does your dm (or do you, if you are the dm) follow the rule of>just keep coming up with excuses to let the players keep rolling until someone hits a nat 20 so you can do the cool plot you've writtenor does he (or you, if you are the dm) let the dice decide what happens in your games?
what cool plot?i don't see a cool plot on my hexcrawl or in my dungeonit's just a place to explore and get rich
>>98766564its a false equivalency. the "dice decide" approach is just planning for failure with multiple paths and multiple ends. be what they may, the dice havent taken you off my plan, you're just seeing a different part of it. Which is a good thing btw. player agency as much as possible is preserved and the rolls arent fudged, i've just precalculated a few of the likely outcomes so i dont need to improvise or overlook something and realize ive written myself into a corner.it takes significant effort to derail even a modestly planned game. but, on that topic...>>98766568i leave the dungeon
>>98766564Plot? That's the thing I gaslight my players in to thinking was there at the time.
>>98766564A natural twenty only matters in the context of an attack and just to indicate a critical hit which means you double the number of dice you roll for damage.Read the above sentence again.Then read the one below.A natural twenty only matters in the context of an attack and just to indicate a critical hit which means you double the number of dice you roll for damage.I don't think dealing double damage on average on a single attack is such an epic plot point.
>>98766564This guy looks like he gets pegged.
>>98766564
>>98766576so in your games when a pc fails their third and final death save, but they haven’t yet done the important thing you needed them to do, do you just invent a reason to let them reroll the third save so they might live long enough to do the thing the plot needs them to do?
>>98767292kek
>>98767292Truly the best use of AI.
>>98767393Need implies a single point of failure. The entire philosophy is to design around multiple solutions so that a total failure is statistically improbable. If im doing my job i should never need any one particular PC in the first place
>>98767481>>98767636one pc needed to free another from a magical pact that bound her to this plane so she could return to her home plane where the next adventure is supposed to take place, but he died before he could release her. so the dm had to narrate a reason why the player could reroll their third failed death save.
>>98768140Let me reiterateThe entire philosophy is based on the idea that a problem exists to be solvedWhat does an unsolveable problem achieve? Nothing.A solveable problem drives the story, encourages creative problem solving and rewards choices in and out of characterA problem with only one solution is inherently a badly designed problem, because the scope for story, character development and problem solving is narrowed to a single "correct" pointYou're describing a problem that depends entirely on a single solutionIts definitionally a badly designed problem from a game design perspectiveAND entirely tangentially you wrote yourself into a corner as soon as the problem's one solution failed or became otherwise unavailable. This would never happen to me because i make sure every problem has at least three solutions. All three critical party members would have to die in rapid succession
>>98766564you don’t have much choice when you have a million dollar merch line hanging in the balance.
>>98766564I make mine reroll until they fail
>>98767292The hero we need right now
>>98768140The DM also tried to kill the PC in an unfair way.
>>98770475He died anyway—sorry.He went to hell, but alive; completely different.
>>98766564>i want to force a thing to happen>but I also want to have a chance of it not happeningWhat is wrong with you?
>>98772275>have a chance of it not happeningHe wants to maintain the illusion of that possibility.
>>98770487idk what this means >>98771954kek
>>98766564I enjoyed the first half (maybe two thirds) of the episode a lot, but there was a specific point where I realized Brennan was doing EVERYTHING to get a specific ending. I'll spoiler the latest episodes big thing.Whether stabbed to death or "saved", Wick was in both scenarios going to up in the Pit with Tyranny, which took a lot of the fun out of it. Still some cool rolls
>>98772548I don’t know if his loosey goosey approach to the rules will work for a long form dramatic campaign. why create these unbalanced encounters and then give the players a bunch of illegal benefits to make it potentially winnable, instead of just making a balanced encounter in the first place? I think at a certain point too many people will catch on to the fact that the stakes aren’t real because brennan is going to force the outcome he wants no matter what.
>>98766564As a DM that is not your job to write a cool plot with scripted events. That practically defeats the purpose of playing tabletop over a crpg.
