Teamwork, Teamwork, Teamwork
I've run enough 4e games and read enough blog posts to understand that 4e really rewards players that use teamwork. And by "rewards" I mean, "let's them live". In my brief stint as a player, I was struck by how profoundly difficult teamwork actually is. I've seen my players struggle with it, but now I think I have a better idea of why it happens. I think it comes down to:
1. Know Thyself
2. Know Thy Companions
3. Inertia of Maximizing Bonuses
4. Real-Time Pressure
Know Thyself: clearly if you don't know your own character well, much less the 4e game mechanics in general, then your ability to work in a team is limited. As a player, it is your job to know what you can do and to understand the rules well. Besides knowing your strengths, know your weaknesses. This seems to be a fairly frequent issue.
Know Thy Companions: there is tremendous synergy between classes. If you are playing a Star Pact Warlock and several of your powers will reduce a foe's Will defenses, then ideally the party should be in a position to exploit this. If you are playing a Tactical Warlord and you can give a +5 bonus to hit to an ally, do you know who has the best power to benefit from this? (hint: it's generally not the character who does the greatest raw damage - look for someone with stunning, blinding, buffing, etc. powers, even if it does markedly less damage.)
This can be a bit weird for roleplayers - in previous versions of D&D I sometimes liked to keep my exact abilities and bonuses secret so as to not diminish roleplaying. Having everyone else in the party study my character sheet is a level of transparency that can be discomforting. Especially if I have a concept like a Changling pretending to be human, or a character who wants to keep his warlock pact a secret. Also, there's a tendency for people to focus on game effects over flavor, so when you start to describe your Dread Star invocation in vivid roleplaying terms, the GM is already writing down the game effects and another player handing you the damage dice. That kinda takes away from the immersiveness of an RPG and is a subtle shift towards tabletop wargames.
Inertia of Maximizing Bonuses: probably not the best label for this, but it's what I'm using to describe when a player takes an action that maximizes their potential damage output or potential effects, over doing something that is less impressive but is of greater tactical benefit to the party. There is a certain inertia to bonuses - "oh, if attack this guy I'll do an extra d8 damage, and if I move here I can get +2 to hit", etc... Things like targeting a quarried/cursed foe to maximize damage or targeting a certain foe just to get a better bonus to hit. It can also be a matter of moving into a bad/vulnerable position so as to make an attack, in the belief that making no attack is worse than being dangerously exposed. By maximizing bonuses, a party is quite capable of dealing a significantly greater amount of damage overall (at low levels, I'd say a solid 10 extra damage per round), however it tends to be divided among multiple foes or often the wrong foes. Dealing less but more strategic damage is better.
Real-Time Pressure: the last point is pretty obvious, players are reacting in real-time. Combat should be moving quickly, yet new information is coming at the players really fast, and they have to assimilate it and react to it immediately. And they have a ton of options to choose from. In addition, it’s hard to coordinate in the constraints of the 6-second round. Think of it this way, as a DM, I’ve usually had a chance to spend at least 15 minutes with a cup of coffee, casually reading an encounter description and examining the map and monster descriptions to come up with some tactics. The players tend to get all of a couple seconds between miniatures appearing on the table and the three magic words being uttered: “roll for init”. How spontaneously coordinated can they actually be?
So that's all coming from the player's perspective. What does that mean for the DM? You should encourage them to develop teamwork. Try to have your players create characters together and discuss synergies while making them. My group is using the infamous near TPK incident as an opportunity to build characters that play nicer together. Those who actually regularly read and reply to their email (all but *ahem* two of them. You know who you are.) are going to really benefit from this.
You should also encourage your players to dissect what went right and what went wrong. Many players will do this on their own, but not always. I like to make sure we wrap up a game a bit before we absolutely need to, so that there's time to sit around and chew the fat about the game. I focus on getting feedback on the adventure, but it's also an opportunity for the players to make tactical critiques. And rewarding a player who takes the time to post game summaries and suggest tactical revisions is a great idea (if anyone if my group is reading this, volunteers are welcome).
I think you can also get players to better learn their powers by making it relevant in-game. Many years ago I played Robotech and one of the modules had a series of adventures that took place in a simulator. One of the adventures had the players getting shot at from a random weapon and direction and having to react accordingly. Something along the lines of:
GM: "Klaxons blare in your cockpit. Your radar picks up a missile streaking towards you from the very edge of your radar! What do you do?"
