D&D Next Q&A

You could either craft a big dungeon or wilderness area like a series of smaller dungeons, meaning it would only differ from a Caves of Chaos type setting by scale; or you could just populate the large dungeon or wilderness area with monsters first without regard to making it balanced for the party, then look at the XP total of what you end up with and say to yourself, "Hm, this looks like about 7 adventuring days' worth of XP, so I should consider giving them opportunities to rest in these general locations."

That's how it seems to me.

Personally, my favorite bit is that they are designing the game to work with parties of different sizes and mixed levels.

AWESOME.

Dark Mistress said:

The two of you using a bicycle to have your discussion. Well learning to ride a bike is a bad example. A better example would be learning how to create a web page. Which can be done a few ways.
1) Go to school and be taught.
2) Have someone teach you personally.
3) Learn on your own by trial and error.

First one takes money and someone that knows how to already do it, second one is free likely but still takes someone that knows how, the final one is free and doesn't take anyone that knows how to do it. Yeah I know there is no schools for GMing, but it is a lot closer than the learning to ride a bike metaphor.

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I actually thought that the learning to ride a bike was an excellent example. Especially as so many people are taught and see examples as well as trial and error.

But let's move on to webpages. We'll assume for the sake of argument that there are three basic methods of creating basic web pages (I know there are more and I am out of date with my web authoring software - but these three will do for now).

• Microsoft Frontpage/Other WYSIWIG
• Text editor + documentation (e.g. Notepad, Vi, EMACs etc.)
• Dreamweaver/Other major editor + documentation

The first will produce a web page but that's about it.



The second is learning the hard way. If you can do it at all, you can do it.


The third is the best way. Getting you to do things exactly the same way as the second, but indicating the correct way and guiding you into it. And colourcoding when things are going either wrong or extremely oddly so that you are always guided into a correct method.



But DMing is much more like riding a bike than writing a webpage. It's a procedure involving continual feedback and that the first hurdle certainly isn't the last.

My point was about the bike is someone that has never ridden a bike can help someone else learn to ride a bike easy enough. Just run beside them holding the back to help them keep their balance. Someone that has never GMed would be of little help in teaching someone else to GM. same with web page. That was my only point.

Crazy Jerome said:

That last one is to me the more interesting one. It basically says, "If the party succeeds in this adventure, they get 1,000 XP. Doesn't matter how the monsters are arranged for XP purposes." That is, if the party is able to divide and conquer, they'll get that 1,000 XP easier. If they don't at all, they'll have to get really lucky or clever some other way to get even that (or survive). Most parties will be somewhere in the middle, and this will average out to about 1,000 XP.

So being clever or stupid doesn't get you more or less XP. It means the XP you get is with less or more risk. This could cause, in some groups, really nitpicky boring play, or fatally reckless play. OTOH, when played in the proper spirit, it should allow a group to pick the amount of risk versus excitement they want.

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Interesting post.

I would want some mechanism that means, when risk vs excitement is decided, this doesn't - at the same time - involve the players making choices in-character. Because if that were the case, there could be a conflict of interest between the player agenda (fun) and the PC agenda (not dying). 4e works well for this by emphasising the GM's primary role in scene-framing. But that's back to encounter-based rather than adventure-based design. Have you got any thoughts about how to handle this in adventure-based play?

Ahnehnois said:

I look at a D&D rulebook as a tool use use to run a game; it's much like a baseball bat is for a baseball player. I don't expect beginners to know how to use it. In fact, if a novice picks up a baseall bat and hits a home run; I'd say something's off.

More to the point, balancing and pacing and various other facets of DMing are things that each DM has to learn by doing. Maybe a little bit of advice identifying common issues can help, but it really isn't the point of a rulebook.

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Once again we have different views! When I look at rulebooks like the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner, or the guidelines on scene-framing and adjudication in Maelstrom Storytelling, or the way the Pass/Fail cycle works in HeroQuest revised, and I then compare them to even the best that D&D has offered (eg the 4e DMG2) I want to cry. WotC falls so short of the mark!

