Official ICE Forums
Gamer's Corner => General Discussion => Topic started by: Marc R on January 24, 2012, 03:39:35 PM
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Depends on the situation, and how your crew works, some players would go nuclear to lose a character to a no RR, no attack roll "yer dead, now roll a new character" result.
Not that I haven't done it, but it's not an ideal choice in all situations.
You make very good points. My very first gaming exp was Dec of 1980, right before xmas break. I was in 6th grade. The game was Tunnels and trolls, a mini course taught by the 7th grade science teacher (Mrs Plakke, one cool adult/chick). Our first day of class (mini courses were tues-fri for two weeks, then start a new one, etc, throughout the school year, 7th hour) we formed groups and made characters after picking who would be the GM at each table.
A group of DnD kids formed in the corner, but the rest of us were gamer virgins. I made a dwarf warrior, Thorid Zad (the first of MANY incarnations, ending in Thorid the VI, killed by xbow bolt...ALL my thorids died). Next day, gear bought, weapons in hand, our group entered THE DUNGEON OF THE BEAR.
After haggling down the door guard to 5gp just to get in, we started down a slopeing floor. CLICK, and a bolder, ala Raiders of the lost ark (but BEFORE that movie had come out, thank you Bear Peters), started rolling down the slope towards us. I wasn't sophisticated enough to be angry over the elves high dex, or the fairies ability to fly versus thorid low speed stat...splat! Thorid was dead before he ever lived. Let me tell ya...I WAS INSTANTLY HOOKED. No B.S. No monopoly esque long painful death ending in bankruptcy, just FINALITY.
I took a book home, learned the game, ran it like mad for about a year, until that summer I found othetr games, but it was RQ that would suck me in. Them RM. Each a game with finality written right into the rules.
That is how I like it.
I've always liked adversity, the harder it is to get something done often the more satisfying the result it (not always, but to a point).
But considering your post above, I realize that a lot of the stories we tell now, 10+ years later, are stories of in game failure.
While there are some "Remember when you killed that lich?" there are a lot of "Remember when your character broke both his arms, then tried to extract the glowing magic crystal from the wall sconce using his mouth, you slipped and ended up hung from the wall like a gigged fish?"
Sometimes failing ends up being the best stuff, though some people just hate failing ever (those kinds of people tend not to be a lot of fun to be around IMO).
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I tend to agree. One of my players was razzed for years about a series of failed perception rolls that led his Dwarf to insist that the party was being followed by a bear which turned out to be nothing more than a scared possum. The same character later misidentified a rock outcropping as obsidian and refused to be persuaded otherwise. And then there was the guy who foiled a perfect ambush by peeking through the door to the hotel swimming pool area and then ducking back down. No...nothing at all suspicious about that when the party's target was a paranoid drug trafficker... 8)
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I tend to agree also. It is the failures that flavor the success, making it so satisfying.
Epic battle between party and giants in very early RM (we converted from MERP to RM1). Rohirim fighter Solon is climbing cliff face, fumbles climbing roll, falls 60' and breaks a leg badly. Now, Solon had a Giant Slaying Sword that he NEVER had a chance to use against giants. He climbs back up the 60' cliff and fights the giants at a -90 to activity, killing one (leaving one because the other giant had snatched up the nightblade and ran back to the cave, rolled the rock shut, scewerd the nightblade and started to roast him). Alashieve and comes out of long stun no parry, the mage fee was badly hurt from a thrown horse that smacked the bejesus out of him...by the time Solon and Al drop the last giant (he turned and ran but was forced to fight before the bolder), the party was forced to listen to the last screams of the nightblade as his sweet elven flesh was roasted alive...the group COULD NOT MOVE THE BOLDER. Once healed they did move the bolder...the giant never got a swing off. The players, when we manage to get together, still talk about that encounter (the other two PC's, a wose and a numenorean, never got in a swing as the giants took em out with rocks as the group rushed up the cliff face). It was their first encounter ever with giants and they learned some respect that day.
The iron heart affair previously mentioned began with the Druid, who would eventually read the scroll (and be the only survivor) broke his leg/hip trying to climb over a fence. When the party had killed the bad guys and freed the prisoners, they dragged everything out of the stuffy nasty smelling basement into the front yard...were the druid killed everybody, even those just rescued. The druid reported back to town, and that character took a vow to NEVER use a scroll again. The vow was kept, and became on of Alonzos most successful character ever (certainly our most successful druid ever). I recall hearing a few times how the new group never would have joined the druids quest if had told the truth about the cursed scroll and how he killed all his team mates.
TPK failures are drastic. Yet failure makes success so much sweeter. Still, pointless death is only acceptable if its REALLY pointless; then its funny and unforgettable.
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Without believing failure is possible, success is meaningless. Your success just depends on how generous the GM is feeling.
Without actual failures, the belief in the possibility of failure will be lost.
I don't know that the failure itself is that interesting. I think it's more what you do after the failure. The reaction and, perhaps, the recovery.
