It is not a big deal.

I just find it amusing when the Intelligence 1 Yardie comes up with a plan that is so complex it baffles the Intelligence 4 Chemist.

Quote from: Professort Zoot;415937I don't have the confidence to simply say, "No, that's not possible."  I do interrogate my players about why the character thought of it.  I won't accept ass-pull retcons of characters meant only to justify the innovations.  I don't accept pseudo-historical anecdotes adapted to the characters (such as the utterly false claim that Christoforo Colombo determined the world was spherical as a child watching ships pull into port).  

Hah! I suppose you were playing an historical game when this happened, but if not, I know what I would have done: let the player make this "discovery" and then have it turn out that YOUR game world IS flat, in fact, and have them fall off the edge ending up shipwrecked in some other plane.

Shit, I'd have been seriously tempted to do that even in an historical game.

RPGPundit

I always let my players come up with technology and strategy in my fantasy games. I used to jokingly call this one guy's 8th level Eldritch Knight "Archimedes." I don't see anything wrong with odd technology and magic in fantasy as long as my NPC's can do it as well.

And to a lot of my players, coming up with stuff is a part of the game. Like the new King Arthur movie, when you have to beat a horde of infantry with a smaller force, the only way to do it is to lead them through a maze of clever traps.

My biggest problem player always tries to build new technology in my science fiction game. As a general rule, I'll let hand built crap from engineering characters gain as much as a +20% bonus, if they can get the best and most expensive parts. That isn't usually enough for the guy, he always wants to come up with something that bypasses the game world.

"I want to make EMP missiles."

"You mean nukes?"

"No, something with a battery that makes a pulse that turns off armor."

"Well, if something like that worked well, then that's what everyone would use and it would be normal. Sorry, but they are too advanced for that."

"Waaaaaaaaa"

"Ok, EMP missiles do 60% normal damage. When a suit has taken as many points of EMP damage as it has armor, it shuts down."

"Waaaaaaa ok"

Quote from: RPGPundit;416210Hah! I suppose you were playing an historical game when this happened, but if not, I know what I would have done: let the player make this "discovery" and then have it turn out that YOUR game world IS flat, in fact, and have them fall off the edge ending up shipwrecked in some other plane.

Shit, I'd have been seriously tempted to do that even in an historical game.

RPGPundit

I've done this kind of thing from time to time (though not so spectacularly as falling off the edge of the world!) and it has usually proven a solid approach. (Usually it's less that I'm dealing with "PC wants to invent gunpowder" than "PC is overthinking the "science.") My goal is less to smack down a PC than to give a gentle reminder that when I'm running a game, it's about exploring a strange world, not about making assumptions about a familiar one.

I think, especially for fantasy, it's a tricky balance to strike between rewarding clever or knowledgeable players and maintaining a sense of the uncanny in the world. I don't have a systematic way to figure out this balance, but over the years it seems like you develop an intuition for it if you try.

Its simple, reward it if its really clever, and not just OOC cheating.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;416416Its simple, reward it if its really clever, and not just OOC cheating.

RPGPundit

It's the simplicity that makes it tricky - obviously these are the two positions that I want to reward and dismiss respectively, but I think it's an aspect of good GMing to present the adventures and the world in a way that already encourages creativity and discourages meta-game bullshit before the decision point of "is the GM just going to say 'what's this, Pete, your birthday? fuck no you can't do that.' " even comes up.

In my Warhammer game the response usually goes like this.

Inquisitor: Clearly your thoughts are heretical.  Burn him!

Quote from: kryyst;416491In my Warhammer game the response usually goes like this.

Inquisitor: Clearly your thoughts are heretical.  Burn him!

Man, I love the simplicity of WFRP sometimes.

RPGPundit