this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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How does a DM deal with players who look for these wild ideas?
I think it's fine to think outside of the box and metagame. But does it end up in a slippery slope where it feels like the players just want to outthink every encounter where it's just a rube Goldberg set of plays?
There isn't anything to "deal" with. If you want your players to only give predetermined solutions to problems, you really need to play a different game.
If you've got the right DM for it, they lean into it, because everyone's having fun.
But say by adventure 10, they're still trying to beat the system. It feels exhausting trying to create a story like "A vampire council, but they have anti-magic doors so you can't disguise yourself. And also no rats. And you can't teleport in there. And summoning a devil or warping the castle is forbidden. And..."
In a world where magic exists and anti-magic countermeasures are a thing do you think any reasonably powerful person wouldn't have them in place? It seems like you're trying to come across as ridiculous but all of those sounds like pretty reasonable precautions in a magical world.
Agreed, it's even comparative to our world. My local grocery store doesn't have metal detectors, but the county court offices do, and then the white house has stuff way beyond even that. You can bet your bottom dollar that if wild shape was a thing that certain buildings would be built to uncover that kind of thing.
That's just forbiddance. Just need 1 wizard with 6th level spells to ritual cast it once a day for a month.
Just don't do that lol, let them do wacky hijinks, or play a system without the wacky hijinks
Imo this is firm "you can get away with it exactly once" territory. It's clever, so it should be rewarded. But after the once every lord will mysteriously have anti-shape shifting wards.
Or guards with detect magic.
I immediately thought about guards with wands of detect magic. Then I realized we've reinvented the TSA.
They don't need wands. It's a first level spell that can be cast as a ritual. 2 guards with at least 1 level in Wizard can always have detect magic active.
If you're not a fan of this type of behaviour, I recommend playing a TTRPG that isn't D&D.
D&D has gotten a bit of an "LULLZRANDOM!!11!!" reputation, possibly because of the content creators needing something whacky to get views, or just because of how mainstream it is. If you need to stand out in a crowd of thousands being extreme, novel, or whacky has the lowest effort for the highest reward.
If everyone at the table finds the game fun, then you are playing correctly. I find this behaviour exhausting and would tell the players that it needs to stop unless someone else wants to GM.
What would examples of alternative TTRPGs be? And what characteristics would they have that would prevent the "LULZRANDOM We're breaking the system" type of gameplay?
I'm thinking maybe crunchier and more in-depth rules ala Pathfinder or GURPS, since the barrier-to-break is much higher due to having to read more, but I'm just guessing as a relative ttrpg novice here haha
I would instead lean more into the FATE direction. They are more open for interpretation and thus allow the DM more control.
Spells there don't necessarily specify transforming your weapons. The DM would maybe allow it but doesn't have to. Some of those games don't even have a spell list, so no definitive way to know, your spell idea works or even exists (unless you did it before).
This is the first time I have heard of FATE and that is interesting! From what I'm reading, it's highly free-form, with stuff normally associated with characters or the setting being referred to as aspects (like some kind of adjective or attributes of a programming class), which can be called upon to give bonuses provided you have enough fate points). The free-form part comes from the aspects being basically anything related to the characters/setting at hand. I guess it does put a lot of onus on both the DM and the player to collaboratively figure out how to find creative solutions to problems, but in a way that isn't mechanically restricted.
From what I've seen from the suggestions so far, rules-lite/abstract helps to mitigate some of the rube-goldbergy-mad-contraption-tzeentchian-ness that seems to be inherent in rpgs (and probably human nature lol), but not by "restricting" players in a strictly defined box of rules. Rather, rules-lite systems allow for the rube-goldbergy-mad-contraption-tzeentchian-ness to feel less like breaking the system and more like building the system (within reason and the DM's judgment), which is huge. So either that or a heavy narrative focus seems to work well in theory.
I am not here to shit on D&D. If you're having fun, then it's the right game for you and your table.
D&D is a rules medium game that is based around combat, but isn't great at combat being balanced at combat where every PC is basically immortal. The game itself doesn't really set a tone, which makes different people have different expectations of what the game "should" be.
Because of it not-quite-being-great at anything, people tend to want to push limits, or add homebrew.
Edit: A rules lite system with a set tone will also prevent this level of silly, if that's not what you want
Oh don't get me wrong, I play D&D and love it as well haha
I was just curious about other systems and how their approaches to rules, balance, and storytelling affect how players play as well (and DMs DM), seeing as there's a myriad of different systems each with different goals and mechanics. I haven't played any other system on the tabletop, as my group hasn't really tried playing other systems yet (only crpgs based on other systems, plus me reading manuals and rulesets because why not)
I can see how a rules lite system would prevent random pushing of the system until it breaks type of gameplay, ala PbtA games. Plus with more emphasis on crafting a narrative vs focusing on the best combination of stats/skills/interactions, there's less incentive to turn the mechanical knobs until something ends up broken.
Personally I think the players coming up with some cool new trick for each encounter sounds pretty good. The problem is when they find one cool new trick that works for everything. Like, casting Create Water in someone's lungs sounds awesome the first time you do it, but you don't want a whole campaign of just that. But even if the players agree that that would be boring, it's hard not to do that without justifying why it wouldn't work, and if it wouldn't work every time, why would it have worked the first time?
You can have it work as a roll for arcana vs the victims survival, or just plain roll a d20 for the victim to cough it up and be angry, and ofc set the challenge much higher for stronger creatures, etc. I think there are lots of ways around it within the mechanics of the game.
Some DM have a general rule you can’t re-attempt the same skill check over and over, you can try it in the future on a different person but not again on the same person in that moment. So that’s another possible barrier to abuse. That only applies out of combat ofc.
Another option is world build against it - allow it the first time, but then word spreads about this tactic and any well off people find defensive countermeasures or learn to create potions to counteract the effects. Then it would be re-attemptable just in rare situations where you just travelled to a new and information-isolated region.
Now I know the create water trick is just an example but it’s a flexible system and I think with some creativity you can counteract things like that being too OP in a way that’s still fun