Quote from: Greentongue;411205Have you tried a Professional Wrestling/Boxing game?
Sounds like what your players would like.

Maybe have them inherit a ring in your game and have a go at running it.
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That... is fucking genius. I might.

It is a very good idea.

Quote from: Cranewings;411218That... is fucking genius. I might.

Here's a RPG based on wrestling, called "Rasslin'!"

http://www.hexgames.com/qags/component/virtuemart/details/10/10/all-products/colin-thomas-presents-rasslin%27-pdf

Quote from: Cranewings;411217Those are all good ideas, an honestly, I use all of them already. They actually love fighting and are good at role play. The problem is more in how they go about interacting with the game world...

Give you an idea, here are a couple of scenarios and how they would go about it.

Scenario -- They must approach a house with a front and back door and arrest the man inside.

Execution -- Walk strait up to the front door. No one goes around back.

Scenario -- Assassin has killed two people in a castle. Stop him.

Execution -- Pretend to be wealthy dignitaries of the same group. Get a room at the castle. Go to sleep with little or no protection. Hope to win the fight.

I see. Your players seem to have discovered the James Bond Method.

Quote from: Cranewings;411217Those are all good ideas, an honestly, I use all of them already. They actually love fighting and are good at role play. The problem is more in how they go about interacting with the game world...

Oh ho, I see what you mean now.  Tis a slippery slope you walk.  Do you just make the fights easier since they aren't "thinkers?"  Could you instead gently punish them (keep the fights at the difficulty you planned) in the hopes of "training" them to do better?  I can't speak for you or your group, I don't know how much chemistry you have, but I can tell what I think I would do in a similar situation.

Keep a mix of encounters in every session.  Sure, let the players kick open the door and bum rush the slack-jawed bad guys like they want.  But I would certainly have my more brutal, thought-intensive encounters. If they bleed, they bleed.  These fights would have been easier if the players had used some sort of a plan.  

Then, during the session debriefing I would mention this.  Depending, again, on your "chemistry" either to the whole group or just to a couple of guys you think were close to forming a plan, got their ass especially kicked, or tend to be group leaders.  

Maybe it will stick, maybe it won't.  I believe there is a silver lining to most gaming situations and groups, you play to have fun and all that happy horse shit.  But you're the one running the game so you shouldn't be miserable trying to fit their playing style.

Quote from: Soylent Green;411261I see. Your players seem to have discovered the James Bond Method.

That is pretty funny, and pretty true.

Quote from: winkingbishop;411271Oh ho, I see what you mean now.  Tis a slippery slope you walk.  Do you just make the fights easier since they aren't "thinkers?"  Could you instead gently punish them (keep the fights at the difficulty you planned) in the hopes of "training" them to do better?  I can't speak for you or your group, I don't know how much chemistry you have, but I can tell what I think I would do in a similar situation.

Keep a mix of encounters in every session.  Sure, let the players kick open the door and bum rush the slack-jawed bad guys like they want.  But I would certainly have my more brutal, thought-intensive encounters. If they bleed, they bleed.  These fights would have been easier if the players had used some sort of a plan.  

Then, during the session debriefing I would mention this.  Depending, again, on your "chemistry" either to the whole group or just to a couple of guys you think were close to forming a plan, got their ass especially kicked, or tend to be group leaders.  

Maybe it will stick, maybe it won't.  I believe there is a silver lining to most gaming situations and groups, you play to have fun and all that happy horse shit.  But you're the one running the game so you shouldn't be miserable trying to fit their playing style.

I hear ya. In a lot of ways I think they want a realistic, immersion game. They don't respect it if they think I changed something. If I ever have a cut scene, like the ship they are passengers on being sunk or something, I've had them directly ask me if it was organic or planned. They want random, organic, preplanned material characters in a randomly sorted world, they just seem to hope that magically it will bend around their will.

It's hard to read the situation over the net, so please be aware that I'm going to make a heap of assumptions.

You say your players love combat but I doubt they're very tactically minded even in combat. So I also doubt that they're very trainable.

That said, if you've been playing with kid gloves, you may have trained them yourself that the best way to deal with a problem is to just blunder into it, since everything always turns out okay in the end. I doubt this, given your "angry players" thread, but it's a possibility. If so, I'd suggest finding a way to make PC death more palatable (IMO, you could start by using a system with quick & easy chargen), and then letting them bash around until they figure things out.

