Sources of Tactical Depth

[TheFlatline]

You have a poor GM if one KnotCut ends the game. Example given, Gandalf rides Giant Eagles to dump Ring. Seriously, I thought 10 seconds before coming up with 2 different in game challenges, and just refluffing some of the threats to be winged. Shorter game than standard since you skip the terrain hazards, but good gods, wheres the fun in making Climb checks and Fort checks like the book did?

I love the Gandalf/Eagles thing.

We establish that:

A: The ring is semi-sentient/intelligent
B: It corrupts whoever holds onto it or even some who are around it
C: Saruman and Sauron are both kind of expressly looking at Gandalf, since they expect him to go for the ring.
D: 9 Nazgul on one Gandalf is going to be a messy fight.

So Gandalf grabs the ring, takes off on an Eagle, and he either figures "fuck it, I can use this ring for myself" (Which is why he's terrified of even touching it), or if he holds off on that, he gets a crapload of Nazgul swooping down on him to kick his ass (remember, crows and birds and shit spy for both Saruman and Sauron), fight him, and take away the ring. Also remember, the King Nazgul can't be killed by a man, so a direct confrontation is going to go poorly for Gandalf. I mean, he literally dies fighting the Balrog, who is less of a threat than Sauron or the Nazgul.

The knot-cutting in Lord of the Rings was to give the ring to a nobody who didn't want power and send him off. The enemies intended Gandalf to actually make a direct run, hole up in Rivendale/Lothlorien, or go reinforce Minas Tirith.

[TheFlatline]

Goal: Find me an interesting challenging high level adventure that's immune to knot cutting. I'm not talking about teleportation or invisibility specifically, I mean such that the PCs abilities cannot bypass large portions of the adventure or skip it. That also includes inability to simply dominate, bluff or other wise just get someone else to do the adventure for them.

Simple: The big-bad-evil-guy has N+1 teleports memorized, where N = the number of teleports the PCs have. So eventually you're going to have to go through the dungeon anyway, because the BBEG will jump away if you jump straight to him.

Or how about this? Remember the old DM rule "whatever the PC's can do, I can do better?"

Imagine the PCs port into the castle and take on the BBEG bypassing his army. He sends out an alarm to his mage lieutenants, who then teleport entire companies/brigades of troops into combat, more or less indefinitely, until the PCs are looking at 7000-to-4 odds. Maybe it's not a good idea to just port straight to the boss then, but to take out reinforcements.

When I come up with dirty tactics, I'll use them as the DM. Otherwise, I use what the PCs find most successful for tactics, and tweak them to be used by the bad guys. It's up to the PCs to figure out how to outsmart themselves.

I mean, countering these powers isn't difficult. Invisibility has so many counters against it that it's not funny. Shit. Guard dogs could smell/hear someone who is invisible and start freaking out. Sprinkling something crunchy like twigs or leaves or potato chips on the ground so that they crunch or make noise when someone walks over them. Trip wires made invisible themselves. Dispel magic. True sight. Area of effect spells. Tremor sense. I can keep going.

But while we're at it, I have a challenge for you:

Counter-Goal: Show me a module that allows free will to the PC party that doesn't go off the rails? Because first you have to prove to me that low-level, pre-knot cutting powers, that adventures are capable of keeping PCs on the rails.

For example, the local sheriff asks the PC party to help with the gnolls. The PCs say "no thanks", turn around, and go back the way they came. Your low-level adventure has just gone off the rails and needs some creativity to get it going again.

Or how about the gang that hides in the warehouse that you have to go confront. You could nail the doors shut and burn the place down, and not use teleport or invisibility. Are you telling me that fire is over-powered in this case?

Basically, you're bitching about players having free will and creativity. Which makes you look like a douchenozzel.

[Novembermike]

Goal: Find me an interesting challenging high level adventure that's immune to knot cutting. I'm not talking about teleportation or invisibility specifically, I mean such that the PCs abilities cannot bypass large portions of the adventure or skip it. That also includes inability to simply dominate, bluff or other wise just get someone else to do the adventure for them.

Simple: The big-bad-evil-guy has N+1 teleports memorized, where N = the number of teleports the PCs have. So eventually you're going to have to go through the dungeon anyway, because the BBEG will jump away if you jump straight to him.

So just DM fiat things away?

[mean_liar]

I dunno man. As it stands, you have to be smart, and literate to play 3.5 well. Developers .... well, yeah, most of them are dumb as a brick, but I suspect they were lowballing the prospective players of modules.