Player: "I, uh, take evasive action and fire a mini-missile at the launch site!"
GM: "What kind of missile?"
Player: "Uh, armor piercing? No, wait, Plasma!"
GM: "You dodge a direct hit from the enemy missile but its fragmentation warhead damages your mecha. Your missile falls far short of the target - your radar has five times the range of your missiles. Do you think it is funny to waste expensive munitions, Private!?!"
Player: "Aaaah! Sir, no Sir!"
It was hard as hell but you learned your mecha's weapon systems really quickly. I think I still have all the sensor and weapon ranges of the Excalibur memorized to this day... Next time I start a new campaign with all new characters, I'll consider finding a way to integrate something like that into my D&D game. Whether it's a retired adventurer taking the PCs under his wings, or a War Mage Academy Illusory Combat training course, I like the idea of finding a way to get characters to quickly learn and choose from their powers in-game. A key part could be including hints in the combat descriptions to guide the players in their decisions - suggesting what a foe's lowest defense is, or giving them objectives like preventing enemy movement, for example.
The last thing that you as a DM can do is be fair when it comes to teamwork. When I DM, boy can I get some teamwork going! The poor players have to shout tactics to each other asynchronously in short 6-second bursts. I have telepathy baby! The Kobold Skirmisher wants the three Kobold Minions to surround the wizard PC, being sure to leave the lower right square open and occupying the upper left square to set up a flank for combat advantage? Oh, and after you get into position, delay your attacks until after the Skirmisher so that everyone gets combat advantage all around? Done and done, without so much as a word.
Yeah, look – it’s really easy to be clever as a DM, you can almost always be more clever than the players*. What’s hard is not being too clever. You need to look at the Int, Wis, and descriptions of the creatures you are playing and be sure to roleplay them accordingly. Kobolds don’t exactly have high Intelligence scores, but they are pretty darn cunning and fight as coordinated mobs so maybe it makes sense for them to work really well together. But you should try and impose some of the communication lags and coordination difficulties that PCs suffer from to be fair. In the game I just played in, the DM did a great job of having rats and their kin behave in combat like rats, not mini-rodent versions of Sun Tzu. Flanks against PCs only occurred because a player was truly mobbed, not because of wolf-pack maneuvering. Rats triggered OAs because they didn't know any better. Great job.
I try to do this too. In my last DMing session, the Kobold leader started shouting out commands. Namely, keep away from the big, armored guy with the sword, and attack the wizard (who had strayed a bit too close to the battle line). But there was a one turn delay before the Kobolds really started to act on it – I tried not to use my instantaneous one-brain telepathy and have them act with some kind of creepy hive mind. (Although, one of my players thought they were still too coordinated, which could be true.)
So there ya go. Those are my thoughts on how hard it is for players to use teamwork and what the DM can do about it. Technically, it's the players' problem not the DM's, but I genuinely believe that any thing the DM can do to make for a better game is worth looking at. Even if it means finding ways to cajole players to learn something as obvious as the rules and their companions and their own capabilities.
* “Almost always" be more clever is an important distinction. Odds are good that your players are clever bastards. The SOBs will regularly figure out your plots prematurely, hijack your story arcs in ways you never imagined, and ask to do ingenious things that aren’t even remotely covered by the rules. They will find ways to skewer your major villain while you are still describing his appearance. Players are remarkably, evilly, clever. They are not, however, consistently clever. Yes, in a 4-hour gaming session, it is practically guaranteed that at least one of your five players will have an idea that is stunning in both cleverness and malevolence. But that’s different from being clever every single round of every combat – the DM definitely has the edge there, simply because he is generally better prepared and is hopefully capable of coordinating tactics with, um, himself.
9.12.2008
Notes from the Other Side (of the DM Screen) 2
We encountered a What?!?
or
Sometimes it's fun to run away
As I mentioned in my previous post, I got be a PC instead of DM the other day! Yay! It's not like I'm never a player, but it really is like a 90/10 split. So when I do play, it's a big deal for me, and I try to use it as a learning opportunity to become a better DM.
