What do you when players are so moronic they think they're geniuses
>wizard-merchant says his potion business is failing
>needs magical cauldron from dungeon to turn things around
>players decide to not chase the obvious hook
>decide to put their "business management" skills to use instead
>their grand strategy to rebuild the business is to....
>make posters for the shop
>not even that many, they buy 5 fricking posters
>post them all round the city 1 in each district, say they'll check back in 2 weeks
>2 weeks pass
>describe the shop as empty and abandoned, wizard went to greener pastures
>players get mad, say I'm not flexible enough and don't understand business
>point out expecting a handful of poster ads to save a business is stupid
>apparently I'm stupid because I couldn't see the 'roleplaying potential" of those posters
>general shitflinging, call game done for the day
Frick me, man. Posters? Over the magical cauldron the guy said he explicitly needed? What the frick did they think would happen?
"Having no game is better than having a bad game."
Having a solo game is better than having no game.
>Pretending to have a game is dumber than enduring bad game
>players
They have no idea how advertising works or how big of an ad campaign you need in a city opposed to a village.
>GM
It likely wouldn't have clued them in, but you could have said that after putting up the posters they notice on the return trip two were torn down. Either as a way to have them get the cauldron or rethink their poster strategy.
They returned two weeks later. I've seen failing businesses shutter within four days, let alone two weeks.
Be more explicit. Just after they hang a poster and are walking away someone tears it down and uses it to blow his nose.
You are both dumb. You should have let their idea give the wizard a bump in business, but he is unable to keep up with demand. Business then dries up when a competing wizard can mass produce the same product much more xheaply because he hired adventurers to get him a magical cauldron. Now their idea still worked, but you get to dunk on them twice as hard.
FIVE posters for a CITY. One in each DISTRICT. OP might not have handled it ideally but the PC's plan was the level of moronic of a small child trying to do a lemonade stand in their suburban neighborhood to refinance their elementary school.
Look man, high magic, basic b***h fantasy modeled off Nintendo game economics is dumb as frick to begin with. The efficacy of advertising relies on so many assumptions and I have no real information about your dumb setting. Missing an opportunity to give the players a small victory and then pulling the rug out from under them for fricking around and ignoring your obvious plothooks is on you.
>come back two weeks later.
>potion business is still failing
>and now also loansharks have wizard-merchant by the balls because those posters notified them of his failing business so they showed up to "help"
You aren't obligated to throw players a bone when they do something stupid that wont work just because it's unconventional.
GM's at fault more than the players on this one.
I tentatively agree. The PC plan was dumb and half-assed, but it was build-on behavior even if you don't let it work, which of course the GM shouldn't. It's my personal opinion that a GM needs to be willing to occasionally massage realism and work around dumb ideas to produce interesting outcomes. This doesn't mean just giving the players exactly what they want, mind you.
>a GM needs to be willing to occasionally massage realism and work around dumb ideas to produce interesting outcomes.
that was too stupid, not even comic relief. They ignored the plea of the npc, which would have solved his problems and went out doing stupid shit. The posters should have killed them.
Making dumb ideas function can be a useful approach, but allowing incredibly stupid ideas to succeed just encourages stupid play. Why try something that might work when you can do something absurd and succeed more reliably? If we are trying to autopsy OP's story then I'd be far more concerned to learn what OP did to communicate that the 5 posters were inadequate for the purpose.
I think this viewpoint is in of itself stupid. Was anyone entertained by what the GM did? I presume not. So the failure is at his feet more than it is at his players'.
The GM had a plethora of options he could've brought out from this that would have been entertaining, interesting, and even potentially genuinely clever. He didn't do any of that.
The laziest option possible would've just been to have it only help a tiny amount, to demonstrate 'this idea isn't good enough.' You could add complications from there if you wanted to, like the 'mob loan' scenario mentioned up-thread.
>The GM exists to entertain the players no matter what they do
The game is meant to be entertainment anon.
NTA
You're almost correct.
A game is meant to provide entertainment through its established challenges, and rules set for players to complete those challenges with their skill or luck.
If the game isn't entertaining by those parameters, the players and GM should do something else.
The first and foremost purpose of a game is BEING a game, and then people can decide if they think it will entertain them.
