[Tunnels & Trolls] Colonizing goblin lands
newsalor:
Normal encounters? I was never involved in a encounter that had less than 7 goblins if you don't count the encounter with the wolves.
Hmm...
The difference with the brakish encounter and the forest encounter was that while we couldn't have beaten the brakish in combat, it was kinda cool to gauge their strenght. You know, even if they were total ninjamonsters, there was some uncertainty and the challenge was to realize that we couldn't beat them. We even devised a way to get past them with a boarding bridge of sorts, because now way we would give up the amber, because it was more treasure that we had ever seen in our life!
Also the terrain and the situation was cool.
The forest scene, as I saw it, however, a clearly unbeatable opponent, that on close inspection was still unbeatable, partly because our saving rolls generated terrain didn't effect them much. We tried to find a place where we could limit the amount of goblins we had to fight, so you'd think that it would be an ideal place to encounter 20+ goblins, but the goblins are tough customers.
I wasn't in on the Hiitola/Goblinia part of the adventure, so I didn't know how they trailed the goblins then, but last time we had to try something sneaky we had to roll individually, so I estimated that it would have something like 80% chance of failing.
My point is, that in terms of challenge, this was a null encounter. How are you supposed to step on up if running away is clearly the only choice?
But hey, don't take this the wrong way! I had tons of fun playing. I even ordered the game from the States. It's just that I don't think that getting to the point that players are too neurotic to engage much weaker opponents or don't believe in the chances of winning (I definetly read Sipi's actions in the town defence as defeatist) is worth bragging about.
Eero Tuovinen:
That's a good viewpoint, Olli. The GM is often in a blind spot when it comes to picking up player reactions, I had no idea you found the whole set-up desperate as opposed to just challenging, and I thought Sipi just flavoured play with his character's role and was confident about the encounter with the goblins; the game's played for fun, after all, so why not take some risks and try to play a cool character.
Callan S.:
Quote
So it wasn't difficult by any means to make the call to not attack them
I think that it was easy is actually the problem, especially given it's gamist play. It kind of raises the question "Why put that choice/challenge in, when the answer (run) is so obvious?". Like the ambiguity from above where the question of whether the GM is out to kill characters or is the GM is out to follow procedure that kills PC's, here there's an ambiguity of whether it was a challenge, or a scenic railroad to convey world events.
I only own 5th edition, but as far as I know the procedure in that, you worked within the (very wide) parameters the game has. Making it legit procedure following. Which means legitimate rules use can lead to what is in practical terms, from the players point of operation, a railroad.
Usually we all jump on the GM at this point, even the GM him or herself, sometimes. I think this might be a bit scape goatish. Often GM's are just off on some artistic high, creativity pouring from them but staying within the channels they actually know of. If they were cooking and the rule was to use no nuts, then they wouldn't. But if there is no rule against it then they go with their creative flow and that might mean reaching for some nut ingrediant at some point. And it's very tempting, when your throat is constricting from alergic reaction, to blame the cook rather than the rules the cook was told. And there are some GM's which exult in the capacity the rules give to railroad, thus making it even more tempting to blame the GM. I still remember a GM giving her account on storygames, then realising the railroad (She saw it! Fantastic, she can see it!) then blaming herself (noooooooo! Change the rules, not youuuuuu!).
Sorry, long post - describing the rest of the iceberg that's (as I understand it) underneath the tip takes a bit :)
Eero Tuovinen:
Agreed, again. GMs are powerful figures and intensely problematic in roleplaying. It's difficult to be objective about them.
The way I myself saw that meeting with the oversized enemy force wasn't at all that I was railroading - rather, I was just introducing a new element, an organized goblin attack on the human lands. The players could have chosen to trail the goblins, send their own goblin to spy on them, commit to a hit-and-run war of attrition against them or any number of other things; even the choice they made was hardly "running away" when they decided to return to town and start preparing it against the imminent goblin attack. It was hardly a null scene in my mind - which of course doesn't mean that it wasn't that to the players. A new group with no history of communication, so of course we'd communicate to cross-purposes here and there.
newsalor:
It's all about perception. Maybe if we had played the town defence out, all the events prior to it would have gained new significance. :)
I feel that perhaps with extended play, the players would learn to keep a more open mind in terms of framing the challenges they encounter. I guess we had two major frames of mind to learn out of. The first one is the heroism thing. In a game like this, you just have to play lowlifes, who kill rats and employ hit&run style guerrilla tactics against foes and view an escape against a superior foe, a victory.
I seem to remember that RuneQuest was once like that, except that often the enemies were lowlifes like yourself and combat against the broo was more like throwing some attack spells and rocks to test the other side, before one or both parties withdrew.
The second kind of brain damage would be the boxed in encounter thing. D&D and such games tend to train you into thinking that each encounter is boxed in like an fight in a JRPG. Perhaps it's the same thing with scene based narrativism, I don't know. In a game like this, you should think outside the box and come up with victory conditions of your own instead and note that the world outside of the encounter still exists.
I could see someone playing as a kind of midfielder fulfilling this role or perhaps it would be a cool procedure for the players to have a short discussion about what should they try to achieve in each encounter. It would be somewhat similar to the thing that you do in The Mountain Witch, but actually this kind of reframing is pretty natural with everyone just assuming what the goal should be.
I don't know. What do you guys thing?
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