It may seem like I bagged on the DM's black dragon encounter in the last post for not quite fitting in with my plot/balance expectations, but that was just focusing on one particular nuance of the encounter. Another facet of the encounter, namely how absolutely scared s---less we were and how awesome that was, is highly praiseworthy. Let's recap:
The party is off to find a dangerous and evil orb in a cave. The party does indeed find an orb, but it hardly seems dangerous and evil. The orb is suspended by the spray of a magical fountain. It bobs atop the water, and the water is pure and refreshing. The party's paladin and cleric sense no evil. Runes etched into the ceiling contain references to Moradrin and Corellon - the antithesis of fearsome, evil deities (there are also runes for "undead" and "protection" but I just assume - correctly, it turns out - those are related to a trap).
At this point, we think it's the orb we seek, but it just seems too darn "good" compared to what we were expecting. I think too many of us grew up on Gary Gygax modules where the obvious often equated with death. So we decide to press on for a bit, to explore some more and be sure the "real" orb isn't hidden deeper in the cave network. It's still early in the day, so we meander through the cave network for over three 3 hours (big caves).
At this point the DM utters something like "a loud whoosh of air from massive, leathery scaled wings rushes over you" as he places a figure on the table. It's a Black Dragon. "In Draconic, the dragon says 'You have trespassed into my lair - I may yet allow you to leave with your lives.'" Almost everyone succumbs to dragon-fear.
The players begin to chatter amongst themselves (something our characters didn't do, but the DM let it slide) debating if we could take on the dragon, but it becomes clear there's a misunderstanding. "Whups, no - the only Black Dragon miniature I have is medium-sized. This guy is actually large. Here, this is better." as the DM swaps out the 1x1-based mildly alarming dragon for a 2x2-based figure of plastic-injection-molded terror.
Unfortunately, the only guy in our party who speaks Draconic is the not-terribly-bright Dragonborn paladin. While most of the party shakes with puddles of urine at their feat, he summons the courage to overcome the dragon-fear and speak (having worked with reptiles, I'm somewhat alarmed at what might be in the Dragonborn's undergarments). The paladin says something along the lines of "Mighty cousin, we have come here seeking a magical orb of great evil, do you know of this orb we seek?"
When combined with a poor Diplomacy check, the black dragon interprets this as something along the lines of "Cousin whom I insult terribly by speaking to as an equal, we think there is a magic orb in your treasure that we wish to take from you. You cool with that?"
The dragon's eyes narrow and it hisses "I know of many magic orbs, and I see one more that I shall add to my trove. Leave it and I will spare your lives." The dragon was looking at the magic orb currently being held by the party's wizard...
There was some back-and-forth where the wizard genuinely contemplated trying to palm the orb and use Prestidigitation to hand over a fake orb so as to save a few hundred GP and perhaps some dignity. Eventually, however, the sheer statistical improbability of pulling that off made him relent and hand over his orb. The party tip-toed out the way we came in.
That encounter was awesome.
As a player, I am generally expecting to be able to defeat anything we encounter, though sometimes it may be harder than other times. But we're still gonna defeat it. I generally only experience, erm, iris-puckering fear, as it were, when the dice have gone terribly wrong and we're losing to random luck, or perhaps we've made a stupid decision or missed an important clue that is making our fight harder. I never really expect to be just plain ol' outclassed by an encounter. It's frickin' scary.
Sure, we could have taken on the dragon and won, though somebody would likely have died, and if the dice went against us, it could have been a TPK. But it was so much more fun to be scared and to have to turn tail. I know it doesn't sound like much fun when you put it that way, but it was a really memorable encounter. I'm just glad no one did anything stupid. And the DM did a good job of playing up how menacing the dragon was, and gently coaching people about potential consequences.
I might add an encounter like that to my games. The two concerns I have are making sure the party has a realistic out and making sure the party knows what they're dealing with. I'd hate to have the party die due to some failed Diplomacy checks or saying the wrong thing. Likewise I'd hate for the party to die because one of the players unilaterally decides the party can take 'em. In other words, the problem with introducing something that can kill the party into the game is that just might happen.
or
Sometimes it's fun to run away
As I mentioned in my previous post, I got be a PC instead of DM the other day! Yay! It's not like I'm never a player, but it really is like a 90/10 split. So when I do play, it's a big deal for me, and I try to use it as a learning opportunity to become a better DM.
