GM announces out of nowhere that rocks fall, killing the party

...

You know, a lot of times "rocks fall" for a reason that can be avoided or predicted. Maybe you needed to pay more attention.

This
I had several people warn adventurers that the caves are dangerous, full of monsters and prone to entire tunnels collapsing
>they go into cave
>every time they do something too intense like cast an explosive spell or strike the wall/ground hard, the walls would shake and rumble
>this happens SEVERAL times, increasing in intensity and frequency each time
>even have a warning-shot cave-in that almost hits them
>they still don't get it
>keep murderhobo'ing even though the rogue and the wizard want to get the fuck out
>eventually the walls cave in
>two people almost dead
>they're too pissy at the fact that a cave-in happened. they just give up instead of healing or asking team for help
>the others are trapped but get out eventually
>cue pissyfit "WTF ROCKS FALL REALLY?!"

They thought I was trying to railroad and killed them out of spite for going "the wrong direction".

Is this the power of fa/tg/uys?

Have you tried not playing D&D?

See my pic?
It's a Veeky Forums-related strawman.
Just like OP.

So your players they were playing dnd, only to realize they were playing your autism.

>They thought I was trying to railroad and killed them out of spite for going "the wrong direction".
They might not have connected their actions with the possibility of a cave-in, or they may have thought you were just giving flavor-text to make their stuff sound cool.

My GM would probably have said something like, "the entire cave is shaking, apparently as a result of your fireball. More explosions like that could cause whole structure to collapse on your head."

Yeah, as a GM you should sort of give your players slight advice with these things.

Like you should ask your players if they're going to try and be sneaky or not before they try and go somewhere where something might spot them

DMs have a bad tendency to not realize that players don't have the same information that they do. Things that should seem obvious to the DM almost never are to the players.

If they just conjure rocks out of nowhere then it's shitty dming. If, say, the rocks fell because the players were wandering a rock infested cliff, were ambushed by bandits or accidently destroyed the support pillar holding up a major part of the dungeon than having a roll with a risk of failure is perfectly fine.

OP, that isn't how that situation goes. RPGs as a medium are designed around using mechanics to create feeling. The devil is entirely in the details.

You posted a...whats the term.....

Thanks guy.
A straw man.

Hard moves (eg rock falls) should be foretold with soft moves (eg "rock falls" sign ahead, wat do) in most situations. Difficultly is set up according to fiction. "success" means character achieved their intent. PC moves influence all of those.

>y different standard tho
for starters, let's start with your conceit: "a gamist rpg experience"
>rpg experience
what experience is that? the experience of playing a game?
if you have a shit DM, don't shit on the mechanics for his bad adjudication
if your DM did give you a fair warning, well then guess what? a setback is more narrative than mechanical so you should be eating it up, since it isn't "gamist shit"
I'll never understand you storyfags and deriding a GAME as being GAMIST. what the fuck else is it supposed to be? it's called a role playing GAME, not just a role play

I’m having trouble understanding the point you’re trying to make.

Is it that dice rolls don’t mitigate the DM’s ability to control the game? It’s true, the GM can make whatever he wants happen by stacking the odds against the player. This is just the nature of role playing with a GM, Good GMs don’t abuse this, and bad ones do.

Or is your point that dice rolls shouldn’t be used to determine important things because it overshadows player decisions? I disagree with this, dice rolls represent uncertainty, on the part of both the players and the DM. Uncertainty is exciting, the game would feel too deterministic without it.

I’ll give an example: last game my players decided to get rid of some bodies by burning them. They were in a forest in the dry season. So I told them “There is a chance that this bonfire spreads to the trees, let’s say five percent” They agree that seems reasonable, I roll a d100 and it turns out it doesn’t spread. Now, this forest fire would have far-reaching consequences, it may have destroyed a village and the dryads would have hunted them, but still I left it to chance. It would have been unreasonable to just proclaim they started a forest fire, because bonfires don’t always start forest fires. But on the same note if there was no chance of a fire I would have been robbing my players of their agency, because forest fires can be a consequence of bonfires in forests.

>they still don't get it
Implant understanding into their character head then "You understand that cavern won't withstand another explosion and will collapse burring you". If they are actually retarded tell them out of character.

Any action taken by GM that can be described as "out of nowhere" makes for a shitty GM. If he took time to give the PCs some hints about rock traps ahead, or advice somebody to roll perception check, then its justified

>Any action taken by GM that can be described as "out of nowhere" makes for a shitty GM

Unless it's an RKO

In this case it is pretty obvious though and two of the party even wanted to get out. Rest of the party keeps going so 2 people get smushed. Blame the rest of the party for making a stupid decision.

