Let me ask you if you have this problem, too. The party just got pasted by a monster, they run out of there dragging their dead companions and cursing the unfairness of gaming, the session wraps for the night, and you mouth off about all the things they forgot. "You didn't even have to fight the Elemental. What's-his -name has the Protection from Evil 10' radius spell and you guys could have hedged it out and moon-walked across that room…"
If I have a fatal flaw as a DM, it's giving the players the DM's perspective after their failures and not letting them figure this stuff out for themselves through head banging, frustration, and trial and error. It's one thing doing an after action review with some newbies, but I'm always blabbing my mouth off about play refinements, even with the seasoned vets.
Case in point from the other night, and this one came back to get me. The party was making camp in a stand of evergreens (they're way up in the mountains) and their ranger scouts noticed a small group of grizzly bears come down out of the opposite trees and start splashing in the river that split the valley. Then one of the bears rises on it's haunches, sniffing the air. Did it smell their horses, or the cooking meat?
The druid goes out there with a sack of food, cautiously uses Speak with Animals, ends up convincing the bears to be on their way, after giving them a few weeks worth of rations to drag off.
So they're camping later that night, and I snicker, "Good thing you didn't remember you took Animal Friendship…" That's the spell that lets druids turn an animal into a permanent companion. The gears started turning in the minds of the players… could they afford to miss a day of travel, and have the rangers and druid double back and track the bears, so the druid could attempt Animal Friendship? Dang it! By the next night, the druid was working on teaching his new bear companion some tricks, after burning a few Speak with Animals and Charm Mammal spells out in the wilds.
In all truth, this was a fine turn of events for the players, the druid guy loves his new animal companion - "I have a bear!" - the players laugh during Speak with Animals when the bear talks like the Yogi Bear cartoon character, and seeing a grizzly bear maul hobgoblins later in the session was entertaining all around.
But seriously, I need to learn to shut the hell up!
If I have a fatal flaw as a DM, it's giving the players the DM's perspective after their failures and not letting them figure this stuff out for themselves through head banging, frustration, and trial and error. It's one thing doing an after action review with some newbies, but I'm always blabbing my mouth off about play refinements, even with the seasoned vets.
The druid goes out there with a sack of food, cautiously uses Speak with Animals, ends up convincing the bears to be on their way, after giving them a few weeks worth of rations to drag off.
So they're camping later that night, and I snicker, "Good thing you didn't remember you took Animal Friendship…" That's the spell that lets druids turn an animal into a permanent companion. The gears started turning in the minds of the players… could they afford to miss a day of travel, and have the rangers and druid double back and track the bears, so the druid could attempt Animal Friendship? Dang it! By the next night, the druid was working on teaching his new bear companion some tricks, after burning a few Speak with Animals and Charm Mammal spells out in the wilds.
In all truth, this was a fine turn of events for the players, the druid guy loves his new animal companion - "I have a bear!" - the players laugh during Speak with Animals when the bear talks like the Yogi Bear cartoon character, and seeing a grizzly bear maul hobgoblins later in the session was entertaining all around.
But seriously, I need to learn to shut the hell up!
Oh boy, am I ever guilty of that. Sometimes I do it because I want them to know I didn't deliberately screw them over, and they'd had options they didn't use.
ReplyDeleteBTW I just did a post about grizzlies the other day and used that same pic (but mirrored)! :-)
http://geekechoes.blogspot.com/2012/01/rma-random-monster-assessment-grizzlies.html
It's just a game. DMs need to have fun too. In this case, you oversaw a different kind of adventure than you had planned. Sounds like fun.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar problem last night DMing. The party captured a dude with a magic ring. They did not know it was magic, but they suspected it was. They did not want to take it from a living captive. So, they were role playing well, but I was fighting the urge all along to see "Take the ring! It's frigging yours to take! You're looting his house anyway!"
In the end, when the capture was remitted to the authorities, the ring was given to the players as a reward.
In the end, this was a better role playing experience than the one I had planned.
I try my best to keep my mouth shut, and mostly succeed, but the PCs sorely test my patience... I recently added Stonehell to my sandbox, and the players (lvl 2-3 all) eagerly attempted to delve it. Unfortunately, the first thing of note they saw, was the sign in 1A about the "dragons den." They nearly freaked out, having had a few "not level appropriate" encounters with me before. They went the other way, and found a room with scorch marks. They freaked out, and boldly ran away from stonehell. It did not matter that Stonehell was close to a major city, and there had beed no rumors of dragons, or that all the adventurers with experience from Stonehell ridiculed them for thinking there was a dragon on the first level. The PCs know what they know, and they know that there is a ferocious dragon on the first level. Afterwards, they planned to level up a few times before they reentered the dungeon. I mentally gnawed on my fist for the remainder of the session, as well as the next one when they looked for other stuff to do. I kept my mouth shut, and I look forward to wathcing their faces as they discover what they have been so terrified off... It will be delicious.
ReplyDeleteThis is very difficult to do, but something I've gotten better during this last campaign I've been running. The only time I might say something is if I think the characters wouldn't have forgotten, but the player had because of some distractions, pizza delivery, phone call from the wife witha grocery list, or just a week between games. Still, when the players gather all that loot int the chest, forget to check for secret compartments and they bypass a cool magic item it is tough to keep tight lipped.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's player skill and then there's the intrusion of real life. A player forgets something, too bad - a player is distracted by something more important than gaming, that needs to be worked around a bit.
DeleteEven my Vampire players are taking notes, though. That helps.
I have trained myself to take a puff on my cigarette and raise an eyebrow quizzically whenever I'd shoot my mouth off normally. Or, sometimes I'll offer short, cryptic suggestions if I'm between cigarettes. I find it works pretty well, albeit only in situations where I can smoke indoors.
ReplyDeleteI tend towards an enigmatic "I know what I'd do." Years of spectating on wargames and training myself into the proper etiquette there seems to have helped...
DeleteI do this all the time, and yeah, I'm trying not to. I think it's better if I'm not an interested kibbitzer, to paraphrase Phil Folgio, but an impartial judge.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there is anything wrong with this, but it does mean you end up steering the game more than you might want to.
I sometimes quite like it when the GM goes through how an adventure should have gone after the fact, but that's not quite what you're talking about here.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm missing an underlying assumption here. Why is it better for the players to feel frustrated and stymied than for the GM to sometimes point out where they might have done something a little smarter? Assuming, of course, that the pointing out doesn't devolve into mean-spirited teasing or trying to push the party in a direction of the GM's choosing.
ReplyDeleteI'm poking some fun at myself here, but the question of DM intervention is nuanced. I absolutely believe a good DM has the role of coach and teacher - it is our duty to teach how to play the game, well - but the other side of the equation is giving the players freedom to play and succeed or fail by their own choice. Giving the group some pointers is valuable any time a session ends and the group is discouraged about the play. We can't lose sight that we play for fun. So any light-hearted reproach I'm sending my way has more to do with my timing, not the content.
ReplyDeleteThat's it. I think if they're going "oh crap we should have done X" you're okay, best not to intervene, but if they're going "what the hell was that I hate this game" and clearly had no ideas about what they could have done, that's when the maw should be opened. As long as you haven't been trying to engineer this sort of bullshit.
DeleteI only do this very occasionally; yeah it's a bad habit. Staying ignorant of PC capabilities can help, and lets me run a more objective world.
ReplyDelete