It may seem like I bagged on the DM's black dragon encounter in the last post for not quite fitting in with my plot/balance expectations, but that was just focusing on one particular nuance of the encounter. Another facet of the encounter, namely how absolutely scared s---less we were and how awesome that was, is highly praiseworthy. Let's recap:
The party is off to find a dangerous and evil orb in a cave. The party does indeed find an orb, but it hardly seems dangerous and evil. The orb is suspended by the spray of a magical fountain. It bobs atop the water, and the water is pure and refreshing. The party's paladin and cleric sense no evil. Runes etched into the ceiling contain references to Moradrin and Corellon - the antithesis of fearsome, evil deities (there are also runes for "undead" and "protection" but I just assume - correctly, it turns out - those are related to a trap).
At this point, we think it's the orb we seek, but it just seems too darn "good" compared to what we were expecting. I think too many of us grew up on Gary Gygax modules where the obvious often equated with death. So we decide to press on for a bit, to explore some more and be sure the "real" orb isn't hidden deeper in the cave network. It's still early in the day, so we meander through the cave network for over three 3 hours (big caves).
At this point the DM utters something like "a loud whoosh of air from massive, leathery scaled wings rushes over you" as he places a figure on the table. It's a Black Dragon. "In Draconic, the dragon says 'You have trespassed into my lair - I may yet allow you to leave with your lives.'" Almost everyone succumbs to dragon-fear.
The players begin to chatter amongst themselves (something our characters didn't do, but the DM let it slide) debating if we could take on the dragon, but it becomes clear there's a misunderstanding. "Whups, no - the only Black Dragon miniature I have is medium-sized. This guy is actually large. Here, this is better." as the DM swaps out the 1x1-based mildly alarming dragon for a 2x2-based figure of plastic-injection-molded terror.
Unfortunately, the only guy in our party who speaks Draconic is the not-terribly-bright Dragonborn paladin. While most of the party shakes with puddles of urine at their feat, he summons the courage to overcome the dragon-fear and speak (having worked with reptiles, I'm somewhat alarmed at what might be in the Dragonborn's undergarments). The paladin says something along the lines of "Mighty cousin, we have come here seeking a magical orb of great evil, do you know of this orb we seek?"
When combined with a poor Diplomacy check, the black dragon interprets this as something along the lines of "Cousin whom I insult terribly by speaking to as an equal, we think there is a magic orb in your treasure that we wish to take from you. You cool with that?"
The dragon's eyes narrow and it hisses "I know of many magic orbs, and I see one more that I shall add to my trove. Leave it and I will spare your lives." The dragon was looking at the magic orb currently being held by the party's wizard...
There was some back-and-forth where the wizard genuinely contemplated trying to palm the orb and use Prestidigitation to hand over a fake orb so as to save a few hundred GP and perhaps some dignity. Eventually, however, the sheer statistical improbability of pulling that off made him relent and hand over his orb. The party tip-toed out the way we came in.
That encounter was awesome.
As a player, I am generally expecting to be able to defeat anything we encounter, though sometimes it may be harder than other times. But we're still gonna defeat it. I generally only experience, erm, iris-puckering fear, as it were, when the dice have gone terribly wrong and we're losing to random luck, or perhaps we've made a stupid decision or missed an important clue that is making our fight harder. I never really expect to be just plain ol' outclassed by an encounter. It's frickin' scary.
Sure, we could have taken on the dragon and won, though somebody would likely have died, and if the dice went against us, it could have been a TPK. But it was so much more fun to be scared and to have to turn tail. I know it doesn't sound like much fun when you put it that way, but it was a really memorable encounter. I'm just glad no one did anything stupid. And the DM did a good job of playing up how menacing the dragon was, and gently coaching people about potential consequences.
I might add an encounter like that to my games. The two concerns I have are making sure the party has a realistic out and making sure the party knows what they're dealing with. I'd hate to have the party die due to some failed Diplomacy checks or saying the wrong thing. Likewise I'd hate for the party to die because one of the players unilaterally decides the party can take 'em. In other words, the problem with introducing something that can kill the party into the game is that just might happen.
9.09.2008
Notes from the Other Side (of the DM Screen) 1
I'm almost always the DM, I rarely end up being the player in a campaign. But last Sunday I got the chance to play in a friend's one-off 4e game. I'm in his 1/month main 3.5 campaign but it's on temporary hiatus due to scheduling conflicts and childbirth (or some such lame excuse), so he's cobbled together some of the players from that game and a couple other random people to run short "prequel" sessions in the interim. The results of these games actually have a minor effect on the main game. Pretty cool. The characters were premade - I ended up with the human rogue (level 3) - and the plot simple: fetch an orb from the nearby caves once inhabited by cultists.