>>98766564The dice cooperate with my storyshitting more often that not. EG I had a BBEG who had a fixation/fetish with amputation as a punishment for his minions or way to let enemies off with a warning. And when the players fought him at the finale he lost his right hand to a critical hit. > let the players keep rolling until someone hits a nat 20 In general I don't let players spam rolls. Only the lead/dominant person rolls and everyone else is just assisting at best. Otherwise you'd get a situation where it's impossible to to ambush a group of soldiers because one guy is going to roll that 20 or its equivalent in other systems. In reality anyone who isn't an outrider/scout is probably going to get complacent. Similarly, you don't get to just try again after failure unless circumstances have changed, like you someone giving you instructions to leave the maze or you buy a better tool set to open the mechanical chest or whatever.
>>98766564No. I don't structure campaigns in such a way that something "has" to happen. If I were ever in such a position, I wouldn't have players roll though. I'd sooner come up with a narrative contrivance than treat my players like they're a rat in maze.The only situation that's similar is, for example, a skill check where players theoretically have infinite time. In which case, the roll is more so how long it takes them to complete the task.
>>98773780The latest episode that aired this week. Campaign 4 Episode 37>>98773713I'm inclined to agree with you, since the lack of stakes is what I felt myself towards the end of the episode. But looking at the two main forums where people discuss critical role (as far as I know), the critical role and fansofcriticalrole subreddits respectively, it feels like a minority are catching on (more in the latter who are the crankier group. Admittedly it's always a small minority of the fanbase that posts, so you never know.But yeah, in my experience if a campaign is deadly you don't need to fucking tell people it's deadly every five minutes, as a rule of thumb. Same way smart people don't tend to run their mouth about being smart typically.
>>98766564Well, this is a dumb question and you seem to have a chip on your shoulder asking tha->it's about gay internet D&D showNigger, you're watching this shit intentionally to get mad, you're an even lower lifeform than the most slop-lapping retard. Reconsider your life right now, and by reconsider I mean reconsider whether you should continue living.
>>98775517critical role>>98775821I enjoy the show, and I enjoy discussing/criticizing the choices made by players/dms and by characters too. using an example from an actual play series to start a conversation about dm philosophy is no different than using an example from my own game to start such a conversation. I understand why so many anons hate cr (it’s woke by any definition of the word), but I’ve been watching since 2015 and still enjoy it. I don’t hatewatch it and I promise you are madder about me watching it than I am. my own games usually are much more rules as written than what brennan has been doing, especially in the most recent episode.
>>98767292amazing
>>98766576>i leave the dungeonI bet you feel so smart yet that anon clearly said his campaign was an hexcrawl so you once you leave the dungeon you are just in the wilderness rolling random encounters each hex.
>>98776536>critical roleWhy didn't you specify? Do you really think we all know what the fuck homoslop you watch?
>>98775515I agree. it’s one thing to do this kind of rule breaking stuff in the finale of a miniseries or the end of a oneshot where you have a limited time to get to a satisfying end point, but for an open ended campaign this level of railroading is going to start to seem more and more egregious even to the most die hard fans.
>>98766564Actually its the oposite. My dm often makes us keep rolling until we fail to keep us from doing something cool for some reason. When an action might take 1 roll, he likes to do 2 to fish for nat 1's for some reason.
>>98778820that’s just as bad as the opposite. I hate when dms won’t let go of the story they wrote in their head (or their notes).let the players’ choices and the dice rolls decide what happens.
>>98766564Why bother playing a game if you're not going to let the mechanics of the game mediate the experience? Look if faggoty theatre kids want to play their eternal toddlers-in-the-back-garden-tier Make Believe then have fun, but that's not roleplaying and those aren't games, it's just play-acting.
>>98768331>What does an unsolveable problem achieve? Nothing.Legitimately awful thinking. If it's impossible to fail then there are no real stakes, and in fact >the scope for story, character development, and problem solvingis wildly EXPANDED by an objectively failable scenario because how people(and thus, characters) respond to failure and its consequences is an incredibly rich narrative vein to tap.I bet your games are boring as fuck you hugbox-designing loser.
