Roll your attack is nothing like the above statements.  It's the resolution of the game system.  It's how the setting of that world is affected through the mechanics of the game system.

That has nothing to do with a character's knowledge, thought process, or actions.

If you're the type of GM that wants input into the player's decision-making process, toss in an NPC.  Then your NPC can say "Pardon Sir Paladin, but the last owlbear almost killed us all, aren't we too weak to take out another one?"  

If you don't have an NPC to say it, and no other player is saying it, then all the players, together are making the same, rather obvious error.  This isn't pixel bitching, "sheesh you guys didn't try turning the key 7 times counterclockwise and 9 times clockwise, of course you didn't open the door", this is very simple logic.  If the players can't see it, they're in "if it's there, we can kill it" mode and need a reality adjustment.

Let it play out.  If someone doesn't need a crutch, giving them one to use will end up crippling them.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;757289A powerful referee tool: "Are you SURE you want to do that?"  Followed by silence and a little grin.

I don't think I've ever said "no, you don't do that" but I have, in rare cases of real balls-out ruin-the-session idiocy, where an ordinary "are you sure" sly grin wasn't working, gone with "do you want to fucking die? That will kill you. You'll die."

Quote from: CRKrueger;757382Roll your attack is nothing like the above statements.  It's the resolution of the game system.  It's how the setting of that world is affected through the mechanics of the game system.

That has nothing to do with a character's knowledge, thought process, or actions.
...

Sorry, I don't buy it.  You and I may draw different lines at where meta begins and ends, but this strikes me as "it has to be perfect or it sucks" and I'm firmly in the "perfect is the enemy of best" camp.  The GM telling players things only the players know is exactly the rules of every TTRPG I've ever read.  I'm agreeing you should TRY to do it the way you suggest, but that's it's no gaming sin to keep the game moving by occasionally blurting out "That would be suicidal in case my hints didn't tell you."  Nothing wrong with a TPK because a party failed when they did know things, but it's certainly a greater break in the game to have everyone make new characters when they didn't understand the hints (and it's usually obvious to the GM, who is also allowed a mistake now and again).

Quote from: CRKrueger;757382Let it play out.  If someone doesn't need a crutch, giving them one to use will end up crippling them.

+100

Free will includes the right to death by stupidity. Either the players will get the idea of consequences after their 3rd TPK or so or not. Eventually they will want to reach 2nd level and play in a manner which allows them to do so.

OTOH if they enjoy the endless meat-grinding process then I won't stop them.

Quote from: Gabriel2;756875I've been the suck GM on many occasions.  Railroads, GM PC Theater, arbitrary calls against players.  I've done all the mainstream sins.

Most of the time, I was just trying to present something fun to my players.  I wasn't trying to be a suck GM.  I was trying to do something entertaining and doing it badly.

However, a few times I've just flat out been an ass.  They're not particularly interesting stories.

One time there was a player named Roger in our group who most of us had issues with.  So one game session he was making a routine pilot check and failed it by one.  I was in a bad mood that day, so I declared that his failed pilot check caused hs variable fighter to fall apart in the sky.  I told him he successfully ejected, but was going to have to sit out the adventure and wait for rescue, and that if he left before his character was rescued, then his character would die.   I then made him sit there for six hours doing nothing. It was purely a dick move.  No one else thought it was anything less than what he deserved, but it was still a dick move.

Another time I was running a game and doing a plotline where a PC had been possessed, but the player was still playing the character.  I told the player the little voice inside his head was instructing him to capture my GM PC and kill him.  So, the player did, quite eagerly I might add.  He never tried to struggle against this instruction even once.  I wonder why?  Anyway, it became clear the player was going to be successful in killing my GM-PC, so I paniced and arbitrarily pulled some crap out so I could kill his character before he killed mine.  Yeah, dick move, because I intentionally set him up to just declare his character dead.  Everyone was rightfully pissed with me for that one.

However, the funniest one is another Roger story.

Some backstory, I had this strange double pronged knife.  It was something I had found.  It was probably from the forties or something.  It was pretty wicked looking, and it had some rust on it to make it look especially nasty, because the rust was on it in just such a way that made it look like it was still stained with blood from a recent murder.

Anyway, we were having game night as usual.  As usual, Roger was being himself.  I forget what was happening in the game.  I think Roger said something about demonic sacrifice.  Whatever he said, it was the trigger for what we did next.

I told everyone else in the group "it is time."  We hadn't planned any of this beforehand.  It was purely spontaneous.  It's kind of scary how coordinated we were.  They grabbed Roger and hurled him down to the floor, holding him down while he screamed in confusion.  I turned and brought the evil looking knife out of it's hidey hole.