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Yeah, that. If failure carries no price, victory has no savor.
...was razzed for years about a series of failed perception rolls that led his Dwarf to insist that the party was being followed by a bear which turned out to be nothing more than a scared possum.
Which reminds me of the failed perception roll where one of the Privates in the squad sees a large, reptilian looking footprint 15 or 20 feet away and thinks, "Hah! Mr. know it all spellcaster Corporal thinks these guys didn't have any heavy backup. Wait til I show him this wyvern or young dragon or whatever it is footprint. I'm gonna razz him about it for weeks!"
He had just enough time to make a bit of a fool of himself before the Corporal showed up and said, "It's a fossil, Private. It's probably been there a million years."
::)
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One game a few years back I was rolling for random encounters at night. I came up with nothing. I mentioned a shadow passed over the camp, and was about to tell then it was a cloud passing overhead and blocking the moon. But the party member thought it might be a flying beast. They spend the next 4 game hours tracking it.
I, of course, let The Shadow lead them to the next major encounter. To this day my wife swears here is a semi transparent flying creature that haunts the nights of my world. Some day I need to create the monster so she can kill it.
The thing is all of the bad rolls (they were not over a 10, and the worse was in the -50 range), cause then to believe that there was something there. This turned into fear as I kept insisting that they found nothing. Then another poor roll and my smile and shaking my head, "No nothing is there. But over there is that a Shadow?" They all were and still are convinced they missed something that day and have spend many a game-week crossing and crisscrossing the area looking for the beast.
Because they have done things like researching this in the library of every city they have come to it has produced experience. So in effect failure has taught them something.
Of course, as I have found out racing motorcycle....pain is the best teacher.
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Well I will admit that sometimes they never, ever seem to get it. There was a kid (teenager) who played in one of my games for maybe 2 years, and got to where any time it was foggy he was sure we were about to be attacked. He was absolutely certain that fog was theatrics, with no real purpose in the game other than to provide cover for monsters.
The idea that we were in mountains in a temperate climate, that fog and rain in late spring is common as dirt... that one just never occurred to him. The idea that for an intelligent monster looking for an opportunity to raid would know that and use it to his advantage, to fail to do so would be out of character.... that idea never seemed to make it into his head.
Over 2 years (real world time, perhaps 8-10 years game time), he seemed completely unable to work the logic backwards, to consider the idea that instead of the monster being a given and me using fog to give it an advantage, the fog was a given in a particular area at a particular time of year, and the monster would use it to his advantage.
He never seemed to notice all the times it was foggy and no one got attacked... even after one night when the mage face-planted into a tower because he was flying in the fog.
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IMHO yes failure is a great thing ... if someone can learn from it.
MDC
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IMO, even if they don't learn anything from it, I stand by my original statement:
If failure carries no price, victory has no savor.
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Players can learn. point in question. I was running a game in "The System That Shall Not Be Named (tm)" and I was looking to give them a reason to run from a monster. The average level of the party was 15, I then saw a CR32 creature...the Flesh Jelly. Think of a disgusting jellyfish type creature made of rotting flesh. The party attacked, as I knew they would. They were pushed back by the stench and the like.
As they regrouped it was noted that the Barbarian was not affected by the smell. The cleric then looked at him and asked if he would accept a spell by not resisting. The Barbarian agreed and the cleric cast "Frenzy" to bump up all kinds of physical attributes while lowered mental ones. (Like who cares with a Barbarian). The downside was that the character would attack until he was able to control himself, but the mental faculties were impaired.
Needless to say the creature rolled right over him. I move the time I was using as a marker of the creature on and left a small six sided elongated die behind it. The players all asked what that was. I then took the character sheet for the Barbarian and listed all of the non-digestible items on it. Much laughter ensued. But the Party learned to not attack everything in their path.
To this day the phrase "Do you resist?" is used when the encounter looks too tough.
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IMO, even if they don't learn anything from it, I stand by my original statement:
If failure carries no price, victory has no savor.
I agree fully.
MDC
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Players can learn. point in question. I was running a game in "The System That Shall Not Be Named (tm)" and I was looking to give them a reason to run from a monster. The average level of the party was 15, I then saw a CR32 creature...the Flesh Jelly. Think of a disgusting jellyfish type creature made of rotting flesh. The party attacked, as I knew they would. They were pushed back by the stench and the like.
As they regrouped it was noted that the Barbarian was not affected by the smell. The cleric then looked at him and asked if he would accept a spell by not resisting. The Barbarian agreed and the cleric cast "Frenzy" to bump up all kinds of physical attributes while lowered mental ones. (Like who cares with a Barbarian). The downside was that the character would attack until he was able to control himself, but the mental faculties were impaired.
Needless to say the creature rolled right over him. I move the time I was using as a marker of the creature on and left a small six sided elongated die behind it. The players all asked what that was. I then took the character sheet for the Barbarian and listed all of the non-digestible items on it. Much laughter ensued. But the Party learned to not attack everything in their path.
