Quote from: rgrove0172;934925How many movies would have been ruined if the heroes had acted intelligently?

All the vapid ones.

Quote from: rgrove0172;934925... As a GM do you go along and make 'realistic' changes to the Boss's defenses based on daylight, creating a pretty unconventional final battle. Or do you implement some delaying tactic to hinder the players until night falls? If you do this, is it fair? What if they refuse to assault, turning around and leaving rather than brave the evil one on his own turf?

As a GM, what I do, is referee the situation fairly. However, I may likely have designed an evil "boss" (sigh) to be intelligent and to have considered the possibility of a daylight attack, and to have something in place to try to detect attackers, and various contingency plans. The boss and his agents do their thing and the PCs do theirs, and I use the rules and map and their positions and actions on the map at various times to resolve the action. The GM is not implementing a delaying tactic, but the NPC probably does if he's actually worth being the climactic challenge of an adventure.  The game then becomes interesting on a level it otherwise would not - the players are trying to gain an advantage in a logical way, and the NPC is trying to deny that advantage and turn it around, and that is what that level of play is about, and I will enjoy playing it out in a logical and fair way where the outcome is uncertain and determined by play according to the situation, plans that make sense, logical cause and effect, and calculated risks and rolls. That's far more interesting and exciting to me than a forced result. It's actually playing a game about trying to outmaneuver a villain, not just showing up for an inevitable scripted showdown.

QuoteIs it proper to simply tell the players that this is the big show in the campaign.

I think that's much less interesting, but it's ok in a canned/limited scenario where you've consciously chosen to exclude that level of play for some reason, but I'd suggest to be up-front that trying for a day fight is simply out of scope and you're going to force it, rather than forcing it but trying not to admit that you are.

QuotePart of the fun is enduring the dramatic, scary, conditions and surviving them. Sure, its reasonable to assume intelligent people might figure a way to avoid them but what fun is that?

It can be quite fun if you let it be a part of play. What did the players do to try to avoid detection on their way to the target? If you didn't avoid detection you might try to show up at day but some agent tries to mess you up and delay you. You decide to therefore spend another night to attack the next day, but then what guard shifts are you setting? Have you been detected? Do you need to worry about being attacked yourselves that night? Your characters are getting tired, adding to the tension and risk. You finally do show up at day, and find the place empty. The doors close behind you and are barred! A trap! You survive that trap, but where did the villain flee to? You have to track him down... or is he tracking you, or leading you into more traps or counter-attacks? Every day you hunt, and every night you might be hunted. Sounds potentially vastly more interesting than just showing up at Big Boss HQ for a scripted set-piece slugfest.

QuoteHow many movies would have been ruined if the heroes had acted intelligently?

For my tastes, none. How many movies were ruined for me because the heroes and/or villains acted in dumb ways because the authors were lazy and didn't bother to have things work out in a way that made sense? Many.

Even in a forced scripted plot, it's far more satisfying to me if the author at least has the final battle work out to be at night because of reasons that seem to make some sense, rather than that the heroes are just sloppy dunderheads who don't even try to do anything intelligently because it doesn't matter because the author is forcing stuff to happen how he wants without bothering with things making sense. It's usually not very hard (and far more satisfying to me) to force a plot to turn out how you want for reasons despite intelligent attempts as opposed to because the heroes/villains were just airheaded convention pawns.

Quote from: rgrove0172;934925How many movies would have been ruined if the heroes had acted intelligently?

[video=youtube;olEbwhWDYwM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEbwhWDYwM[/youtube]

Quote from: Spinachcat;934981LAME!!

There needs to be in-game in-setting in-genre justification. If you need the PCs to be there at night, then for whatever reason that makes sense, they need to be there at night.

What reasons make sense?
The ritual can only be done as the sun sets!
The holy sword only works in the light of the moon!
We can't kill her in human form, only once she become a werewolf!
The castle is ethereal in daylight!
etc...

I run Chill and CoC and my players want genre tropes AND the feeling their choices are meaningful. If I need an in-media res event, then that's how I start the adventure. If I want one in the middle of an adventure, that's what dream sequences are for.

I don't dookie ex machina against my players just to fit my narrative.

Plus one.

Quote from: rgrove0172;934925Your Gothic Horror campaign is nearing the climax. The players have tracked the Evil Boss to his lair and are planning their assault. For reasons of setting the Evil Boss is much more challenging at night, not to mention the powers he utilizes have maximum theatrical impact and cool factor at night as well. This is the final climax, the big show. Think stormclouds blowing over the moon and distant thunder, a strong wind whipping the trees and inky blackness veiling all,  but.....


