"What we've got here is failure to communicate" – Cool Hand Luke<br/><br/>Seriously, that is a lot of the problem.<br/><br/>My intention with this encounter was to create an open environment where characters could approach the situation in any number of different ways – partly as a test, partly as an opportunity for people to spread their wings, partly to trial the 5e combat rules that are quite new to some of us; but mostly to see the group dynamics and psychology of the party play out. Hence the open situation where the party clearly had a massive advantage over a group who weren’t even aware of their existence.<br/><br/>I think it’s fair to say that what resulted was something that nobody really intended but that happened because of a fundamental lack of communication and people inadvertently building on each others’ actions – because let’s face it, these things can take on a life of their own. Things escalated pretty quickly from there.<br/><br/>This was intended as a shakedown fight. I deliberately lined the party up with an unsuspecting and irrelevant group and gave you guys the advantage so that you could make a few mistakes without world-shattering repercussions before you moved onto the caravan. It turns out that was a good idea.<br/><br/>So to answer one of Vergil’s concerns - no, nobody is necessarily going to die. These are Level 1 mooks. They have inferior stats to you guys. There are only 4 of them. Aaaaand, to start with, you had them in a compromised position where you could have chosen to do whatever you wanted. OK, you fucked that part up, but you still have them surrounded, surprised, unaware of the full extent of your group and still outnumbered. Far from what I would call a TPK situation. Personally, though, if we do have a TPK, I’d feel completely justified in making that happen.<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=269827.msg13428467#msg13428467">Quote from: Brittlby on 15-08-2017, 21:22:46</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">The point is two seperate rolls with a higher likelihood of success is better than six seperate rolls</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>Britt is 100% spot on when she says this. And I am having a hard time working out why everyone just jumped on the bandwagon. I can see one skilled person sneaking ahead to survey the scene. Or two, just to make sure the first doesn’t get isolated. I can even understand the whole party trying to sneak past an enemy to get to a different location... or maybe sneaking into flanking positions to achieve something.  But what was the deal with everyone suddenly deciding it was a great idea to push their luck? These are elves. In the woods. Surely everyone has at least some idea of what an elven ranger is... and that a party as diverse as this, with no less than 6x people, has fuck-all chance of going unnoticed as they sneak around an enemy group with no less than 4x Perception checks between them. That’s banking on 100% of the 6x party rolls being higher than the 4x opposed rolls. Probability? Not a chance. It just means that you took an absolute gift and flushed it down the toilet!<br/><br/>And there is no contingency. No discussion about how to approach, what to do if the sneak fails, what people are trying to achieve. Just a few assumptions and a whole lot of<em>whatever</em>. Nobody considered luring someone away from the camp. Nobody considered bluffing them into a false sense of security. Nobody made any preparations. Nobody set any traps. Nobody discussed a coordinated approach on how to target the enemy. Nobody cast any spells in preparation – OK, Vergil almost showed us his intentions with a planned MM strike. And Snake only metagamed what I can assume was an attempted distraction<em>after</em>he bombed the Stealth roll. Everyone just looked at Adel’s lead and thought ‘yeah, fuck it, why not... I’ll just follow what she does because it looks like she is capable of independent thought!<br/><br/>It could be an entirely different reason, but the conclusion I have come to is that it is mostly due to lazy thinking and just tagging along. And really, that’s not good enough. Because that approach currently appears to be the defining attribute of this party and this game and it’s not something I had hoped for or wanted to achieve. I may be speaking out of place here, but aside from Adel, the only area where I have seen any true inspiration, creativity and enthusiasm is in the abundance of lecherous behaviour in the group. And I’m not sure we’ve had an appropriate place to express that just yet. I’m not criticising smut. I’m just saying that I’d like to see that much thought go into other things and, maybe, finding a better way to channel the smut into something more productive. Like, say, seducing a group of four elves into giving away their possessions, for instance. I feel like I’m pushing shit uphill with this.<br/><br/>Where do we go from here?<br/><br/>I’m not in favour of killing all characters and summoning new minions to replace them. That’s crude and unnecessary and there’s really nothing wrong with the characters. It’s a lot more to do with the way they interact. Or don’t. Teamwork would undoubtedly make things run a hell of a lot smoother. If people die, they die. But I’m not going to get all wrathful on the party because we made a couple of bad choices.<br/><br/>I think the more pertinent question is what people are hoping to get out of this. Why are we in this position? Why aren’t people communicating? Is this the style of game we want? Am I expecting too much as a DM? Am I too vague, too oblique? Do we have the right mix of people in this game? Is this even the right storyline? Or the right group? Or am I just not giving people what they want?<br/><br/>Vergil sent me into a spin when he threw all his toys out of the cot and announced he was done... and I reacted by sending out a probing PM to the rest of you that I probably should have considered a little more.<br/><br/>Here we are though. I’m not the only person with a vote in this. What do you guys think?