>>98776844Because just like watching the show is their only exposure to TTRPGs, they think everyone else must be the same because they're low IQ and can't conceive of hypotheticals.
>>98776844Yes, you quite obviously do
>>98782259is there a difference between the type of failure that drives the narrative forward compellingly and failure that just means your pc dies and the bbeg wins? in other words, what exactly do you mean by failure?
>>98776536Critical Role is structured very differently from a real proper sit-down game. In all my years of gaming, I have never EVER told a player to roll for something if I had come into the game intending for a specific level of success to continue the events of the game. You only roll the dice when there's a reasonable margin for error expected as part of the normal proceedings game, not when you need someone to arbitrarily succeed nor fail. So, I don't really see why you're asking this question about other tables if you wanted to just make a Critical Role thread. They script their shit out ahead of time. Next to no other actual game ever needs to.
>>98783697NTA, but it's the difference between "Spider-Man died trying to stop the Green Goblin" and "Spider-Man stops the Green Goblin, but circumstances and an incredibly rare but crucial slip-up still resulted in his failure to save Gwen Stacy". Not every plan goes off perfectly without a hitch. Not every victory over the villain comes without zero cost.
>>98783762the anon I relied to was talking about >an objectively failable scenarionot one where you succeed but at a cost.
>>98784497"Objectively failable scenario"? What, like when the party arrives too late to have any effect on the villain's plan? Or when they challenge a lich for moral/personal reasons that is explicitly out of their capacity to fight, and die within the first few rounds due to how seriously outmatched they are?
>>98784591idk I was responding to an anon who said that.
back to seekers this week
>>98789955checked and looking forward to it after the fuckery of the last couple eps
I’ve been in games that were pretty much on rails, especially when playing through a published adventure book, and I’ve been in games that were totally open world sandboxes. brennan is far more on the rails that cr has been in the past.
>>98773723wrong. Every good game should have some video game logic cinematic cutscenes where rad shit happens
>>98766564In session zero, I make it very clear that the games at my table are collaborative in nature. A failed roll is equally an opportunity for roleplaying, as a success is. I don't run games with the intent of giving players a self insert power fantasy. Characters, including PC's, are a part of a story that has not yet been created. I run the background and the engine to make it possible, but it's the players that interpret how their success and failures create more story elements. With all that said, we don't do dnd. The system doesn't have critical success or failures.
>>98795749what game do you play?
>>98796548I've GMd many different games. Currently GMing a homebrew fantasy game. Before that it was Dragonsbane, and before that it was Kult: divinity lost.
>>98796838never heard of either of these.
>>98795612agreed but they should happen at the start of a story arc or something rather than the dm trying to force his own prewritten climax or ending.
>>98796838dragonbane is an osr type game right? is there something in particular that made you choose that one over the alternatives?
>>98801097>dragonbane is an osr type game right?What? Did I mix the timelines again?
>>98801767idk that’s why I asked
>>98782259Way to not read what he wrote and work yourself up into a tizzy, anon
>>98789955>>98793769four hours of talking in a tavern. while I like to see npcs actually push back against bad pc behavior, which matt rarely did, I still think this should’ve been half a session rather than the whole thing.
>>98783729it’s not unusual for a table that is running through a published adventure to be just as much on rails as critical role. I agree with you about it being obviously bad dming to put information necessary for the campaign to progress behind a roll that could fail.
>>98766568based
>>98766564Did the general threads die out or what gives?
>>98766564I'd like to think this is bait but DnDrones are so retarded it's hard to tell.
>>98801097Yes, it's OSR. I mean, technically. I still have my original books from the 90's. It's very easy to mod to be more or less realistic, and the old version is even more so.
>>98766564Critical Role is staged theater using DND to provide moments of improv, but it is largely staged with set outcomes.
