Murphys Law

[RPGnet Columns]

Post originally by Ped at 2003-11-08 05:53:31
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Very amusing portrayal of Murphys Law in relation to gaming.

Of course being pedantic, I'd say with relation to:

"This means, astonishingly enough, that players are basically just like raw nature itself. They are, in a word, non-sentient, and exist purely to persecute GMs. Which, in itself, is a minor revelation."

Methinks you are confusing sentience with unpredictability. Players can mess up your carefully laid plans for a number of reasons, ie because they think they're clever, they think your adventure sucks and hence try to wreck it, or they simply think that it's "in character" (or some other reason) for a low level mage to suddenly ignore using his magic (and magic items) and take on a lich by punching him in the jaw.

As such, there's no way to plan for every eventuality, but being flexible and appealing to basic human nature helps.

Eg: There's an NPC who mustn't die.

Make him useful (inexpendable) to the players in some way (if he's allied with them), or have some kind of failsafe somesuch he can use to escape a fight (if he's against the PC's). At the end of the day though, everyones expendable, and GM's can be just as quick thinking and unpredictable as players.

Once again though, this column gave me a good laugh.

[RPGnet Columns]

Post originally by Belac at 2003-11-08 15:00:01
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Its really sad that many of my adventure notes really look like the orcs-in-forest encounter plan. I have them just so I can show them to players to prove that I'm not just making up obstructions to their "brilliant ideas" off the top of my head to be difficult.

Great article; I'll send it around. :)

[RPGnet Columns]

Post originally by Necrosis at 2003-12-05 20:01:04
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Yes it's true, but the problem is: how many things can 1 person think? How many can a group of 5? Or the best, of two?
It's really funny when random actions that seem of no importances join to make it seem like it was all forseen:
The character steals covers from the beds on an inn he stayed on.
*1 gameworld week*
The character wants to make a black cape with the sheets he stood, oh how handy he is just in the border of the swamp of evil, he says that he covers the sheet in the dark mud (rich in methane) bluffing, but you make him do it as a meanie DM, and now he just saves his dirty sheet again
*a lot more time passes*
The character stands behind an abom that they where supposed to run from and evade, but they killed it burning, it really doesn't matter much, you have a backup plan saved to replace the later uses of the abom. There are ghouls behind the door, the character just then gets an idea. He grabs his old dirty sheet, still rich in methane and now dried and covers his warhammer with it and then lights it up. Now he has a huge steel warhammer with a fire damage bonus to it, dear it's not gonna be a fight as you wanted it, it's gonna be a ghoul massacre!
(based on a true story)
You can't predict all of the players movements, but you can play their own little dirty game: make your NPCs do things the players never thought they could do.
Make that warrior enemy get a jump start getting his horse to kick him towards the players (just a bit of subdual, and a big boost) that'll leave the players gagging, or throw a magician who always uses illusions, but then brings something almost *impossible* players will think it's an illusion when it's not! Or this could be made to make players think it was an illusion that the guy was captured so they free him accidentaly to find out it was trully captured! Random players can only be neutralized by an opposing random GM...