracked the last werewolf as it fled back to its lair, where they caught up to it shortly before sundown of the next day (werewolves in this setting only transform the three nights of the full moon, and they completely lose themselves to the curse when they transform). They entered the den and they found the skinny, scarred man, asking them to spare him, to give him time to find a cure. They talked with him a while, and as the sun set, realizing they had no way to bind him that would withstand the transformation, they struck him down before he could finish shifting into the beastly form.
The party successfully defended the town and ended the werewolf problem, but it was a mournful experience that involved them building a funeral pyre for that last werewolf.
It doesn't have to be that dark, but it does show that gravitas can be re-introduced when they're doing too well without risking a TPK.
I had a DM once who set us up with an encounter that was designed so that we would run away. We were getting too cocky so he threw something massive at us. We almost died before we retreated because we weren’t thinking.
I had a DM once who did something similar. I think it was my first session with the group, we had a bunch of new level 3's and a level 9 Fighter in the group. We were looking for tamed mounted Wyverns that had escaped and as we found one, an Adult Red Dragon had crashed down and killed the Wyvern. The Fighter, who was DM's best friend, charged in and my weak Wizard butt dove behind a rock and basically just shot an acid arrow once and stayed as far out of the fight as possible.
The group ended up killing the red dragon and the DM actually got a little upset, he said he set that up so that we would have to run. Well, when your best friend's character charges in and you don't kill him outright from an Adult Red Dragon attack, it kinda makes everyone else go, "Okay I guess there's nothing to worry about." I don't think the DM learned from that encounter, because the stakes were always super high but we always made it through with zero casualties, even on suspiciously low rolls.
Thank you all for taking the time to reply to my nonsense!
I wouldn't say that I have a problem with encounters, although yes, sometimes I think "someone should have died from that" but it doesn't happen often. Most of the times encounters are well balanced and we had a couple of "unbeatable" encounters here and there. Maybe "failure" is not the correct word in this case.
For instance, going back to the gargantuan sea serpent story from before: I don't have a problem with killing the thing. That's what adventurers do and we were level 10 anyway. However I can't see my ship surviving that, regardless of how well we play it out. This was a random encounter, an unexpected event in our journey, a big one, and we had a fishing vessel armed with one single ballista. We managed to repair the thing in the middle of the ocean and go back to sailing like nothing happened. I feel that it would have been more appropriate the lose the ship, maybe get stranded on a deserted island, or maybe just losing our provisions.
My character thinks that she can do anything now, nothing bad can happen to her because she will always be able to come on top. She can defend a fishing vessel from a creature 10 times the size of the ship.
I understand what you guys are saying about railroading and I agree, no good DM would set up the party for failure, however don't you think that some things should be out of the players' control? Yes, if the ship was destroyed we would have gone off a tangent, completely out of the main plot of the adventure, but isn't that what adventuring means? Dealing with unexpected events?
I was a player in a campaign very similar to this a few years ago.
1: We always succeeded (and it was never really a challenge) which led our party to becoming SUPER cocky (in game) We were ok with this because this was our first ever ttrpg, and it was originally pathfinder that we converted to 5e. Our inexperience and PF's overabundance of magic items led to us players being REALLY OP.
2: This was a result of a similar mindset as this but more in line with what I think OP is experiencing which is a DM that has a course in mind and doesn't want to deviate. In the same campaign I described above, our party ALWAYS ran into the next "plot point" exactly where we were no matter where we were. Bad guy stole the mysterious, one-of-a-kind McGuffin? We run into him next door. We went to an island resort to relax, it just HAPPENED to have a special item needed for "main plot" I kinda channeled my annoyance at all this "convenience" into my character's development over the course of tier 3-4. My character became very adverse to the idea of FATE. He hated the idea of his decisions being made for him.
