Game Interjections

drasnor

Alright, it seems there's some hostility or resentment or something about having midga watch. This is not something I can really do anything about; my only Windows PC is in the living room of the apartment and I play on a 10' 720p projection on the wall. It's pretty conspicuous and it's a shared space anyway. When he's around, sometimes he watches, sometimes he plays TF2.

I don't mind because I fall into the category of player that needs to be reminded fairly regularly what the rules are. It has been, in the other campaigns I've played, the player's responsibility to know the rules that specially pertain to their character (for instance, in the other game I'm playing in I have a stack of note cards that describe each of my character's non-standard capabilities because there's no way the DM or myself are going to remember how they work.) I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is my first time playing a primarily-melee combat character and I'm still not solid on all the rules. Midga is the most experienced player I know and when he's around he's pretty good about telling me when I'm screwing up. I'm sorry that I can't mute my mic easily and you have to hear him telling me how I should've presented my intentions to CB.

For instance, I should've known that I not only could attempt to force the enemy back but also move around him (overrun, PHB pg 157). I should've known the rules for moving while grappled (move, PHB pg 156.) I should've known the rules for grappling in general (I had thought it unlikely that I would need it, but now I know better.)

At any rate, the "us vs them" mentality isn't helping anyone, especially if we're knocking each other for consulting the PHB during a game. None of us are infallible.

-drasnor

CB

First: Once again: This isn't the thread for this. This thread is solely for me to point out my mistakes, and for the players to ask questions about them. These two posts need to be moved. thanks

Second: my problem isn't with Midga watching. My problem was with him interjecting.

Midga is not part of this game. It's not a team effort: if we were sitting around a table it would not be acceptable for you to have someone sitting nearby telling you things about what you should do in the game, and it's not really appropriate here either. However, I didn't even know that that's what was going on. All I heard was someone arguing with me about the rules, mid-battle. That doesn't work. You've got to make the roll I ask you to roll, and take the result. If it's wrong, and it's not story-shattering, we'll figure it out later. The game is slow enough without stopping to check the PHB for something I can wing. Now, if it's something that I completely don't understand (like when we needed to know the rules for the coupdegras last time, I'll take time out to look it up, but the key there is that it's my decision when to put the game on hold for a rule look-up, not one of the players, and certainly not someone who isn't even in the game.

I'm sorry if you or Midga felt I was rude in the the way I handled the situation, but I wanted to make it clear that if I suggest that a discussion about a rule should stop, and ask that it be brought up later, then it needs to stop right away. No offence, and no hard feelings meant. I just don't want to set a bad precedent.

drasnor

CB wrote:

Midga is not part of this game. It's not a team effort: if we were sitting around a table it would not be acceptable for you to have someone sitting nearby telling you things about what you should do in the game, and it's not really appropriate here either.

When I'm sitting at a table with other people playing we often offer suggestions on what we should be doing or discuss what the party should be doing to accomplish some goal. It's not uncommon to ask to see each others' character sheets so that we know each others' capabilities. Also, 3rd party interaction is not unwelcome in any of the other games I play in, where someone's roommate walks by and asks a "hey what are you doing? why aren't you doing this? oh I hadn't thought of that." It's not something _I_ thought of but it's certainly something my character should have known. I guess I'm just not seeing the problem. I'd rather an experienced player tell me I'm making noob mistakes than screw the party's chances.

We're playing the most srs game I've ever been in and as such I've noticed that we're playing this to the letter of the rules and not "winging" anything, particularly if it's something that we know is in the rules and we haven't done before. When we do new things, like the coup de gras you mentioned, we should check to make sure we do them right. I'm sorry if that slows the game down but that's the nature of playing with new players. I'm not in a hurry.

Also, I don't see how arguing about the rules is a bad precedent. The only thing that should come out of such a discussion is a better understanding of the rules for both parties.

-drasnor

GHoosdum

I split this from the DM thread.

My take on the situation wasn't that Midga was trying to help you, dras, but rather it seemed that he was trying to tell the DM he was wrong.

It's one thing when a player involved with the game questions the DM. It's still not technically something that should happen, but partially understandable when it impacts the future of our characters. It's something else altogether when someone who's not involved in the game at all pipes in to try to tell the DM what he should be doing. In my opinion that was ten times more rude than CB's response to it when it happened.

But that's just my opinion.

drasnor

I don't understand. We were doing it wrong and the right answer was right there. Where the answer comes from is immaterial to me, this is just a game and we're all friends here. The fundamental issue to me here is that we don't want to look up rules when we ought to and we won't accept people that know better telling us what the rules are.

I think it's great to have an experienced player waiting in the wings watching us, that's a valuable resource waiting to be tapped both by the players and by the DM. CB has already stated that this is his first 3.5 game and that most of his earlier games were entirely roleplay. No one is holding this against him because we all agreed this was fine when we joined up. CB has done a great job putting this world together and populating it with interesting people and places and finding things for us to do. It just boggles my mind that we are so adamant about not arguing the rules during encounters.

-drasnor

BuddyJ

If we're doing something wrong, and the answer is easily available, I have no problem with anyone pointing it out. I'd rather see an easily corrected situation remedied than play two or three more hours doing it incorrectly. For the many of us still trying to learn the finer points of the rules, it seems counterproductive to be reinforcing the wrong thing instead of correcting it. My 2 copper.

CB

As I said: It's fine to occasionally have rules discussions, even mid-encounter, but it needs to be up to me. Sometimes, I will think it's worth it to stop and discuss/look-up the rule. Sometimes I wont feel that the application of the rule is presently important enough to stop an already very slow session.

This specific case was exacerbated by the fact the their person trying to stop the encounter was not one of the players.

Drew, you were even saying "we'll figure out the right rules later". You knew that it wasn't a big enough difference, and it wasn't really important to figure it out right then. If you, one of the players of the game, had thought it was really important to get right, then maybe I'd have decided to stop, but it wasn't you. We had all agreed to move on, and Midga could still be heard in the background, talking about grapple rules, and he was distracting you during your turn to act.

drasnor

I said that to try to defuse a situation I saw developing where we were going to get in a fight by proxy. We're discussing this now, and in hindsight I could probably have handled it better.

-drasnor