Quote from: Warthur;708582I think the most credible complaints about "pixel bitching" are those directed at GMs who come up with one solution and one solution alone to a problem that is pitched at the players, and shoot down any alternate solutions - even if there's absolutely no in-world reason why the alternatives the players thought up shouldn't work.

Sierra Syndrome...

Quote from: therealjcm;708572Maybe some entitled players use "pixel bitching" to cover having to actually engage their brain in order to find a trap, but I would use it to describe a trap/puzzle that is "solved" by wearing a green hat, standing on one leg, singing a dirty limerick about a hedgehog, while levitating a butter churn with tenser's magic disk... none of this having been actually hinted at in game.

:rotfl:

What an entertaining image.

The term gets slug around these days if the player has to actual describe what area of the room his character is searching instead of saying " I search the room taking 20".

Quote from: Omega;708570Most LARP traps though arent specifically designed to blend into the scenery or made by master trapsmiths. Though the picking or disarming mechanisms for LARP traps can be really interesting. Though I have not seen yet a newer LARP and suspect that the actual hiding of them has advanced some.

My experience was from the 90s. At the Pittsburgh NERO chapter and several other Northeast NERO chapters there were a handful of people who were noted for creating and hiding challenging traps that were also safe.

Aside from the being hidden part, NERO traps don't share much with real world counterparts. The main take away it NOTE what you DO about the traps. That part is unique to NERO Larp. The main take away is how people act when confronted with trapped filled mazes on a continual basis while adventuring with a small group.

In real life any trap filled dungeon will be subject to an expedition similar to how the Egyptian or Mesopotamian ruins were dealt with. You secure the area, setup up camp, and dig out the "dungeon".

This actually happened once in my campaign. The players went into the Tomb of Horrors by themselves. Managed to deal with with the demi-lich and realized the main treasure wasn't the pile of coins and items. But the area itself which was made of mithril and adamninite  However much of the dungeon was still "active" trap wise". So they contacted a friendly dwarven clan and made a deal to dig it out and to dismantle the dungeon. While the player's loyal troops guarded the area.

Quote from: GameDaddy;708565I caught this as a pit so deep full of gems that the player sunk into it and suffocated before any other members of the party were aware the player was even in trouble. Just another reason splitting up the party, or letting one player get too far ahead on point.... is a baaaaad idea for party integrity.

You attach that special word to this,
Magic

Then all is well.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;708585I think the point is that some things are going to be harder to perceive via listening to the GM than if you were actually there; a GM has to make reasonable allowances or you end up with PCs killing themselves by ramming into walls because they thought the door was North when its really West.

THIS is where a GM really has to pay attention and help the players and understand the artificial limits placed on the player therefore.  That and the gaps between the players knowledge and the PC's.  Example:  The city person who is playing a Ranger.  The GM can't let them make mistakes that a Ranger never would.

I don't use traps all that often, but when I do, I bait the trap with Dos Equis.

Stay observant, my friends.

Quote from: Bill;708781I don't use traps all that often, but when I do, I bait the trap with Dos Equis.

Stay observant, my friends.

Good idea. That's about all that beer is good for.  

Quote from: Bill;708781I don't use traps all that often, but when I do, I bait the trap with Dos Equis.

Stay observant, my friends.

I use them very rarely.  Usually when the group comes across the trap, it has already been triggered long ago.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;708664The term gets slug around these days if the player has to actual describe what area of the room his character is searching instead of saying " I search the room taking 20".

That is probably what most people mean by it. But in the adventure games community the term came from it had nothing to do with player laziness and everything to do with poor presentation and nonsensical solutions.

Quote from: ggroy;707821I don't know if this is strictly a generational thing.

Back in the day, I knew a few individuals who griped frequently about this sort of thing.  For the most part, they stopped playing D&D and other tabletop rpg games altogether.  I don't know what other hobbies they moved on to subsequently.

Fair enough. A bad GM can ruin any game for anyone. I tried 2nd edition DnD with two seperate "bad" GMs. So I quit playing DnD altogether until 3 years ago.

We had a good demonstration of 'pixelbitching' in the other night's Pathfinder game as the cleric spent 5 minutes trying to find the exact square on the grid where he could do a Healing Surge and hit everyone but miss the elemental we were fighting. It was obvious there was some position where this would happen so I asked the GM, 'Can't we just say he found the spot, got the spell off and continue?'. His answer was, 'No, that's one of the downsides to using miniatures.'

Didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Quote from: Arduin;708740THIS is where a GM really has to pay attention and help the players and understand the artificial limits placed on the player therefore.  That and the gaps between the players knowledge and the PC's.  Example:  The city person who is playing a Ranger.  The GM can't let them make mistakes that a Ranger never would.

I'm up for this. Remember though, that what the Ranger knows may, or may not, be shared with the rest of the party, depending on the relationships of all the other player characters with the Ranger.

...Also, any good GM will be able to adequately describe the scenario for the players, so that the players have at least some ideas how to best utilize the skills, spells, and talents of their character.

If all the players were in the same room as the luckless dude being swallowed by the magical pool of gems, then they could at least throw him a rope or something to slow his rate of sinking.

Likewise on the magic. There would likely be some evidence that this was no ordinary pool of gems, and the party magic-users should be wont to try various spells, such as dispel magic, anti-magic barrier, etc... to cancel the effects of the "magically enchanted" gems, especially if the mundane actions such as rope throwing, and grabbing the player, aren't working properly.

That Ranger example came up a while back while I was playing a Pathfinder Ranger. We had a mission to kill a giant bear that had been terrorizing the area.
In real life I've never hunted anything. My wilderness skills are zilch. I grew up in small town in the desert.

The GM however is an avid hunter.

It all ended up being a comedy of errors, including nearly being killed by our own traps. Lots of laughs, I enjoyed myself, But I certainly didn't feel as if my PC was all that effective... except for the bits where he used feats/skills and rolled well on the dice.
Afterward the GM told us what HE would have done... which was an option we players had discussed but decided it seemed like a bad idea.

I don't feel like the GM did a bad job. But it did leave me wandering how it could have gone better.

The player/character divide when it comes to knowledge and skills isn't that cut & dried. I agree that people are generally happier if they get to benefit from character knowledge that they, the players, don't have. But there are undoubtedly occasions when a player would rather make do with their own knowledge, e.g. as an exercise or display of acumen, or because it feels more immediate/immersive. One area for me would be that if I'm playing a commander of troops, I'd rather do my own strategy & tactics. Other people might not, preferring a "military leadership" roll and an abstract battle system.

The hazard in those cases is that the "weekend warrior" or "nature expert" might not really know as much as they think, or have a basically unresolvable difference of opinion with the GM about some esoteric but crucial detail.

Quote from: Arduin;708740THIS is where a GM really has to pay attention and help the players and understand the artificial limits placed on the player therefore.  That and the gaps between the players knowledge and the PC's.  Example:  The city person who is playing a Ranger.  The GM can't let them make mistakes that a Ranger never would.

Exactly.  I'm a veteran camper.  Few of my players have been outdoorsmen.  If I've got a bunch of folks with Survival-13, they know where not to camp, how to pitch for prevailing winds, how to spot good water, how to find game trails, how to start a fire in wet weather, all the basics, without me screwing with them.  They say, "We're looking to find the best possible camp in our next half-hour's worth of march," I give it to them.