To put it another way.  You can't have a lieing DM lie about whether or not the liers are lieing.  

Not in an imaginary world with out objective reality.

Headless, I just have to ask...do you type on a watch or something?  

Another possible outcome that could be interesting (but I wouldn't do anything to try to make it happen) would be if the newly-evil PC and any sympathizers join Lt. Cliche in escaping (or if the still-heroic PCs flee), leading to a game that could be run with some players as antagonists or an opposing group.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;938792Of course, as I've said more times before than I can count, we didn't play "ONE BAND OF HEROES TRIED AND TRUE WELDED TOGETHER AT THE HIP."

You know... I've pretty much never seen that in any group I've played in or DMed for.

Sure the groups tended to try to stay together. Its pretty much a death sentence in most RPGs to not to. (Unless you really know you are too much for the area.) But rare have they been really close. There might be strong friendships between smaller groups in the group. But never the whole group unified.

And back to the OPs question.

As a DM what would I do?

First off the villain is going to try and get the device back ASAP. And since they just dropped it that means they are close enough to make a grab for it and I foresee a nice little tug-o-war developing.

Past that I do like some of the others here and wait to see how the other players react.

Quote from: soltakss;938778That situation would work perfectly well with RuneQuest or, probably, any game. Nothing D&Dish there.

It would be a little odd in Bunnies and Burrows

It was a joke, man.

Though cornering the guy/gal/ghoulie in a "dungeon" did feel like a reference to D and D style jargon where dungeon is a place where adventures occur and might be anything from a cave complex to a ruined castle to the rotting body of a dead giant unless it was meant as a literal dungeon which would be kind of odd place for this sort of showdown to happen but anything's possible.

But besides, its fantasy role playing. Isn't all fantasy role playing D and D?

(Kidding)

Quote from: Omega;938843You know... I've pretty much never seen that in any group I've played in or DMed for.

Sure the groups tended to try to stay together. Its pretty much a death sentence in most RPGs to not to. (Unless you really know you are too much for the area.) But rare have they been really close. There might be strong friendships between smaller groups in the group. But never the whole group unified.

Generally been the other way for us. The PCs were pretty tight or get to be that way quickly. There were rivalries and animosity but rarely anything violent or aggressive among PCs. Even in Vampire bizarrely enough.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;938792Also, I don't have "bosses" and "mini bosses" and "lieutenant bosses."  I have NPCs who are pursing their agendas, and how the players interact with them is up to the players.

Yes you do.  The King of a castle who happens to be a warrior powerful enough to challenge the PC's.  The Wizard at the top of the Tower.  Those are Bosses.

It seems you're confused in thinking that video games came up with the concept, rather than just codifying it.

Every bad guy in an action/adventure movie, television, comic, novel, is a Boss encounter.  A mini-Boss or Bosses, are lieutenants that have a bunch of minions/goons to control.  The Boss idea has been in most media and stories we've been telling ourselves since the conception of language.

Video Games just codified it firmly, but it's been in pulp adventure comics, Western movies from the 30's to 70's and beyond, from Epic Fantasy stories.  Hell, what do you think Lord of The Ring's Sauron was?  Yeah, there was a macguffin to defeat him, but he was the end boss of the story, the goal to defeat in some fashion.  You don't have to 'fight' an end boss, a 'puzzle' is another method to defeat.

Yes, you do use it, because D&D is built around the same assumptions, as long as you're using Conan of Cimmeria, Errol Flynn movies and The Lord of The Rings trilogy as inspirations.

Quote from: Nexus;938907Isn't all fantasy role playing D and D?

Yes.

Quote from: Opaopajr;938693... Thank the merciful stars that the topic title was not the start of some appaling slash fic trend on this site?

What slash? She grabs the sceptre:D!
That's no slash, though it could be a fan fiction;).

Quote from: CRKrueger;938833Headless, I just have to ask...do you type on a watch or something?  