The best GMs I know move away from modules because they are so limited. So its a reinforcing system where the Devs don't cater for the players who optimise D&D and we don't buy the modules because we KnotCut them.

Thats my opinion anyway.

+1.

Game writers have to write for everyone, and that means that they have to account for all kinds of players. Not only that, but I imagine as you get towards the far end of optimization you're expected to start writing your own stuff just because its needs are radically different than mainstream/unoptimized player needs.

[Gods_Trick]

Actually, I think the fact that the fact that the professionals who designed the game can't make high level adventures work with the powers in the game is a pretty good indication that there are issues. If the level of system mastery required to properly DM high level adventures is "be better than people who do this for a living", then that's not really a great thing.

Exactly. It's good to see someone gets my point.

@Gods Trick: Seems easy enough to break to me. One guy who teleports the group to wherever he scrys the piece, right next to the piece and another guy readies a telekinesis to grab it as soon as they appear. Then have a third guy teleports the rest of the party back out before they even have to fight anything. You can basically wait till the pieces random movement takes it to some unguarded corridor or something before making your move to be extra careful to avoid any attacks. Repeat that 11 or so times and win.

Thats 3 casters in the party that have prepped multiple Teleports and Scrys . Heres where I put on my Big Boy GM's hat and start making the terrain itself a threat, aka Void or Water plane, right next to in the possession of a threat, have a counter group also be hunting it with the same tactics, and at least once have their shard planeshift out just as they teleport in, its an artifact, its allowed to be frustrating.

With 3 casters, sure, its a shorter adventure. But it tells me my players are here for Caster lulz, and not epic swordslinging. I adapt rather trying to protect my plot. Cause, y'know, adapting is what us humans do best.

[Ikeren]

And in response to the "SURELY NOT ALL THE MODULE WRITERS CAN BE INCOMPETENT" gang, I respond with "groupthink".

WotC is basically the poster-child for groupthink.

[Maxus]

And in response to the "SURELY NOT ALL THE MODULE WRITERS CAN BE INCOMPETENT" gang, I respond with "groupthink".

Indirectly gives me an idea for a thread.

[K]

Published modules tend to be bad because they need to accommodate the "ranger, bard, fighter, and a paladin" party and the "druid, wizard, cleric, and a sorcerer" party.

One of these parties is going to be kicking the dick off of encounters that are TPKs for the other.

That being said, you can't really write an adventure that equally challenges both. Considering the real man-tears that have been spend on "killer modules," I can see module writers going for the lowest common denominator. It's just good business.

WotCs only real failing is not understanding feedback. They saw the problem of "hey, it's hard to write modules because people keep knot-cutting problems" and they made 4e to remove knot-cutting. They didn't realize that it's hard to write modules because some players where knot cutting and the others were simply speedbumps for monsters.

[Draco_Argentum]

Anyone who can get a job writing rpg modules and do it well could just get a job that pays a lot better doing something else. Its no surprise that the best writers are not churning out modules.

[Plebian]

Anyone who can get a job writing rpg modules and do it well could just get a job that pays a lot better doing something else. Its no surprise that the best writers are not churning out modules.

this is the same argument that goes "those who can do and those who can't teach" which can apply to some but is applied to all by really, really stupid people who think that one brush can cover a spectrum.

[Gods_Trick]

Anyone who can get a job writing rpg modules and do it well could just get a job that pays a lot better doing something else. Its no surprise that the best writers are not churning out modules.

I'd need to see some proof of that. Do you have any figures or facts to back that up?

[Username17]

Anyone who can get a job writing rpg modules and do it well could just get a job that pays a lot better doing something else. Its no surprise that the best writers are not churning out modules.

I'd need to see some proof of that. Do you have any figures or facts to back that up?

Being an RPG designer is not well paid. Being a module author is even less well paid.

For example: let's say you wrote for Shadowrun. Assuming the company paid you at all (a non-trivial assumption, there are still outstanding payments from work done in 2009, maybe earlier), you'd be paid about $300 for a 10k word piece in a "real" book. If you were writing a Shadowrun Mission, you'd get fifty bucks.

Now neither one of those is well paid. But obviously three hundred dollars is six times as much as fifty dollars. And it might very well be less actual work. I don't know WotC's pay schedule, and I imagine they pay more. But the pattern of real books to modules probably holds - after all it's all based on the steely eyed pragmatism of the fact that modules don't see very well.

-Username17

[sabs]

I'm not sure they pay more, after all every fanboi and his dutch uncle is submitting stuff to them, and willing to sell his 1st born child for a shot at writing for them.