To this day the phrase "Do you resist?" is used when the encounter looks too tough.
Great story!
MDC
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Heh "Do you resist" is asked every time someone casts a spell on a PC, to be consistent for when it really matters.
A more popular mockery of failure for us is usually "What are the odds?"
Great story BTW.
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Fog and flesh monsters...great stuff. laugh points around!
More stories of failure please. Fun reading.
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That same teenager got razzed mercilessly for a failure to grasp the basics of roleplay as it applies to the GM. His thing about fog was really just a symptom of his failure to get the idea that I was trying to come up with an inherently logical scenario, and while the idea of challenging the PCs was built into it, it was entirely possible to bypass any given element. He was convinced that "no matter what we do, he's gonna get us anyway, so it doesn't really matter."
He got a lesson in how flawed that premise was in the session where the mage (warrior mage, actually) face-planted into the tower. After the guy got back to camp and healed up a bit, the next morning they went looking for that tower. It was attached to a larger building, and the corner tower was the only part of it more than one story high. They found the structure and started investigating, and the bottom floor was a typical dwelling, abandoned. The only thing out of the ordinary was the door in the corner which led to the tower. It had some sort of drawing on it, which unbeknownst to him was a lightning bolt trap, set to go off when anyone besides the caster who emplaced it turned the doorknob.
The warrior mage was all for going out into the woods and finding some small animal, wrapping a rope or belt or some such around the doorknob, and twisting the knob just as the small animal was tossed in front of it. Did the rogue listen to the guy who knew something about spells? No. Why not?
"If he wants to get us he's gonna get us, there's nothing we can do about it."
That may not be precisely verbatim (it's been nearly 20 years ago after all), but it's pretty close. So since "it doesn't matter, he's gonna get us anyway", he went to the door, grabbed the knob and twisted.
He lived... but he was pretty badly injured. The downrange part of the bolt missed the warrior mage, who was standing in the entry doorway to the dwelling, by under a foot.
For months after that, the player of the warrior mage (his older brother) got endless mileage out of the phrase, "Grab the doorknob! Grab the doorknob!" Whether there actually was a doorknob was beside the point entirely.
GM: "You see a cave."
Warrior Mage (to the rogue): "Grab the doorknob! Grab the doorknob!"
::)
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We had one player who made a living out of picking off other people's kills. He'd hold back in a fight and then try to run in and deliver the killing blow. Sometimes this worked, but during one encounter the party ran into a group of chaos warriors led by a single chaos commander. In the ensuing melee this player held back until the moment the party's main fighter (a Dwarf) managed to disarm the chaos commander. Sensing a quick kill, our guy ran into the fight and attacked. For those of you who haven't seen the RMC I chaos commander, that NPC has a nasty OB in martial arts. So the chaos commander turns to the player rogue, smiles, and unleashes a snap kick that sends him back ten feet and into a coma! So much for the best-laid plans... After that, poor plans tended to be mocked by comments like "Yeah...let's just disarm that chaos commander. It'll be SOOOOO much easier."
In another encounter, we had a player who was brand-new to gaming. He'd developed a barbarian, read all my world's background stuff on his race, and was very proud of how he'd developed his name and all the other bits. The party was moving through an unexplored stretch of woods and came across an old keep in disrepair. Sensing an opportunity, they moved in and tried to determine how easy it would be to repair (stronghold, anyone?) without considering that someone else might have the same idea. When they were attacked by a party of Orcs, the barbarian grabs up his gear and rushes to the wall to do battle. Only then does he realize that he never developed a skill for the weapon his character used (axe). This kid was pretty quick on his feet, though, and he looked around and found some rubble. "Can I throw rocks?" he asked. "Sure," I said. "Use your AG as your OB." Not quite by the book, I know, but I didn't want to penalize him for coming up with a good idea. So he's up on the wall, this 6'4" red-haired barbarian, tossing chunks of rubble down at the Orcs and screaming at them in his native language. He even managed to hit one or two of them. After that, the party made sure he had a supply of rocks in his pack, and from time to time he'd use them in combat in preference to his normal weapon.
Not deadly failures, but still interesting situations that our party didn't forget.
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In our first run through the original Herubar Gular (the default adventure in the MERP box), there were a couple of players ... me (a rohirrim ranger), a dunedain fighter, a hobbit thief, and an elf mage.
We came to the top of the trapped stairs. The mage looked at the inscription (failed his Read Runes role) and said - "it's trapped ... but I need more time".
The hobbit thief says "I can't see any traps ..."
So the Dunedain picks him up and tosses him down the stairs.
As the GM, I ruled that he missed the trapped stair, and so told the Dunedain that he got to the bottom of the stairs without triggering anything ... but appeared to be stunned/unconscious from the fall (from what they could make out in the spluttering torch light). Grinning, the dunedain nonchalantly walks down the stairs (while the ranger fumbled in his pack for herbs), and is greatly surprised when he is hit with the fireball !!