>>98766564Nope. Most players do not like when they fail however. You will run out of peolle to play with if you have consequences etc
>>98812401oh I see. I didn’t realize it was an actual old school game kek
>>98767628He specifically said "dm", and afaik, D&D uses the d20 since the 90s, probably since before that.Also, there are equivalents.> WoD, Shadowrun and other basic dicepool systems5+ successes.> Fragged Empires2+ Strong Hits on a successful roll> GenesisCritical or at least 1 success and 4 advantages.> CortexMaxed d10 or any d12 for effect.> DP9 or Blades in the darkTN 7+ (base roll maxes out at 6)... and so on, and so forth...
>>98813766The one from the 90's is. The English release is some kind of zombie hybrid where parts are similar but then not really. The Old version had supplement rules like the Warrior's Handbook, which expanded on the combat rules into a tactics game and introduced parallel systems for exhaustion and pain penalties. The new one is kind of bare bones.
>>98766564Sounds like a weak plot and a chore, desu. I work the other way around: a good/ wacky idea, a chance roll and a nat20 (or statistically equivalent) success WILL derail my plot.> Star Wars game, KOTOR era> MacGuffins are Krath-era giant gemstones gathering dark side force energy linked to the 7 deadly sins.> Unrelated, use KOTOR inspired gems for guns and lightsabers.> Unrelated, create Hematium, a metal that can channel/store the force so that the gem of Wrath has a philactery-bound specter protecting it.> Players have Wrath with them.> Sloth is on a derelict capital ship (space dungeon, really) lazily in orbit, in a cloud of minocks, spaceship parasites.>Fukdat.jpg> Force user + Tech Specialist wants to switch the gem (like their blasters) but wants to use the Force Gem MacGuffin.> I tell them it's a different kind of energy.> "What about Hematium?"Their ship went to the -10 step on the Condition track, turret exploded with someone inside who ended up making an atmospheric re-entry unconscious in his super-heavy armor, lots of people ended-up with broken bones... but it did work. And woke up something. But they did one-shot the capital ship and minock nest.Campaign switched after that. Had to deal with what was awoken.
>>98811580yeah in 24 or 25 I think
>>98812550it didn’t used to be. what a shame.
>>98766564I got this one player that constantly complains that it's unfair that I don't bail them out of situations where they risk something big and then fail the checks and have to face the consequences
>>98812558players like feeling that they are playing a game and that not everything they say or do has to be taken super seriously all the time. they like feeling free to goof off and have fun.
>>98766564My favorite part is when that one character died in the first fight so they had to come up with a plot contrivance to bring his soul back from the afterlife for no reason in the same session he died
>>98820128did you miss the part where the player wanted to play as an undead and the Dm said "cool, wanna have the moment you become undead on-screen?" and they went with exactly that? Yeah no shit it worked, that was the entire idea behind it.
>>98814281sounds fun, anon. it always feels amazing as a player to see your choices directly affect the world of the game.
>>98824089Had a GM tell me once: "I'm merely the GM, who am I to decide what should happen next?".Stuck with me. I'll never use the railroad again, but I will give you a map of roads you *might* pick.
>>98817217he’s a pussy. don’t take the risk if you can’t live with the results.
>>98766584kek I would say that improvising in the moment a connection to a pc backstory or some npc or faction or whatever is still a plot, just not a pre written one.
>>98824321great line, and exactly the way I think about dming too
three whole live shows next year. a darrington brigade one, an araman one, and a bells hells one kek.
>>98831829>Araman live show>Brennan as the dmwe are eating good, lads
>>98831969I’m more interested in the darrington brigade. the one sam ran recently felt like c1-c2 home game energy in a way nothing they do ever feels anymore.
>>98767209many tables don’t play that way, of course
seekers halloween episode tonightso does that mean schemers halloween ep next week and then apereea at the soldiers table the week of halloween?
>>98766564WE ARE NOT WRITING A NOVEL. If my players get lucky and my BBEG dies like a retard the only thing I ask of my players is to have a witty zinger.
>>98838632kek trueand of course there’s also always the possibility that the REAL bbeg was the guy behind the guy you thought was the bbeg.
>>98766564I don't think you understand how to play dungeons and dragons.You should try actually reading the rulebook.
>>98838246hopefully it will be schemers and “sinners” the next two weeks.
