Quote from: LordVreeg;667896Right.
I said it earlier.  I am playing with the players, not against them.  They play their characters, I play the setting, we all play together.  
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Yes, I wouldn't frame it as adversarial. I dont think the GM is there as an opponent, he plays the setting like you say and he supplies the challenges. All I want is for the challenges to be more than foregone conclusions, and for them to be a natural outgrowth of what is going on or true to the feel and nature of the setting.

Quote from: J Arcane;667877The GM's job is to simulate life.  Whether the players win or lose at life is up to them.

This is too simplistic to be true.  You need a qualifier or three, like 'fictionalized but plausible analog of life'.  Simulating life wouldn't be very fun.  You'd have to work for a living, for starters.  Wounds wouldn't heal completely.  Anyone could kill you with a lucky blow at any time.

And that's just applying our reality.  A fully realized fantasy world wouldn't be likely to resemble anything from our past, but almost certainly not feudal Europe.   That's just the macro level.   On the micro level I would expect to see thing grow organically around the 'adventuring' career that's in the genre.  For example, there should be shoddy equipment,  corpse recovery services, adventurer's insurance,  and maybe even specialized bandits that prey on level 1 PCs.

Bill said it best, once you decide 'how many ninjas' you have compromised your impartiality.   Consciously or subconsciously, I cannot see how this statement could be false.

Quote from: mcbobbo;667954This is too simplistic to be true.  You need a qualifier or three, like 'fictionalized but plausible analog of life'.  Simulating life wouldn't be very fun.  You'd have to work for a living, for starters.  Wounds wouldn't heal completely.  Anyone could kill you with a lucky blow at any time.

And that's just applying our reality.  A fully realized fantasy world wouldn't be likely to resemble anything from our past, but almost certainly not feudal Europe.   That's just the macro level.   On the micro level I would expect to see thing grow organically around the 'adventuring' career that's in the genre.  For example, there should be shoddy equipment,  corpse recovery services, adventurer's insurance,  and maybe even specialized bandits that prey on level 1 PCs.

Bill said it best, once you decide 'how many ninjas' you have compromised your impartiality.   Consciously or subconsciously, I cannot see how this statement could be false.

Or, you know, maybe you're engaging in reductio ad absurdum on a simple statement not meant as literally as your nerd reflexes want it to be.

Just because a DM's ability to fully simulate a world is limited doesn't mean the goal has to change.  That's 'baby with bathwater' talk.

Quote from: mcbobbo;667954Bill said it best, once you decide 'how many ninjas' you have compromised your impartiality.   Consciously or subconsciously, I cannot see how this statement could be false.

Certainly a GM can choose the difficulty level for his game, and that's going to impact the success/failure level of the players. Throwing a 1st-level group at Tomb of Horrors is vastly different then sending them into the Dungeon of Monty Haul, for example. I don't think a Game Master has to be from the Neutral Planet in order to see a game out to a decision-based, uncertain conclusion.

But—and I think this is the contention many of us are making here—within the scenario that the GM has laid out, be it a cupcake dungeon or the grimmest of grimdarkness, allowing player/character decisions to ultimately determine success or failure within that campaign or session is less predictable, and more entertaining for many (not all, of course!). This can also grant a sense of heightened tension and suspense, and will make any eventual victory feel more hard-won and precious, especially if you know you've been through the meatgrinder and have lost worthy allies along the way.

This is in contrast to setting things so that the group almost always expects victory or at least reprieve.

In other words, I think the traditional Game Master is not there to ensure the success of the players. He is there to lay out a scene, and use the game rules and his judgment to adjudicate that experience an outcome that has not been predefined.

Again, I really appreciate those taking time to express their opinion as to the other viewpoints on this.

Quote from: mcbobbo;667954Bill said it best, once you decide 'how many ninjas' you have compromised your impartiality.   Consciously or subconsciously, I cannot see how this statement could be false.

Spot on.  Once you have arbitrarily decided that the PCs WILL be murdered in thier sleep, it doesn't matter if it was 5 or 50 ninjas that did it.