(later, the same Dunedain decided that he needed to level up, but needed another 500 exp ... so he climbed to the top of the tower and jumped off ... figuring that the D fall/crush critical would level him up and heal the damage. I left him with a broken leg for three weeks in-game :) I also dumped the default RM experience system that day and never looked back!
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So the Dunedain picks him up and tosses him down the stairs.
Bwahahahahaha. :mullet:
I think we have the same players at one time or another.
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Jumping off a tower for XP I'd never heard of before, though I have known people to be a bit rough in practice combat using that logic that Damage is XP, and the cleric is right over there watching us spar.
Which spawned the comment "If I don't break some of your bones sparring, you're never going to learn."
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Which spawned the comment "If I don't break some of your bones sparring, you're never going to learn."
While that's definitely over the top, I was taught shield defense by someone who told me, "If I put a bruise in the same spot on that leg 3 times running, I bet I won't have to remind you to guard that leg anymore."
And in fairness, sure enough, he didn't. :o
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On weird xp...I was a guest at a 2e campaign. As usual I was a fighter (Paladins and cavaliers were my fav, but the GM stated I would want a Chaotic AL).
Anyway, long fight, the gust NPC tough guy was badly hurt. The cleric ask how many HP left, to which the GM responded two. The cleric went to heal him but cast wounding instead, killing him..for the xp! This was a 12th level druid after all. So then the cleric RAISES THE DRUID NPC and convinces him all is in balance, cuz while he did kill him, he also raised him. That stupid GM gave full xp AND a bonus for raising him (the cleric was NE I believe).
There ARE so many reasons to hate alignments.
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The half truth, half crazy is what made it all funny.
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After a character death, the party (needing an in game reason to find a new member) was recruiting potential replacements. The new character steps up and after being asked, "so what can you do well?", he replies "I'm an expert archer."
New PC fronts up to a makeshift archery target and readies his bow, fumbles and breaks his bow and stuns himself badly. The party give each other concerned looks, but giving him the benefit of the doubt, allow another shot. New character readies his restrung bow....and fumbles again. The GM was nice and said there were no other applicants, so the new guy was hired.....but on a very low wage.
Later party was out on a mission and was welcomed by the local chief and offered hospitality and some beer. Knowing that we could be called to action with short notice, the charcter drank moderately, with the exception of the 'new guy'. The party's leader cautioned him about drinking too much but was told in a rather surly way that 'I can handle it.' Soon we heard of local raiders and mounted our horses to ride off. 'New Guy' fumbled his ride roll, fell off the horse and broke his arm.
He was resoundingly admonished for his drinking and fined a weeks pay. Any further claims of ability this character had were looked on with a strong degree of skeptisicm.
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Well, the attack roll was successful, but the tactic had some flaws:
MK 5 Extended Range Plasma grenade in a (smaller than he thought) underground bunker.
Only half the party died, so it was not a complete failure;-)
-Terry
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We came to the top of the trapped stairs. The mage looked at the inscription (failed his Read Runes role) and said - "it's trapped ... but I need more time".
The hobbit thief says "I can't see any traps ..."
So the Dunedain picks him up and tosses him down the stairs.
A group formed up and the person playing the thief dropped out. The module the GM was running was very trap heavy. We were having issues. Since we were first level payers we could not just have someone pick up the ability to detect traps. We came on a long hall and just "knew" there were traps in the hall. My half-orc Paladin (yeah, that kind of campaign) had a brilliant idea. He went back grabbed the corpse of the Dire Rat they just defeated. He slid it down the hall and set off a trap. The Dire Rat became the "Trap Detector" until my wife (then fiance) joined the game and ran the Thief. (A hobbit thief who had two ponies, Apple and Cake, one to ride and one for Tasty Rations). We ended up naming the Dire Rat corpse "Stumpy". That character is now 20th Level and still carries "Stumpy IV".
The only down thing is we all go to gaming conventions together. The bad thing is there are only 5 of us, so some poor soul fills out the table. Invariably, one of the girls will use the phrase, "Man, I could use a Stumpy now!" Boy, do we get strange looks!
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For my answer to the question, I'll state something my father always told me.
"It is only from our mistakes and failures that we actually learn something. And only fools do not learn from their mistakes and failures."
I have found that is true, even with the wild stories posted.
rmfr
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Or for that matter, a good answer to the posted topic is something I have heard as one of "Murphy's Laws of Combat":
Experience is something you get just after you need it. ;)
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Or for that matter, a good answer to the posted topic is something I have heard as one of "Murphy's Laws of Combat":
Experience is something you get just after you need it. ;)
Unfortunately, I find that is SOOOO true in RL also
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The one variance here is that it's a game, so you learn from the mistakes you don't survive also.
That and it's for fun, so sometimes learning or not, failure can be hysterical.
