Party stumbles upon a group

I always been told that anything said by the GM to the players (not the characters) OOC is fact or else it is a shitty GM. If a player had asked what his character see and the GM say "your character see... They are likely to attack (based on your character past experiences). If he just said that as a GM out of the blue then he is a shitty GM that was setting you up to fuck you over.

>"Suspect is likely armed" doesn't mean the cops get to shoot him at the first wrong move.
Of course it does.

Not only that but after the fight how would the party have known that they were potential allies? That's just pulling information out of your ass to piss off the party.

The DM is shit. Replace him immediately.

>Players take your word as law.
I wanted to meme you at first but this is so wrong on so many levels.

don't go into law enforcement.

I look forward to your DM coming to Veeky Forums five months from now, complaining that no matter how clearly he says something is impossible, the players ignore him and try it anyway.

>I wanted to meme you at first but this is so wrong on so many levels.
Players need to trust the GM to be telling them at least what their characters can detect. If the players stop trusting the GM to tell them correct information on what they can see, hear and smell/taste/touch from their character's perspective, then the game breaks down.

This does NOT mean that the character's senses can't be fooled, but it DOES mean that the GM should not tell outright lies.

>Your character sees a solid bridge going across the gorge.
"Ok, I go across it."
>As soon as your horse attempts to step upon the bridge it whinnies and plunges forwards through the illusion! Make a reflex save!

That's ok.

>There's a bridge going across the gorge.
"Ok, I go across it."
>I lied, there was no bridge, you just fell into a ravine and died, ahahahahaha what you believed me? ahahahahahaha

That's not ok.

We were not doing stealth we were just travailing and he said they looked hostile after a perception check.

Wrong. You're all fucking wrong. The DM was totally in the right here.

Exactly as I suspected

If GM said they "looked" hostile that means that based on your perception roll, that's how they look. You know who looks hostile? Literally every single adventurer out on the road has a good chance of "looking hostile" if you just randomly observe them without them knowing.

I would say the DM mentioning they would've helped you is just him trying to get your party not to be murder hobos/retards.

this

GM is in the wrong, why would he even say something like "they are likely to attack you." He should just describe their appearance, and what they are doing, and the players should decide if they want to fight/talk or w/e based on what they know of the world. Like maybe the recognize an insignia and know these guys are members of a hostile militia or something like that.

Telling your players something like is is pretty much the same as telling them how much hp monsters have, or some shit like that, its dumb.

I'm leaning more towards the DM being an asshole because what the fuck did he expect to happen? Dice be damned, if he wanted that group of adventurers to not be hostile he should have conveyed that, dice be damned.

Bullshit. Players' asking for the check literally means they're asking for more information. Which doesn't push the blame on the players for miscommunication but again on the DM.

DM feed them shit intel. the players acted on shit intel. It's still the DM's fault

Not unless you're black of course. Drow are nothing but underground knife ears

>All he said was that they looked hostile

How do you "look hostile"? Weapons drawn? Angry faces? Saying they'll kill the next sod they see?
Some of these are not really indicative that they're hostile *to you*. You should have asked the DM what he meant. Since you didn't, you're at fault.

What if getting shit intel is the result of a poor roll?

Well, threatening is probably what he was thinking about.
Like If you're walking at night and you see some hooded dude with a chain, or if you're a travelling merchant and you see someone that totally fitst your idea of an highwayman.

And you're not justified to just attack them in any case without hailing them first, unless you're a highwayman yourself.

That's true, that's why you try and avoid them. As nobody likes to end up in a potentially lethal situation.
But hey, we're playing a game and not a lethal situation.
That's what OP should have done

I actually wanted to, blame my trigger happy friend for blowing up one of them because they looked hostile.

DMs should give competent descriptions without being asked.

I said that they LOOK threatening, and seem ready to fight. You were too busy on the phone, and when you asked what I said, they just said that. Maybe you should pay attention next time.

Don't blame me blame the players that decided to fight them I sat half of it out and only contributed when it started to get bad.

Roll perception check! Oh, a nat 1? This traveling band of halflings is actually a giant man-eating ogre!

You want to just peacefully acknowledge them and move on? Roll diplomacy! Looks like you insulted their mothers and now they are trying to kill you!

If it's actually something important a good DM would either fudge the roll in the party's favor or concoct the situation in a manner that doesn't require a roll in the first place. If it isn't something important, he shouldn't be a smartasss about it afterwards, and just change things behind the scenes so the other party really was hostile.

dude shut up and go play skyrim.

Bada Bing Bada Boom

This. If all the DM said was "they look hostile" then the DM dropped the ball.

If the DM said "they are orcs" then we might have an argument.

> You should have asked the DM what he meant. Since you didn't, you're at fault.

