No matter how much you prepare, no matter how great the challenge is, your players will find a way to do things you never imagined possible. I say that as a Dungeon Master who built a room with a clever trap and my players dug a tunnel around it instead of going through it. I set a Giant to guard the treasure and they poisoned kobolds and sent them against him till all of them were dead and walked out without a scratch.
Fuck yeah.
How true! In about 30 years as a DM I have experienced many of these situations. And you think that I am a very finicky as DM and preparing mine adventures in details. But if I have to tell you the truth I'm glad that this is so, because often the best sessions are those who take unexpected roads despite all your preparation and you have to improvise everything. :)
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely Giuseppe!
DeleteApropos : http://tinyurl.com/l8ogop6
ReplyDeleteI see you fellas have never run up against a genuine crit monster. Those strange probability altering gamers who always roll crits, rarely roll botches, and can do this with any set of dice you give them in case you accuse them of using loaded dice. Yes, you've never quite learned how to react as a GM until after your crit monster player rolls five twenties in a row, or rolls all 10's on five ten-sided dice and somehow soaking the aggravated damage from the holy water she just drank, or rolls a 3 on 3d6 so commonly she has the critical hit chart memorized, or rolls up three characters in a row with all 18 stats...in front of you. Yup, there she goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die. Add that to the fact that she's my significant other and co-GM...and well, you get the idea. Oddly enough, It extends to card decks too as we found out. Never play TORG with her. Never. And no, she won't let me take her to Atlantic City. I've tried. She claims I'm using her powers for evil - and I am - but a guy gets tired of the dragon getting it on the first round of combat. And that's my after-midnight gaming rant for the week.
ReplyDeleteI love that this comment dovetailed into a bit of Hunter S. Thompson styled prose.
DeleteIn a game of EPT with such a crit monster, stats something like 99, 97, 100, 100, 100, 100, rolled in front of me, the crit monster met his comeuppance when his brother shot his character in the back with a heavy crossbow and killed him outright on the way to the dungeon because he was too good to live.
ReplyDeleteOne guy back when had a great story of the DM hiding his big boss's treasure trove behind an impervious Adamantium portal. The PCs chiselled away the walls where the hinges were anchored and hauled away the doors using rollers since they were more valuable than the concealed loot.
"the crit monster met his comeuppance when his brother shot his character in the back with a heavy crossbow and killed him outright on the way to the dungeon because he was too good to live."
DeleteHa! That's the story of my gaming life right there. My brother makes perfect monsters and I cap them in the back of the head. :)
That's the part of the game that keeps you coming back for more?
ReplyDeleteYeah.
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