Like, a fighter I know dove off a ledge, flying toward a major demon with a Fly I ring. . . .put put put put. . .Fly one doesn't really let you swoop in, so it was sort of like he allowed the demon to play slow motion softball with him . . .the fact he had four 1-quart glass jugs of super acid in his backpack just meant he got immolated by it's fire aura, swatted into a wall, where he slowly dissolved from the backpack out.
He learned from that mistake, but we still laugh about it.
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Not an rpg moment but...LANing Ghost Recon. Five of us in crouch mode sneaking through the office up to the door.. Crack it open and see lots of badies. "I'll throw a grenade, fall back..." Except we all forgot we were in crouch mode. TPK. It took a few minutes before resuming play we were laughing so hard.
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Magician: "I cast a fire ball!"
GM: "You are in the middle of sewers of the city ... there is a lot of gas around ..."
Magician: "Can I centre the ball on the leader of the party?"
GM: "...ehm ... well ... yeah ..."
Magician: "I cast my fireball!"
The GM was nice and we all survived ... naked, however, all gear became victim to the flames ... except the boots which luckily were submerged in the sewers' liquids.
A fun moment we all liked to remember!
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Brings a whole new skid to "up.... um, the creek."
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These are too funny. If you know you are a redneck if your last words are 'hey buddy watch this', does that make you a redneck geek if the last words your characters is is the GM going 'you do what?'
For example playing an AD&D module we are being attacked by a swarm of norkers. Thief decides to hide behind a corner passage way to let them go by and attack them from the rear. Unfortunately this is where the mountain giant would enter the room the next round. Scratch one thief. There is a trap door on the floor which the cleric says 'I stand on it to keep it down.' which gets lots of perplexing stares from the rest of the party. Next round he is knocked flat as the trapdoor flies open as the norkers start coming up. So the cleric gets the idea then to levitate up 20' or so before getting overrun and use spiritual hammer. Which worked great for a round before the norker shaman dispelled the flight spell. He was then on known as the falling cleric.
But my favorite happened to one annoying player with a real annoying character who decied a good place to be protected from a red dragon swooping in about to breathe was in his bag of holding - that is made of phase spider silk.
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These are too funny. If you know you are a redneck if your last words are 'hey buddy watch this', does that make you a redneck geek if the last words your characters is is the GM going 'you do what?'
I guess that makes me a redneck nerd then, since my sig line on another site is:
Aliquando et insanire iucundum est.
Yes, even in Caesar's time, people said,
"Hold my beer and watch this!"
I think the bottom line on the topic of failure is that not only is the occasional failure a good thing, indeed the occasional failure is vital.
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Invariably, one of the girls will use the phrase, "Man, I could use a Stumpy now!" Boy, do we get strange looks!
A player of mine once had a rabbit he named Teebie.... short for "Trap Bait".
::)
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This thread has definitely turned to the funny.
I have wondered for a long time now how to institute the "learning while failing" concept - as apparently, it is how we learn best, but with no luck. Anyone else work on and figure this out?
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I haven't figure it out, but I never liked the RM concept of negative experience.
You're already going to get penalized by screwing up, why hurt them again by -xp?
Players are in a huge cavern, home of a Drow city; pop ~9,000.
The natives have had over 1,000yrs to magically ward the place with major access to 20th lvl casters and some access to higher lvl magics.
If you try to translocate (Teleport), you take an A Disruption crit. Sure you get an RR, but what you fail by is added to the crit.
With that much time an access to magic, the city is fairly protected from an army popping in, wreaking in and popping out.
Our friendly neighborhood Mage takes his chances and Teleports about 3 times before he gives up... Even the most stubborn players can learn.
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I haven't figure it out, but I never liked the RM concept of negative experience.
You're already going to get penalized by screwing up, why hurt them again by -xp?
I don't think I have heard of "negative xp" outside of an undead's ability to suck the life out of you, and that was in D&D. I know I never had to deal with it as either a player or GM of Rolemaster. Oh, and the occasional resurrection/reincarnation causing level loss. But that was also in D&D.
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The very first time I GMed Rolemaster (which was also the very first time any of us where playing the game), the very first action taken by a player required a riding skill roll, which he fumbled. He thus fell from his horse, and ended up knocked out for several hours, because, lucky him, he had a helmet.
The player helped me with the table look-ups (and had some weird prophetic dreams during his coma while the rest of the group was talking about what to do next), and though it was great.
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The very first time I GMed Rolemaster (which was also the very first time any of us where playing the game), the very first action taken by a player required a riding skill roll, which he fumbled. He thus fell from his horse, and ended up knocked out for several hours, because, lucky him, he had a helmet.
The player helped me with the table look-ups (and had some weird prophetic dreams during his coma while the rest of the group was talking about what to do next), and though it was great.
RM skill resolution and danage system has a nice way of often contributing to an organic story line. Major props for throwing in a vision. It not only advances the story but turns a bad situation into a cool situation, coma and all.