The players decided (perhaps wisely) to get an early start and attack during the day.


Smart move surely, but... well it sure puts a dampner on the scene don't you think?

Not just smart move the only move anybody with half a choice would make.  I hate contrived difficulty and drama, and attacking a night creature at night?  Purely Hollywood lazy drama creation.

QuoteAs a GM do you go along and make 'realistic' changes to the Boss's defenses based on daylight, creating a pretty unconventional final battle. Or do you implement some delaying tactic to hinder the players until night falls? If you do this, is it fair? What if they refuse to assault, turning around and leaving rather than brave the evil one on his own turf?

What is realistic is that if I am a creature of the night my day defenses are going to be extra strong.  It could be something as simple as I reside in a safe with a timed lock during the day.  Of course as a smart night boss I'm going to have things to delay anyone that gets in my stronghold during the day.  The best defense is of course to have a secret location as well.

Smart PCs will not assault the boss on his own turf but come up with a plan to draw him out to the battlefield of their choosing.  The logic of that has been known for millennia.  So either they trick to boss out, there is a reason they have to finish him there (I don't know a soul gem on something he keeps local to truly finish him off, treasure, a hostage, etc.) or they are just stupid.  As a GM I would have had the reason be there is something in his lair you need to finish him off, and not just that, it only works under certain conditions that occur only at night.

QuoteIs it proper to simply tell the players that this is the big show in the campaign. Part of the fun is enduring the dramatic, scary, conditions and surviving them. Sure, its reasonable to assume intelligent people might figure a way to avoid them but what fun is that? How many movies would have been ruined if the heroes had acted intelligently?

Proper is a social construct, but I think it is lazy.   Figuring out ways to avoid things, ways that the GM never thought of, that is more than half the fun.  Otherwise it is just a set piece battle, like a computer game, and computer games do those so much better.  The best movies are where the heroes (and villains) act intelligently an there is still drama and action.  Deus ex machine and contrived plots are lame, even if the movie is fun.  Again, why not just watch a movie then if intelligence and being able to act and think outside the box is not permitted.

QuoteMy players (in just this situation) agreed, what the night assault lacked in strategic wisdom more than made up for in genre-specific drama ... afterall, we are playing Gothic Horror here.

To each there own, and a lot of a game is the scoail interaction more than anything else.  As a player the only way I could justify this would be that I was semi-suicidal, maybe subtle mind control by the evil guy, really bad planning/time management (like Deadpool and his ammo) or having some really big ones, that attacking the big evil at night at the height of his power is meant to send a message to other creatures of the night.

I can see how it would work, but really asking your players to act stupid because of lack of thinking things through on your part, sounds kind of lame.  I mean who wouldn't attack in the day light?

Quote from: rgrove0172;934925The game went great but I'm betting some of you will have counter opinions.

Telling me to do something my character wouldn't do because of genre conventions would ruin the game for me -- it would yank me right out of the story, and would undermine exactly what having the climax at night is supposed to create: a sense of fear and suspense.

Even worse: if the GM came up with bullshit reasons because he wanted to force an outcome.

Running things with a sense of verisimilitude means sometimes having an anticlimax, but I think that's preferable to the other options.

I do think it's okay to set up a situation where an outcome I prefer is very likely but be willing to bin it if it's not working out.

I ran a game a few years ago where the characters were cyborgs and unknowingly agents of a divine power.

They were across the border in Mexico about to assault a narco-terrorist's fortress full of child-soldier cultists; they were going to meet some Mexican Federal police who were on -- essentially -- a suicide mission to try to stop the terrorists.

I wanted the action to roughly parallel the biblical versus Joshua 5:13-6:27, with
* The PCs standing in for the agent of God, meeting the other-wise doomed Federales, and helping them complete their mission
* Taking down the walls of the armed compound 'miraculously'
* Killing a much larger and extremely well armed force inside (killing everyone, taking no prisoners)
* I also really wanted the initial interaction between the the PC's and the Mexican Police to parallel the Biblical meeting in the desert where the Angel tells Joshua's army that he is on "neither" side and tells them to remove their footwear, for they "stand on holy ground."

I could arrange for the incredibly miraculous coincidence of the PC's finding a decades-old cache of explosives and heavy machine guns -- one of the PCs had chemical sensors that could detect explosives and would identify the Comp B buried under the roadside shrine that was their meeting point.

