Quote from: jibbajibba;643242I thik you are bieng too black and white.
Not al Killer DMs cheat the system.

I think you misunderstand me. I never wrote anything about cheating the system. Your Kobold Gauntlet looks like a barrel of laughs, not DM sadism in the sense we're writing about.

The role of the GM isn't adversarial, even when the GM causes problems for the party it's still in cooperation with the group, even if those problems cause deaths. If a GM is deliberately pulling a Kobayashi Maru scenario, they've stopped being a GM and started being a dick.

Quote from: Riordan;643173wait...

Sadistical GMs DO have their place...
... in Paranoia.

I'd like to give you details but it seems you do not have clearance for that information, citizen.

Hang on, I'm wearing a green t-shirt on a Friday. Shit. [Vaporised]

Quote from: The Traveller;643252The role of the GM isn't adversarial, even when the GM causes problems for the party it's still in cooperation with the group, even if those problems cause deaths. If a GM is deliberately pulling a Kobayashi Maru scenario, they've stopped being a GM and started being a dick.

THANK YOU.  Kobayashi Maru - "I don't want there to be the possibility of failure, I wanna watch you fail, and am going to create the means for that to happen regardless"

THAT in a nutshell is the killer GM.

Quote from: The Traveller;643252If a GM is deliberately pulling a Kobayashi Maru scenario, they've stopped being a GM and started being a dick.

I don't even think it has to be an all out Kobayashi Maru style scenario for a GM to be described as "sadistic". Sometimes I've seen GMs that were cruel in lording it over the players, and gloated at the severe beatings or situations handed out to players, like they were getting off on it. Omnifray makes a good point in his rambling post- that sometimes sadism is in the eye of the player. But not always.

The other thing I've never been able to get my head around is the opposite problem, that of players deliberately trying to defeat the GM. Haha we broke [name]'s game. That's also pathetic IMO.

Quote from: Malygris;643255I don't even think it has to be an all out Kobayashi Maru style scenario for a GM to be described as "sadistic". Sometimes I've seen GMs that were cruel in lording it over the players, and gloated at the severe beatings or situations handed out to players, like they were getting off on it. Omnifray makes a good point in his rambling post- that sometimes sadism is in the eye of the player. But not always.

Quote from: catty_big;643256The other thing I've never been able to get my head around is the opposite problem, that of players deliberately trying to defeat the GM. Haha we broke [name]'s game. That's also pathetic IMO.

Both symptoms of a pure lack of education, the GM is part of the group as much as any player. If people don't understand that the game will suffer.

Quote from: The Traveller;643252If a GM is deliberately pulling a Kobayashi Maru scenario, they've stopped being a GM and started being a dick.

Intent matters, though. If the GM is running an adventure in which the party needs to be subdued/captured/imprisoned in a given encounter, some will ensure that it happens no matter what the PCs do - and this not with ill intent, but to make the adventure (as it's written) happen.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;643263Intent matters, though. If the GM is running an adventure in which the party needs to be subdued/captured/imprisoned in a given encounter, some will ensure that it happens no matter what the PCs do - and this not with ill intent, but to make the adventure (as it's written) happen.

Exactly so, these would be bad things done for good reasons. The GM is on the players' side in having fun, and sometimes that means throwing challenges at them. It would hardly be much fun if everything went swimmingly all the time, may as well be sitting around having a conversation.

Quote from: catty_big;643256The other thing I've never been able to get my head around is the opposite problem, that of players deliberately trying to defeat the GM. Haha we broke [name]'s game. That's also pathetic IMO.

But leo, how often have you actually seen that happen? (In hundreds of games, I'm not sure I've even seen anyone really try to actually "break" the game, i.e. screw up its fundamentals. They might have refused to jump at railroading bait once in a very long while but if that's really a problem, you should have made it more tempting.)

Granted, I did once have a player who statted a Soul's Calling character up with virtually every skill going just to see if it would annoy me but... she covered it in her backstory, so it was cool! And she commented afterwards they didn't seem to throw the game off course.

That's why they're cheap, dear, that's why they're cheap...

Quote from: thedungeondelver;643174That's why so many people misunderstand S1 and disregard it as "Gygax being a dick, agaaaaain :rolleyes: " - S1 is aimed at really highly experienced players, not simply "high level characters".

