>Players are hired to steal a set of valuable artifacts across the city
>do so by walking to the location where it's held and murdering the shit out of everybody there
>the last artifact now has a fuckton of security around it because the owner realized that somebody was after the set
>players don't adapt tactics, just walk in and try to murder everything again
>complain that I'm punishing them for playing the way they want to play when they all die
The fuck did they expect?
>The fuck did they expect?
Level-appropriate combat encounters.
>why tactic when u can fite boss jus need mor dakka to win
On one hand that is entirely 100% correct.
On the other hand their expectations were woefully incorrect.
They were thinking that it was like in their vidya games where they could walk in braindead and still come out on top.
This would be true if OP didnt make it clear that there was stricter security due to there tactics the first time around, or at least hinting at it. but lets be honest this wasnt really a combat encounter, the encounter was to avoid combat. which they failed.
Players don't have to win all the time. Wining gets dull unless they lose, this is a loss because they are careless.
While It's not a bad thing to design hardly winnable encounters, It's important to apply a fitting amount of handholding to the certain kind of players. An npc that would tell them that the whole thing might be deadly trap for example.
When GM'ing It's good to use a narrating style that acknowledges the game as a story and certain choices like a game changing branches similar to some of the more story based video games. This way, you can straight tell your players "The plan worked brilliantly so far, why changing It? Then again, even a puppy learns to ignore a fake throw after the fifth or so time" or "This one is different. You realize that without a new plan, you are going to die. What do"
Or just make the world react accordingly to their actions and push their shit in. If you're good enough at your job, they will crawl back to you anyway, sooner or later.
Hell, they might even learn from their mistakes
The poster you are replying to did not say that it was a bad thing. He answered OP's question about what the players were expecting.
I agree with you up to a point.
If the party had an NPC that helps them, I would have warned them about doing that a second time because they suspect that this time they will find a lot more resistance.
>>The fuck did they expect?
>Level-appropriate combat encounters.
No, that isn't what they expected. They expected "We so Lol-Random-funny and we always win." What they got was a situation where they had to do some thinking. And they failed to do it. I'd say they got an encounter that was both level *AND* situation appropriate. The fact that they were not prepared for it and were not smart enough to recognize that is NOT the GM's fault in this case.
I really hoping that the party planned for this reaction then adopted a cheeky breeky sneaky approach for the last one. That would've been amazing.
Oh well. Their own fault for dying like morons.
It's level appropriate even if its a fuckton of mooks. When youre out to steal shit but do it in the most violent, loudest way possible, of course people are going to catch on.
What spoiled population I find myself among.
It's not level-appropriate if you get slaughtered, user. Level-appropriate encounters should have the party winning, having expended a percentage of their resources that varies depending on the edition in question.
Sounds like you should run for a different group.
>Level-appropriate combat encounters
That's one of the most stupid notions D&D has ever popularized.
If you are the equivalent of a level 1 D&D party and find yourself against thirty well-armed guards, you should know it's time to run, or find a way around them.
Worlds that level-scale are sewage, user.
Just because the players got killed doesn't mean the encounters weren't level appropriate. It'd also be possible for OP to simplely put more encounters in their way than they can handle without actually stopping and using caution.
If the group can handle 10 goblin encounters in a day, and the DM puts 15 goblin encounters between them and the treasure they're after, whose fault is it when the players go on to encounter 11 or 12 and die?
I think the REAL problem is all those GMs who say shit like "This world isn't going to be tailored to you" and "Actions have consequences" and then either:
>Don't follow through on it
>Use it as an excuse to do typical bad GM bullshit where the party can't do/accomplish anything
>Follow through on it so rarely that they might as well be doing the first one, but then when they actually do follow through on it the players are not prepared.
Now, I am not saying OP is any of those I am not saying he is not, either, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt, but the GMs that ARE like those ruin it for the GMs that want to run it RIGHT. Since those are behaviors that all encourage PCs to expect beatable encounters from "good" gms even when the GM tells them otherwise. Even if you are their first GM, online stories can poison the well in much the same way.