Of course guidelines aren't all that's needed. The action resolution mechanics of the game have a huge impact on pacing, and should be designed (in my view) with some pacing ideals in mind. But the game rules can also usefully tell the players of the game how the designers envisage it being used, in respect of pacing and balance as well as other obviously salient facets of playing a fantasy adventure RPG.

Ahnehnois said:

If you can't play a variety of paces/balance levels/etc., you can't learn how to use those elements. You might get lucky and find a game that dictates a pace that works for you, but that doesn't mean you've learned pacing. Trying to dumb down DMing for beginners is like trying to teach someone how to ride a bicycle by giving them a tricycle.

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Nothing has helped me develop pacing techniques - and especially techniques that don't rely simply on GM force or fiat - as much as reading good discussions of how particular mechanics and techniques can be used for particular pacing outcomes, and then implementing those techniques and mechanics in my own game.

Neonchameleon said:

It's been called the Dungeon Master's Guide. Its purpose is to help the DM run the game. And as such it should be as user friendly as possible a tool.

And it is absolutely possible to get decent pacing and balancing from a properly designed system playing it by the book. The first thing you need to learn is what it feels like when all is going right so you have something to compare to when it goes wrong. 4e does this.

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I agree with the first para. And the second para fits my experience.

pemerton said:

Interesting post.

I would want some mechanism that means, when risk vs excitement is decided, this doesn't - at the same time - involve the players making choices in-character. Because if that were the case, there could be a conflict of interest between the player agenda (fun) and the PC agenda (not dying). 4e works well for this by emphasising the GM's primary role in scene-framing. But that's back to encounter-based rather than adventure-based design. Have you got any thoughts about how to handle this in adventure-based play?

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Yes, though those thoughts are a bit muddy right now. It's the reason why I bolded the "for XP purpose" in that post.

Basically, I see the critical structural problem for the daily adventure XP budget approach being that, at least thus as presented so for and discussed by fans of that idea like [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], is that it tends to conflate the three roles of XP:

1. Reward - to characters for good/ play.
2. Pacing of character advancement - distinct from the previous in that the DM may have plans/preparation dependent upon the pacing.
3. Challenge/Encounter ratings - helping the DM determine what the PCs may be getting into.

I'm not too concerned about conflating the first two, partly because daily adventure XP budget and earlier version strutures also conflate them without too much trouble, and partly because the trouble caused I already have a solution for--use action points and other currrency as "reward" instead of XP, reserving XP for pacing purposes here. (This obviously is a bigger deal for those that like the AD&D mixed character levels approach, where reward is more important in XP, but then the pacing concerns of such a game are very different anyway.)

It's the conflation of pacing and challenge that I think is at the heart of the problem being discussed in this topic. So my answer is to separate them conceptually, even if they both use the same XP mechanic as a measuring stick. My previous post was largely focused on how to tease the pacing out of the challenge, by saying that the pacing is:

1. A set amount of potential XP provided by the DM/adventure.
2. Gained/Attempted at a rate determined by the party to suit themselves.

In other words, not about living or dying directly, but about risk/reward speed. Presumably, there is a lot of possible variation on the speed, well shy of complete grind on one side or TPK on the other.

Then I think the challenge information is primarily a DM issue mechanically, with the player interaction being a communication/social contract issue. Thus the need for the DM to have separate guidelines to determine how to break up the daily XP budget in ways that will meet his intentions.

If, for example, the social contract is that the heroic party will go charging through the adventure, with clear clues when things are going to get really rough, then the DM needs to know enough about the challenge to communciate the clues. It's a cheap shot to pretend that, but then ambush the party with a complete day's worth of XP budget monsters. OTOH, if the social contract is that the party is exploring a dangerous environment, with widely varying difficulties, then then DM just needs to know that he is in the ballpark, which a daily total and some common sense should provide.

So the XP budget provides a pacing (and reward) component and a very rough balancing component. Then there needs to be a separate challenge rating balacing component/guideline that tells the interested DMs how to divide that budget into pieces that fit their social contract and/or playstyle.

Crazy Jerome said:

Basically, I see the critical structural problem for the daily adventure XP budget approach being that, at least thus as presented so for and discussed by fans of that idea like [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], is that it tends to conflate the three roles of XP:

1. Reward - to characters for good/ play.
2. Pacing of character advancement - distinct from the previous in that the DM may have plans/preparation dependent upon the pacing.
3. Challenge/Encounter ratings - helping the DM determine what the PCs may be getting into.