Because I'm fascinated by game design and want to be a better DM, I made some observations from the player's perspective. In this post I want to address the sad fact that players will notice your adventure's plot holes and/or realism deficiencies.
This is unavoidable. Don't feel bad. It's just part of the game. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into your story arc, there is always going to be at least one niggling little detail which makes as much sense as the Chewbacca Defense - in other words, none. And invariably someone will notice it.
If you have rats deep in a limestone cavern, someone will point out that we haven't found any organic matter in half a mile that could possibly support swarms of rats. There's a reason a rat infestation will be in your attic, floor, or elsewhere nearby - they live near their food, not an hour-long trek from it. If you run into a dragon as a random encounter (this happened, by the way), a player will invariably voice bewilderment that no one told them about the @$^%! dragon living 10 miles from town which, based on the size of both the dragon and its hoard, must have been feeding on cattle and travelers for quite some time.
This is a problem - suspension of disbelief is important to RPGs. The DMing lessons I learned from this are to never use truly random encounters and to listen to your players and think on your feet.
By "truly" random encounters, I mean when the DM decides the players have been
* pissing about aimlessly and becoming bored to the point that playing Wii Looney Tunes Acme Arsenals begins to sound good (Why do I have this game? Oh, that's right - the guy I bought the Wii from gave it to me for free. Then he gave the sign of the Cross, muttered "Our Father..." and slammed the door in my face. It's that bad.)
* making so much noise that some poor monster trying to get some sleep is going to stomp all the way across the dungeon to tell the party to STFU
* willfully avoiding the GM's carefully crafted plot so that he needs to smack them around a bit to remind them who's the boss
so that the GM rolls on a chart or picks a random mini to keep things moving and/or punish the players. It's the "random" part that I don't like. Because you might end up picking an encounter like, say, a Black Dragon. This happens to present some glaring realism issues ("Dude, how the %^@$& did the mayor forget to mention this?!?") and also plot inconsistencies ("So the mayor is in a tizzy about an orb that might possibly be recovered by a presumably destroyed evil cult who could eventually use it to raise an undead horde that might some day raze his village. He is not, however, concerned about the scaly winged death that could raze his village tomorrow &#^%@ morning. Either the orb is more powerful then the mayor lets on, or the village idiot and village mayor are one and the same.").
If I have enough prep time, I prefer to roll up random encounters in advance and put in a little forethought about how these fit into the story and setting, making changes as appropriate. The technique I use is "3x Why?". Ask yourself "Why?" three times before including anything in your game. If you can't, or your answers don't really work with the adventure, ditch the idea.
For example, just in case I need a random encounter for next week's game, I'm rolling one up now. I put together a short list of creatures based on level and environment and I just rolled... a Shadow Hound encounter. Why is there a Shadow Hound here? Um, it's prowling for food and picked up the party's scent. Why? It got here by slipping into the natural world from the Shadowfell and is lost and hungry. Why? Hmmm... Longshadow's Eve was a mere three days ago. A player with Arcana would know that Longshadow's Eve marks the cyclical occasion when the presence of the Shadowfell is stronger than normal and beings can sometimes cross over. It also explains why there were paper lanterns hanging around all over town - a superstition for warding off ill luck around this time of year.
At this point, I probably won't roll any more encounters at random, but instead choose ones related to the Shadowfell. By asking three Whys, I've shored up the encounter plausibility. More importantly, it's forced me to take the time to think about the encounter and hopefully identify any other issues. As I'm going through the 3 whys I'm checking for logical inconsistencies. And it's given me a new idea for my games - I kinda like the Longshadow's Eve idea and think I'll work that one into my current game...
Back to my other observation - listen to your players and think on your feet. Look, coming up with great ideas all by yourself is actually hard. You know how sometimes you can spend hours and hours racking your brains about a problem, and finally you'll mention it to your wife or someone, just venting not really expecting any help, and within 2 seconds she'll say something like "why don't you try it this way?" and it totally works.
Yeah. As a DM, that happens all the time. At least once per session, a player is going to look at a situation and interpret it in a way you never would have thought of. And frankly, it's often better than what you thought of. If you can think on your feet, it's sometimes a good idea to shift gears and run with what the players come up with.
