In a tread concerning the superb-sounding ending of his campaign, Imperator wrote (among other things):

Quote from: Imperator;365206I saw how sticking to the dice made the endig more awesome than we could possibly imagine (Agammenon's early defeat due to an special success which pushed him to the Abyss whe he was about to kill one of the PCs,

...to which I replied...

To the thread "The Importance of Failure", I might add "The Importance of Success and Luck".  There are some GMs who believe that no plan should ever go smoothly and that luck should never make things easy for the PCs.  When everyone at the table sticks to the dice, it can be as sweet when a plan comes together or the luck cuts in favor of the PCs as a grueling hard-earned success.  As both a player and GM, I've found that sometimes letting a plan go off smoothly encourages players to plan and they don't feel cheated by their planning paying off and sometimes having things work go easy on the PCs because of how the luck or situation plays out doesn't leave them feeling robbed, either.  Sometimes Golum dances himself into the volcano and it can be quite satisfying when it happens.  It's why I find dice indispensable and prefer rolls to be out in the open.

Benoist suggested I start a new thread for discussion so here it is.

Have you ever had excellent role-playing experiences that consisted of a plan working exactly as planned, where the bad guys didn't know what hit them, or where luck took down a major opponent quite quickly?  How about a game situation that was ruined by an overzealous GM who didn't want things to be too easy for the PCs who never let a plan work out or always had their bad guys recover from bad luck?

Quote from: John Morrow;365233Have you ever had excellent role-playing experiences that consisted of a plan working exactly as planned, where the bad guys didn't know what hit them, or where luck took down a major opponent quite quickly?  How about a game situation that was ruined by an overzealous GM who didn't want things to be too easy for the PCs who never let a plan work out or always had their bad guys recover from bad luck?

Yes to both. I had quite a few games where plans unfolded rather smoothly. Usually, in the best occurences, there would be a few itches along the way, mainly because of bad dice rolls, but it's incredibly satisfying when you come up with a plan and it all works out how it's supposed to.

I remember a Rolemaster game like this where we were trapped in a valley with a village and a baron who was terrorising his own folks. Some of us rallied the folks of the village, while other posed as Assassins to be hired by the baron to kill the leaders of the resistance (aka us). The keep was by a lake, and our troops waited on the lake in barges while the druid raised a mist all over it. A small group faked an attack through the forest with bullhorns and cries, troops were sent from the keep to crush them. While these troops were away, the "assassins" opened the gates to the keep and the troops from the lake invaded it. We ended up fighting our way to the top of the keep where we confronted the baron while the whole keep was burning and falling apart all around.

EPIC.

Everything went smoothly. It was brilliant.

I've met my share of GMs who think that "challenging" the PCs means that nothing ever can possibly go smoothly. Oh yeah. And that is a major mistake precisely because the players will end up thinking "Why bother? It's not going to work anyway" - it forces them into a passive submissive state, where they basically wait for the GM to hand the game to them whenever he or she sees fit. The game is in effect dead at this point, because the players no longer have any motivation to play it.

Thanks for creating the thread, BTW.

Bring me the head of Esamur the Hawk, as played, had a nice mixture of player planning and luck leading to a satisfying anticlimax.

That begs the question, though: when is "challenging" too much of a challenge? Is it group and situation specific, or are there broad guidelines we can come up with to decide when too much is, indeed, too much?

Yep to both. Will elaborate more later.

Traveller game, way back when.

Our free trader emerges frome jump space carrying a very rich load of spec cargo: gems, computers, what-haveyou, all high ticket items. All of our spec capital was tied up in those goods; if we lost 'em, to pirates, to battle damage, that was our fortune gone.

We're immediately hailed by a colonial cruiser that wants to come aboard for 'inspection.'

My character was captain and pilot, so I had the crew go to battle stations while I attempted to get the cruiser to allow us to proceed to port for the inspection. No dice.

I made a Navigation skill check and asked if the cruiser was attempting to match vectors; the referee, gawds bless 'im, played it straight and said they actually appeared to be maneuvering in behind us . . .

. . . for an engine room shot, I conculded.

I order the gunner to open fire. She rolled a hit. Oh, how she rolled a hit.

Remember, starships in Traveller are like Napoleonic ships-of-the-line. You don't blow one up so much as you dismantle it piece by piece. Unlike Star Wars, they don't disappear in sparkles.

Except this time.

Critical hit. Boom goes the dynamite. The Type T, with twice as many turrets and three times the gees, blew up.

