Knights & Knaves Alehouse

I think I watched one or two episodes of Wheaton's RPG thingy. Once I realized it was story gaming my interest level plummeted.

I they had played 5e I would have been a lot more interested then whatever system they were using.

Zero interest.

I would be willing to watch other people play D&D on video, but only if there was a running commentary by Pat Summerall and John Madden.

Pat: It looks like the party has encountered a group of Ogres, here, John. What do you think they are going to do?
John: Well, Pat. The thing you have to know about Ogres is that they are usually the biggest guys on the battlefield. You see, the Ogres are big, and none of the PCs are as big, so that makes the Ogres the biggest.
Pat: Right you are, John. Looks like the party isn't doing much damage to these Ogres. Why do you think that is John?
John: Well, Pat. The thing you have to remember about dealing damage is that it all comes down to the dice roll. If you want to deal more damage, you have to roll higher on the dice.
Pat: It looks like this is going to be a TPK, here, John.
John: Yeah, Pat. I hate to see a good party suffer a TPK. The thing is, if all of the members of the party die, you just can't win. You're never going to win if everybody on your side is dead.
Pat: Right, you are John!

bobjester wrote: They are used to the battle-grid, so that becomes the map. I can't get a single one of them to put a pencil to graph or hex paper, even to make an overland map. They don't take notes and can't recall even the important encounters or events from session to session..

Well, if you only draw ou the battle grid/map for when there's actual combat, and wipe i clean between them, while using descriptions to 'image out the rest of the dungeon' and they are failing to take notes/do a map, START Having them get lost. Forget key things (like was that pit trap this side of the door, or was it on the other).

bobjester wrote:I can't get a single one of them to put a pencil to graph or hex paper, even to make an overland map. They don't take notes and can't recall even the important encounters or events from session to session.

Party: We go back to town.
DM: Okay, how do you leave the Dungeon?
Party: We just go back to town.
DM: Well, okay, you are 3 levels deep, having traversed many passages. What route OUT OF THE DUNGEON do you take?
Party: ?????
DM: <rolls a 1 on a wandering monster check>
DM: <rolls 1 on a surprise check>
DM: You are beset by a group of well armed Ogres, they get one free round of attacks.

That's how you fix that.

francisca wrote:

bobjester wrote:I can't get a single one of them to put a pencil to graph or hex paper, even to make an overland map. They don't take notes and can't recall even the important encounters or events from session to session.

Party: We go back to town.
DM: Okay, how do you leave the Dungeon?
Party: We just go back to town.
DM: Well, okay, you are 3 levels deep, having traversed many passages. What route OUT OF THE DUNGEON do you take?
Party: ?????
DM: <rolls a 1 on a wandering monster check>
DM: <rolls 1 on a surprise check>
DM: You are beset by a group of well armed Ogres, they get one free round of attacks.

That's how you fix that.

The Old School of Hard Knocks according to Francisca.

Yeah, player unwillingness to draw maps mostly comes from them not seeing the need - if the dungeon is more-or-less a straight line from encounter to encounter and there's no chance of getting lost, then there's no reason to draw a map (especially not a scale map). But once you drop them into a complex, branching maze and they realize they're going to have to find their own way back to the surface, then a map (or at least some sort of marking guide*) starts to seem like a better idea. If the players are drawing a map it should be because they chose to because they realize they need it, not because the DM told them they have to.

*the AD&D PH says to draw maps instead of doing things like unwinding a ball of twine or making marks on the walls because the dungeon inhabitants will remove/destroy those, but to me that's skipping too far ahead: sure, in a high-traffic and actively malevolent dungeon those tricks won't work, but that's not every dungeon, and IMO telling players "this thing that seems like a clever trick won't work so you shouldn't do it" sends the wrong message, encouraging them to think inside the box and rotely follow established traditions rather than thinking up their own solutions (and then learning the limits of those solutions). Players should equip themselves with torches and rope and mapping gear and iron spikes and oil and so on because they understand why it's useful, not just because it's on the gear list in the book and they feel like they're supposed to.

Watching D&D. Although I myself am not terribly interested in watching people play at this point, I certainly would have been interested when I first started. I saw ads for D&D in comic books and magazines, but really had no idea how it was done other than a few brief seconds here and there in movies. So, I can appreciate how new people might like to watch people play. To the extent that you get experienced people watching people play, I mean, whatever. I don't really like watching basketball or Grey's Anatomy either, but apparently a lot of other people do.

Mapping. As for getting people to map, if I were playing with totally new players, I'd start with simple dungeons that might not even need to be mapped, then transition to dungeons that might be mapped with a simple flowchart and then to something that requires some graph paper and attention. I think if you ease people into mapping as a technique for survival, especially once they've already been hooked on other elements, they'll see the benefit and might even enjoy it (!). If you sit someone new down on day one and expect them to map out Bottle City while you dictate, yeah, they're probably going to think D&D sucks ass. If experienced players don't want to map, then we probably want different things out of the game and our styles might not be compatible. It happens.

To me, mapping is the very heart of the game, so, I definitely don’t see the harm in coaching the players through it right off the bat. I guess if you think mapping is inherently lame, a sort of necessary evil rather than something that is inherently awesome and fun, then you might have a different perspective.

Falconer wrote:To me, mapping is the very heart of the game, so, I definitely don’t see the harm in coaching the players through it right off the bat. I guess if you think mapping is inherently lame, a sort of necessary evil rather than something that is inherently awesome and fun, then you might have a different perspective.

I love mapping and we always map in my home games, so I'm not sure I see how easing new people into mapping equates to believing it's inherently lame. Maybe I don't understand what you're saying.

You said it sucks ass!!

J/K. I didn’t mean to address you personally.

Falconer wrote:You said it sucks ass!!

J/K. I didn’t mean to address you personally.

No worries.

I think mapping is inherently lame and a sort of necessary evil

As far as watching videos goes, I'm not going to turn up my nose at something not personally interesting to me, or different than I used when I was a kid, that's bringing in players. Minecraft and other game playthrough videos get eyeball time in my household and Lord knows a D&D session video can't be much more boring than those. Leveraging one habit to spark interest in another is how marketing works.

Something else to consider re mapping: if this isn't an aspect of D&D that your group enjoys, dump the aspects of D&D that are mainly utilized specifically to make the act of mapping error-prone.

That doesn't mean simplistic architecture or dumbing down layouts, but to continue use of bottle city as an example, there is in that map (IMO) lots of stuff built in solely to make the table-act of putting pencil to graph paper exceptionally confusing/difficult without having any other purpose or plausible in-game raison d'être. This stuff can and should be sparingly used if a group doesn't enjoy that sort of "puzzle". It's not a central pillar of the D&D experience (which is different than being able to draw a reasonable outline of purpose-driven dungeon layout).

(as an example where I would still use that stuff: illusionist lairs, locations famous for being confusing, etc. - then players should have an expectation of this sort of challenge if they take on a location like that or avoid it otherwise)

T. Foster wrote:I think mapping is inherently lame and a sort of necessary evil