What I couldn't do, of course, was insure that he'd use his sensors. And -- also -- I couldn't force any specific words to come out of their mouths.

I could have the FBI agent helping them with the operation set things up so it would be likely that things would work out: they weren't to identify themselves, and should disclaim any affiliation and be as uncommunicative on that matter as possible. The agent also suggested that they secure the area, check for IEDs (e.g. scan for explosives), and if they were safe advise the Mexican police to rest after a long foot march (e.g. take their boots off).

The odds of it working out perfectly were low and I saw absolutely no point in trying to force anything -- if I'd prompted the PCs to "say this" or "do that" it the outcome would have had exactly zero power.

As it happened, it worked beautifully. The PC's arrived and realized they were well under-prepared for a siege and fight against an small army. Still, they scanned the area and discovered the unexpected and game-changing cache of weapons.

While obviously a set-up by the GM, it was also a set-up by the forces in the game, one of the earliest ones that couldn't be dismissed as a coincidence.

But the real payoff came after the NPCs approached and wearily asked the unknown PCs whose side they were on -- the Federales, or the Narcos? And the one of the PC's tersely said "neither" but "we have a message for you. Rest by this shrine, and when you are ready, we're going to kill the narcos."

The passage from Joshua and the slaughter at Jericho had been meaningful earlier in the game, and one of the PCs made the connection and was like... "WOAH." The parallels were direct and obvious, and while there were clearly in-game forces manipulating things supernaturally, their role in the discussion was completely natural and without any railroading.

Very gratifying. Very unlikely. And while I obviously set things up so the outcome was likely there was absolutely no guarantee that it would work out (or work out as well as it did). If things had gone differently (frankly, what I expected), I'd have been happy to let them.

Cheers,
-E.

One of the tropes in our old RQ campaign was that we always arrived at Vampire HQ just before dusk, thus allowing us the hope that we could get inside and kill the vampires before darkness fell while knowing that this would never happen.

Camping outside Vampire HQ and waiting until dawn normally resulted in various undead monstrosities hunting us, including the Vampires themselves, so it was better to go in and face them that be slaughtered in our sleeping rolls.

-E.'s story is a great example of even an intentional setup where the GM had a clever meta story in mind, being 1000x times more fun/interesting/satisfying when the GM is NOT forcing it to happen. I like the stories from games even better when there was no clever meta story in mind at all, and I like playing it more than talking about it later. For me, the point is playing an actual situation that is up in the air and could go many ways, and having to react in logical and inventive ways to unpredictable results and other agents' unpredictable actions. I like it when we surprise ourselves with what we end up coming up with during play.

Like the time I decided spontaneously to try to get an audience with the duke, and ended up managing to sneak into his office without being identified, but he was about to call for help so I grabbed him and got him to drink an animal transformation potion without knowing what it was (I don't think he even believed in magic up until then). Usually one needs to have an animal in mind to transform into, but checking the potion description, we found that in the absence of that, one turns into an animal most like one's own nature, and the GM decided that was probably a rabbit. I was able to sneak the rabbit out and give it to some children in another country as a pet, where the duke lived out the rest of his bunny life span as Bunnius the pet rabbit, and the disappearance of the duke was never solved. It wasn't planned by anyone; it just kind of happened. (I also can't remember anyone using an animal transformation potion at any time before or since - it was just a weird piece of loot I had found in some previous adventure.)

Genre conventions don't exist in my games, unless the players have all been told (and agreed) that we're working with them.

If I need to have the attack happen in darkness or else the entire adventure falls apart, and my table full of friends won't be entertained - cool, a big storm starts blowing in. There's going to be gloom. But you'll bet I will avoid making that mistake twice. Hell, I build most of my adventures assuming that the characters are going to make the smarter choices.

Darkness is also not required for horror. A big, spooky mansion where the windows are boarded up, and shafts of sunlight illuminate swaths of drifting dust is creepy. A place where the birds don't sing, and the colours feel muted, and silence seems oppressive can be done in broad daylight. But if you've designed a big showdown against a gothic horror villain and are expecting the characters to walk in through the front door - expect them to steal a bulldozer and crash through the side wall, exposing the entire house to sunlight at once.

This is why trying to force a game to follow narrative structure isn't always a good idea. This is also why a showdown isn't always required for a success. This is also why I don't bother running horror anymore. IMHO horror requires narrative control, and RPGs are about ceding narrative control to the players and seeing what happens.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;935876RPGs are about ceding narrative control to the players and seeing what happens.