To subtly let the DM know my annoyance without calling him out, I RPed my character as slowly becoming more nihlistic. by saying stuff like (NOTE! i wasn't this direct about it and it was MUCH more subtle than my paraphrase):
Party: Where should we go to chase down BBEG? Me in character: "I suggest we stay right here. The Gods have our fate planned for us and the battle will inevitably find US first. At least if we stay here, we know the layout"
or
(in context of the party debating whether to accept a job involving the "main plot")
"As long as we exist, the universe will thrust us back in this conflict, so we might as well accept"
THE POINT: When newer DM's are afraid to have the party fail, I believe that it is because they more than likely have a progression of events already in mind and are afraid of what failure might do to that projection. In my experience, I fixed this by, in character, pointing out how tied to fate our party was and for his next campaign, the DM did not create a "main plot" and the whole game (currently at level 14 and started at 1) has been entirely player driven and more enjoyable for the whole table (DM included)
Maybe this is what's happening, or maybe my DM is afraid to take things away from us. To be honest, I'm not sure. Talking to him and with the group is probably the best thing but before doing this I just want to make sure that it's not all in my head.
There used to be an expectation in prior editions that PCs would need to retreat from about 5% of encounters. I could swear I remember reading that in one DMG or another. But there’s no such rule in this edition. I do have a sense that player expect to be able to win every fight, and if they can’t, it because the DM is intentionally screwing them by giving them something too hard. Not all players, certainly, but some. As was mentioned above, this is really the sort of thing to put in a sesssion 0.
I like to fail, and I like it when my players fail sometimes, or when they accidentally mess up. But I've noticed that at least one of my players really, really hates losing and he's pretty much the norm in D&D.
Personally I like it when you win an epic battle, only to discover that either you were too late, you killed the wrong monster, you were tricked etc. To me it's all story. But for lots of players, they just want the wins. I don't know how you make the wins feel big if there are only ever wins!
I think the simplest answer is that planning for both win and failure conditions - or a whole spectrum of them - can be difficult for new DMs. I think most people would agree that it provides a richer experience, but it's also more work and there are a lot of challenges to crafting realistic failure conditions that don't slide into a TPK. And yes, sometimes a TPK is okay but not at the frequency that you should be encountering failure.
I know one newish DM who apologizes profusely when we stumble. She takes on our failures as her own, feeling that a good DM is always forcing the party to walk along the edge of that failure cliff but should never push them off. If you kill the party, was it your fault or theirs? New DMs don't have the confidence or experience to reassure themselves that sometimes a party earns their failure all on their own.
It's also worth noting that some players like D&D primarily for the experience of feeling empowered and kicking some ass. I know a few players who would happily play a campaign that allowed them to just steamroll over everything in their path. For those people it's less about the story and more about letting off some steam or escapism from the real world which provides some of us all the failure we care to deal with.
I will now step up to the podium and talk about old-school gaming.. *flame suit activated*
Correction: will talk about the myths of old school gaming. There's no question that old school D&D went for arbitrary death mechanics and didn't have a specific concept of a balanced encounter, but modules have had a suggested level range since the start, and it's the nature of an ongoing campaign that the PCs need success odds high enough that the campaign doesn't just end at random. The big differences are that editions after 2e have made it increasingly hard for PCs to actually die without a TPK, with concepts such as negative hit points (people did it as house rules back before, but it wasn't official) and avoiding save-or-die mechanics.
I feel like there's a distinction to be made between a TPK (or a near TPK that forces a retreat), and a failure. You don't see a lot of failures, because you don't see a lot of goals more nuanced than "go to the end of this dungeon and don't die."
You don't see a lot of TPKs, either, because PCs have a lot of tools to ensure their survival, but it can happen. I've seen it three times in my... Four years with this edition? (Goodness gracious.) The d20 is a volatile die.
First, Old School didn't have arbitrary death mechanics, this is nonsense that has been repeated for years by people who don't play the old editions, now people just regurgitate this as gospel.
I've played old editions. What about a 1+1 HD monster with 'save vs poison at +2 or die' is not arbitrary death?
One problem old school D&D did have was really bad DM's that dirtied the waters because they ran the game like a tactical combat simulator, but that you can't blame the game on.
So, you're saying that old school D&D didn't have arbitrary death as long as the DM avoided using all the mechanics that resulted in arbitrary death?
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Hei!
So I'm usually on the DM side of things but I decided to sit back for a bit and play a Divine Sorcerer.
Now, my DM is currently running his first campaign and everything's good so far, however there is something that's bothering me: our party never fails. We constantly win, every single time and we get praised wherever we go.