That’s true, players need to be allowed to understand the world, not just have saves thrown at them.

I’ve heard the example the OP has given before, usually as an example of good GMing vs bad GMing. I think the bit of advice it was meant to give is “Never kill a player without a death save” and doesn’t really have anything to do with proper foreshadowing of events. It was just OP who conflated advice about death saves with advice for good storytelling.

In OP’s rockfall examples, players might still have decisions available to them, a wizard casting a levitation or shield spell might neutralize the danger. This is why foreshadowing is important, because it allows players to prepare for it.

The classic "rocks fall" scenario occurs when the GM is fed up with the players' collective shit and just kills the characters off in a fit of rage.

The lack of any way to avoid the death it is only a minor part of the problem that makes this sort of GM terrible at their job.

The scenario has nothing to do with literal falling rocks. It could just as well be a whale falling from the sky, or a portal to the elemental plane of fire spawning beneath their feet.

>Why does this reasoning exist
It's not the outcome of the dice that's sacred, it's the PCs having some sort of ability to interact with the scenario.

In both scenarios, the PCs are not going to have a chance to prepare to avoid or mitigate the damage beforehand since the rocks fall from out of nowhere.

Therefore out of the two scenarios, the players would prefer the option that provides a chance to interact with the scenario, even if the option to interact is simply to throw a die to see if they get less hurt or not.
But as stated, there is a bigger, unstated issue here that BOTH scenarios are shit without a leadup - rocks falling out of nowhere is a noninteractive event that the players have no control of. Gamist RPGs SHOULD be held to a bigger standard, but you missed the point - BOTH of your shit scenarios should be shitcanned because both don't provide interaction with the players, you shit OP.

>Or is your point that dice rolls shouldn’t be used to determine important things because it overshadows player decisions?
This one, in part. I'm saying that the game should focus more on the decisions that the players make and not "ooh, you rolled well" or "ooh, you rolled badly"

> I disagree with this, dice rolls represent uncertainty, on the part of both the players and the DM. Uncertainty is exciting, the game would feel too deterministic without it.
There are plenty of games with zero random elements which are not deterministic in from the point of view of the guy trying to make a series of complex decisions as to what to make as their next move. And plenty more with minimal ones that aren't something you can easily predict either.

>Forest fire example.
And I don't have a problem with it (well, except maybe the DM asking for the player's approval in setting the rate of the fire spreading, and given the way the example is set up, you should probably give them a chance to reconsider if they know what the odds are now but didn't before, but that's unclear from the text.). But again, the decision is one made about a course of action in light of certain risks that they do not 100% know how they will play out.

1/2

Here's a counterexample of my own. Say the players are on a mission to assassinate this one duke of the kingdom on the orders of a rival duke. And they come up with a REALLY good plan, they infiltrate the castle using some friendly contacts they made prior. They manage to slip a deadly poison into the guy's food because they managed to attach themselves in the kitchen staff. The nobleman in question does not have the means to detect the poison before consuming it, nor to survive a dosage that they delivered.

Assuming there are in fact no chances of this plan to screw up based on the course of actions that they did, I would be perfectly fine narrating out how each step went and how they succeed at the end of it, without calling for a single roll. Furthermore, if they embarked on a plan that had possible points of failure at different stages of it (I don't know, they get into the kitchen staff like before but instead try to sneak into his room at night, which means they have to dodge the guards patrolling near his quarters. Or instead of calling in an old favor, they try to bribe the majordomo to give them a job in the keep, stuff like that.), they might have to succeed at certain rolls, and there isn't necessarily anything to be gained by doing so.

I know quite a few people here who would be upset at that sort of thing, because rollign dice is apparently some kind of sacred activity in an RPG that cannot be tampered with, and the game is incomplete without it.
2/2 fin.

Reading comprehension user. It can really help. I in no way endorsed the second scenario. And in fact, if you look at the later part, the line about how
> primary focus should be given on the PC decisions, their 'moves' so to speak, and not the dice rolls.

That necessitates the ability for PCs to take actions and make those actions have meaning, which yes, both scenarios are shit because a hazard got dumped on their lap out of nowhere.

>my character is walking through the city doing some errands
>out of nowhere gets critted in the spine by a crossbow bolt and dies
This happened in a game last night. I'm a little salty desu even if all the rolls were above board.

Was the city known to be dangerous? Did you take any precautions? Did you have enemies in the city? Did you have any reason to suspect an assassin might be around?

Because if it was literally "herp de derp, u ded xD" out of nowhere from the GM then that's tardtastic. They're stupid for setting that up in the first place. Invisible snipers don't make anyone happy, and a shot like that should only come at the end of a string of avoidable mistakes.