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I don't think this is an inaccurate conflation. Those three things are inextricably linked. All three feed into the risk/reward motivational loop in traditional D&D play.

It might help to think of it this way: a game experience is fundamentally similar to a narrative experience in that there is a starting point, a challenge, and a reward for undergoing the challenge. The reward serves to motivate a player to move from the starting point, through the challenge. All games -- from stickball through monopoly through solitaire through Minecraft feature this. In some games you can turn that off and "sandbox" it, but such an experience is more of a toy than a game: you can play WITH it, but you can't play IT.

In D&D specifically, XP serves first as a mechanical carrot. Treasure, too, but less so in 3e and 4e, so XP most prominently (and occasionally concurrently).

In order to serve as an appropriate reward, it must also serve as an appropriate measure of difficulty. Games may swing wildly with respect to their risk/reward ratio (ha! Say that three times fast!), but generally speaking, for satisfying motivational psychology, we expect a fairness: a big risk nets a big reward, and a small risk nets a small reward. If the risks and the rewards become too drastically disentangled, we experience a lack of motivation to proceed: it's not challenging enough to be interesting, or it's too challenging to be worth it.

Thus, the first and the third items on your list are linked. If you use separate mechanics to measure them (such as using CR to measure challenge), you must eventually link them on the back end (such as a CR-to-XP table).

Given the risk/reward link, it's easy to see why this has an influence on character advancement: if a character tackles greater risk, they should have a greater reward, and thus advance faster than they otherwise would. Harder challenges -> more XP -> faster level-gain -> more fobs and bigger rewards.

It's the conflation of pacing and challenge that I think is at the heart of the problem being discussed in this topic. So my answer is to separate them conceptually, even if they both use the same XP mechanic as a measuring stick. My previous post was largely focused on how to tease the pacing out of the challenge, by saying that the pacing is:

1. A set amount of potential XP provided by the DM/adventure.
2. Gained/Attempted at a rate determined by the party to suit themselves.

In other words, not about living or dying directly, but about risk/reward speed. Presumably, there is a lot of possible variation on the speed, well shy of complete grind on one side or TPK on the other.

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I'm a little confused. If the party undertakes to accomplish Task A, it has a given risk and given reward (both here measured by XP). If the party undertakes to accomplish Task B instead, it has a different risk and a different reward. Thus, players determine the "attempted XP" by undertaking a given task (or, in D&D, perhaps a quest or adventure, or maybe just a part of a bigger quest or adventure; more heavily plotted games might still have various methods of getting to the next plot point).

What need is there for a different rule to govern that character choice?

What they don't get to do, of course, is determine they're only going to accomplish 10% of a given task, recover all their resources for free, and then accomplish the another 10% of the task, and repeat ad nauseum. If they only accomplish 10% of a given task before a recharge, they fail that task.

If, for example, the social contract is that the heroic party will go charging through the adventure, with clear clues when things are going to get really rough, then the DM needs to know enough about the challenge to communciate the clues. It's a cheap shot to pretend that, but then ambush the party with a complete day's worth of XP budget monsters. OTOH, if the social contract is that the party is exploring a dangerous environment, with widely varying difficulties, then then DM just needs to know that he is in the ballpark, which a daily total and some common sense should provide.

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Obfuscating forge-isms aside ( ), I don't think there's any debate that DMs need to telegraph the level of risk involved in an activity. Clues about danger (either potential clues that require work to find and that the party may fail at finding or functional clues either found or just stated by the DM) are part of that risk/reward analysis, and it's important that the players be empowered to peg the general level of risk (and thus infer the general level of reward) of a given task.

So the XP budget provides a pacing (and reward) component and a very rough balancing component. Then there needs to be a separate challenge rating balacing component/guideline that tells the interested DMs how to divide that budget into pieces that fit their social contract and/or playstyle.

