Totally unrelated to recent events
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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If you really want to scare players, throw a gazebo at them
My low level group ran across a sleeping gazebo fresh into level 5. Playing a druid my character said that if we didn't do something it'd wake up and begin stalking us. Our 2h fighter melee wanted to try to surprise it with extra attack & action surge. But, our rogue thought we were trying to get him killed (again), then refused. We gave it a wide berth and went on our way. Two sessions later we're ambushed by a gazebo.
Sorry ambushed by a what?
ED: You see a well groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
ED: [pause] It's white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED: About 50 yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: [pause] It's about 30 ft across, 15 ft high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.
ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I call out to it.
ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?
ED: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow. [roll to hit] What happened?
ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
ERIC: [pause] Wasn't it wounded?
ED: OF COURSE NOT, ERIC! IT'S A GAZEBO!
ERIC: [whimper] But that was a +3 arrow!
ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a GAZEBO! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try. It's a @#$%!! gazebo!
ERIC: [long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.] I run away.
ED: [thoroughly frustrated] It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo. It catches you and eats you.
ERIC: [reaching for his dice] Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my Paladin.
This is hilarious and I'm even more confused now...
Player thought a gazebo was a new monster type and DM eventually got fed up and had gazebo kill the player?
just let matt get one tpk already he deserves it
I mean he's gotten close a few times.
I do wonder how often he fudges rolls.
hes learned much since his wife swan dived off a 100 foot cliff
Major respect for him pulling that trigger.
He gave her every chance to save herself and let the dice call the shot.
Dice won...
Just to get it out of the way, I don't watch CR, so I don't know if this is a specific reference, and am just speaking about D&D in general. :)
Kind of inevitable with most D&D games. If you design adventures around having a series of more-or-less balanced encounters, almost always combat, where player characters are expected to be stressed but not generally killed the vast majority of the time... both the players and their characters are going to have the expectation that they can just do that.
So you need to manage those expectations. Make it clear up front, and either run the game so that death is a real threat more of the time, or find other ways to make it crystal clear when it is.
(Or just don't make things lethal and find other consequences for failure. Or whatever you'd like, my point is just to get folks on the same page.)
IMO, this is an issue specific to 4e and 5e. In 3.5 and older, it wasn't as expected that D&D would always be balanced with winnable fights. Often you'd have horror moments in modules/campaigns where you were expected to run away or die.
At least the way my dad taught the game to me, 2e was almost survival horror for lower level characters.
Gary Gygax dungeons were infamous for the "there's 3 doors. Behind door 1 is a swarm of giant poisonous killer bees, behind door 2 is an insta kill trap and behind door 3 is a tunnel leading to a chest full of gold and gems" situation without any way to distinguish the doors.
It's definitely something that's a part of newer D&D, though it's debatable when it started. It was inarguably a part of 4th edition, I think it was here by 3rd edition, and there's even a case to be made that 2e was headed in that direction with some of the supplements.
Anyway, your dad was right. :P During 2e, that was still a big part of the game. It's part of the differentiation between "old school" and "new school" D&D. Whatever I think of any particular edition, I think both approaches are rad for different reasons. :)
It's just the mismatch of expectations that would be a problem. It sucks to die because you were expecting another epic set piece battle, and it also sucks to try to come up with a clever solution to avoid an encounter just to end up not doing much or getting railroaded.
So, Matt has had a couple of moments where it is, before combat, looking like the players are FAR outmatched. Aaand someone’s fave purple character paid for not doing the mental maths. I feel that is how he makes it clear that you PROBABLY don’t want to take the baddies on.
Sometimes that attempt to communicate misses.
My fav Matt surprised moment isn’t the party going into a fight they shouldn’t have, but how Travis decided to get them out of a tough fight in Nicodranas in Campaign 2. Totally sent campaign in a new but fun direction. Bonus that the next episode was live on stage and the cast got to play dress-up.
My memory is a bit rusty, which event are you referring to?
Spoilers Season 2 Episode 35 Dockside Diplomacy
spoiler
The party's search for a guy named Marius lead them to the Nicodranas dockfront at night. Marius was parleying with some pirates, which of course led to a fight. A fireball and Thunderstep later, the city guard joined the fight too. Not an the player's side (or pirates).
Noticing they were starting to get overwhelmed, the party decided to retreat... by stealing the pirate ship. Which sent the campaign in a completely new and fun direction and allowed them to wear pirate costumes on-stage for the next episode.
It was also mostly Tavis's doing that locked them in that direction of "escape", but also made sense as Fjord (his character) had a whole sailor background. It ended leading directly into Fjord's individual story arch.
I believe Matt said later during a Talks Machina or something that he did not think of that option when we was setting up the fight before stream, but that it's exactly the kind of crazy player decision that he loves.
I just love the: oh, we need to retreat. I know! Let's steel the pirate ship.
My players did something similar in one of our campaigns. Though in their case the ship they were already on was attacked by pirate and I'd REALLY underestimated the difficulty. My players slaughtered the pirates and decided to take their ship instead of just ride on someone else's. The core plot of that campaign was really location agnostic, so I didn't mind at all.
Ah right. It honestly felt so natural I didn't really think about that.
@Lianodel@ttrpg.network its a meme,dude. We as a party were in a high Level Dungeon as mid level chars… and dm told us repeatedly if we really sure about this…
Alright, gotcha. Just taking it as a launch point for discussing the game.
Plus apparently situations like this happened in CR recently, so I thought it was about these kinds of situations in general.
@Lianodel@ttrpg.network no, just dumb players not taking a hint… and yeah we kinda deserved it…our dm was devastated, but we agreed on taking consequences for our decisions…
Yeah, we had a near-TPK with our group recently. The rogue picked a lock and opened a door, which triggered a comical amount of explosives. We dealt with the consequences, but it was frustrating because it just kind of came out of nowhere. It didn't seem to be that kind of campaign, y'know? Nothing remotely like it happened in months of play up to that point.
...so I was kind of reading my own experiences into this. :P
As long as it's not a door..
Tails from the stinky dragon have so many door problems
Or a chair :)
I remember him making that face, but I can't recall what it was in reaction to
Does anyone know?
This was the DM when I intentionally nestled myself inside the shambling mound
Or when I wild shaped to swim directly down the throat of the leviathan
When I'm DMing, I always tell myself I'm not gonna tolerate that bullshit.
But at the table I usually let it happen to see where it's going.