Yes.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;938936Yes you do.  The King of

I think he means that he doesn't create bosses as gates to pass through to advance the party along a central storyline but instead worlds for the PCs to rattle around in with 'bosses' as lesser and greater challenges that players may or may not choose to work against and eventually have to deal with.

Seems to me there is a difference in how artificial and forced the players' relationship is to particular villains.

Or more simply, is the GM running the game as if there is an expected series of escalating confrontations with mooks and then bosses which are often set-pieces and may involve puzzle-like challenges that have good & bad solutions that strongly determine the outcome, where brute force, tactics or other logical ideas that may come up in play probably wouldn't work?

Even the real world has rulers, lieutenants, soldiers, servants, and even some crime bosses with multi-level organizations. The real-world even has some anti-organized-crime units which track crime organizations, often for years, trying to imprison elusive crime bosses who are insulated by their organizations.  But that's only what a small sliver of the population is up to, the world doesn't hang in the balance, it doesn't tend to go down like Miami Vice with hierarchical engagements and climactic heroic gun battles where the boss is a combat monster, and the puzzles are about how to get them convicted properly.

When I notice that I have something like a "big bad evil guy", I check myself to see how cliché I am being, and tend to expect my players to avoid them rather than track them down. I look for other things I can flesh out and have be interesting. If they do start trying to loot some dangerous evil type, I just detail the evil guy and related characters, where they are and what they do, and play out what happens. Rarely if ever am I going to set it up like a puzzle where they have powerful enchantments which are essentially puzzles for the players to solve how they can be used as a fatal weakness.

Instead of the players following clues and fighting mook fights leading to mini-boss fights leading to big-bad-boss fights solved by designed-in puzzle weaknesses, the players tend to approach things in their own way, and often the target organization notices and tries to organize itself to deal with the threat, so it becomes a kind of information & maneuver battle and/or pursuit/evasion. And meanwhile everything else in the world is also going on and responding to any chaos this may be causing, and often various (PC & NPC) characters in the struggle may opt to go far away instead of fighting it out.

Quote from: Skarg;939075Seems to me there is a difference in how artificial and forced the players' relationship is to particular villains.

...

I don't understand how, after reading the scenario I posited, that everyone is inferring so much background. Also, why are you all jumping to the worse Evil DM scenario?

What if several clues discovered during previous adventures pointed to the possibility of this scepter being both a source of power and a way to bypass the BigBadEvilGuy's defenses? Now, why does this mean this is the ONLY way to bypass his defenses? Why assume that this DM in the scenario is railroading his players?

You know what's even more disconcerting about this thought exercise?

The setup placed YOU as the GM. YOU are GMing the scenario. I made no mention of how you got there, or the setup, or anything. In media res you find yourself at this moment, and then I ask "What do you do?".

This leads me to believe that the bulk of people admonishing this terrible GM are actually admonishing themselves! It's also an interesting dive into the psychology of people. Even with all the power, all the imagination, all the ability to frame your response with you being in control - you still pissed all over the GM (yourselves). Weird.

Maybe, understanding the purpose of [Think Fast] - some of you want to stop pissing on yourselves and answer the question with "the FULL power of your fully operational GMing capabilities"?

Quote from: trechriron;939095This leads me to believe that the bulk of people admonishing this terrible GM are actually admonishing themselves! It's also an interesting dive into the psychology of people. Even with all the power, all the imagination, all the ability to frame your response with you being in control - you still pissed all over the GM (yourselves). Weird.

Entire rest of post pre-stipulated to be opinion and my own interpretation

Well, not exactly. People are saying, "I, as a DM, would never..." So no, they aren't admonishing themselves, they are being defensive about their own DMing talents. Why people consider this scenario to be so odious, or even why we feel the need to pretend that our own DMing is universally beyond reproach are topics worthy of analysis. However, I think you miss the mark to say we are admonishing ourselves.