At the starport the local space patrol told us the cruiser checked out as one hijacked by its crew. It was indeed a colonial cruiser, but one which had gone pirate. The local space jocks commended us, as did the commodore of the colonial squadron of the hijacked cruiser.

And we kept our wealth.

The game was in my friend's home brew fantasy world using 3e GURPS as the system.

One of the PCs was a king, and the rest of the PCs were his band of kickass buddies.  One of those kickass buddies was my character Fierce Fox and his pony Freewind.  Fierce Fox was from a culture modeled after the American Indian horse culture.  He was an excellent rider, and Freewind was from an exceptional type of pony.  

Demons in this game had previously been barred from entering the physical world due to a barrier.  However, the lich Murmadag (bastard!  We had to kill that lich three stinking times! *shakes fist*) had secretly weakened the barrier so that several very powerful demons were able to cross over.  

Ravaging the kingdom was a giant worm-like demon that had one hundred arms and was uber fast and nigh unkillable by anyone, including us PCs.  This world had black powder weapons.  After much gnashing, hand wringing, and oracles we come up with a two-part plan.  

Part 1:
We scouted out a valley that was rimmed with hills and mountains which had a stream and mill in the center of it.  We gather all the gunpowder available and all the cannons available in the kingdom (empire, actually, with magic gates system).  The cannons are all set up surrounding the valley and are pre-sighted for firing on the mill in the center of the valley.  Barrels and barrels of gunpowder is stuffed in to the mill in the center of the valley.

Part 2:
Someone would have to lure the demon into the valley and into the mill structure, which was effectively a suicide mission.  

The problem was that the demon was uber fast.  It was painfully clear, from previous contact with the demon, that even luring the demon would be dicey since it was so damn fast.  My character, Fierce Fox, volunteered for the mission knowing full well what this meant to him and Freewind.

The time comes and Fierce Fox and Freewind find the demon and start the chase.  I forget the exact number now, but I had to make a series of really hide Ride skills rolls to keep just a nose a head of the demon.  I rolled low a couple of times and the demon whacked Fierce Fox and Freewind with its multiple arms wielding melee weapons.  Another single hit from the demon could have quite possibly killed either Fierce Fox or Freewind, which would have ruined the plan.  Luckily, I rolled well enough to finally make to the mill.  The demon fell for the trap and followed Fierce Fox into the mill.  

That was the signal, and the cannons let loose.  They opened up and fired, obliterating the mill and setting off the stored gunpowder.  The plan worked and the demon was obliterated, as well as Fierce Fox and Freewind.  The Valley was renamed as the Valley of Ten Thousand Cannons, and the day was immortalized in the game world as the Day of Ten Thousand Cannons.  There is now a nice bronze statue of both Fierce Fox and Freewind in the capitol's square, and the Day of Ten Thousand Cannons is celebrated annually in the Empire.

Quote from: John Morrow;365233Have you ever had excellent role-playing experiences that consisted of a plan working exactly as planned, where the bad guys didn't know what hit them, or where luck took down a major opponent quite quickly?

Absolutely. The dice can be a bitch, but they can also be wonderful. That's how 1 hit point fighters make their way through an entire dungeon, slaying several kobolds and wrestling a basilisk and come out unscathed with their share of the treasure.

Or how PCs can ambush the high level sorceror and kill him not instantly, but quick enough to make sure no PCs died (none fighting him, anyway) - not bad for 1st level adventurers.

Of course, PC death does not mean lame and stupid failure all the time. The campaign was the "twenty years on" sequel to one before, and in the last one the savages had attacked on one side of the fortified village, all the defenders rushed to that side, the savages snuck a force over the back. One player's character was the son of his character in the last campaign, so when the savages attacked in this campaign he said, "I remember something my father told me..." and rushed to the back of the village to check.

The savages were indeed creeping over the back, overwhelming the few defenders there. He charged in and fought them, slaying many, but staggering with many wounds. He withdrew, but they came on, opening the gates - so he went in again. Again he fought and slew several, but was wounded again, and withdrew, calling for his comrades to come and fill the breach in the wall.

Then one of the savages came to fight him - a woman warrior! A woman whose betrothed he had slain in a duel, and who wanted revenge. In his wounded state he could not resist too well, as his companions came up, she slew him, cut off his head, and ran away carrying it as arrows and spears fell about her, she dashed through the open gate among the warriors, the PCs and other warriors came up and filled the breach...

He was slain, but the village was saved. All because the dice favoured him, every time he was struck he managed to stay upright and fighting, until the end... And when I ask people what their best game moment ever was, the player mentions that. A death - but a death which was a victory.