The initial flaw of my character was that she lacked confidence and she felt she was good for nothing. That changed very quickly. Now I'm playing her as a cocky, spoiled brat because I feel that was the natural evolution of the character. I thought "well, she will get smacked in the face at SOME point and get back to earth" but that never happened.
Maybe it's just me (and that's why I'm posting this here) but when I DM, I expect my players to fail some and win some. What I mean is: some things must be just our of players' control. Bad things happen and you just have to deal with them sometimes. The bad guy is the bad guy for a reason. The bad guy is intimidating and you hate him because he keeps winning and you're just not powerful enough to stop him.
With this I'm not saying that a DM should railroad players to failure, I'm just saying that the opposite is also true and a good story -in my view- sees the characters struggling and achieving small victories until the end, when they can finally get their reward. If your heroes never lose anything of value, everything is inconsequential.
Am I wrong in thinking this? Should I tell my DM "ehi man, maybe we don't defeat the gargantuan sea serpent in the middle of the ocean, repair the boat and keep sailing like nothing happened this time. Maybe we actually lose something in the process."?
As I said he is a new DM and I don't want to discourage him, at the same time I'm not even sure this is a problem in the first place. Maybe I am doing something wrong. What do you think?
I expect to fail at times too, it makes the wins more significant.
I suggest you have a chat with the group next session and get their opinions on how things are going. It may be something others have noticed, or maybe not, but then you can all decide as a group whether you want more of a challenge. Your new DM might be struggling to find the right level of challenge for your party, so a little feedback could help.
It's a common misconception that the DM will provide encounters that you can win at every turn. So much so that if a DM throws an unbeatable encounter at the party, it will usually result in a TPK and the party asking the DM why they "gave them that to fight", as if they are entitled to win everything instead of learning their limits.
This is a topic best discussed in a Session 0 - which can occur at any point, though it's better at the start. What do the players want from the game - in this case, you want the world to be challenging enough that failure is an option. You're absolutely not wrong in this, as it's how you want to enjoy the game - you just need to make sure tha tthe whole group is on board with it, because otherwise people go running towards the enemy thinking they have no chance of failure, and then get punted off a cliff by the giant guarding the bridge who used a logical shove action.
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I agree, but the caveat here is that the DM should never plan for the party to fail at a certain point. Failure should be based off of the choices of the party, whether they went with a poor combat strategy against a powerful opponent, or if they angered the wrong vengeful noble who will definitely sell them out to the bbeg.
If you ever, as a DM, find yourself writing a section where the heroes *have* to fail at a certain time, you risk breaking the player's immersion and taking their autonomy.
At most, the DM should provide the opportunity for failure, just as they provide opportunities for success. Sometimes however, when designing those opportunities, you can focus on opportunities for the players to fail and leave the solutions up to them. It's not always your responsibility to hand them a working solution.
I had a DM once who set us up with an encounter that was designed so that we would run away. We were getting too cocky so he threw something massive at us. We almost died before we retreated because we weren’t thinking.
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I was a player in a campaign very similar to this a few years ago.
1: We always succeeded (and it was never really a challenge) which led our party to becoming SUPER cocky (in game) We were ok with this because this was our first ever ttrpg, and it was originally pathfinder that we converted to 5e. Our inexperience and PF's overabundance of magic items led to us players being REALLY OP.
2: This was a result of a similar mindset as this but more in line with what I think OP is experiencing which is a DM that has a course in mind and doesn't want to deviate. In the same campaign I described above, our party ALWAYS ran into the next "plot point" exactly where we were no matter where we were. Bad guy stole the mysterious, one-of-a-kind McGuffin? We run into him next door. We went to an island resort to relax, it just HAPPENED to have a special item needed for "main plot" I kinda channeled my annoyance at all this "convenience" into my character's development over the course of tier 3-4. My character became very adverse to the idea of FATE. He hated the idea of his decisions being made for him.
To subtly let the DM know my annoyance without calling him out, I RPed my character as slowly becoming more nihlistic. by saying stuff like (NOTE! i wasn't this direct about it and it was MUCH more subtle than my paraphrase):
Party: Where should we go to chase down BBEG?