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Risk and reward are inextricably entwined, and in designing any game that hopes to encourage the attention of its audience, you must be able to relate the two coherently. XP is a single measure that does that well. I don't think there must be any other separate measure (though there could be!), and, indeed, I think it would be rather superfluous, as whatever "challenge rating" you choose must relate back to an XP award ultimately anyway.

Crazy Jerome said:

I think the challenge information is primarily a DM issue mechanically, with the player interaction being a communication/social contract issue. Thus the need for the DM to have separate guidelines to determine how to break up the daily XP budget in ways that will meet his intentions.

<snip>

there needs to be a separate challenge rating balacing component/guideline that tells the interested DMs how to divide that budget into pieces that fit their social contract and/or playstyle.

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Another interesting post, but still no XP for you!

If I'm following you correctly, then you're saying that - for the risk/reward stuff - this is established in the first instance via social contract at the set-up stage, and then managed during the course of play primarily via the GM. So the player conflict-of-interest that I was concerned about shouldn't arise.

Assuming I'm understanding you, that makes sense. I think I find the 4e approach more elegant, but for a system intended to support a wider range of playstyles than 4e, I guess it's inevitable that extra components will have to be added in (in this case, the "GM needs to balance risk/reward in addition to settle the pacing" dial).

Crazy Jerome said:

If, for example, the social contract is that the heroic party will go charging through the adventure, with clear clues when things are going to get really rough, then the DM needs to know enough about the challenge to communciate the clues. It's a cheap shot to pretend that, but then ambush the party with a complete day's worth of XP budget monsters.

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On the player side, I am thinking that agreeing on that sort of heroic play, and then having the PCs, in their downtime, stock up on iron spikes, 10' poles, ear-seeker-proof listening cones, and all sorts of other devices that will let them grind through their opposition in Gygaxian skilled-play style, would be a comparable violation of social contract.

Which suggests that equipment lists and purchasing rules, like every other mechanical component, will need to have notes on what sort of approach is suited to what sort of play.

Kamikaze Midget said:

I don't think this is an inaccurate conflation. Those three things are inextricably linked. All three feed into the risk/reward motivational loop in traditional D&D play.

<snip>

In D&D specifically, XP serves first as a mechanical carrot.

<snip>

In order to serve as an appropriate reward, it must also serve as an appropriate measure of difficulty.

<snip>

Risk and reward are inextricably entwined

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This seems to make assumptions that I don't think are universally true.

In 4e, for example - at least as I play it, but I hew pretty close to the RAW - XP are a reward primarily for turning up and playing the game. You get 4 monsters worth of XP per hour of dedicated freeform RP (per DMG 2), 5 monsters worth per full skill challenge (whether your succeed or fail, per Essentials) - which is about an hour's play - and 5 monsters worth per equal level combat (only if you succeed, but the game is designed to make success in combat the overwhelming norm) - which again is about an hour's play. Plus Quest XP, which you earn for pursuing the goals you have set for your PC (player-designed quests).

This is quite different from Gygaxian D&D, where you might turn up and play a full session yet get no or minimal XP because, for whatever reason (poor skill, bad luck) you don't kill much and don't find much treasure.

Also, in 4e XP don't correspond to risk in any tight way. For example, a complexity 2 skill challenge of the PCs' level is worth the same XP as a complexity 1 skill challenge 4 levels higher - but the first challenge will generally be quite a bit easier. Similarly, one level+4 encounter is worth the same XP as two equal-level encounters, but it is harder (and probably will take longer to resolve) than those two done back-to-back with a short rest inbetweeen.

In terms of CrazyJerome's categories, I see 4e XP playing role 2 very clearly - turn up, and play, and your PC will progress along the road from Heroic to Epic, at aboutone monster's worth of XP per hour of play (so about 10 hours of dedicated play required for a level).

They also play role 3, but in a distinct fashion, via the encounter budgetting rules. Build tougher encounters and the game will be mechanically more challenging for the players, although the pace of advancement will not change a lot (as I said, it may slow very slightly because one big encounter can actually take more time to play - in part because it is more intricate, in part because higher stakes engender more attentive and cautious play - than two smaller ones).