One favourite of mine happened in a D&D 3.5 game a few years back.  Rather than do a Tomb of Horrors, traps 'n fights run (which the DM had expected) to retrieve an artifact from a magically fortified temple of evil, we packed our gnome rogue into a bag identical to the High Priest's luggage.

The DM was fairly strict about skill rolls, so the cleric had to Knowledge out how much the High Priest's devotional kit weighed, the fighter sleight-of-handed the bag exchange at an inn, and the rogue made several Escape Artist checks to avoid being detected.

Once inside, he hopped out of the luggage, grabbed the artifact and escaped through a secret passage he'd overheard about while in the bag.

It could have come undone at any roll, but we took pains to arrange the situation to claim bonuses when we could, and the rogue's skill allocations paid off.

Quote from: John Morrow;365233Have you ever had excellent role-playing experiences that consisted of a plan working exactly as planned, where the bad guys didn't know what hit them, or where luck took down a major opponent quite quickly?  

Does it count if you're the GM?

Because session before last, the players came up with a plan to handle some guards with brutal efficiency (basically, Bull Rushing them from a hiding spot so that they'd fall over a 100 foot high ledge) and I let them enact it without interference or hitches.

A couple sessions before that, they were tracking a large party of slavers across some hills. They wanted to set up an ambush. Since they could see and follow the slavers without difficulty and since the slavers hadn't spotted them and didn't have a good chance of doing so, I gave the players carte blanche in setting up their ambush.

And, over the course of the years, I've had plenty of NPCs and monsters fall to good luck on the PCs' party.

Although it sucks when your challenges are overcome so easily, especially if you've worked hard on them, but my philosophy is that there's always another challenge. As a GM, you don't have to ramp up the difficulty or change details or whatnot to "protect" a challenge that's being readily overcome - there'll always be another one, another opportunity.

Moreover, games can grow from these sorts of things. These organic "seeds" can bear wonderful fruit. So instead of trying to figure out to undo what the players are doing, try to figure out a way to make it meaningful, interesting, and tied to current and future elements of the game.

Seanchai

Answering the OP now:

I remember a Vampire game (Giovanni Chronicles III) where my players created such a brilliant deceit that they managed to prevent a Sabbat invasion in Victorian London through clever use of disguise and Disciplines.

When they finally confronted and destroyed (with the help of the Camarilla forces) the small remnants of Sabbat they all smiled and nodded to each other with that "I love when a plan comes together" look. and it was cool. There were rolls, but the players stacked the odds so heavily in their favour through the thorough planning that I could not throw additional risks and troubles in their way without being a complete dick.

Quote from: Benoist;365237I've met my share of GMs who think that "challenging" the PCs means that nothing ever can possibly go smoothly. Oh yeah. And that is a major mistake precisely because the players will end up thinking "Why bother? It's not going to work anyway" - it forces them into a passive submissive state, where they basically wait for the GM to hand the game to them whenever he or she sees fit. The game is in effect dead at this point, because the players no longer have any motivation to play it.

Thanks for creating the thread, BTW.

I've had my share of that, sadly. And I reaped what I had sown.

Quote from: Seanchai;365397Although it sucks when your challenges are overcome so easily, especially if you've worked hard on them, but my philosophy is that there's always another challenge. As a GM, you don't have to ramp up the difficulty or change details or whatnot to "protect" a challenge that's being readily overcome - there'll always be another one, another opportunity.

Moreover, games can grow from these sorts of things. These organic "seeds" can bear wonderful fruit. So instead of trying to figure out to undo what the players are doing, try to figure out a way to make it meaningful, interesting, and tied to current and future elements of the game.

Seanchai

I fully agree with this, and that's how I roll these days.

I'm a believer in balance. You need successes to keep the characters going and to encourage them to continue taking risks. You need failures to remind them that nothing's free in this world and to give them adversities to overcome.

In my Rogue Trader game the characters have had a fairly uninterrupted run of success, until the most recent session when the intervention of the Inquisition has caused them some difficulties. (They've basically been told that they're not to show their faces in Imperial space again until they're confident they'll be able to pass an Inquisitorial "audit" of their ship... which in practice means they're exiled from the Imperium - and therefore cut off from some of their loftier ambitions - until they can sort their shit out.) There's nothing quite like the buzz of a session where the characters undergo a radical reversal of fortune, whether it's a run of good luck turning to disaster or a difficult slog against horrendous odds turning into a flawless victory.