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Negative Experience:
RMFRP pg 74.
RMSS pg 126.
The examples in the book are when someone finds a trap, forgets and then stumbles into it anyway. The GM docks them 100xp!
Glad I'm not the only one who just skipped over that part. :)
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Speaking of bad things I often give a player a roll if they are going to do something their PC would know not to do. The higher the skill the lower they need to roll to still do what they know the PC should not do.
MDC
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Definitely thumbs up there. Turned "I hated that game where I spent most of the session unconscious" to "Remember the vision I had when I was knocked out?"
Negative XP would only seem to apply if you're forgetting something, not being stupid. . .it seems a poor lever to fix stupid, since the cure for stupid in RM is quite evidently built into the critical and fumble results. ;)
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Invariably, one of the girls will use the phrase, "Man, I could use a Stumpy now!" Boy, do we get strange looks!
A player of mine once had a rabbit he named Teebie.... short for "Trap Bait".
::)
We had a character take the golem mastery list and dubbed his creation 'The Irish' from Braveheart for such instances as "The room might be trapped, send in the Irish"
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Negative Experience:
RMFRP pg 74.
RMSS pg 126.
The examples in the book are when someone finds a trap, forgets and then stumbles into it anyway. The GM docks them 100xp!
Glad I'm not the only one who just skipped over that part. :)
So it is docking the character because the player messed up?!? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me. As Marc R said, the game already has the punishment built in to it. (At most, I would just increase the effects of the trap - or whatever - to encourage the player to pay more attention.)
The example given just seems that the GM takes back what they gave for finding the trap in the first place. Instead of negative XP it should just be called: I take it back.
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My objection to negative XP is the sheer illogicality of it. You dock the character XP for the player's foolish decision, which makes it take longer for the character to level up and learn more skills... while the only real person involved, the player, probably learned more about how to play his character from that foolish decision than he has from his successes. Even if it wasn't more, it's extremely unlikely that he learned less.
The only reasons I can see for awarding negative XP are:
1) The player/character makes a nearly identical foolish decision more than once, which suggests that the XP awarded for the first time was given in error, as he obviously didn't learn anything from it. (The "take it back" as stated above.)
2) The player insisted on acting completely at odds with the stated personality of the character. Even here that's a judgment call, the only place I can see it being a 'given' is if he has abilities granted him through worship of a God. I'm not going to say "out of alignment" because I have always considered the entire concept of "alignments" to be deeply flawed. But if the followers of the War God have a stricture that they never heal, and the player's cleric went and bought a bunch of healing runes to save a fellow party member, I expect God to make him pay the price of his 'heresy'. Considering it's a War God, he's lucky if negative XP is all it costs him.
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In this context, as I said, a pattern of foolishness or stupidity already has a built in feedback-response factor in the critical/fumble/failure results. . . .if you taunt fate enough times, you die, then XP ceases to matter.
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Yes but
the critical/fumble/failure results
are governed by random d100 rolls, not by the logic of the scenario. Should XP be awarded by how well you rolled, or how well you played? The 2 conditions I gave above really could be shortened to
"Negative XP should only be awarded where the logic of the scenario demands it. Because XPs are expressed in the game mechanics as an abstract of the learning process, negative XP are only justified when:
1) The GM had awarded XP for a previous scenario which, in hindsight, it is obvious the character didn't get the benefit/learn the things the GM thought he had ("taking it back"), or
2) Some off-the-deep-end scenario where somehow the character has actually managed to become stupider, less skilled, and/or less powerful."
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I might award negative EXP for the PC above who jumped off the tower just to EXP from the crit. ;D
MDC
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Nah - leaving him with two broken legs for three game sessions taught him more :)
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As I recall the negative XP stuff was optional. Meaning you don't have to use it.
Personally, I always figured if a character did something really stupid, you just let them suffer the consequences (up to and including being killed by their stupidity). Earning XPs doesn't help if you're dead and there's no chance of being revived.
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As I recall the negative XP stuff was optional. Meaning you don't have to use it.
Personally, I always figured if a character did something really stupid, you just let them suffer the consequences (up to and including being killed by their stupidity). Earning XPs doesn't help if you're dead and there's no chance of being revived.
Sure. It's like the cherry on top of a sundae, something to notify all and sundry that this was not just some normal, everyday stupidity, but something special... and it's not there all by itself. If the cleric of the War God above gets nothing but some negative XP out of the deal, the GM didn't do justice to the guy's God.
Penance is supposed to suck. ;)
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The dice matter, but much like gambling in a casino, over the long term luck is a small factor. If you persistently make foolhardy or stupid choices you die.
Like, how long does a character who refuses to ever put any OB into parry last? The dice may matter in any particular instance, but with a larger group of attack instances the odds of being killed for not parrying start to approach 100%. . .