Sounds to me like the players didn't entertain the GM either. They sure as frick didn't do anything "genuinely clever" either.
I don't think Anon thinks the players should be entertaining the GM, if he did I don't think he'd try to offload the responsibility that way.
>I don't think Anon thinks the players should be entertaining the GM
well they fricking should
Absolutely, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement. That's the point, and the point certainly isn't the GM exclusively catering to the whims of the party even if their decisions are uninteresting and inefficient.
I have absolutely had a player tell me they want their character to be a 'tactical genius' where I then had a decent amount of fun on the ST side making his weird-ass combat decisions make sense.
Just do what I do: a rival group of adventurers follows the plot hook instead. Don't want to play the game? Fine. Someone else gets the wealth/glory and every tavern you visit will ring with songs of their deeds. Enjoy your make believe marketing business, homosexuals.
Autists will ignore any social contract you want, but know just enough to fall back on how discriminated they are as an appeal to the crowd when challenged.
Also every autist I've met has been insufferably pleased with how much of a genius they are; an expert in everything, holding court. But they're always just an actual moron endlessly repeating stuff they've read online. No intelligence, self awareness, or capacity for reflection and deep thought at all. Truly garbage people.
I don't exaggerate when I say I would much, much rather hang out with downies over autists. At least they're fun.
Look up delayed echolalia
I have found that when players do something that is this outrageously ineffective, that taking over one of their characters for a second to state definitively "You don't think this is going to work." has proved effective. But only insofar that they get sad that their plan is being shot down, rather than the complete outcome of their plan failing. I do also genuinely believe as a GM you have to assert your dominance and make the players accept that your rulings are consistent, to smother these issues in their crib. If your players don't trust you to rule correctly then you can't be an effective GM to them, because they'll challenge you on such stupid shit as this poster crap. If they trust you it wont matter if there were 5 posters or 5000; they'll respect that the poster plan failed because it didn't work rather than the GM "ruling incorrectly".
>What to do when players think they're smarter than they actually are?
they will get killed on their own and it will be funny, eventually they may learn.
grand strategy to rebuild the business is to....
>>make posters for the shop
>>not even that many, they buy 5 fricking posters
>What the frick did they think would happen?
whether they are your friends or acquaintances you play the game with, they have brain problems.
>magical cauldron from dungeon to turn things around
these morons consider common sense solutions, and solutions that are certain and suggested by those suffering the problem, to problems to be railroading (as an evil thing obviously).
>apparently I'm stupid because I couldn't see the 'roleplaying potential" of those posters
they are living trash, don't talk to such people
Man I'm glad I don't have to deal with players like that and only play with my wife.
>they buy 5 fricking posters
you should have had that monster that looks like piece of paper or cloth, don't remember which one it is but it may be more than one, be the posters and attacked the characters.
https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/
maybe its a gotcha monster or mosnters
https://2dGanker/wiki/Gotcha_Monster
>grand strategy to rebuild the business is to....
>>make posters
their competency and delusion is that of the super obese from my 600 lbs life tv series
>plot twist: OP’s players were 8 years old
>5 fricking posters
https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/sheeghou/
https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/palimpse/
https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/dealinsh/
I'm stupid because I couldn't see the 'roleplaying potential" of those posters
that player sounds like a massive homosexual, but if I were you I'd have just explicitly told them the plan wouldn't work with 5 posters.
Seems obvious the players were trying to win the "mission" (put merchant back in business) without putting themselves in any danger.
>players get mad, say I'm not flexible enough and don't understand business
the players are unbelievably moronic.
>PCs make a friend in this out of the way desert fort.
>He's a minor nobleman and a disgraced soldier for political crap in the setting that would take a while to explain.
>But the PCs are nice to him, he's frineldy in return, and he's a deadly swordsman; he offers to train them in swordsmanship for nothing, which in system means they could buy ranks with a lot of swords for a lot less XP than normal.
>PCs eventually find out what the fort was built for and that there is a major magical locus of power in a hidden chamber in it.
>They actually can't find out where the chamber itself is, specifically, and don't have the kind of clearance to go looking for it, or the stealth abilities to go sneaking around to look for it surreptitiously.
>Decide to just blow up the entire fort by swapping out some of their shipments (By this point, they have a fairly major mercantile presence) with explosives and setting them off.