If,however, you are not a dick DM and need to know how many ninjas attempt to murder the PCs then refer to your notes on the assassins guild, check thier available resources, evaluate thier level of commitment, come up with a reasonable range based on these factors and roll for it.

Quote from: Old One Eye;667416Pffftttt....

A damn fun game can be had where Han and Chewie's players realize the mission is hopeless and fly off to greener pastures while Luke gets toasted on his impossible mission, the Empire destroys the fledgling Rebellion, and Luke's player rolls up a new character to join the Falcon's future adventures.

Yep. That's why having an overall campaign plot isn't necessarily a good idea. In your scenario, Luke's player is going to have a very different sense of the game world than one where his characters fulfill their destinies as a matter of course.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;667499If players need to pay attention and actually put forth a good effort to win, they will be much more satisfied with thier victory than with one that can be virtually phoned in.

In my campaigns, if the default is ride along and accept whatever, then loss is the usual outcome. If you want to win then play like you want to win. If players don't want to have to think then they don't have to play.

That's the way we roll too. Bad play? 30 per cent chance of success (success being most of the party survives and fulfills its goals). Mediocre play? 60 per cent. And that will catch up with you eventually. You want 90 per cent success? Then bear down and play hard. Plan. Prepare. Know when to cut and run. Use your resources and knowledge optimally.

Some examples from our current D&D Next campaign:

The party breaches the arcane protection of an ancient library vault. Exploring the library, they come across a disheveled and wizened old librarian. He draws back in terror and starts casting a spell. The party blasts him down magic missiles and axe-work. They do have the presence of mind to heal him and interrogate him. But their goal of using the library to discover some major background information important to the plot has now diminished considerably. A potential ally has become an enemy.

Later, the party accepts the commission of the local Lord to hunt down an insurgent faction known to operate in a certain neighborhood. Making no effort to disguise themselves, they're ambushed in the streets. Then they find the front for the organization - a quiet inn - and let one lookout escape, and threaten another into fleeing. Then they find a hatchway into the catacombs beneath and set off, leaving an alerted and hostile force behind.

They encounter and defeat some of the rebels in their underground labyrinth, but eventually they're discovered and an alarm is raised. Furthermore, the rebels above-ground are entering the labyrinth in force from two different directions. In the hub chamber, the party detects hostiles from three directions, with three other passages open.

At this point, they've made their bed. They flee into the first quiet tunnel, and they are fortunate that it leads to a hidden exit under the docks. If they had chosen one of the other tunnels, it lead to a dead-end chamber. And they would have been bottled up facing 26 enemy combatants. Considering the fact they had just finished slaying and looting the leaders of the rebels, there would be no mercy shown, and likely a TPK.

It wasn't my job to find a way for the players to escape that labyrinth. They made several strategic and tactical mistakes. They left enemies in their rear. They did not post a lookout. They did not make a cursory exploration of the several passages leading out of the hub before they set forth to take on the rebels. If we had a TPK, it would have been on them. I set them up with the potential for success, and the rest was up to them.

Quote from: Zachary The First;667863I watch movies, read books, and watch (some) TV. I also recognize that tabletop gaming is distinct from that, and trying to recreate the plots from any of those things by assigning success to an endeavor ahead of time is not (IME) a formula for success.

Maybe it's because we started playing D&D when were really young (10 years old), but it never occurred to my buddies and I to emulate movies or TV shows in our game. We started playing D&D before we were immersed in that kind of stuff. Furthermore, most of my buddies grew out of being geeks by their teens, so geeking pop culture tropes just weren't part of our thinking. D&D was it's own thing. We don't expect our PCs to accomplish the things Luke Skywalker, or Froddo Baggins accomplished. We expect them to try to accomplish the things Krago of the Mountains and Rundell Estercorn did in our formative D&D years - try to survive, level up, get some cool magic items, and have adventures.

Quote from: mcbobbo;667954Bill said it best, once you decide 'how many ninjas' you have compromised your impartiality.   Consciously or subconsciously, I cannot see how this statement could be false.