As I turned around I held my arms out and chanted stuff like "almighty satan, we do give this virgin sacrifice unto you..." blah, blah, blah.  This scared Roger even more, and he was screaming bloody murder and struggling for his life.  But everyone else managed to keep him held down while I kept chanting.  Then, I said something like "Amen Satan" and looked down at him as crazily as I could.  He was yelling, "Oh god, oh god, please don't kill me." or some shit like that.  I acted like I was going to stab him, and he let out a blood curdling girly scream worthy of a slasher movie.

That was finally what did it for me.  I started laughing and couldn't stop.  Neither could anyone else as they let go of Roger.  Roger was paralyzed for a moment, still recovering from fear.  He said something like "You guys are assholes" and fled.  We probably kept laughing about it for at least an hour.

I guess it wasn't quite bad enough a gaming experience, because Roger was back to play next week.

What did Roger do to earn so much spite?

Quote from: Imp;757383I don't think I've ever said "no, you don't do that" but I have, in rare cases of real balls-out ruin-the-session idiocy, where an ordinary "are you sure" sly grin wasn't working, gone with "do you want to fucking die? That will kill you. You'll die."

See, I won't stop Players from having their characters commit to actions that will kill them. A big part of my games is "stupidity kills". After having to deal with a lot of that from open table games, I've stopped trying to prevent one Player from doing stupid shit that kills the party - to me it is the party's job to keep idiots in check.

Now I'm talking stupid here, not ignorance. Not knowing setting or rule nuances that will hurt them is not the Players fault. Defying any kind of common sense is the Player's fault.

For example, had a party of three low levels observe an entire orc tribe on the march. Instead of just letting them pass and escaping with the information, one Player decides that they attack and charges. End result, TPK due to second hand stupidity.

Quote from: jeff37923;757396Now I'm talking stupid here, not ignorance. Not knowing setting or rule nuances that will hurt them is not the Players fault. Defying any kind of common sense is the Player's fault.

I think that is an important qualifier. I want to make sure the Player has all the information he needs so that his bad choices are all on him, not on my faulty presentation.

Quote from: Simlasa;757407I think that is an important qualifier. I want to make sure the Player has all the information he needs so that his bad choices are all on him, not on my faulty presentation.

QFT!

And I had no idea posts require 4 characters until now  (I will nonetheless try not to abuse QFTing)

Quote from: jeff37923;757396See, I won't stop Players from having their characters commit to actions that will kill them. A big part of my games is "stupidity kills". After having to deal with a lot of that from open table games, I've stopped trying to prevent one Player from doing stupid shit that kills the party - to me it is the party's job to keep idiots in check.

Well like I said it's a very rare thing for me and I'm happy to let characters die out of ordinary dumbness. It's more the "I drive the wagon off the bridge into the lava/ I press the History Eraser Button" type of thing that drives me to the limit. Charging the orc tribe would rate the raised eyebrow treatment.

Quote from: Nexus;757394What did Roger do to earn so much spite?

Short version?  He was a liar and a klepto.  He also liked blaming other people whenever he got caught.  Despite none of us having anything to do with Roger's shenanigans, none of us could enter local shops without being viewed as criminals, because Roger had gotten caught and had spun a tale that we were Fagin and he was just the innocent Oliver Twist.  All of us had lost things to Roger's theft: RPG stuff, music cassettes, books, money, anything he could get away with stealing.

Does that excuse it?  Oh, hell no.  My actions weren't a direct retribution for any specific thing Roger had ever done.  They were just a vague and uncoordinated response to Roger being Roger.  I was being an asshole.  In other words, I was being a teenager.  

I bet if Roger has told anyone that story, his version of it has him jumping up, beating us all up, and holding the knife to my throat while he says some line from an Arnold movie.  

That reminds me of another dick move I did that I might as well add to this:

I had been running the game for a while and one player had an on again off again relationship with a stereotypical hot girl NPC.  There had been a little delay since the last time this player had been able to game with us, and I had continued subplots while they were gone.

One of those subplots, created purely to satisfy teenage fanservice requirements, was that the hot girlfriend NPC had developed a relationship with another hot girl NPC.  So yeah, two hot girls kissing, a sure fire crowd pleaser.  It was kind of a humorous sub plot.

Anyway, the player finally got back to gaming with us.  The sapphic subplot had not been revealed to him by any of the other players.  I decided to have him find out in the most humorous way possible.  His character would walk around the corner, see his girlfriend kissing the other girl, and comedic hijinks would ensue.

Well, they did, but not in the way I even remotely intended.  Everyone else probably sees what is about to happen, but I certainly didn't.

The player in question went ballistic.  "Do you think I'm gay?  Do you think I have a small dick?"  To be absolutely clear,  he wasn't speaking in character.  He was genuinely pissed at me.  He thought I was accusing him of being homosexual and simultaneously saying he was incapable of satisfying a woman.  He lit into me, violence ensued, and everyone else thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.