Heh, nothing personnel kid

You're forgetting that rolling includes your bonuses. If your DM just says you die, you don't know if you died because your character just wasn't strong enough, or if the DM just wanted you to die. When you roll you know modifiers are accounted for, so even if the DM is slightly fudging DCs you are led to believe that at least some of your decisions mattered.

I think he presented the risk, and then asked them if they were willing to go through with, not asking them if he can place a risk on it

It's not shitty GMing, it's self-preservation. The GM thinks you all suck and is done with your shit.

The second case is an actual play example, it has nothing to do with the first. You can be an annoying piece of shit who has a great Reflex save and all this would do is make you shoot your fool mouth off instead of getting the GM safely away before he throws his necktie over a rafter and hauls down hard.

Nice try, now fuck off to /qst/ with the rest of the dregs.

>primary focus should be given on the PC decisions, their 'moves' so to speak,

gee i wonder who could be behind this post

All the misunderstanding of the question aside, this is a crucial bit of TTRPG player psychology that is rarely addressed due to the tiny minority of diceless (or more generally, randomizer-less) games that make it obvious. People accept results more when they can roll for it, even though the GM can set DCs or any other situational aspects to force through the result they want even with a roll. This applies not only to TPK scenarios, but essentially any action in a game, it just tends to matter more to the players to be upset about it when the stakes are high. It is a foolish psychological quirk, since the dice rolling does not really change much, but when dice are involved they are more likely to blame bad rolls than the GM. The dice act as a shield against ill-will directed towards the game master, deserved or undeserved.

I suppose rolling dice make it more difficult to for the GM to fudge things the way they want, but I have a hard time believing that is the main reason. The "blame sponge" effect, in my experience, seems the most pertinent.

So wait, you KNEW your party wasn't getting something, and yet you insisted on stating it in the same way regardless, knowing they didn't get it and thus would likely not get it the next time either, and then blamed them for that?

>it's not the party's fault that the party were at fault

It's not the player's fault the GM noticed the players were not understanding something, and then deliberately chose to repeat the same message despite knowing they didn't get it, instead of communicating in a different way.

>Why does this reasoning exist? Why is the outcome of the die roll held as sacred when the GM, often arbitrarily, can decide what dice totals yield success or failure and what "success" and "failure even mean?
Neckbeards crave the control they lack in real life when they're at the table.

Don't game with them.

>literally believes I just repeated myself over and over

Gotta love the anti-DM bias. Maybe read the actual post before replying.

see
>every time they do something too intense like cast an explosive spell or strike the wall/ground hard, the walls would shake and rumble
>this happens SEVERAL times, increasing in intensity and frequency each time
Before smugly telling other people to read your post, maybe read your own post, and then also read the post you're replying to. Maybe then you'd have noticed I don't think you, literally, stated the exact same thing word-for-word, merely that you only tried one means of communication (i.e. narrating walls shaking) instead of something else, maybe something like >My GM would probably have said something like, "the entire cave is shaking, apparently as a result of your fireball. More explosions like that could cause whole structure to collapse on your head."

>2 people understood the danger and were adamant about leaving

The cave-in didn't even fucking kill anyone. The crybabies gave up instead of dealing with the shit circumstance their tunnel-vision put them into.

Are you actually retarded?

>they still don't get it
>except for the ones that get it
>the wizard gets it
>except the walls were shaking because of explosive spells

Maybe if you could write a greentext story without every line contradicting the one before it maybe because it never happened? anons wouldn't get confused?

> I'm saying that the game should focus more on the decisions that the players make and not "ooh, you rolled well" or "ooh, you rolled badly"

In my experience this happens when the only challenges the players are faced with can be immediately resolved with skill checks and aren’t given the opportunity to make interesting decisions in the first place.

On your poison example, yes that seems perfectly reasonable, the players coming up with a plan and executing it well shouldn’t be deprived of success for the sake of a dice roll. That would be no fun for anybody. However, say there was a royal taster they knew about but didn’t deal with, well then there would be a roll for the taster to detect the poison.

When there should and shouldn’t be a roll really comes down to the situation, and sure some people here might necessitate a roll when it’s not applicable. My point is that randomness can give the players unexpected obstacles or rewards that keep play fresh and don’t feel contrived because of the small chance of their happening. I suppose this doesn’t conflict with your point that arbitrary dice rolls can rob players of their agency.

On the players asking for approval, I like players to know the chances of something negative happening so it doesn’t look like I’m fudging the roll. I wouldn’t allow them to go back on their actions, as I told him there was a chance of fire. (But didn’t state it in the text, true) but if someone pointed out something I forgot like “You said it was rained yesterday” I would throw away the whole fire idea entirely. Which, well, I’ve been known to do.