You could take some folks who've never played D&D before, give them 20th level characters, and put them through S1 and have a total party kill in the first (real) hallway.

On the other hand you could take a quartet of 9th level characters played by experienced players and cakewalk the whole module.

Assuming the DM is being evenhanded through the whole thing.

In fact, S1 is as much a challenge for good DM acumen as it is for good play acumen.  A good DM will read it front to back and make sure that each challenge in the module functions exactly as described, no more or less lethal than written (where applicable), with hints given as written, and keep a good poker-face during the whole thing.  A bad DM will either nerf the whole dungeon or go full-bore sadistic and turn it into a murderhouse, deliberately lying/changing room descriptions and make the players play "Guess what I'm thinking." instead of "Figure out these puzzles."

Gary put that sort of thinking in the intro to S1 itself.  If a party is not used to a puzzle type of dungeon and still expect a "normal" dungeon even after explaining S1's premise, then don't even bother with S1.

Quote from: Malygris;643149Hello to everyone at the RPGsite, this is my first post, so please forgive any clumsiness and naivety. I'd like to ask you all if GM sadism is a sign of immaturity? Or does it have an acceptable place within a game or in certain genres?

Well, I don't expect my GM to cause me pain, but I do expect them to cause my character pain.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;643181Sadly, the entire concept of player skill is under siege these days. Modern game theory would have us believe that all challenges should be solvable by pushing the right button on the character sheet.

And knowing the right button is a skill.

Modern games just don't engage the skillset YOU enjoy.

Quote from: jibbajibba;643187There are DM rules of course.

How often this seems to be forgotten.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;643212If player skill is all that matters, then the character sheet may as well be blank.

That's like saying that skilled Chess players don't need the pieces, which while technically true, they still have the model in their heads.

Quote from: jeff37923;643239It is kind of an IQ Test, since the Players should not have engaged those opponents in the first place unless they can be fairly sure to have a fighting chance. Like you should know in D&D that at first level that you will not be able to take an ancient black dragon in its lair, so just avoid that encounter untill you get to a high enough level.

Yeah, 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.

Quote from: Omnifray;643243He can always defeat the party if he really, really wants to. He can simply make their opponents unavoidable and undefeatable. "Victory" to be had so trivially is what the Germans would euphemistically call "self-satisfaction".

And that's why the good killer GMs use RULES. It's no fun if you can defeat your players without constraints. But how many RPGs actually provide rules which can be used this way?

Quote from: The Traveller;643252If a GM is deliberately pulling a Kobayashi Maru scenario, they've stopped being a GM and started being a dick.

I've played in a lot of Call of Cthulhu scenarios like this, and it depends on what the lose condition is. Also, Kirk won.

Quote from: The Traveller;643268Exactly so, these would be bad things done for good reasons. The GM is on the players' side in having fun, and sometimes that means throwing challenges at them. It would hardly be much fun if everything went swimmingly all the time, may as well be sitting around having a conversation.

Yeah; I think the key here is challenging the players as opposed to "the only way for me (the GM) to have fun is if I crush them at every turn - TPK or bust".

I'd regard "players must be captured for the rest of the adventure to work" is very railroady (A3 I'm lookin at youuuuuuu), but that's not necessarily sadism.

Quote from: Omnifray;643270But leo, how often have you actually seen that happen? (In hundreds of games, I'm not sure I've even seen anyone really try to actually "break" the game, i.e. screw up its fundamentals. They might have refused to jump at railroading bait once in a very long while but if that's really a problem, you should have made it more tempting.)

Granted, I did once have a player who statted a Soul's Calling character up with virtually every skill going just to see if it would annoy me but... she covered it in her backstory, so it was cool! And she commented afterwards they didn't seem to throw the game off course.

That's why they're cheap, dear, that's why they're cheap...

I've seen players make characters that would deliberately screw with either the setting or the group dynamics...and when one of my friends went off to college, apparently every game his college group played resulted in either a player jacking with the fundamentals of the game at every opportunity, or the GM slaughtering the PCs at every opportunity.

They all apparently got off on it, though, so more power to them, I guess.

Define sadism. I've seen it described as actual sadism, as playing a more difficult game, or in having enemies behave intelligently at all.

Only the first definition is actually valid.