You may also be dealing with people who don't like to think strategically, but who do enjoy tactics. You'll have to sort that out yourself. If so, then the answer of course is to revert to the "string of EL-balanced encounters" model that basically seems to dominate modern D&D scenario writing. Do not offer anything which will distract the players. Simply give them scenarios that require them to do A then B then C in a straight line, with a fight at each stage. It sounds like these guys are very predictable, so you don't have to worry about them getting creative and skipping an encounter.

But, if they're crap at actually managing a fight as well as being strategically hopeless, this isn't the way to go. Instead I'd look to a game that uses a simple one-dimensional attritional model of combat, but with "perks" that add some flash and narrative color. Old-school D&D can be run this way by using a very abstract approach to positioning (you basically just need to know if enemies are in missile or melee range, and whether PCs are in the front or second rank). The color comes from spells, magic items, and monster special abilities. FTA! might also do the trick (based on a partial reading), because it's got stunts. Heroquest (also based on partial reading) could also be an option. From there, you just make sure the players have enough information to be able to tell if they're winning or losing. Depending on how pathetic they are, you might have to tell them the enemies' remaining hit points during the fight. Hopefully not, but the basic idea is to make things sufficiently transparent that they'll be able to decide for themselves whether to continue fighting or to run away. And if they do run away, give the opponents at most one free strike before disengaging.

It is the weirdest thing, they use to be better years ago. They have gotten WORSE! It is so strange and I can only think to blame the other game that they do.

But yeah, good advice. I'm still thinking about what I can do differently. I like the string of encounters idea, but I know that most of them would be bored.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;411375But, if they're crap at actually managing a fight as well as being strategically hopeless, this isn't the way to go. Instead I'd look to a game that uses a simple one-dimensional attritional model of combat, but with "perks" that add some flash and narrative color. Old-school D&D can be run this way by using a very abstract approach to positioning (you basically just need to know if enemies are in missile or melee range, and whether PCs are in the front or second rank). The color comes from spells, magic items, and monster special abilities. FTA! might also do the trick (based on a partial reading), because it's got stunts. Heroquest (also based on partial reading) could also be an option. From there, you just make sure the players have enough information to be able to tell if they're winning or losing. Depending on how pathetic they are, you might have to tell them the enemies' remaining hit points during the fight. Hopefully not, but the basic idea is to make things sufficiently transparent that they'll be able to decide for themselves whether to continue fighting or to run away. And if they do run away, give the opponents at most one free strike before disengaging.

That's basically what I had in mind when suggesting straightforward dungeon crawling earlier in the thread. *nod*

Why would they be bored?

I'm thinking maybe it's because they know in advance what must happen--that they have to do A, then B, then C.

But you don't have to tell them that. You just set things up so that they'll do A, and having done A, the most obvious/direct thing to do is B. Or I should say, it's obvious to you, knowing them, that they'll do B after they do A. You may have to avoid offering sidetracks, which sounds like what might have happened in the incident that triggered this thread.

Traveling is a good scenario set up for this since it makes it natural for there to be a fixed progression of encounters, with or without telling the players in advance what to expect. (Probably they'll know about some things, and not about others.)

Another might be to take the action to the players immediately, which sort of reverses the pattern you've described. Instead of having them blundering into situations and getting ambushed, you can just ambush them right from the start. E.g., they've just arrived at some castle, and right when they're being welcomed, there's an attack by a rival lord or a monster. (A little like the story of the Argonauts & Phineas & the harpies.)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;411470Why would they be bored?

I'm thinking maybe it's because they know in advance what must happen--that they have to do A, then B, then C.

But you don't have to tell them that. You just set things up so that they'll do A, and having done A, the most obvious/direct thing to do is B. Or I should say, it's obvious to you, knowing them, that they'll do B after they do A. You may have to avoid offering sidetracks, which sounds like what might have happened in the incident that triggered this thread.

Traveling is a good scenario set up for this since it makes it natural for there to be a fixed progression of encounters, with or without telling the players in advance what to expect. (Probably they'll know about some things, and not about others.)

Another might be to take the action to the players immediately, which sort of reverses the pattern you've described. Instead of having them blundering into situations and getting ambushed, you can just ambush them right from the start. E.g., they've just arrived at some castle, and right when they're being welcomed, there's an attack by a rival lord or a monster. (A little like the story of the Argonauts & Phineas & the harpies.)

I'll mull it over. Thanks for the help man.