It's why a good session 0 to explain expectations are important, and try to avoid cliches like above. And, really, it is on the GM to make sure the players actually GET what they should expect and that they also MODEL that in game from VERY early on. Otherwise, the Players will slip back into the default mode of play, because that is what the system encourages. If you don't do this, or don't model it properly, it isn't really the player's fault they have the wrong expectations, you can't expect them to read your mind and know NOW you are switching into consequences mode.
And if the PCs have the wrong expectations, they might see the 30 guards in as mooks that they get to just mow down rather than legitimate threats. From the GM perspective, knowing the statblocks and knowing what their narrative hints mean, it seems like the height of idiocy. The players, on the other hand, if they are coming in with an assumption of beatable encounters, will just see all those hints as flavor, and nothing more, and, since all encounters are beatable, they are acting perfectly rationally.
who says they have the right to a level appropriate bias? It sure isn't a right in every game. main goals and quest things possibly, unless you play dumb. When it is too hard knowing when to run away and hire help/re-arm/piss off to level and loot can be important.
But hey I dunno what game op's running so whatever.
I am man enough to admit I suffer the last problem you greentexted there. I'm a softy.
For that last bit, I think the key is to set up expectations in the moment. 30 guards makes it seem like they must be pretty weak. If it's 5 guards instead, and theyre a difficult fight, and then the next room has 10 guards, the players are more likely to actually heed the threat
Players aren't doing what you wanted, but you could have better communicated a warning to them
They just want to relax and have fun.
I like to run gritty, high risk games. I have to prepare my players for the danger, though. I usually do this by making the first few sessions super hard, so a couple level 1 characters die. This teaches the players to be careful.
clever.
Would you prefer them to solve the encounter by rolling a Stealth check once?
The main problem with the "appropriate level" phylosophy is that it comes with games and settings where the CR/level of an NPC or a monster can be pretty much arbitrary, without a coherent reference system that allows the players to estimate how strong a monster could be without having to look at its statblock.
To make a simple example, in D&D two monsters could have the same size, similar build, and look pretty much equally 'mundane', with one of them having ten times the hit points of the other.
A Kobold that has been arbitrarily been set as a level 20 legendary chieftain could still have its best abilities in the lower tens and go around in loincloth and with a shitty pickaxe, and absolutely murder a mid-level party.
This shit doesn't make much sense. A creature's physical might, for example, should be recognizably correlated to its size and build, or if influenced by supernatural factors, those should be perceivable in some manner.
Otherwise, the player won't have any real way to appraise wether the monster they're facing is a CR5 mutant ogre or a CR25 abyssal spawn from an obscure Russian splatbook. Which forces them to, or make them feel entitled to, expect that the GM will tailor each and every encounter to their level.
For example, imagine to be a level 1 character and find a beast with golden fur and six legs, around the size of a small dog.
It's a Pathfinder monster; CR9, a hundred or so hp.
>he thinks this is some sort of MMORPG
>If it's 5 guards instead, and theyre a difficult fight, and then the next room has 10 guards
Why would the 10 guards sit on their hands and wait for you to kill the others in the next room?
thanks for killing them
fuck you for not telling them that murderhobo shit is unacceptable.
A horror game I planned on running had monster taxonomy as a central mechanic, for this exact reason. A skill was devoted to examining monsters and corpses to learn their weaknesses for next time you encountered one.
A simple (mandatory, so players don't forget) knowledge check could work wonders if the characters don't know the monsters.
> A religion check tells the Cleric that this is a powerful demon opposed to his god.
>The rogue recognises the hooded killer by MO and reputation.
Just giving an example. The more key part is that the players have a hard time with X, and then they encounter 2X a bit later.
Replace room with street, building, town, city, dimensional plane, or whatever makes the most sense to you.
I had the players encounter a CR10 golem with a paralysis gas attack early on, in a dungeon where it took a whole round for it to squeeze through the doorways. Didn't get to bring it back later, campaign got cut short.
Before you ask, I did give a (small) XP reward for successfully evading it.