PC and monster weaknesses are very easy to look up and apply, but finding out what the actual people at the table will fall for is a lot harder, so what have you noticed your players always get pulled in by?
PC and monster weaknesses are very easy to look up and apply, but finding out what the actual people at the table will fall for is a lot harder, so what have you noticed your players always get pulled in by?
Let me shit on my old groups a little. My current group has been good so far.
One of them wouldn’t read. Like they got a clue that was a short paragraph of text and she just said “yeah I’m not reading all that.” It was like five short sentences.
I don’t know if there’s a name for the trope I’m about to describe. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since it happened. Working title is “don’t cast fire spells on the fire elemental”
Modern day secret occult game. The players were looking for another group of mages. They learned the other group was warded against magic generally, and also teleportation/scrying specifically on top of that.
The players decide to try to teleport to the other group anyway. I say ok but like I said it’s going to be difficult. They spend some time figuring out their dice pools and bonuses, and make the roll. I make the opposed check in the open. It was close, but they failed.
The next week, for Player reasons, they decide to try again. Same song and dance of spending resources, figuring out their dice pool, and rolling. I tell them it’s the same odds as before. They say ok. I roll. They players come up short again.
The one I liked least gets frustrated. “how are we supposed to find these guys?? What are we supposed to do??”
I ask if they want a hint. They say sure.
I say “You could try calling them on the phone”
“…oh”
“You could also ask their friend, the NPC whose apartment you’re in, if she knows where they are.”
“…oh.”
It was weirdly frustrating. They were told this one specific path was what the opposition had fortified themselves against, so that was the thing they wanted to attack.
Another time the players wanted to get into an exclusive club. The bouncer said no, they’re not on the list they can’t come in. The players were like “what if I ask him really nice?”
I’m like my dudes his whole job is telling people no. At least that time one of the players decides to steal a car and crash it into the building to make a distraction. The others were just like “wow this bouncer is insurmountable”
Is the problem me? Maybe it’s me.
Yes, I think it’s kind of waving a red flag to a bull metaphor. If you present the enemies’ wards, possibly to the exclusion of - or more emphasised than - other characteristics, then the players may read that as the ‘target’ for that scenario.
I’m familiar with the issue, I call it Skyrim Syndrome after a player who took a while to get that NPCs wouldn’t just forget she ever existed if she crouched behind a barrel. I think it’s a result of people having very gamified experiences with rpgs, and expecting the same limits on simulation as a videogame. Things that aren’t mentioned in detail are just flat background, or things that are mentioned in detail are the “interactable object” of the scene, the only thing they “see” to do something with.
It is somewhat on the GM to be aware of those players, giving extra hints, suggesting courses of action and telling them when their character would think something is a bad plan, but it’s actually solved by the players themselves grasping the endless possibilities of TTRPGs.