Quote from: Anon Adderlan;643272Yeah, but that's an extreme example. Of course no 1st level player is going to engage a fucking dragon, but what about an Owlbear? Or Aboleth? Or Beholder?

Not taking these doomed actions has more to do with experience and less to do with IQ.

Nope, I actually had a TPK as the result of a group of 1st level Players chasing after a very deadly black dragon in a swampy area of the game map. I spent most of a session showing them through its actions that it was not going to be a pushover and was too much for the group. They still went after it and got themselves killed.

Quote from: jeff37923;643494Nope, I actually had a TPK as the result of a group of 1st level Players chasing after a very deadly black dragon in a swampy area of the game map. I spent most of a session showing them through its actions that it was not going to be a pushover and was too much for the group. They still went after it and got themselves killed.

...

OK, I stand corrected.

Out of curiosity though, was this a group who had never played before?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;643501...

OK, I stand corrected.

Out of curiosity though, was this a group who had never played before?

It was a mix of experienced and inexperienced Players in Basic D&D. However, after spending six hours showing them that the black dragon's lair was underwater, that it took out a tribe of lizard-men all by itself, that it was capable of casting spells, that it was definitely large and old, even an inexperienced Player should have gotten a clue that it was a bad idea.

Sometimes Players get ate up with stupid and while it is the DM's job to provide interesting and fun challenges for the group, the DM should never feel that they have to save the group from itself if that group is Hell-bent on doing something dumb.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;643469I agree. Only saw this is a player, myself...because as a GM, I won't let one person ruin everyone else's fun.

as a Gm if the player is bieng a dick I just enforce the rules, all of them.
Its been a long time since I had to do it but ....

They roll a PC and describe them like arnie or whatever, so I make them roll on the DMG  hieght and weight table now they are 5'8" and weigh close to 200lbs.
They don't wear a helmet... so 1 in 6 attacks is aimed at their unarmoured AC 10 head. They were a helmet so their listen and obervation rolls are reduced etc etc ...
Usually they quietly leave.

I have only had to do it a handful of times.

I am glad to see that my first question here has generated a lot of debate and differing views. It makes for interesting, and entertaining reading.

Quote from: jeff37923;643504It was a mix of experienced and inexperienced Players in Basic D&D. However, after spending six hours showing them that the black dragon's lair was underwater, that it took out a tribe of lizard-men all by itself, that it was capable of casting spells, that it was definitely large and old, even an inexperienced Player should have gotten a clue that it was a bad idea.

Sometimes Players get ate up with stupid and while it is the DM's job to provide interesting and fun challenges for the group, the DM should never feel that they have to save the group from itself if that group is Hell-bent on doing something dumb.

I blame newer video game design for some of this.  Back 10+ years ago, it wasn't unusual to find a very dangerous area nestled in among lower level places.  The point wasn't to spoonfeed you, but that you learned very early on that you had to avoid certain areas, to run from the baddies, until you were powerful enough to take them on.  You weren't supposed to take on the Shadowlords in Ultima V until you found out their origin and how to defeat them.  Until then, you had to hightail it out of any town they showed up in.

Nowadays, you don't get that sort of hard earned respect; you get the "if the GM threw it out there, it must be able to be overcome" attitude.  I had to explain to my son out of game that no, the gang that he refused to give protection money to and who subsequently burned his character's house down was too powerful for him to take on.... Yet.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;643523I blame newer video game design for some of this.  Back 10+ years ago, it wasn't unusual to find a very dangerous area nestled in among lower level places.  The point wasn't to spoonfeed you, but that you learned very early on that you had to avoid certain areas, to run from the baddies, until you were powerful enough to take them on.  You weren't supposed to take on the Shadowlords in Ultima V until you found out their origin and how to defeat them.  Until then, you had to hightail it out of any town they showed up in.