It's like you were talking sense and then turned completely retarded.

It's like reading a book. If the author says "the figures looked hostile" ignoring how trash that line is then the reader is being invited to fill in whatever details they want about how the foes look to justify when the hero pounces upon them.

Mmmm, "look threatening" is in a grey area. I can see that being open for the players being good guys. At the same time I don't think the players would be in the wrong for attacking the dudes.

Try being more specific with the details of the things they are seeing (orcs, humans, etc)

does he say your character thinks that or is he advising you

the difference is important

Go away /v/ermin that is golden GM advice.

I think most of us can agree a crappy, ambiguous description was given by the GM. However, the players should have recognized this, and asked for clarification. Communication is a two-way street, either party could have taken action to avoid this misunderstanding.

Why the fuck do people respond to blatant bait posts but the second I ask for suggestions on my edric edh deck I get nothing.

Like wtf

>Walking through the street
>Stumble upon a group of niggers
>They look likely to attack me
>Take out gun and shoot them in prevention
>Law enforcers scolds me saying I can't just shoot people in the street even if they're black an threatening
>Get thrown to jail because looks can be deceiving
Who was in the wrong here?

Post it in the EDH general you mongoloid

>the DM gave us misleading information, it's our fault for not questioning it further
The game shouldn't turn into 20 questions, trying to figure out how the DM is trying to fuck you this time. The DM has 100% control over the information the players receive.

>You rely on my narration totally to perceive this world and I just told you X
>Haha bait and switch, now that you have acted on that information it was actually Y, I was vague and now you're going to regret it!

Nah, your GM's a cunt. All that does is erode trust in him as a narrator.

>Communication is a two-way street

Yeah, and one way got completely trashed. Then the guy who trashed it bitched at the party for going around.

So, whatever the DM describes isn't usable information? That renders the game unplayable.

>BLUH BLUH BLUH WHY DON'T PEOPLE DO WHAT I WANT THEM TO DO

Sorry, newfag, you can't control people's actions. They prioritize what they want over what you want.

Go ahead and throw a tantrum and troll across Veeky Forums

Ask yourself this: Why would the DM say the part about looking hostile if it weren't true? Unless a player fucked up a perception roll, what could possibly be his motivation and intended result? There is no reasonable answer other than he wanted to trick the players.

>no perception check

The niggers

Your GM is fucking you about, get a new one.

You are all retarded. DM should never use a blatant statement such as "hostile', but you should never just take the DMs word for something that "looks" a certain way.

>you should never just take the DMs word for something that "looks" a certain way

You have a very unhealthy view of the GM/player relationship.

It sounds like you have the sort of GM who does not properly keep meta knowledge to himself. He tells you things your characters shouldn't know, and confuses you by blurring the line between in-game information and meta-knowledge. I knew a GM who was really bad about that. It leads to a lot of confusion and frustration for everyone involved.

>You should have asked the DM what he meant. Since you didn't, you're at fault.
While I agree that they should probably probed the issue a bit, the DM gave them an assessment that indicated that their characters thought the people were hostile, and it only makes sense for the characters to act on this information. The characters can have an intuitive feel of the situation based on a dozen little things too tedious to relate in full. Your character is "on site", so there's every reason to trust their instincts.

If a DM says something IS a certain way, then ok, if he says something "looks" or "appears" a certain way, then be wary.

This is a narrative driven game, wording is important.

> kill them
> get exp
> get every item they are carrying
> doesn't get karmic penalty because 'they are likely to attack us'

> don't kill them
> get useless advice
> get useless trinket (that you could pillage from the corpses)

You did good.

Does looking hostile make you hostile?

Eh, that sounds like way more trouble than its worth. You get a better effect providing clear details of what they see with concrete details.

Depends on who is looking at the "hostile" person.

Yes, that's how the DM has to do it, that's why in this case the DM was at fault too, he should of just described the image, not make any remarks about it.

The GM was entirely in the wrong, how are you chucklefucks even trying to debate this?
The GM should be describing what the players actually see, not how they feel. It's the player's job to decide that.
If your GM said something like "you see 4 men, swords drawn, scanning their surroundings", then you could come up with your own decision based on your available info. All he said was "they look threatening", robbing you of control of your own characters.

Excellent. So you agree the DM was at fault for providing poor details to the player.

At the end of the day, we are judging the DM for making a stink of the players killing things he described as "look hostile"

>The GM should be describing what the players actually see, not how they feel. It's the player's job to decide that.

OMG THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

OP's DM set up a scenario to trick the players and then got pissy that they fell for it.

Your DM is in the wrong. He did not describe how they looked, he described how you perceived their looks. This is bad DMing even in a normal situation, let alone something like this. Their looks we're not deceiving, your DM was.