>>98766564>>98840261just like my vintage maymays
>>98840261he’s got big nuts
>>98840261Is it picking up more stuff every time it appears?
>>98842685>picking upyou mean stealing
>>98844192Such a hurtful thing to say!
>>98815642I'm sure there were generals for the new campaign, or am I going crazy?
>>98844998early c4 in late 2025 are the last crgs in the archive
>>98767292This looks like hay.
>>98767292BaLed
>>98767393>they haven’t yet done the important thing you needed them to doDefine "need them to do". I need my players to play the game, if their character dies they roll a new one and chances are the new character continues where the last one left off.
>>98766564hal fang is a COLONIZED orc kek
>>98847942Halandil Fang is Literally Hitler>a veteran of the last major war>revolutionary upstart politician>ethno-centric political platform (orc/german)>the enemy he blames for his people’s struggle is an ethnic minority who are over represented among the elite (sorcerers/jews)also they’re both artists of different types, although hal is a commercially successful one
>>98851677he’s more like a 21st century europoor right winger>ethnocentric political platform >”my ancestors built this place”>”this place belongs to our people”>his people, the indigenous population, are in danger of becoming a minority in their own city due to mass immigration >the immigrants aren’t assimilating, but are bringing their culture and religion with them>a religion which Hal hatesDol Makjar is basically 21st century europe with orcs as whites and human candescent creed members as black and brown muslim immigrants
>>98847942>>98851677>>98853765based hal kek
schemers halloween ep this week. I guess that means they’re doing some kind of third table next week. either soldiers or sinners. I wonder what they’ll spoil on talegale this time since they retardedly do these live streams when they are several episodes ahead of the audience lmao
>>98859096>schemers halloween ep this week.and soldiers table halloween next week with apereea and guests. and maybe travis' new character?
>>98862308>maybe travis' new character?unless they meet him tonight in the pit.
>>98767393wouldn't be much of a game if the players cannot fail at any of their goals.besides they already had 3 turns of dying in which someone could have fixed that, plenty of time to save the dying character if there was an "important thing they needed to do"
dead air, the show. brennan could make one round of combat take four hours.
>>98866655checkedand speaking of checks, brennan doesn’t care if you roll double natural 1s on a persuasion check with advantage, if the thing you’re trying to persuade an npc to do is something he needs to happen for his railroaded disaster of a campaign to be able to continue.
>>98862308brennan dming for apereea and several guests is literally not critical role. even if travis is there, it would just be him and a bunch of randos. what a disappointment.
>>98766568even if it's session after session of slice of life because the random encounters don't want to come out, it's still a plot. And a GM shouldn't let the players re-roll until they succeed to speed up the hexcrawl.
>>98871543>a GM shouldn't let the players re-roll until they succeedagreed. if you can’t lose, it’s not a game.
I mean it was or is obvious that Brennan wants to tell a certain story, that is just what Critical Role is. I don't really mind the extra death save because Wic had 0 agency in that fight (should've designed it differently) but honestly, thats just what it is. It was fun and pretty climactic. even if wic was gonna end up in the pit anyway. I care more about Marisha casting misty step and a levelled spell in the same turn or shit like Thimble giving herself the help action.
>>98875700>that is just what Critical Role is.>thats just what it is.checked and true, but such a shame. it used to be an actual dnd game, but I guess that was almost a decade ago now.
>>98873032there can be other ways to lose besides pc death, but there definitely must be a way to lose.
schemers this week, sans costumes, seems like a weird scheduling decision. probably only like 6 eps left this year and apparently some of them will be apereea and guests and the soldiers table, so probably just 1-2 each left for the seekers and schemers until next year.
anyone have any thoughts about why he’s railroading wic and tyranny in particular so hard these last few episodes?
>>98884623He likes to railroad everyone, but it’s more noticeable with those two because they’re the most chaotic and don’t grasp the direction he’s trying to steer things in.
>>98766568So a boring slog where nothing matters and it's all randomly generated dogshit?