I see role 1 in 4e being pretty light touch - "good play", in 4e, has little meaning, for advancement purposes, beyond "turn up and do what the rules tell you it is your job to do as a player - succeed at quests by tackling challenges". This is quite a significant difference from Gygaxian D&D. (Which also is a further answer to [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION]'s questions, in another thread, about the difference I see between Moldvay Basic and 4e.)

Kamikaze Midget said:

I'm a little confused. If the party undertakes to accomplish Task A, it has a given risk and given reward (both here measured by XP). If the party undertakes to accomplish Task B instead, it has a different risk and a different reward. Thus, players determine the "attempted XP" by undertaking a given task (or, in D&D, perhaps a quest or adventure, or maybe just a part of a bigger quest or adventure; more heavily plotted games might still have various methods of getting to the next plot point).

What need is there for a different rule to govern that character choice?

What they don't get to do, of course, is determine they're only going to accomplish 10% of a given task, recover all their resources for free, and then accomplish the another 10% of the task, and repeat ad nauseum. If they only accomplish 10% of a given task before a recharge, they fail that task.

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For now, I'm only going to answer this part and see if some of the other stuff comes into focus as a byproduct. Also, did you read my earlier post?

There is no Task A and Task B with the chance for the party to pick to only do part of it. There is a set of tasks comprising an "adventure day" that is worth 1,000 XP. The question was how to handle encounter balance in such an environment, since obviously ten 100 XP encounters are not equal to five 200 XP encounters are not equal to one 1000 XP encounter. My anwer is that for pacing advancement purposes only, maybe they are equal.

If the party does the set of tasks fast (i.e. charges through, drawing the opposition to them, but taking relatively little game time), then they get 1,000 XP. If they party does the set of tasks slow (carefully using divide and conquer tactics, hording resources, etc.), then they also get 1,000 XP. If they fail with the set, they get less or even no XP (depending on other playstyle factors outside this discussion). Thus for pacing purposes, the DM sets up the general pace when he places that 1,000 XP worth of opposition, but the players choose the exact pace by how aggressive or cautious they are. Aggressive players run more risk but advance their characters faster in game time. The tasks remain the same.

Of course the XP systems (including reward as included) have to tie together. That's why they all use the same XP system. It's the scale and focus of measurement that varies across my three categories, which is why they are conceptual categories, not totally separate systems. (I do tend to pull a large part of reward out of it as a separate system, as I noted in passing above, but that is also a separate issue that has nothing to do with encounter versus daily XP balancing.)

So a theoretical subsystem specifically for challenge ratings has to be built in the context of the overall XP system. It's simply that conceptually there are some details in the challenge ratings that really don't have anything to do with the pacing part, and thus can be broken out. Plus, some people will want to vary the pacing and challenge ratings (and rewards) separately. So it would be good to specify when XP discussion is affecting one or the other more strongly.

You can think about it also like this, as an analogy: The adventure is measured in leagues, the adventure "day" in miles, but the individual, actual encounters in yards, feet, or at times even inches. (I suppose "inches" would be important but minor details of single monsters in this analogy.) You can talk about 6,543 yards worth of adventure, but somewhere well below that you are probably better switching to miles. Likewise, you can talk about .234 miles, but at some point well above that, you are probably better off switching to yards. The units need a consistent conversion, but they are separate units. Same with balancing encounters versus handling "adventure days". (Reward doesn't really fit in this analogy, though.)

That some people are going to basically eyeball the encounter part as fractions of the "adventure day" doesn't change that it is conceptually different. It's merely that some people want more precision and detail, while others want less.

That's really no different than using precise encumbrance, merely eyeballing it, or some middling approach. No matter which method is chosen, we assume the fighter can wear chainmail, can't carry a dragon, but can certainly haul many coins in a bag. And likewise, we don't want to overly complicate the Str mod for all uses merely to accommodate encumbrance, even as an option. (For example, we don't want to consider the weight of a sword by the "pound" when determining combat statistics.) At the end of the day, it's all "strength," but it is zooming in or out on strength to a useful degree for the particular purpose at hand.

I'm saying that rewards, character advancement pacing, and challenge ratings all occur at different zoom levels on the XP ruler. This affects the mechanics that best serve each conceptual category, and also affects how and when people want to vary those mechanics.

Make more sense?