So yeah, a friendship ended like that.  I guess the people who are quick to cry misogyny are basking in satisfaction at how this tale turned out for me.  I really couldn't argue with them.

Regardless, I still laugh when I remember him saying, "Do you think I have a small dick?"

QuoteFor example, had a party of three low levels observe an entire orc tribe on the march. Instead of just letting them pass and escaping with the information, one Player decides that they attack and charges. End result, TPK due to second hand stupidity.

This would get the raised eyebrow from me NOT a TPK. The smart people in the party usually catch a clue muzzle the idiot and we move on.

Quote from: Marleycat;757426This would get the raised eyebrow from me NOT a TPK. The smart people in the party usually catch a clue muzzle the idiot and we move on.

But if the fool charges the orks wattaya gonna do? The other PCs might try running away... but do you pull punches to let them escape?

Since we're talking about orc camps, the people involved still say I'm a dick GM for this one (or they did last time I talked to them a decade ago).  I don't agree, so here goes.

I wanted to run AD&D.  I told everyone I wanted to do a heroic campaign.  The only stipulation I made is that all their PCs had to be good aligned.  This caused quite a bit of grumbling among some of the players, as they claimed this stifled their ability to play.  I held firm and said that was the campaign I wanted to run and if they didn't want to play good characters then they didn't have to play, as I could arrange to run the game on another night.  "Bah!" they replied and made characters anyway.

The opening adventure involved a village under siege from some orcs that had set up operations nearby.  The villagers told the PCs how the orcs were a powerful force.  Very few who had managed to find the orc's camp in the swamp had managed to return alive to bring news of it.  The heroes did some detective work and ventured to the orc camp.

Now, I had dropped hints about the orcs apparently looking for something in the area.  They only raided the village periodically to steal food.  I think I was somewhat heavy handed in my hints that the orcs were up to something and the heroes needed to learn what it was.

When the PCs saw the camp, I described how the orcs had obviously been here for some time and were in the process of fortifying the location.  There were lots of orcs, and I'm pretty sure I said directly that a frontal assault would be pointless.  The PCs discussed things for a while, and then they told me what they were going to do.

"We all charge the camp."

"Really?  There are a lot of orcs."

"Yes.  We'll catch them by surprise."

I sighed and decided to ignore all the snares and traps which I had mapped out which the heroes were about to run through (they chose the path of maximum resistance).  I generously treated it like Lancelot's attack on the castle gate guards in Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail and granted them surprise despite there being no way in hell that made any rational sense.  I suppose those were my mistakes right there, but I at least wanted to have a fight to end my campaign rather than a simple slaughter of characters pinned in traps.

A few combat rounds later, everyone except one character was dead.  His dice were hot as hell, and my dice refused to kill him.  Instead of fleeing, he stood his ground and killed dozens of orcs.  Eventually Boromir died and I had a TPK on my hands.

"Well, that was stupid," I said.

"What do you mean stupid?  You forced us to do that!"

"Huh?"

"We're all good!  We HAD to charge the orcs.  You railroaded us into that!"

That night and for months later, I thought they were trollin' me.  They insisted since I had forced them to be good aligned, that meant they were required to play in a completely non-tactical and non-intelligent manner.  Given the consistency over the years of their declaration that I "intentionally fucked them over," I have to conclude that they genuinely believed and still believe that I forced them to charge the orc camp and commit suicide.

Quote from: Simlasa;757432But if the fool charges the orks wattaya gonna do? The other PCs might try running away... but do you pull punches to let them escape?

I probably would, I see no reason to penalize the whole group for one idiot who has been warned by me multiple times and the group straight up at least once. So idiot boy can just go sit on the couch and start creating a new character and I'll stuff him in there somehow at the end of the session most likely.

Now if they ALL insist on being idiots despite this then they get what they deserve (which is dead, ate, orc dinner). Now of course in 5e it's obvious that large groups of anything are highly dangerous to any level of character so it may be much less of a problem hopefully.

Quote from: Gabriel2;757434"We're all good!  We HAD to charge the orcs.  You railroaded us into that!"

So, by their way of thinking good=stupid and there are no good folks left in the setting because they all perish at a young age in misguided Kamikazi attacks on 'evil doers'?

In our Pathfinder games I had other players insisting My PC HAD to attack a hill giant (who they wanted to kill for no particular reason) because I had 'giants' as my 'Preferred Enemy' (or whatever it's called). We were only 2nd level. I talked to the giant instead... peaceful outcome. GM stepped in to say that 'Preferred Enemy' just meant my PC was good at fighting them... not that he flew into a blind rage whenever he saw one.
Now I've got a reputation for being a 'pacifist' because my PCs don't just attack things without reason.