Me in character: "I suggest we stay right here. The Gods have our fate planned for us and the battle will inevitably find US first. At least if we stay here, we know the layout"
or
(in context of the party debating whether to accept a job involving the "main plot")
"As long as we exist, the universe will thrust us back in this conflict, so we might as well accept"
THE POINT:
When newer DM's are afraid to have the party fail, I believe that it is because they more than likely have a progression of events already in mind and are afraid of what failure might do to that projection. In my experience, I fixed this by, in character, pointing out how tied to fate our party was and for his next campaign, the DM did not create a "main plot" and the whole game (currently at level 14 and started at 1) has been entirely player driven and more enjoyable for the whole table (DM included)
It's hard to run combat encounters where the PCs can fail without a TPK, because even if the PCs are willing to run, by the time it's obvious that you're going to lose a fight, it's often too late to successfully run away, particularly since the odds are at least one PC doesn't have special abilities that assist with rapid escapes.
Not always. As a DM, I want to translate more into encounters that failure is a legitimate option, but my players are used to being able to handle everything because it's 'at their level'. If failure becomes an option, I'm afraid it will turn into a TPK because my group wouldn't know when to run away or resolve the conflict through roleplay. How would you handle this change?
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
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You could try and tackle this in game by throwing a more dangerous encounter at them. Then if your players find themselves at risk of a TPK and aren't able to recognise or react to it, you add a high level NPC to the fight to assist them. You then use the NPC to deliver your message to the players, namely that they should have run away or tried to resolve the situation through role-play, because the NPC won't be around to save them next time.
Alternately, like much of the advice here suggests, you just talk to your players before or after a session and say you want to increase the difficulty, and they will need to consider different options instead of fighting every time.
A lot of players will recognize straight up overwhelming opponent and back off. The problem is the maybe-beatable encounters, or the fights where it's not all that clear how strong the opposition is. If you have a fifth level party and they run across an Ancient Red Dragon they'll know 'nope, not winning this one', but if it's a Young Red Dragon, well, that's a maybe-winnable (I suspect statistically it favors the PCs, but if the dragon wins initiative and breathes on the entire party that's likely game over).
Another option having victory taken away from the players when they expect it. Very few creatures will really fight to the death unless they have to. A bad guy with the dimension door or teleport spell will hold a spell slot back to use is to try and escape if things are looking bad for him (and if he can he will try to get out of sight of anyone who might have counterspell before using it). In some encounters the bad guy is a success fo rthe party but in the most meaningful encounters it is almost a defeat as it means they will have to hunt him down again.
One way to potentially humble the characters (if they're not murder-hobos) is to present them with a challenge that even if they prevail, has no sweetness in victory.
I ran one game where the party was protecting a village from werewolves, and after an attack they tracked the last werewolf as it fled back to its lair, where they caught up to it shortly before sundown of the next day (werewolves in this setting only transform the three nights of the full moon, and they completely lose themselves to the curse when they transform). They entered the den and they found the skinny, scarred man, asking them to spare him, to give him time to find a cure. They talked with him a while, and as the sun set, realizing they had no way to bind him that would withstand the transformation, they struck him down before he could finish shifting into the beastly form.
The party successfully defended the town and ended the werewolf problem, but it was a mournful experience that involved them building a funeral pyre for that last werewolf.
It doesn't have to be that dark, but it does show that gravitas can be re-introduced when they're doing too well without risking a TPK.
I had a DM once who did something similar. I think it was my first session with the group, we had a bunch of new level 3's and a level 9 Fighter in the group. We were looking for tamed mounted Wyverns that had escaped and as we found one, an Adult Red Dragon had crashed down and killed the Wyvern. The Fighter, who was DM's best friend, charged in and my weak Wizard butt dove behind a rock and basically just shot an acid arrow once and stayed as far out of the fight as possible.
The group ended up killing the red dragon and the DM actually got a little upset, he said he set that up so that we would have to run. Well, when your best friend's character charges in and you don't kill him outright from an Adult Red Dragon attack, it kinda makes everyone else go, "Okay I guess there's nothing to worry about." I don't think the DM learned from that encounter, because the stakes were always super high but we always made it through with zero casualties, even on suspiciously low rolls.
Thank you all for taking the time to reply to my nonsense!