Nowadays, you don't get that sort of hard earned respect; you get the "if the GM threw it out there, it must be able to be overcome" attitude.  I had to explain to my son out of game that no, the gang that he refused to give protection money to and who subsequently burned his character's house down was too powerful for him to take on.... Yet.

Heh.

"Aw shucks, that dragon killed us lads. Let's reload. Why are you looking at me like  that?"

Quote from: flyerfan1991;643523I blame newer video game design for some of this.  Back 10+ years ago, it wasn't unusual to find a very dangerous area nestled in among lower level places.  The point wasn't to spoonfeed you, but that you learned very early on that you had to avoid certain areas, to run from the baddies, until you were powerful enough to take them on.  You weren't supposed to take on the Shadowlords in Ultima V until you found out their origin and how to defeat them.  Until then, you had to hightail it out of any town they showed up in.

It's true. If a newer game does put high level areas close to low level ones it's called bad design. Even if NPCs say not to go there if you speak with them.

Quote from: jibbajibba;643519as a Gm if the player is bieng a dick I just enforce the rules, all of them.
Its been a long time since I had to do it but ....

They roll a PC and describe them like arnie or whatever, so I make them roll on the DMG  hieght and weight table now they are 5'8" and weigh close to 200lbs.
They don't wear a helmet... so 1 in 6 attacks is aimed at their unarmoured AC 10 head. They were a helmet so their listen and obervation rolls are reduced etc etc ...
Usually they quietly leave.

I have only had to do it a handful of times.

Maybe you're just not describing your reasoning very clearly, but in this particular example, you're the one who comes across as a dick, not the player.

One, exactly what faux-pass did that poor player commit with describing his character like Arnie? Do you have a secret hate-on for Schwarzenegger ever since he raped you sister? Do you belong to a religion which teaches that long hair on a male, even in the description of a fictional character, is anathema? Or are you specifically running a campaign focusing on the adventures crippled morons, making a physically formidable PC inappropriate? What did he DO wrong? In your example, the guy didn't do anything demonstrably dickish.

If his horrendous dickwad crime was that he described his character as a lot more physically developed as his scores indicate, than why don't you just say "No way, not with a Strength of 13. You could look like Sean Bean or Gabriel Byrne, but not Schwarzie." As a DM, you're supposed to clear up issues primarily by simply communicating not by going "RRRRRR YOU TOUCHED BY BERSERK BUTTON I'LL DRIVE YOU AWAY FROM MY GAME".

Two, whatever the player's extremely vaguely defined sin was, your "solution" to it is horrible. If there's a misunderstanding because you're not on the same page, you should get on the same page. If he's deliberately being disrupting, you should politely but firmly not invite him back. But your self-described panacea is to throw the rulebook at him, hitting him with every single hindersome rule that you're not applying to any of the other players. Which is double standards. And you're even being passive-agressive about it. Instead of coming out and saying "Yo, I'm not cool with what you do in the game because Reasons A, B, and C, so please change it", you just go "Yeah, sure, you're doing everything fine, keep truckin' (oh, and here's another screw you! ruling)" and punish him without explanation until you drive him away. In your example, you address the (completely undescribed) problem in the worst possible way a DM could.

Again, that's just based on what you have actually written in your example. Maybe you just failed to mention a few highly relevant points that would shed an entirely different light on the whole fictional situation. But as it stands right now, it only presents you as a dick, not your fictional player.

Quote from: Malygris;643520I am glad to see that my first question here has generated a lot of debate and differing views. It makes for interesting, and entertaining reading.

Yeah, it was a good one- keep it up dude .

Quote from: Premier;643550Maybe you're just not describing your reasoning very clearly, but in this particular example, you're the one who comes across as a dick, not the player.

One, exactly what faux-pass did that poor player commit with describing his character like Arnie? Do you have a secret hate-on for Schwarzenegger ever since he raped you sister? Do you belong to a religion which teaches that long hair on a male, even in the description of a fictional character, is anathema? Or are you specifically running a campaign focusing on the adventures crippled morons, making a physically formidable PC inappropriate? What did he DO wrong? In your example, the guy didn't do anything demonstrably dickish.