The key here is "out of nowhere". Either way, if a sudden, unreasonable catastrophe that the party couldn't have predicted or prepared for (i.e lightning striking on a sunny day), then it doesn't matter if the players get to roll or not - that GM's just trying to hurt/kill the party. However, if the party KNEW what they were in for and didn't prepare for it, that's fine. For example - if the party goes into a dungeon, they should expect cave-ins. These are ancient ruins. They're probably not up-to-code in terms of structural integrity. That means travel light so you can avoid cave-ins, have some food/water/digging implements, and be on the lookout for fragile-looking walls/ceilings.

tl;dr It depends

I'm pretty sure most people would be annoyed at bad things happening to them with no chance for avoiding it, user. It's particularly egregious in games because the person in control is right there, as opposed to, say, a nebulous god or unfeeling corporation in charge of them.

The cave-in was caused by a hammer.

Re-read the post and don't insert your headcanon.

Oh, you're right, right there where it says "eventually the walls cave in due to a hammer." I missed the latter part of that sentence because it doesn't say that.

>the story makes sense if you just read the supplemental EU material...

>they COLLECTIVELY don't get it
fixed for your autism

I figured fa/tg/uys were smart enough to know that the wizard was the one causing the explosions

and the fact that he no longer wanted to be there, since he understood the danger. A LOGICAL HUMAN could assume he wasn't the one who caused the cave-in.

That was the point. Not it being specifically a hammer. Just not the wizard.

If a teacher fails an entire class and complains, "They collectively didn't get it!"

What's more likely - that the entire class were, collectively, retards, or that the teacher is bad at their job?

Go find an actual fucking game to play instead of cunting about ridiculous hypotheticals you probably never even have experienced firsthand.

Save or Die Checks should only be from one of two things

>really bad thing that is explained a lot as being bad and never fucking touch it
If a player touches it at that point, they're dumb
>spell from very high level enemy like Death

You're terrible at analogies.

Two players got hurt because of a continuous romp of bad decisions. They could've easily escaped, but they chose to have a hissyfit and give up instead.

Not sure where the "entire class fails!" came from. Guess that's just more headcanon. Keep backpedaling with those goalposts though, user. You'll "win" eventually ;^)

It came from that time you said the entire party got trapped and had to escape.

So, why do you think your players were incapable of understanding a threat that was being conveyed to them?

It's amazing how much mental backflips GMs like you will go through to avoid admitting that when the players don't understand the context, it's usually their fault.

three
>party Wizard

On more serious note, Save or Suck at the wrong time can be pretty damn deadly too - would you think of restricting that as well?

>you're trapped and have to escape!
>this means the game is over. everyone fails

It's time for you to go back, user.

>dodging the question
You can tell you dun goofed when you're unwilling to answer a basic question.

>ITT whiny players who never DM'd in their lives

You guys forever DM if you're so great. Eventually you will have a lapse of judgment and make a simple mistake and you'll have to deal with the fury of autism unlike you've never seen before

Forever DM here.

OP is right, and on more than a few occasions I've used a highly unfavorable roll to give legitimacy to some bullshit I wanted to pull for whatever reason.

>Orton is a DMPC

Makes sense.

you're making me depressed with how plausible the first option is

It's always possible, but the simplest explanation is usually the best, and it's usually right to boil it down to the least common denominator.

Assuming an entire party of players - or even a party save one or two - are all so retarded they misunderstood or deliberately ignored clear and unambiguous statements is simply requiring more assumptions than assuming a single DM was retarded.

I'm sure that was supposed to sound much more impressive in your head.

>the simplest explanation is usually the best

Okay, the classroom full of children is full of idiots.

Least common denominator. 30 idiots is less simple than one idiot.

well the one "idiot" has a degree and managed to get hired at a school district. Odds are, they're not the idiot.

>"Your actions have caused part of the cave to collapse near you, almost killing you."
>"lol whatever, you didn't specifically say there was a risk of the cave collapsing ON us, that means we're invincible!"
This is the state of nu/tg/ gamers.

>managed to get hired at a school district
You're not exactly helping your case.

And anyway, I could hire a mathematical prodigy to teach children mathematics, and if he tries to teach advanced calculus to children and then fails them all, he's still the idiot because a smart teacher would attempt to teach something age- and level-appropriate.

>I notice my players are not comprehending a threat I have tried to hint to them
>lol whatever, I'll just hint it at them in the exact same manner again and if they don't get it I'll just try to kill their characters.
This is the state of nu/tg/ dms.