I think it depends on what reason you use to set the number and the reason for the attack in the first place. These sort of things do matter to a player like myself. If the GM sends a bunch of ninjas, doesnt roll any dice, and clearly does it just to "win" well, that is going to feel a bit unfair to me. But if he does it because one of the pcs royally angered the assassins guild, or got int their way, and he sends a number of ninjas that seem to reflect the guilds size, and rolls just like he'd be rolling for us if we were trying to wipe out the ninja's in their sleep, to me that would still be fair provided we understood from the beginning this is the type of campaign it would be (I think that last bit is very important). Again, what constitutes fair is going to vary somewhat from group to group. For others a fair call may be sending a level appropriate number of ninjas.

That isn't to say that people who want a more secure and heroic victory and path for the pcs are wrong or doing it wrong. Far from it. It is just a different style of play.

I feel like folks are saying you either have to accept the GM is always letting the pcs live or always making them die. There is vast middle ground between those two positions.

The point about fairness is you are striving for it, and you try to be as aware as possible of your own biases. Under a microscope, no one is ever going to be 100% fair and impartial, that doesnt mean it is a bad ideal. I find some GMs much more impartial and fair than others, and it is because they make an effort toward it.

I think even a '50% impartial' mark is hubris.

I am not saying it is wrong to try, just that you may be overlooking the big picture.

Every GM leaves fingerprints on his campaigns.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;667964Spot on.  Once you have arbitrarily decided that the PCs WILL be murdered in thier sleep, it doesn't matter if it was 5 or 50 ninjas that did it.

If,however, you are not a dick DM and need to know how many ninjas attempt to murder the PCs then refer to your notes on the assassins guild, check thier available resources, evaluate thier level of commitment, come up with a reasonable range based on these factors and roll for it.

As a gm, I never plan to save or kill pc's. A thought process of 'I will not let pc die' or 'I will make sure pc win' is not something that happens in my head.

I would have the assasins guild act much as you describe above. Very reasonable approach. However, the result will not be based on setting integrity.

Because, unless the assasins guild is made up of untrained, unarmed, resourceless children, they would be easily able to destroy a pc party with a setting appropriate attack.

The assasins would:

Use careful planning and strategy to attack at a time when pc's are isolated, disperesed, otherwise unprepared, critically wounded, weak/etc.

Stealth and subterfuge. Pc's won't even know they are there until it is too late.

Pick them off. The pc's will die when they are not all in a pack glued at the hips. Even Sir Gonad the omnipotent does not bathe wearing plate armor.

I don't see how the pc's have any real chance at all without the gm pulling punches.

What happens in practice, in most games I have ever seen the assasins show up in numbers and under conditions that allow the pc's a 'good' chance of victory regardless of the setting integrity.

Otherwise the pcs would just die about every other time anything clever and dangerous is opposed.

Obviously some playstyles have much less deadly combat than others.

Quote from: mcbobbo;667982I think even a '50% impartial' mark is hubris.

I am not saying it is wrong to try, just that you may be overlooking the big picture.

Every GM leaves fingerprints on his campaigns.

I don't think I would go so low as 50%, though I don't think this is something you can qualitify...but sure, GMs are human, as are referees and judges. That is why impartiality is more about the ideal. It being difficult and somewhat subjective, doesn't mean you have to abandon it though, or say all judgments about or efforts toward impartiality are meaningless. It also doesn't mean an impartial judgment is impossible, or rare. It is just still a judgment at the end of the day, and with that comes some room for dispute and disagreement.

For me it boils down to how I answer the question "was that a fair call?" or "was that a fair thing to do?" after the GM makes a judgment or has something occur. With a lot of GMs I can answer yes, well over 90% of the time. To me that is a fair and impartial GM. Obviously one can quibble, one can point out that he is still an imperfect being and was operating from a limited viewpoint, and didn't necessarily consider A, B, or C. To me that takes the concern way beyond what I require as a player from an impartial GM.