>But there's a problem. They don't want to kill Elbir in the explosion. He's their friend after all.
>So they're trying to think of a way to get him out before the big boom, and the plan they come up with is.....
>Let's hit him on the back of the head with a sap and carry him off with our baggage while he's unconscious! We can explain what we did and why later.
>Well it turns out that the master swordsman who trained half the party in how to fight and I described with terms like "blindingly fast" is not easy to knock out and reacts with deadly force when attacked for no reason.
>This flabbergasted my players.
Holy shiiiiiiiiit that's incredible. Sounds exactly like a half-baked PC plan.
It is amazing how stupid players are when they are trying to be nice. If they needed to kidnap him and knew he was hostile, I guarantee their plan would have been much MUCH more convoluted. Not good mind you, but at least 20 steps and requiring a portable hole.
You missed an opportunity to have the merchant act as a mouthpiece and confront the stupid of the players.
>Players return to the shop, its sign taken down and the merchant sadly locking the door.
>players "oh merchant bro! what happened?! we thought we solved your business issues!"
>Merchant "wait you found the cauldron? I might be able to get an extention on my lease if..."
>players "no we put up posters!"
>merchant "what posters? where? I hit the markets regularly and I didn't see any... also how were posters supposed to help? I'm lost a silver on every health potion, I can't fix that with sales volume"
>players get a chance to explain their plan.
>merchant gets a chance to say their aid was way to little and solving the wrong problem to boot.
If the players are dumb as bricks, make the world call them dumb. Sometimes is really fun to play bumbling idiots and having shit backfire makes for the best green texts. I site "at least we have gay marriage" as an example.
>I site "at least we have gay marriage" as an example.
*cite
Sounds like your players were hoping for an alternative solution. You could either have the wizard explain why more customers from an ad campaign won't work, and why he needs specifically that cauldron; or explain to the party before they attempt their dumb idea that you'll allow it, but it'll require some hard ability/skill checks.
In my experience with players trying stupid shit, if you tell them the options and the stakes before hand, then let them try, they're less salty when they fail.
Wizard?
He should have been able to get the cauldron himself.
youre not wrong, op. i want to start with that. everything you said is correct. you did make a mistake though. lets examine key elements of the scenario.
>cauldron in the dungeon: who or what is using it until the players go and get it? what do they do with it if the players never show?
>merchant-wizard does nothing on his own? revenge? his own plans for shop rebuilding? new staff aka new npcs with their own motivations?
>empty shop: who or what is there now that the wizard left? what do they know about the PCs failure? how do they take advantage of it?
your mistake was allowing this whole thing to just fall flat. pay off the PCs failure in a fun and challenging way. it shouldnt be purely punishment, either. it should be new hooks or opportunities alongside failure related downsides
i also want to add that everyone calling the players dumb have never played ttrpgs. this shit is incredibly common, especially for D&D players and refugees. barely anyone knows how to improvise or just make shit work out of a handful of concepts.
>wizard
>couldn't get it himself
Strange.
You must be a real shitty roleplayer, OP.
A couple days into the two week wait, have the players notice the potion shops in other districts are doing better. People saw the posters, and went looking to see if there was a more local shop. Have one NPC comment how they used to go the the failing shop, but this place is just a short detour on the way home.
I recently had a fallingout with a group who believed that detect magic should make their level 2 character immune to ambushes by outsiders, undead or fey as their bodies are by nature magical and should be detected automatically.
They believed this because it was "RaW" despite me being able to track down interviews with the developers, published by WotC saying it doesn't work that way.
They really wanted to believe they were clever. I similarly had a complete breakdown of communication and needed to end the session early. I adjudicated that we needed some other way for the one character to notice the undead standing up, and that detect magic did not work that way and would not work that way in the future.
That game fell apart.
That being said I have had the opposite experience where I based a puzzle on the dreams of Daniel of Nebuchanezzar and the players successfully identified all the puzzle elements, successfully identified the important sequence and what the puzzle 'should' do when complete, and then activated all the elements in exact reverse order and I realized I hadn't seeded any clues that really told the order. I basically made it a negligible difficulty Strength roll to turn the machine on from the wrong end.
Like how was I gonna ignore them being so clever and give them a hard time about something that I hadn't sent any clues about.