>>98766564You only roll the dice when the outcome is in question, faggot. If I want something to happen, it happens. And you queers are going to scream about storyshit and railroading and whatever but that's not how TTRPGs work or have ever worked, it's part of the social contract between GM and player. The players are agreeing to the premise of the campaign being run, and the GM in turn allows them to influence the game world within the context of that premise.I've seen sandbox shit, it's the players not having anything they want to do until you give them a plot hook. Players are incapable of creating their own adventures reliably, they want something to sink their teeth into and get invested into. They want NPCs to latch onto that you didn't even intend to be more than one-offs, they want a chance to have their PCs be heroes, they want a greater goal than just stabbing shit for money. They don't want you to just shit them out in bumfuck nowhere with nothing to do, no reason to even be a party, and no destination to reach.It's basic human nature at play. Humans want purpose, humans are goal-oriented creatures that need something to strive for to be satisfied and to push forward. If you don't have a goal of some kind to work towards, you won't go anywhere, and if you're part of a group that group needs a collective goal to serve as the glue holding it together. TTRPG parties, therefore, require more than 5 randos with personal goals that are completely separate. They need one, uniting goal that the GM needs to give them. And no "haha get rich lol" is not a good enough goal, because that's what everyone wants, to have enough resources to live comfortably. That's not heroic. that's not adventurous. That's just being a wagecuck.
>>98766564>BLM exposed as a hack theater kid fake dungeon masterwhat a lovely day. that being said, lots of weak DMs in home games fudge death saves and are scared to let player characters die.
>>98884734sam definitely grasps it he just likes to make unpredictable big swings with his characters. whitney is lost though kek
>>98886495nice write up and I agree with what you’re saying. the op isn’t about the general railroad vs sandbox philosophical debate, though. it’s more like the type of railroading where the dm says>you need to persuade this npc to do this thing or else the campaign is basically over, so roll persuasion with advantageand then the player rolls two 1s, and the dm has the npc do the thing anyway. the player is basically left wondering why they even rolled, and for that matter, why they’re even playing. just write your novel at that point.
>>98889267If you read my post you'd know I was pre-empting the usual wave of nogames faggotry and am aware. I address this in my first sentence.>You only roll the dice when the outcome is in question, faggot. If I want something to happen, it happens. Why on god's green earth would I waste my time and my players' time making them roll for shit that needs to happen for the game to continue? My continuation was preemptive to people whining that things needing to happen = the players have no freedom, which is stupid. The events that need to happen are like words that you need as part of a sentence structure. They are the space between events. They are the "and then..." before the players make a choice and the dice are rolled. They make one choice, so something else happens (the "and then") and thus they must make another choice, and so on, and so forth, until the chain of events started with their first choice (to play the game with the premise pitched to them that they accepted before the game started) reaches its conclusion because there are no more "and thens" to add on.
>>98886655checked and yes. I hope by the end of c4 his reputation among normies is something like>well his style isn’t for everyoneor better yet that he just sucks kek
Never leave plot critical elements up to chance. Anything that can be failed will be failed and you should be ready to compensate for it.
>>98889566>Why on god's green earth would I waste my time and my players' time making them roll for shit that needs to happen for the game to continue?exactly
>>98893288this anon gets it
>give me back my soul or I’ll ring your fucking neckwhy hasn’t wic said this already, like 30 minutes ago? the players are so passive. like they understand intuitively that they can’t do anything until brennan explicitly tells them to choose a or b in a specific situation.
luis and marisha really theater-kidding it up last night was so unfun to watch. this childish melodrama has been dragging the show down since campaign one and they just keep doubling and tripling down on it. the pit stuff was very interesting, but it’s a shame sam’s punishment for his bold choice with the sermon is that he basically doesn’t get to play the game for at least three episodes
>>98817164>it didn’t used to be
>>98901102you’re gonna tell me there’s no difference between the way they play now compared to early or even late campaign 1?
>>98886455is poker a slog?
>>98901102>>98902240it started out good but liam single handedly ruined it even before c1 ended by making everyone at the table, and many in the audience as well, think the success of their show was about acting when it was really a gaming stream of a type people hasn’t seen before with a charismatic cast who had good chemistry.