[Swordslinger]

Anyone who can get a job writing rpg modules and do it well could just get a job that pays a lot better doing something else. Its no surprise that the best writers are not churning out modules.

But you're still dealing with people that have experience with the game. Enough so that they've made at least a part time job out of it. And like it or not, that is the professional level in the industry. No amount of hand-waving on anyone's part here is going to change that fact.

Official high-level modules do not work. In all the years of pre-4E gaming, I have yet to see even a single module that can't be knot cut unless it resorts to arbitrary power negation. The rules are too complex.

You're talking 30+ years of D&D modules, and you can't bring me 3 high-level modules that work? Even if you say it's monkeys with typewriters you should be able to name a few.

[Gods_Trick]

if you haven't concluded by the silence on the subject, most of us are KnotCutters, and we tend not to play modules. I played one module, Age of Worms for a few sessions, thats was it. It was okay *shrugs*.

My games seem to be more enjoyable to my players. Part of it you need to be creative to roll with Knotcutting, modules are locked into a few or single path.

So if your point is modules aren't good because they can't keep up with Knotcutting, you're right.

If your point is you can't have a good game if theres KnotCutting: you're disregarding the entire experince of most KnotCutters, which indicates you have an axe to grind.

[souran]

Here is the thing: Dragon magazine has been around for like 20+ years. For many of those years they accepted submissions.

Swordslinger has a really good point. There OUGHT to be adventures published, either created by the thousands of indivudals who have written adventures for D&D for their own home use or by the games authors that work at high levels of play.

However, there are really almost NONE that work if your party "gets creative".

Anyway, I don't care for knottcutting or sandboxing because they usually suck worse than modules and are even more unfullfilling.

[talozin]

You're talking 30+ years of D&D modules, and you can't bring me 3 high-level modules that work? Even if you say it's monkeys with typewriters you should be able to name a few.

How many high-level modules have there really been in those 30 years? I haven't actually bought a module since late 2nd edition, but the ratio of high level to low level modules was always extremely tilted in favor of the latter.

I can recall maybe eight 1E modules, off the top of my head, that were pitched as "For Character Levels 10-14" or above. Virtually all of them had some kind of ad hoc-ery inserted by authorial fiat to keep players from using their high-level mojo. The Vault of the Drow was surrounded by caverns made of arbitrarium that stopped you from teleporting home. Queen of the Demonweb Pits had a 4 page long list of spells that you either couldn't use or would malfunction in some dangerous way if you tried. Isle of the Ape had special rules for how the jungle destroyed your equipment, spellbooks, and supplies. Tomb of Horrors was almost entirely ad-hoc bullshit. Bloodstone Pass and its sequels expected you to break out the optional tabletop wargaming rules to resolve some of the fights.

Before 3rd edition, TSR essentially admitted that the game stopped at around 12th level and mostly didn't bother to design material past that point. Gary Gygax explicitly and in writing said that level-draining monsters were in the game to keep characters in the 8-12 range.

[RobbyPants]

That wouldn't surprise me. That combined with the generally slower pace of advancement meant that I never played in or ran anything past about levels 7 or so in 2E.

[Gods_Trick]

Hmm, you know, better to demonstrate than talk. Who's up to writing a module for high level players?

[sabs]

I had one, where the players got stranded on Layer 1 of hell, and had to work their way through all 9 layers to get home.

[Judging__Eagle]

I had one, where the players got stranded on Layer 1 of hell, and had to work their way through all 9 layers to get home.

The PCs couldn't plane shift their way out? Honestly, sort of boring.

The players need to be given a reason to not crack out all of their powers, if not they are very well expected to do so in order to achieve their goals.

[FatR]

All the DMs I've played under don't have the campaign planned more than one adventure in advance. They have jobs and stuff and better things to do than work out contingencies like "What if my PCs decided to skip the whole adventure and want a new one after".

I think the most likely response to that contingency is to tell the player who beat the adventure that he's the new DM, and make a PC. Also let him know that you'll be doing everything possible to knot-cut every single one of his adventures. And if he's okay with you flushing hours of his work down the toilet with cheat tactics, then so be it.