Eh, unless I'm misreading your post, "Letting the characters have the freedom to attempt what they want - and seeing what happens" is closer to your meaning.

"Ceding narrative control to players" just means they become the 3rd person OOC author, not you.

My players in our Call of Cthulhu game have sometimes talked themselves into doing the spooky genre "let's go in at night" thing, just to be spooky. I think that's great.

They've sometimes chosen to back off and wait until the optimal time to strike (e.g. daylight, etc). I think that's great.

They've sometimes been compelled by circumstances (ticking clock, etc) to rush in without much preparation. I think that's great.

They've sometimes rushed in without much preparation because they're dumb. I think that's great.

I create the scenario and they decide how they want to engage with it. We think that's great.

Quote from: rgrove0172;934925Your Gothic Horror campaign is nearing the climax. The players have tracked the Evil Boss to his lair and are planning their assault. For reasons of setting the Evil Boss is much more challenging at night, not to mention the powers he utilizes have maximum theatrical impact and cool factor at night as well. This is the final climax, the big show. Think stormclouds blowing over the moon and distant thunder, a strong wind whipping the trees and inky blackness veiling all,  but.....


The players decided (perhaps wisely) to get an early start and attack during the day.


Smart move surely, but... well it sure puts a dampner on the scene don't you think?


As a GM do you go along and make 'realistic' changes to the Boss's defenses based on daylight, creating a pretty unconventional final battle. Or do you implement some delaying tactic to hinder the players until night falls? If you do this, is it fair? What if they refuse to assault, turning around and leaving rather than brave the evil one on his own turf?

Is it proper to simply tell the players that this is the big show in the campaign. Part of the fun is enduring the dramatic, scary, conditions and surviving them. Sure, its reasonable to assume intelligent people might figure a way to avoid them but what fun is that? How many movies would have been ruined if the heroes had acted intelligently?

My players (in just this situation) agreed, what the night assault lacked in strategic wisdom more than made up for in genre-specific drama ... afterall, we are playing Gothic Horror here.

The game went great but I'm betting some of you will have counter opinions.

I like to work out this sort of thing before the game starts. Are we going for genre feel or "straight" play? Try to get everyone on the same page as much as possible (misunderstandings are inevitable but they can be mitigated). Its not 100 percent one way or the other either. Of course, it goes both ways. Genre conventions won't work in their favor.

I usually prefer games that adhere to genre to some degree; its more fun, IMO. Some deconstruction and experimentation is good though and I don't go totally narrative simulation for a long term games.

Quote from: Nexus;935910I like to work out this sort of thing before the game starts. Are we going for genre feel or "straight" play? Try to get everyone on the same page as much as possible (misunderstandings are inevitable but they can be mitigated). Its not 100 percent one way or the other either. Of course, it goes both ways. Genre conventions won't work in their favor.

I usually prefer games that adhere to genre to some degree; its more fun, IMO. Some deconstruction and experimentation is good though and I don't go totally narrative simulation for a long term games.

My groups have been few and generally included close friends, all of us on the save wavelength so I never thought it necessary to do as you suggest, although if inviting new players in (as per the situation in a Star Wars game I mentioned in another thread) its probably not just a good idea but a must! Something I learned through the unfortunate confrontation with the new player and from the comments here on the site is that gamers are more versatile in their approach than I suspected. Doubtful Ill be inviting any new players to my games anytime soon (there aren't any in my area to speak of) but if I find one, we will have a heart to heart about GM approach and expectations before hand.

Some of my best moments as a GM have come when my players have outwitted the boss/villain.  Players should never be punished for being clever, not anymore than they should be coddled for being stupid.  The problem here, with the situation as you described it, seems to be that there is a preconceived notion of how you think the game ought to go before it even happens.  I say, allow the game to develop, and accept that the PCs are movers and shakers who will foil your villains plans as often as they will walk into their traps.

Quote from: rgrove0172;935962My groups have been few and generally included close friends, all of us on the save wavelength so I never thought it necessary to do as you suggest, although if inviting new players in (as per the situation in a Star Wars game I mentioned in another thread) its probably not just a good idea but a must! Something I learned through the unfortunate confrontation with the new player and from the comments here on the site is that gamers are more versatile in their approach than I suspected. Doubtful Ill be inviting any new players to my games anytime soon (there aren't any in my area to speak of) but if I find one, we will have a heart to heart about GM approach and expectations before hand.

Yeah, Communication is vital. People play for so many different reasons and goals in mind. You can't avoid any conflicts but I've found most people at least appreciate the effort to make sure everyone knew what to expect.