I wouldn't say that I have a problem with encounters, although yes, sometimes I think "someone should have died from that" but it doesn't happen often. Most of the times encounters are well balanced and we had a couple of "unbeatable" encounters here and there. Maybe "failure" is not the correct word in this case.
For instance, going back to the gargantuan sea serpent story from before: I don't have a problem with killing the thing. That's what adventurers do and we were level 10 anyway. However I can't see my ship surviving that, regardless of how well we play it out. This was a random encounter, an unexpected event in our journey, a big one, and we had a fishing vessel armed with one single ballista. We managed to repair the thing in the middle of the ocean and go back to sailing like nothing happened. I feel that it would have been more appropriate the lose the ship, maybe get stranded on a deserted island, or maybe just losing our provisions.
My character thinks that she can do anything now, nothing bad can happen to her because she will always be able to come on top. She can defend a fishing vessel from a creature 10 times the size of the ship.
I understand what you guys are saying about railroading and I agree, no good DM would set up the party for failure, however don't you think that some things should be out of the players' control? Yes, if the ship was destroyed we would have gone off a tangent, completely out of the main plot of the adventure, but isn't that what adventuring means? Dealing with unexpected events?
Maybe this is what's happening, or maybe my DM is afraid to take things away from us. To be honest, I'm not sure. Talking to him and with the group is probably the best thing but before doing this I just want to make sure that it's not all in my head.
There used to be an expectation in prior editions that PCs would need to retreat from about 5% of encounters. I could swear I remember reading that in one DMG or another. But there’s no such rule in this edition. I do have a sense that player expect to be able to win every fight, and if they can’t, it because the DM is intentionally screwing them by giving them something too hard. Not all players, certainly, but some.
As was mentioned above, this is really the sort of thing to put in a sesssion 0.
I like to fail, and I like it when my players fail sometimes, or when they accidentally mess up. But I've noticed that at least one of my players really, really hates losing and he's pretty much the norm in D&D.
Personally I like it when you win an epic battle, only to discover that either you were too late, you killed the wrong monster, you were tricked etc. To me it's all story. But for lots of players, they just want the wins. I don't know how you make the wins feel big if there are only ever wins!
I think the simplest answer is that planning for both win and failure conditions - or a whole spectrum of them - can be difficult for new DMs. I think most people would agree that it provides a richer experience, but it's also more work and there are a lot of challenges to crafting realistic failure conditions that don't slide into a TPK. And yes, sometimes a TPK is okay but not at the frequency that you should be encountering failure.
I know one newish DM who apologizes profusely when we stumble. She takes on our failures as her own, feeling that a good DM is always forcing the party to walk along the edge of that failure cliff but should never push them off. If you kill the party, was it your fault or theirs? New DMs don't have the confidence or experience to reassure themselves that sometimes a party earns their failure all on their own.
It's also worth noting that some players like D&D primarily for the experience of feeling empowered and kicking some ass. I know a few players who would happily play a campaign that allowed them to just steamroll over everything in their path. For those people it's less about the story and more about letting off some steam or escapism from the real world which provides some of us all the failure we care to deal with.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Correction: will talk about the myths of old school gaming. There's no question that old school D&D went for arbitrary death mechanics and didn't have a specific concept of a balanced encounter, but modules have had a suggested level range since the start, and it's the nature of an ongoing campaign that the PCs need success odds high enough that the campaign doesn't just end at random. The big differences are that editions after 2e have made it increasingly hard for PCs to actually die without a TPK, with concepts such as negative hit points (people did it as house rules back before, but it wasn't official) and avoiding save-or-die mechanics.
I feel like there's a distinction to be made between a TPK (or a near TPK that forces a retreat), and a failure. You don't see a lot of failures, because you don't see a lot of goals more nuanced than "go to the end of this dungeon and don't die."
You don't see a lot of TPKs, either, because PCs have a lot of tools to ensure their survival, but it can happen. I've seen it three times in my... Four years with this edition? (Goodness gracious.) The d20 is a volatile die.
I've played old editions. What about a 1+1 HD monster with 'save vs poison at +2 or die' is not arbitrary death?
So, you're saying that old school D&D didn't have arbitrary death as long as the DM avoided using all the mechanics that resulted in arbitrary death?