Revising Tollenkar's Lair - Page 2

Terquem · 03-31-2020, 12:07 PM

The original question is valid, in my opinion, but at the same time a question I am ill equipped to answer. I ran this when I was a teen, but I have not run it since it was updated. I've been running games of many rules systems for a while though and there is one issue I can, and do like to, talk about.

Building characters for the adventure.

I saw this the most in Pathfinder games. A player would always ask, "what is the adventure, what are the monster types we are going up against?" I used to respond negatively to these kinds of questions. I had to learn that there is, and always will be I suppose, a subset of players who see this as a part of the game itself, building characters designed for the adventure.

There is no reason to look at this as a bad thing. It just isn't my thing. I don't allow it. I, typically, run my session 0 games with almost no information available to the characters other than where they begin the adventure.

You could get lost down the rabbit hole looking into the old "kobold" build in Pathfinder. It has always reminded me of playing make believe as a child, when there were no rules established ahead of time,

I shoot you with my invisible cage gun and now you are trapped
I use my invisible cage disrupter to get free
My invisible cage has anti disrupter bars
my disrupter is enhanced with anti disrupter rejectors

and on and on

I think it all comes down to what are you doing? If you are engaging in a thought process that examines the subtleties of the rules and how they may be impacted by combinations that you think the designers must not have thought through completely, and this is how you enjoy spending your time, then this is fine. Have fun. If you like talking with others about these thought processes on "forums" to find out if your logic is sound, and this is how you enjoy spending your time, this is also fine (though you may encounter others on those forums who have not examined these things in the same detail way you have, making it hard to engage on the same level).

You might want to try play through the adventure with unique builds that are designed to "one shot" opposition, to prove the viability of your assumptions. The problem you might have to face would depend on the way you play out the game session. Are you doing it solo, to prove the assumptions you have made? That might give you the results you expect, or not. But if you agree to play out your adventure with me as the GM, and you tell me that your characters are built to defeat the adventure as if it were a cake walk, you might not have a good time when I have the ceiling collapse in the first room and kill all the characters, and then do that over and over and over, showing you that what you have in mind might not be fun for me at all.

On the other hand, if you find, or are yourself, the sort of GM who enjoys the challenge, your results could be different. It all depends on how you play the game. For me, I have always played by this motto

play like you don't need to win

Skarg · 03-31-2020, 12:26 PM

Yeah, the problem isn't that all problem-solving or exploit-testing questions or exercises are bad.

The main error of the question, as usual, is the wording of it. And as usual, it's hard to even know what the "real" question, suggestion, or point, exactly, is. And it's aggressively overstated and/or mis-stated, and follow-up posts don't address the points of others and tend to change the topic and be enigmatic, and even when you do get to the point, it's often some weird rule interpretation or other mistake or weirdness.

03-31-2020, 12:07 PM	#11
Terquem Join Date: Apr 2018 Location: Idaho Falls	Re: Revising Tollenkar's Lair The original question is valid, in my opinion, but at the same time a question I am ill equipped to answer. I ran this when I was a teen, but I have not run it since it was updated. I've been running games of many rules systems for a while though and there is one issue I can, and do like to, talk about. Building characters for the adventure. I saw this the most in Pathfinder games. A player would always ask, "what is the adventure, what are the monster types we are going up against?" I used to respond negatively to these kinds of questions. I had to learn that there is, and always will be I suppose, a subset of players who see this as a part of the game itself, building characters designed for the adventure. There is no reason to look at this as a bad thing. It just isn't my thing. I don't allow it. I, typically, run my session 0 games with almost no information available to the characters other than where they begin the adventure. You could get lost down the rabbit hole looking into the old "kobold" build in Pathfinder. It has always reminded me of playing make believe as a child, when there were no rules established ahead of time, I shoot you with my invisible cage gun and now you are trapped I use my invisible cage disrupter to get free My invisible cage has anti disrupter bars my disrupter is enhanced with anti disrupter rejectors and on and on I think it all comes down to what are you doing? If you are engaging in a thought process that examines the subtleties of the rules and how they may be impacted by combinations that you think the designers must not have thought through completely, and this is how you enjoy spending your time, then this is fine. Have fun. If you like talking with others about these thought processes on "forums" to find out if your logic is sound, and this is how you enjoy spending your time, this is also fine (though you may encounter others on those forums who have not examined these things in the same detail way you have, making it hard to engage on the same level). You might want to try play through the adventure with unique builds that are designed to "one shot" opposition, to prove the viability of your assumptions. The problem you might have to face would depend on the way you play out the game session. Are you doing it solo, to prove the assumptions you have made? That might give you the results you expect, or not. But if you agree to play out your adventure with me as the GM, and you tell me that your characters are built to defeat the adventure as if it were a cake walk, you might not have a good time when I have the ceiling collapse in the first room and kill all the characters, and then do that over and over and over, showing you that what you have in mind might not be fun for me at all. On the other hand, if you find, or are yourself, the sort of GM who enjoys the challenge, your results could be different. It all depends on how you play the game. For me, I have always played by this motto play like you don't need to win

03-31-2020, 12:26 PM	#12
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: Revising Tollenkar's Lair Yeah, the problem isn't that all problem-solving or exploit-testing questions or exercises are bad. The main error of the question, as usual, is the wording of it. And as usual, it's hard to even know what the "real" question, suggestion, or point, exactly, is. And it's aggressively overstated and/or mis-stated, and follow-up posts don't address the points of others and tend to change the topic and be enigmatic, and even when you do get to the point, it's often some weird rule interpretation or other mistake or weirdness.