If his horrendous dickwad crime was that he described his character as a lot more physically developed as his scores indicate, than why don't you just say "No way, not with a Strength of 13. You could look like Sean Bean or Gabriel Byrne, but not Schwarzie." As a DM, you're supposed to clear up issues primarily by simply communicating not by going "RRRRRR YOU TOUCHED BY BERSERK BUTTON I'LL DRIVE YOU AWAY FROM MY GAME".

Two, whatever the player's extremely vaguely defined sin was, your "solution" to it is horrible. If there's a misunderstanding because you're not on the same page, you should get on the same page. If he's deliberately being disrupting, you should politely but firmly not invite him back. But your self-described panacea is to throw the rulebook at him, hitting him with every single hindersome rule that you're not applying to any of the other players. Which is double standards. And you're even being passive-agressive about it. Instead of coming out and saying "Yo, I'm not cool with what you do in the game because Reasons A, B, and C, so please change it", you just go "Yeah, sure, you're doing everything fine, keep truckin' (oh, and here's another screw you! ruling)" and punish him without explanation until you drive him away. In your example, you address the (completely undescribed) problem in the worst possible way a DM could.

Again, that's just based on what you have actually written in your example. Maybe you just failed to mention a few highly relevant points that would shed an entirely different light on the whole fictional situation. But as it stands right now, it only presents you as a dick, not your fictional player.

A little .. the description of arnie like PC is not symptomatic .
I mean that the player was a dick from the get go and no ammount of talking him down seems to affect it so then rather than man up and say dude this isn't going to work I act like a Dick so fair point

Like I said its has been a long time .... so yeah as I was typing it I was kind of agreeing with you

Quote from: Charlie Sheen;643544It's true. If a newer game does put high level areas close to low level ones it's called bad design. Even if NPCs say not to go there if you speak with them.

Eh... WoW had the undead starting area right next to WPL, which was at the time I think level 50 - 55. Heck, there was a dungeon in the same zone for high 20's, low 30's, with mobs around it in that same level range IIRC.

Now there was a pretty obvious choke point to WPL, so newbies mostly didn't make the mistake of going through there and getting slaughtered by bears. But that doesn't change the fact that it was there. Meanwhile the dungeon was not nearly as closed off, I think there might even have been some quests and such that took people close to it.

So this kind of thing still does happen.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;643554Eh... WoW had the undead starting area right next to WPL, which was at the time I think level 50 - 55. Heck, there was a dungeon in the same zone for high 20's, low 30's, with mobs around it in that same level range IIRC.

Now there was a pretty obvious choke point to WPL, so newbies mostly didn't make the mistake of going through there and getting slaughtered by bears. But that doesn't change the fact that it was there. Meanwhile the dungeon was not nearly as closed off, I think there might even have been some quests and such that took people close to it.

So this kind of thing still does happen.

That's my point. It does still happen, but a lot of people complain about it. They don't understand just because an area is close to you doesn't mean you should go there. And so if a newer game allows you to go into an area you can't handle yet it's the game's fault when you go there and die. Even though in most games death isn't even a big deal.

Quote from: Charlie Sheen;643557That's my point. It does still happen, but a lot of people complain about it.

I'm not particularly sure I heard much complaints about that in my stint in WoW, and that was a good six or seven years.

I know they changed it in one of the recent expansions, but that was more for flow and options than anything - pretty much everybody but the undead had two zones they could travel to after the introductory stuff, while they only had one.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;643561I'm not particularly sure I heard much complaints about that in my stint in WoW, and that was a good six or seven years.

I know they changed it in one of the recent expansions, but that was more for flow and options than anything - pretty much everybody but the undead had two zones they could travel to after the introductory stuff, while they only had one.

Really? MMO players bitch about everything. Though six or seven years ago the whole follow the glowing arrow through the game thing wasn't as prominent.