It seems to me that the art of GMing is to present obstacles that seem insurmountable but through clever tactics, good roleplaying, and a little luck the players can still probably overcome them. So that every adventure feels like a narrow, hard-fought victory (or sometimes a narrow, unlucky defeat).

Normally I make up complications and obstacles for the PCs without any clear idea of how they could overcome them. I just put in monsters that are immune to all the group's weaponry, etc, and assume that they will come up with some clever way round it on the night. This to me is one of the joys of GMing, watching the players surprise you with their ingenuity.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;667972The point about fairness is you are striving for it, and you try to be as aware as possible of your own biases. Under a microscope, no one is ever going to be 100% fair and impartial, that doesn't mean it is a bad ideal. I find some GMs much more impartial and fair than others, and it is because they make an effort toward it.

Fair and impartial is personal preference.

I have found the biggest achilles heel for most Dm(myself included) is we hold all the cards, we see everything that is going on, how the web is connected, etc.  Giving the information needed to the players without giving too much or too little is one of the hardest things to do.

When the players come to that no-win situation, you know it won't be won, at this time(or ever), but the players don't.  They can only go by what you give them and that has tripped up many a DM

Quote from: soviet;668001It seems to me that the art of GMing is to present obstacles that seem insurmountable but through clever tactics, good roleplaying, and a little luck the players can still probably overcome them. So that every adventure feels like a narrow, hard-fought victory (or sometimes a narrow, unlucky defeat).

Normally I make up complications and obstacles for the PCs without any clear idea of how they could overcome them. I just put in monsters that are immune to all the group's weaponry, etc, and assume that they will come up with some clever way round it on the night. This to me is one of the joys of GMing, watching the players surprise you with their ingenuity.

I think your approach is far better than prescripting 'the way out'.

There may be a risk the players do not come up with a clever solution, but my experience is similar to your own, in that players work miracles.

Quote from: Sommerjon;668003Fair and impartial is personal preference.

I think a key trait of impartial and fair GMs is a willingness to understand things from the played side, and (perhaps most importantly) the ability to recognize when they have not been fair or when they were wrong.

In the situation you describe I think there are two things going on: one is what the group might consider a fair situation or scenario to be (can a no-win or nearly non-winnable emerge in the game, and if so under what circumstances is it regarded as fair). The other is how many clues the players expect fromt he GM. Is there an assumption that when truly dire situations arise, the players will have sufficient warning within the setting. Or is there an assumption that the players are limited by their character's point of view and could wander into such situations unknowingly. A lot of this is preference and I think any assessment of your GMs fairness and impartiality starts with what the groups preferences are.

Quote from: Zachary The First;667863I watch movies, read books, and watch (some) TV. I also recognize that tabletop gaming is distinct from that, and trying to recreate the plots from any of those things by assigning success to an endeavor ahead of time is not (IME) a formula for success.

Here's the thing: Absolutely nobody said anything about "assigning success to an endeavor ahead of time".

I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume miscommunication was the problem... until multiple people specifically clarified that point and people kept claiming that's what had been said. At that point we're dealing with either illiteracy or mendacity and I don't have a lot of patience for it.

What we're describing is actual behavior at the table: 99% of the time, the forces controlled by the GM will lose and the PCs will win.

And thus, yes, if you were drafting up a list of things that describe a GM's job it would be 100% completely correct to include a bullet point that read: "To be defeated by the players in the most entertaining way for everyone involved."

And if you're pedantic enough that you need to insert a proviso that this is not the entirety of the GM's job and the words "have the forces he controls" inserted after the word "to", more power to you. It doesn't change the fundamental truth of the statement.

As for those in this thread claiming that 20% or 50% or even 70% of their combat encounters end in a TPK? Garbage. Even if we're just talking about encounters that result in a temporary setback before the PCs return for the inevitable, victorious comeback those numbers still look ludicrously high.

And if we're talking about scenario-level outcomes? Please. If you're running a campaign centered around mysteries and 50% of the time the mystery remains completely unsolved... something is seriously wrong at your table.