this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Sometimes I wonder if I run dnd "wrong".
My players would castrate me if they went up to the guards and they where met by incompetence and I would just hand weave oh the guard won't help you because they are just static images.
I don't who Tiberius is, but if he was at my table and wanted to call the army and had established strong bands to governing force. But we assume he would not have a valid cause where the governing force would go of course here is army to protect the land.
With good enough persuasion and paying for the cost for the conscription I would let him.
Why would you not do this?
I don't get why it would not be enough consequences. The party would fight all over the world against different adventure party's that dying to be heroes. Every time they entering new town they have to hope the inn don't have two or more adventure party's.
Tiberius wanted to call his daddy the king for an army against bad guys to resolve the situation in a few shakes. The daddy, aka the DM, said politely to fuck off.
This was in Critical Roll.
Welp, what happens when your players have a side quest to do, for example finding a young girl, and go straight to the guards ? Not A guard, I mean the whole department of the guards. What then ?
Can I say that sounds like cop-out? If rest of party agree and wants to around collect peasants and knights to create an huge army I would let them. If daddy king have standing army that can solve it. Solve it. Don't make a dnd a freaking Marvel movie where only those 5 are heroes if they don't want it.
But to your guard question
The guards will first ask why the players have come to them as it is clearly something either sensitive as quest giver went to players instead of guards, it is extremely dangerous as their quest giver hired a mercenary instead of the guard or simple something that she normally do and why guards would not do it.
Guards finds who gave them their quest tells them to hire a better adventuring party because again why not go to guard in first place if not?
But lets ignore you said straight to the guards. The players have found a cult but they feel out matched. I would have the guards join them against the cult if the party split to pay. Reason why they need to be payed is because party got hired to deal with something.
If players say here is cult they have girl deal with it. Guards will deal with it either by doing it self or lay out the work to more competent party
Kinda. It's kinda of a cop-out. Which is a nice pun since we're talking about talking to cops of the medieval world.
In the end, it's about preps. If I prepare an adventure, I will not prep it with and without guards just in case they go and convince a department to come down the sewers to stop the cult with them. I'll only prepare one of them. If they go for the other, then I have to refuse for some reason or to redoe my preps, sometimes in the middle of the session. That, or you make the contribution insignificant. If you go down the sewers with the guards, then I would make them fight some cultists in the background while they fight the encounters I prepared for this number of combattants of this level.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying : I refuse anything that wasn't prepped in advance. Because of course I don't do that, that would be railroading. But at the same time, we all mostly agree in the TTRPG circles that it's a douche move to not do what the DM prepared for that session. The classic example is having Dracula's castle right there, but the players decide to go in the forest instead for no ingame reason. Should the DM improvise an entire other adventure for them right there and then ? Should he tell them there's nothing in there ? Should he let them wander off for no reasons ?
I think the sweet spot is between these 2. Between the players wanting to go randomly in the forest and the DM refusing to budge from his preps. You should devide where you wanna go and why as the players AND respect the preps the DM actually did. If you go off the preps, don't expect anything of quality already good to go. And as a DM, you should allow players to do stuff outside your preps as long as it fits your improvising skill and enjoyment and (ideally) doesn't make you waste hours of work. Because that stings so bad it takes away my will to even begin those preps.
And for me, calling the guards to your help when the quest never mentionned them or even needed them in the first place is big. Really big. Should you make guards with shitty blockstats to let the players shine and be cool ? Should they be overpowered and deal with the situation without help ? Should they be as good as the players and put in question why they are even needed ?
Lots of questions that I don't really have fun answering live during a game.
I'm curious for your example thought : Guards finds who gave them their quest tells them to hire a better adventuring party because again why not go to guard in first place if not?
Well, why not go to the guards in the first place then ? The answer out of game is obvious : the fun is having a quest be done by the players. Ingame, it would be a reason that the person cannot go to the guards. Which sure, you can plan ahead in case your players have the very bad habit to go and get help everytime they have a challenge to do. But it's more work. More work for the DM already doing so much for everyone's fun, including his own.
So you are correct. It's a cop-out. But if I were to always plan everything all the time just in case my players went to the guards, I'd probably eventually just say fuck it, and tell my players guards will not help you solve quests because I do not want to keep doing this.
And I think calling upon the guards is like going into a forest randomly. And that how YOU deal with this at YOUR table with YOUR players are 3 things that will make the answer to : what do you do when this happen ? very differents. My players, at my table, will be dealt a certain way with these things that will not work elsewhere. Because it's tailored made for them.
In the end, remember. If you're not having fun doing something, don't do it. Even if that thing is always having to find a reason for why guards won't help you.
Haha yeah it was good pun.
This is often a problem with dnd discussion that can create discourse. Based on how different we run our table and worlds.
In my world the guards are the patrolling force of city. They are there to create connections local people, throw out Barthus when she has drank to much. To collect information about Grazth boy that run away for the third time and bring her home from drydock. To deter people from trouble. But when it it looks like shit is about hit the fan, Ozloth comes in bloody claiming he saw Kobols in the pasture.
They call in cavalry that are adventure partys.
this loud bunch that came in to town with weapons, armor and training.
Because they expect adventure to be the swat team of my world.
Because you lose two guards because you want to seems big and scary is that really more intimating? Then having money to splurge to get adventure party to wipe out the bandit camp and still have your guards?
now to our sudden drop of department in our supposedly deadly fight against demon Morlucka the swamp king.
I would be weird but I would let them use all the power. If they convinced the department to come down and now they are 35 vs my 9 cultist that is how it is. I think it is a good win for them and I think the player would just think it a cool moment when they "tricked" the GM.
I don't think would be worth prepping for stuff like that. I would just grab my guard stat block and just roll with it. But I understand completely for someone who prefer more prepare that would not be fun answering all the less fun questions.
To be fair, if I had a week of preps between them making the king agree to send his forces with them against the cult in the woods and the actually woods themselves, I would be more opened to allow it to happen than if the session STARTED with this and then straight to the woods.
It might be actually the deal breaker/maker. When do they do this in the session, as arbitrary as it sounds. Do they give me time to plan this ? My answer to them will probably follow the answer to this question.
Absolutely. That’s why I love when big decisions happens at end of session. Okay you figure out now what I prep to next week.
Instead 10 minutes into session what if we just burn down the whole forest? and all you do lay down screaming when instead of choosing 3 boxes they decided for 6th box.
I think that’s justified to murder them then.
Indeed. Glad we agree. Recently they were making their way into an undead-assieged town and I straight up asked them : ok, where exactly to you go next ? And I just draw a line following their saying and I knew exactly what to prep. If the next time they would tell me : hey, we changed our minds, then my answer would be : ok no probs but I have zero preps. Enjoy your theater of the mind.
To be explicit, I never meant : never go talk to the guards, ever. What I mean is that using the authorities as a magic button to solve problems is bad.
What is GOOD is using authorities to create adventures. If for example, you want the guards to raid a bandit camp that is currently the objective of the quest, then convincing them to do so should be as hard and as fun as raiding the camp itself.
But decent guards wouldn't need convincing. They would at least check it out. Unless they suck as guards, or are bad guys's guards. So either they have no reason to refuse straight up "until you convince us tee hee hee", or they are incompetent, or they are the bad guys.
This is a blanket statement btw, I'm sure it's possible to do something that proves me wrong. But we're talking generalities here, not exceptions.
I'll end by saying that even thought players can always go talk to the guards and get help from them, there is an unwritten rule that if the DM gives a task to the players to do, they aren't really supposed to ship it to the guards and call it a day. There has to be something done by the players that makes the session fun and adventurous.