We played Felltower today.
- the PCs mostly demolished the last of the mechanical knights . . . mostly.
- the Iron Witch was forced to flee, but the only one who could harm her that was nearby wasn't fast enough to catch her.
- a bunch of reinforcements showed up - gnolls and cultist spellcasters!
- Percy showed everyone what he was born to do - crush skulls and take names.
We had to leave off mid-fight, again, despite some excellent progress.
Full summary tomorrow. It was a good one.
There were a few tipping points in the fight, where things started to go our way. But it was scary for months of real time where I had serious doubts if we would get out at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, because from this side of the screen, I was wondering if the PCs would find a way to blow their clear advantage.
DeleteSpoiler alert - they did not!
Thankfully! It was a good, fun time today, even though when we started it felt like we were headed down a very bad path.
DeleteIt was a lot of fun, but I echo Doug's comments. It's often weird that players tend to both wildly overestimate AND underestimate the danger from time to time.
ReplyDeleteI remember GM'ing a game where the players fought a few dozen goblins, and as they were pretty much mopping them up, around the corner came a half dozen guys--one guy in plate with a huge shield, two guys wearing maybe heavy leather or mail carrying medium shields, a "wizard" or "priest" type of guy wearing robes and a death mask, and two guys wearing death masks with shields and light armor, carrying flails. The party decided they would get wiped by those guys, and fled. They constantly refer to the guy in plate as "the big guy" (he was average height and build). Were the players wise to flee? Maybe ... but I'm pretty sure that even in their *relatively* weakened state, they could have taken the six new guys. It might have been a tricky fight, but I think that at least 60% of the time, they win it with no casualties. And that would have been a good haul and a big blow. Next time they came back, those folks were gone, as well as pretty much all the loot, and what was left ... a small horde of goblin zombies.
It's always weird noting the differences between the players' knowledge and the GM's knowledge.
The knowledge differential is a real thing.
DeleteOn the other hand, in a game, you are possessed of a lot more knowledge about yourself than you would in real life - you know skill levels, HP, FP, equipment, DR, etc. all precisely. You don't know them for the enemy. In a real-world situation you have a vague idea of your skill based on experience, and even less idea of your opponents. Yet you see very grave miscalculations in the RPG space at least as often, if not much more often, than in reality.
I find that in the games I play most of the time it's very swingy - people have utter confidence or utter lack of confidence, and a tiny thing can change it. One low damage roll that pings off enemy armor and you're dead, one critical that penetrates your defenses and pings off your armor and you're lucky to be alive and these guys are too tough, one critical in your favor and the fight is won, one excellent roll and these guys are total losers who should have just surrendered at the sight of you. This happens turn by turn, PC by PC. It's partly why I cultivate an "only what you see" approach and don't comment on likelihood of victory or defeat in the moment. That's up to the players.
I think part of it is the completeness of information on one side, and not on the other. You know what you have, so the lack of knowing what they have feels like an enormous gulf that can swallow up and destroy your character. Instead of embracing the benefits of knowledge on one side, and accept that you're ahead of your PCs and yourself in a real world situation, all you can see is the missing information.
And on the subject of knowledge, people get real touchy about missed information on the bad guys. If someone wasn't paying attention, they want a retroactive fill-in of how much damage was dealt, did this bad guy change his facing, what happened to that guy I was worried about, and more. I think it's tied to this anxiety over incomplete information.