It's like blindly crossing the street in a major city. . .if you close your eyes and just cross the street, you may or may not die based on the luck of the timing, and the responses of that specific group of drivers. . .but if you do that every time you cross the street, you're 100% absolutely going to get creamed by a car. . .With a sufficiently large sample of instances, luck ceases to be a major factor and the foolish choice itself becomes the major factor.
Luck is only a factor in the context of "If you keep that up, eventually your luck is going to run out."
Hence, RM already has a very clean and clear mechanism for "fixing" foolish/stupid behavior patterns. . .it's dangerous enough when you're not being foolish or idiotic, if you throw those factors into the mix, it's a death sentence.
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It's like blindly crossing the street in a major city. . .if you close your eyes and just cross the street, you may or may not die based on the luck of the timing, and the responses of that specific group of drivers. . .but if you do that every time you cross the street, you're 100% absolutely going to get creamed by a car. . .With a sufficiently large sample of instances, luck ceases to be a major factor and the foolish choice itself becomes the major factor.
You obviously have never been to Italy.
There - "luck favors the brave". UNLESS you close your eyes and start crossing, you will NEVER cross the street.
You just step out blindly, with the confidence of knowing that as long as you do not make eye contact with the drivers, they will assume that you have no intention of dodging, so they will swerve instead ... (if you make eye contact, you better learn to fly, coz' they'll accelerate!)
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(Bet you still keep an eye on them out of the corner of your eye, just in case. . . .lol)
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hehe - very true ...
Plus - I'd only try that if I already had a green crossing signal.
Much like in the US - cars can turn right through red ligths. Unfortunately, they really don't care if you are trying to corss the street ... so if they think you have seen them, you aren't crossing !
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RM already has a very clean and clear mechanism for "fixing" foolish/stupid behavior patterns. . .it's dangerous enough when you're not being foolish or idiotic, if you throw those factors into the mix, it's a death sentence.
Sure, which is why I stated it in terms of the learning process. Natural selection and the luck of the dice will take care of foolish behavior patterns... eventually. Personally I don't like the idea of XP being solely a measure of success or failure, the dice and the tables do that quite well. I consider XP total an attempt to abstract the character's current place in the learning process that everyone goes through day by day. And as noted above, the circumstances I think would justify dropping that number are pretty unusual and extreme. Nonetheless, I think a slow learner's XP should reflect the fact that he's a slow learner, not whether or not he has been lucky enough to avoid the consequences of it thus far.
If someone grabs the knob of the door with the lightning bolt trap inscribed on it, I think he'll learn something. I can see the sense in giving him XP for eating that lightning bolt.
The second time he grabs the knob of a door with runework inscribed on it (especially if he can check and see whether or not it radiates magic), I not only won't give him XP for getting bolted again, I may take back the ones I gave him for the original lightning bolt, since he obviously didn't learn anything from it.
The third time he's in that situation if he doesn't act like an idiot, I may give them back. If he does act like an idiot, I may subtract that many again. Cos the fact is, he's actually being quite a bit stupider the third time than he was the first time.
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I'd agree with not giving it the 2nd time (though I don't use the old school XP for damage logic anymore) though I don't think I'd reverse and penalty them the 3rd time. . . .you don't learn (earn XP) for setting yourself up for damage on purpose through stupidity, but I'd leave the downside at the damage taken (or death) rather than dock XP.
This is another good example of why it's best to have at least a 1% 00 lethal result on A. . .especially if using the damage = XP system, to avoid the "C'mon, hit me with a Vacuum, it's not like an A can kill me!" variant of the semi-lethal sparring logic.
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This is another good example of why it's best to have at least a 1% 00 lethal result on A. . .especially if using the damage = XP system, to avoid the "C'mon, hit me with a Vacuum, it's not like an A can kill me!" variant of the semi-lethal sparring logic.
Makes me smile. We were doing a playtest for that system that shall not be named. When the fellow that was playing the Monk looked at the mage and said..."Go ahead through the lightening bolt. I can dodge it." He blew the RR badly *Saving throw in that system) and became a charred hulk. We never let hom forget it.
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Musn't of had evasion.
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Musn't of had evasion.
A 1 is a 1. And the roll for damage was NASTY
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Durn. Miss a couple of days and miss an excellent discussion on Negative XP. Here is my opinions...
Negative Experience:
RMFRP pg 74.
RMSS pg 126.
The examples in the book are when someone finds a trap, forgets and then stumbles into it anyway. The GM docks them 100xp!
Glad I'm not the only one who just skipped over that part. :)
I didn't skip over this part, I just ignored it. 8)
Negative XP would only seem to apply if you're forgetting something, not being stupid. . .it seems a poor lever to fix stupid, since the cure for stupid in RM is quite evidently built into the critical and fumble results. ;)
Instead of Negative XP, I just explain to the player that his/her character has forgotten... If the player is a good player, s/he will play accordingly. If not, then I impose something appropriately nasty, if necessary.
So it is docking the character because the player messed up?!? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me. As Marc R said, the game already has the punishment built in to it. (At most, I would just increase the effects of the trap - or whatever - to encourage the player to pay more attention.)