You know what? Fuck you. People like you are the blight that kills TTRPGs. If I want to ride along the rails, there is Dragon Age II on my hard drive, and it will give me a ride through a much cooler story than any GM I may conceivably meet, but particularly a GM like you, could ever hope to approach. And it is only the top of the fat stack of the games I want to play through one day, when I have the time. There is literally no reason whatsoever why I - or anyone who is not socially retarded to the point of only interacting with people outside of his family through RPG sessions and has an opportunity to choose - would ever invest my time in playing TTRPG over modern CRPG, if I'm not allowed to solve problems in unorthodox ways. Oh, and assuming I'm into immersion and roleplaying, just replace "CRPG" with "LARP".

But then again, I generally run games. And still I say: fuck you. Not that I'm a great improvisator (although I try), or have the time for preparing way ahead (although any GM who plans an extended campaign without at least a general idea of what can happen next plainly sucks), but if PCs aren't supposed to do anything unexpected with my plot, why the fuck I'm spending considerable time and effort running games, instead of writing fanfics and whatever?

[Username17]

I had one, where the players got stranded on Layer 1 of hell, and had to work their way through all 9 layers to get home.

The PCs couldn't plane shift their way out? Honestly, sort of boring.

The players need to be given a reason to not crack out all of their powers, if not they are very well expected to do so in order to achieve their goals.

Yeah. Kill Bill works as the starting point for a high level adventure. Battle Royale does not.

The characters can just go places by waking up, preparing spells, and then deciding to do that. If you insist on having a series of 4e-style setpiece battles, you need to give the players a reason to want to go to each battle. If the goal is past or away from any particular battle, the PCs are very likely to avoid it entirely. So if you want the players to face a vampire lord, you want to have him wearing a necklace the PCs want or have him personally piss the players off or have him be an ally of the main villain who the PCs have the opportunity of assassinating before the final battle.

If you want the players to fight a specific battle, then stabbing that particular villain in the face and rifling through his pockets has to be an actual goal that the actual players actually have. There are lots of reasons that could be, but the whole idea of "incidental" monsters is basically over and done with by level 10.

-Username17

[Novembermike]

All the DMs I've played under don't have the campaign planned more than one adventure in advance. They have jobs and stuff and better things to do than work out contingencies like "What if my PCs decided to skip the whole adventure and want a new one after".

I think the most likely response to that contingency is to tell the player who beat the adventure that he's the new DM, and make a PC. Also let him know that you'll be doing everything possible to knot-cut every single one of his adventures. And if he's okay with you flushing hours of his work down the toilet with cheat tactics, then so be it.

You know what? Fuck you. People like you are the blight that kills TTRPGs. If I want to ride along the rails, there is Dragon Age II on my hard drive, and it will give me a ride through a much cooler story than any GM I may conceivably meet, but particularly a GM like you, could ever hope to approach. And it is only the top of the fat stack of the games I want to play through one day, when I have the time. There is literally no reason whatsoever why I - or anyone who is not socially retarded to the point of only interacting with people outside of his family through RPG sessions and has an opportunity to choose - would ever invest my time in playing TTRPG over modern CRPG, if I'm not allowed to solve problems in unorthodox ways. Oh, and assuming I'm into immersion and roleplaying, just replace "CRPG" with "LARP".

But then again, I generally run games. And still I say: fuck you. Not that I'm a great improvisator (although I try), or have the time for preparing way ahead (although any GM who plans an extended campaign without at least a general idea of what can happen next plainly sucks), but if PCs aren't supposed to do anything unexpected with my plot, why the fuck I'm spending considerable time and effort running games, instead of writing fanfics and whatever?

HOW DARE YOU HAVE THE WRONG KIND OF FUN!

:cries:

[echoVanguard]

The OP makes an interesting list of behaviors which indicate lack of depth, but the 'knot-cutting' post sends rest of the thread into a spiral of "you're doing it wrong" back and forth. What was the intended thing to scrutinize here?

If I understand Frank's argument correctly, what he's saying is that any situation in which the optimal behavior can be determined in advance is a situation lacking in tactical depth. However, that could be said of nearly any tactical situation, provided you already have all the pertinent information. If you don't know whether or not your foe has a Teleport Redirection effect which dumps you directly into an antimagic field on the Negative Energy Plane, the question of what tactic to pursue against that foe becomes pretty meaningful.

To put it another way - if your players don't know whether or not attacking a foe with a ranged or melee weapon is preferable, they'll have to experiment to find out which is best in that particular situation, which lends a great deal of tactical depth to the situation. Suddenly, it's not necessarily best to have the highest initiative, because you might be the one who finds out that the monster disintegrates anything within 5 feet as an immediate action - but if you DO have the appropriate strategy, winning initiative has a clear-cut value above and beyond the others.

echo