In our game, the mayor became more and more suspect in the players' minds. The chamber with the orb was clearly not evil, the orb itself seemed to have benign powers, the orb was much better defended where it was than it would be in the hands of the village mayor, and of course there's the little issue of not mentioning the [expletive removed] Dragon living in the caves. For like, years. What's going on? Something's not making sense, so we of course start looking for in-game excuses (as opposed to out-of-game excuses, like it's a only one-session game so the DM didn't go crazy with hours of preparation, so just cut him some slack, shaddup, and roll with it).
Now, I believe the reality was the mayor was a perfectly nice plot-giver and not a villain. The orb is actually a dangerous device in the wrong hands, it's just the way it was described that accidentally made it seem so benign. But as we sat about the table discussing our quandary, we started making a good case for the mayor to actually be a villain. Thinking back to when he sought us out for the quest, we wondered was he being secretive out of fear the terror-- er, sorry -- cultists might overhear? Or was he being secretive because he was furtively executing his own plot? And he clearly knew that only a Dwarven priest of Moradin could recover the orb - anyone else touching it would awaken the undead defenders. What else did he know that he wasn't telling? In our mind, only half-jokingly, we began to think the mayor was actually a cultist and that he was unable to recover the orb himself. So he needed to dupe a dwarven cleric and friends to do it for him.
Maybe I just play too much Eberron, but I think that interpretation is so much cooler than the classic "the mayor asks you to fetch him a nosegay" adventure arc. If I were the DM, I would have seriously considered scrapping my ideas and running with the players' interpretations. I've done that before and, while it's sometimes tricky to think on your feet, it can make for great games.
As a player, I definitely learned the importance of cutting your GM some slack. It's hard work to come up with even a single-session adventure, even without worrying about the ecology of rodents. If something doesn't seem right, unless it's important, let it go. Don't be the Comic Book Guy nerdy complainer of your group.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the game and the DM did a great job running it, especially how he played the monsters very true to their stats and background. He was able to keep things moving in a friendly, efficient way. This post is really more about playing "backseat DM" and wondering what techniques I would copy, and what I would do differently than criticism. It's a great exercise for every DM who gets a chance to see things from the other side of the DM screen.
Because I'm fascinated by game design and want to be a better DM, I made some observations from the player's perspective. In this post I want to address the sad fact that players will notice your adventure's plot holes and/or realism deficiencies.
This is unavoidable. Don't feel bad. It's just part of the game. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into your story arc, there is always going to be at least one niggling little detail which makes as much sense as the Chewbacca Defense - in other words, none. And invariably someone will notice it.
If you have rats deep in a limestone cavern, someone will point out that we haven't found any organic matter in half a mile that could possibly support swarms of rats. There's a reason a rat infestation will be in your attic, floor, or elsewhere nearby - they live near their food, not an hour-long trek from it. If you run into a dragon as a random encounter (this happened, by the way), a player will invariably voice bewilderment that no one told them about the @$^%! dragon living 10 miles from town which, based on the size of both the dragon and its hoard, must have been feeding on cattle and travelers for quite some time.
This is a problem - suspension of disbelief is important to RPGs. The DMing lessons I learned from this are to never use truly random encounters and to listen to your players and think on your feet.
By "truly" random encounters, I mean when the DM decides the players have been
* pissing about aimlessly and becoming bored to the point that playing Wii Looney Tunes Acme Arsenals begins to sound good (Why do I have this game? Oh, that's right - the guy I bought the Wii from gave it to me for free. Then he gave the sign of the Cross, muttered "Our Father..." and slammed the door in my face. It's that bad.)
* making so much noise that some poor monster trying to get some sleep is going to stomp all the way across the dungeon to tell the party to STFU
* willfully avoiding the GM's carefully crafted plot so that he needs to smack them around a bit to remind them who's the boss
so that the GM rolls on a chart or picks a random mini to keep things moving and/or punish the players. It's the "random" part that I don't like. Because you might end up picking an encounter like, say, a Black Dragon. This happens to present some glaring realism issues ("Dude, how the %^@$& did the mayor forget to mention this?!?") and also plot inconsistencies ("So the mayor is in a tizzy about an orb that might possibly be recovered by a presumably destroyed evil cult who could eventually use it to raise an undead horde that might some day raze his village. He is not, however, concerned about the scaly winged death that could raze his village tomorrow &#^%@ morning. Either the orb is more powerful then the mayor lets on, or the village idiot and village mayor are one and the same.").