<Emphasis mine.> My method also. If necessary, I will advise the player that the character "knows" this.
My objection to negative XP is the sheer illogicality of it. You dock the character XP for the player's foolish decision, which makes it take longer for the character to level up and learn more skills... while the only real person involved, the player, probably learned more about how to play his character from that foolish decision than he has from his successes. Even if it wasn't more, it's extremely unlikely that he learned less.
<Emphasis mine.> Absolute concurence.
I might award negative EXP for the PC above who jumped off the tower just to EXP from the crit. ;D
MDC
I wouldn't.
Nah - leaving him with two broken legs for three game sessions taught him more :)
But I would do this...
IMHO, there is no such thing as Negative XP. If anything, I turn it into amnesia, senility, a fugue, etc. Even a person with the fugue can find themselves capable of performing a skill, just can't remember how they learned it. I even had one player whose character took an exceptionally bad blow to his head. Even though he had a helm, the player began playing the character as if he had suffered severe traumatic amnesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_amnesia#Traumatic_brain_injury_.28TBI.29.2C_also_known_as_post-traumatic_amnesia) through no suggestion of mine. I thought it was such excellent role playing that I even gave her character an XP bonus as she played the character slowly recovering his memories. (I know this may seem confusing, but the player was a she and the character was a he.)
And if necessary, I just award the PC no XP if s/he repeats something stupid and do as Cormac Doyle's quote above.
rmfr
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I have done negative XP for brain damage, but in that case, it literally does mean you forgot something. Same for the nasty erosion spells and coming back from the dead after decomposing for a few weeks. I have no problem with loss due to brain damage. . .which is also a good example of "learning from failure". . .
I have had a few amusing incidents where something was "forgotten" due to such, then after a restoration spell, had one PC kill the other PC who'd been tampering with their mind. . .a failure that evil mentalist's player learned from too. (i.e. keep your tampered lackeys away from high level clerics).
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Again, negative XPs are optional, at least in RM2/RMC (Character Law, RMC, p. 121, says that "Negative points can [my italics] be awarded if the GM feels that the actions of a character demonstrate a regression in the learning process" and further states that "ICE feels that these cases should be rare, if they exist at all.") Sure, they give an example, but everything before that example makes it very clear that it's just an option and not a requirement. That's why I never got excited about it.
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I like it hard. Adventures should be challenging. Sometimes even if you do your utmost you still cannot win. IMO even if you die you are still a hero as you tried your best. The games in which I have been playing recently have been too soft on players, but that´s how others like it. I´m joining a new game and I have hopes that its not too easy on players.
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The thing is, even if you had just as many "Mission accomplished!" stories, the ones resulting in failure are usually more humorous.
My very first official roll of the dice playing Rolemaster (technically MERP): Pinned my foot to the floor with a heavy crossbow. Damage, bleeding, stunned for six rounds...
Facing Nazgul (Ring Wraiths) was always fun too. There was never any question we were going to get killed by it... rather it was if we could accomplish what we were trying to accomplish and still get away with our lives by running like hell. Have one mildly funny story about them, but it's a little longer.
D&D one of our famous phrases "Taste plate mail!" came from us facing bad odds, me climbing out of harms way, and attacking with various ranged attacks... all of which missed horribly. The character wasn't a bad shot, I just kept rolling REALLY badly. In the end I was left with nothing but my shield and we needed to save a party members butt... so as a last resort I jumped on top of my foe while standing on my shield... and fumbled.
Then there was the time when a certain party member who could summon demons decided to use the spell that had less than a 5% chance (he had to roll on the higher side of open ended) of summoning one he couldn't control (a 'named' demon). When he rolled and calmly said "Uh oh" with a slight grin on his face the entire party immediately dove for the nearest exit (doors, windows, whatever) of the tavern we were fighting in, leaving the enemy party (essentially a NPC adventure party hired to kill us) wondering what the hell we were doing since we were getting the best of them at the moment. We fled the town as a storm developed over it and didn't look back. Some days later we heard a story about a nearby town that had been leveled by a demon. (Ironically this campaign centered around a "plague of demons" that was causing trouble in the desert).
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Mythbusters motto: "Failure is always an option".
;D
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(I know this may seem confusing, but the player was a she and the character was a he.)
*shrug* That's just the nature of the hobby.
I can totally see taking a character back a couple of levels due to amnesia, but sometimes it isn't as "neat" as that; they may miss certain things during the time forgotten, but remember and/or still be able to do other things from that time.
Of course, that is not what the question was about, it was about a Player continuing to do the "wrong" thing even when confronted with information/evidence that they are doing the "wrong" thing. (Wrong is in quotes because it can be a nebulous term in RP-ing.) To me, that is just poor role-playing and something to be discouraged, both in-game and out of game. Talking to them first is best, then if they still don't get it, have in-game repercussions, which seem to be the only way some Players learn.