If I have enough prep time, I prefer to roll up random encounters in advance and put in a little forethought about how these fit into the story and setting, making changes as appropriate. The technique I use is "3x Why?". Ask yourself "Why?" three times before including anything in your game. If you can't, or your answers don't really work with the adventure, ditch the idea.
For example, just in case I need a random encounter for next week's game, I'm rolling one up now. I put together a short list of creatures based on level and environment and I just rolled... a Shadow Hound encounter. Why is there a Shadow Hound here? Um, it's prowling for food and picked up the party's scent. Why? It got here by slipping into the natural world from the Shadowfell and is lost and hungry. Why? Hmmm... Longshadow's Eve was a mere three days ago. A player with Arcana would know that Longshadow's Eve marks the cyclical occasion when the presence of the Shadowfell is stronger than normal and beings can sometimes cross over. It also explains why there were paper lanterns hanging around all over town - a superstition for warding off ill luck around this time of year.
At this point, I probably won't roll any more encounters at random, but instead choose ones related to the Shadowfell. By asking three Whys, I've shored up the encounter plausibility. More importantly, it's forced me to take the time to think about the encounter and hopefully identify any other issues. As I'm going through the 3 whys I'm checking for logical inconsistencies. And it's given me a new idea for my games - I kinda like the Longshadow's Eve idea and think I'll work that one into my current game...
Back to my other observation - listen to your players and think on your feet. Look, coming up with great ideas all by yourself is actually hard. You know how sometimes you can spend hours and hours racking your brains about a problem, and finally you'll mention it to your wife or someone, just venting not really expecting any help, and within 2 seconds she'll say something like "why don't you try it this way?" and it totally works.
Yeah. As a DM, that happens all the time. At least once per session, a player is going to look at a situation and interpret it in a way you never would have thought of. And frankly, it's often better than what you thought of. If you can think on your feet, it's sometimes a good idea to shift gears and run with what the players come up with.
In our game, the mayor became more and more suspect in the players' minds. The chamber with the orb was clearly not evil, the orb itself seemed to have benign powers, the orb was much better defended where it was than it would be in the hands of the village mayor, and of course there's the little issue of not mentioning the [expletive removed] Dragon living in the caves. For like, years. What's going on? Something's not making sense, so we of course start looking for in-game excuses (as opposed to out-of-game excuses, like it's a only one-session game so the DM didn't go crazy with hours of preparation, so just cut him some slack, shaddup, and roll with it).
Now, I believe the reality was the mayor was a perfectly nice plot-giver and not a villain. The orb is actually a dangerous device in the wrong hands, it's just the way it was described that accidentally made it seem so benign. But as we sat about the table discussing our quandary, we started making a good case for the mayor to actually be a villain. Thinking back to when he sought us out for the quest, we wondered was he being secretive out of fear the terror-- er, sorry -- cultists might overhear? Or was he being secretive because he was furtively executing his own plot? And he clearly knew that only a Dwarven priest of Moradin could recover the orb - anyone else touching it would awaken the undead defenders. What else did he know that he wasn't telling? In our mind, only half-jokingly, we began to think the mayor was actually a cultist and that he was unable to recover the orb himself. So he needed to dupe a dwarven cleric and friends to do it for him.
Maybe I just play too much Eberron, but I think that interpretation is so much cooler than the classic "the mayor asks you to fetch him a nosegay" adventure arc. If I were the DM, I would have seriously considered scrapping my ideas and running with the players' interpretations. I've done that before and, while it's sometimes tricky to think on your feet, it can make for great games.
As a player, I definitely learned the importance of cutting your GM some slack. It's hard work to come up with even a single-session adventure, even without worrying about the ecology of rodents. If something doesn't seem right, unless it's important, let it go. Don't be the Comic Book Guy nerdy complainer of your group.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the game and the DM did a great job running it, especially how he played the monsters very true to their stats and background. He was able to keep things moving in a friendly, efficient way. This post is really more about playing "backseat DM" and wondering what techniques I would copy, and what I would do differently than criticism. It's a great exercise for every DM who gets a chance to see things from the other side of the DM screen.
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