D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

Maxperson · Aug 18, 2017

Hussar said:
But, again, reasonable and within the rules doesn't really matter. The reason we keep it that way is because it makes it more believable and thus, more fun. 83 knights dying to some overly amorous deer would be unbelievably and no fun. But, the presence of that small family of dragons (or, I believe the actual example was giants) is an entirely arbitrary decision. At no point were any actual mechanics USED.

If the encounter mechanics say that giants or a small family of dragons is possible to encounter in an area, then I am using those mechanics if I choose giants to have killed the knights.

Hussar · Aug 18, 2017

Maxperson said:
If the encounter mechanics say that giants or a small family of dragons is possible to encounter in an area, then I am using those mechanics if I choose giants to have killed the knights.

What mechanics say that there are monsters X or Y in that particular area? You don't build random encounter charts and the build the location. You build the location first and then design encounters for that location.

Other than extremely broad strokes - monster X lives in terrain Y- there isn't any world building inherent in that monster. Even saying that Monster X lives in terrain Y does not mean that you will always find Monster X in every location with Terrain Y.

There's no tigers in Africa despite there being lots of areas where tigers could live.

Ovinomancer · Aug 18, 2017

hawkeyefan said:
Sure, you can certainly use wonky random results from such tables as inspiration for story ideas. That'd probably be my only reason to ever endorse such random tables. But we've been talking about such things impacting the world-building, which is a bit different. Such inspiration means you've chosen to allow the results to impact your world-building, but it would be a positive thing, so it wouldn't be an issue.

I snipped this out because it's directly to the heart of my point. Here you explicitly confirm my original statement: choosing a pacing mechanism has impacts on worldbuilding. You've just decided to characterize it as universally positive. I made no comment whatsoever on the positive or negative nature of the impact, although I strongly disagree with your assertion that it's universally positive, just that an impact to worldbuilding is a knock on to choosing a fixed encounter pacing method. I've never claimed you cannot account for it in your worldbuilding, just that you have to.

This is what's frustrated me so with my discussions with [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] -- he insists there are no changes needed to worldbuilding to accommodate a fixed encounter pacing and, so far, has pretty much managed to not prove that without assuming the world is already built so as to accommodate it.

Imaro · Aug 18, 2017

Ovinomancer said:
I snipped this out because it's directly to the heart of my point. Here you explicitly confirm my original statement: choosing a pacing mechanism has impacts on worldbuilding. You've just decided to characterize it as universally positive. I made no comment whatsoever on the positive or negative nature of the impact, although I strongly disagree with your assertion that it's universally positive, just that an impact to worldbuilding is a knock on to choosing a fixed encounter pacing method. I've never claimed you cannot account for it in your worldbuilding, just that you have to.

What you just quoted isn't even addressing pacing (which IMO is a function of adventure design, not worldbuilding)... He's talking illogical or "wonky" results... a blizzard being rolled in a jungle (quite similar to my Roc at the bottom of the ocean example which you claimed was silly and had nothing to do with what we were discussing earlier)... there's nothing about a pacing mechanism in the example he is referring to.

Ovinomancer said:
This is what's frustrated me so with my discussions with @Imaro -- he insists there are no changes needed to worldbuilding to accommodate a fixed encounter pacing and, so far, has pretty much managed to not prove that without assuming the world is already built so as to accommodate it.

A failure on your part to grasp what is being presented... doesn't invalidate what has been shown.

Imaro · Aug 18, 2017

Hussar said:
There's no tigers in Africa despite there being lots of areas where tigers could live.

<sarcasm>
But...but...but it can't be that you originally designed the world so that tigers were never meant to exist in Africa and thus left them off your encounter tables because it was logical. No, it must be that an encounter table without tigers was designed for Africa and then all the tigers were removed from that area because...well...encounters must affect worldbuilding...
<end sarcasm>

clearstream · Aug 18, 2017

Hussar said:
What mechanics say that there are monsters X or Y in that particular area? You don't build random encounter charts and the build the location. You build the location first and then design encounters for that location.

Is the world "built" before it has encounters? For me, no. Maybe an important difference between our views is that you put encounter tables outside the magic circle delimiting "built", and I put them inside of that circle. What you are arguing then becomes for you tautologically true: world building excludes mechanics because mechanics are not part of your definition of "built".

Encounter tables are decidedly inside my definition of "built" and they go on to change what was "built". It's kind of a fascinating metaphysical structure, when you think about it. World building brings imagination and mechanics together, working back and forth between them. It is layered and open-ended.

Imaro · Aug 18, 2017

vonklaude said:
Is the world "built" before it has encounters? For me, no. Maybe an important difference between our views is that you put encounter tables outside the magic circle delimiting "built", and I put them inside of that circle. What you are arguing then becomes for you tautologically true: world building excludes mechanics because mechanics are not part of your definition of "built".

Encounter tables are decidedly inside my definition of "built" and they go on to change what was "built". It's kind of a fascinating metaphysical structure, when you think about it. World building brings imagination and mechanics together, working back and forth between them. It is layered and open-ended.

I think what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is asking is the order. Do you say hey I have a forest it's the Dark Forest of Wyrms... inside it are found Wyrm type X, type Y & type Z and then proceed to design the encounter table for that forest which will contain wyrm X, wyrm Y & wyrm Z? In this case the encounter table was impacted by worldbuilding.

Or do you say hey, I have a forest let me design an encounter table for it... I want some X's, some Y's and some Z's... (where X, Y, and Z they can be any monster). I'll call it the forest of X, Y and Z's... and the forest must have X, Y and Z in it since the encounter table says it does... In this instance the world was impacted by encounter design.

Personally I do my worldbuilding & encounter design like example 1. Which is why I maintain the encounters don't impact my world by my world impacts encounters... if you do it the second way I could see the argument that encounters impact worldbuilding... but then you should also be able to admit it doesn't have to be that way.

Maxperson · Aug 18, 2017

Hussar said:
What mechanics say that there are monsters X or Y in that particular area? You don't build random encounter charts and the build the location. You build the location first and then design encounters for that location.

Nobody claimed that the world building didn't inform the mechanics. We are claiming that the mechanics also inform the world building.

The world building informed us on how to create the mechanical encounter table. The encounter table informed us how to further world build due to how the encounters interact with the area. It's a symbiosis.

Ovinomancer · Aug 18, 2017

Imaro said:
I think what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is asking is the order. Do you say hey I have a forest it's the Dark Forest of Wyrms... inside it are found Wyrm type X, type Y & type Z and then proceed to design the encounter table for that forest which will contain wyrm X, wyrm Y & wyrm Z? In this case the encounter table was impacted by worldbuilding.

Or do you say hey, I have a forest let me design an encounter table for it... I want some X's, some Y's and some Z's... (where X, Y, and Z they can be any monster). I'll call it the forest of X, Y and Z's... and the forest must have X, Y and Z in it since the encounter table says it does... In this instance the world was impacted by encounter design.

Personally I do my worldbuilding & encounter design like example 1. Which is why I maintain the encounters don't impact my world by my world impacts encounters... if you do it the second way I could see the argument that encounters impact worldbuilding... but then you should also be able to admit it doesn't have to be that way.

You're skipping the part where you apply a fixed encounter pacing mechanic, so that all the encounters, no matter the X, Y, or Z, are now all tied directly to the level of the PCs. So you can have your preplanned Dark Forest of Wyrms, but the only Wyrms are those that come in deadly job lots for the current power level of the players -- and must change those job lots if the player power levels change. Now, the question is, did you build the Dark Forest of Wyrms so that it logically supports the power level of the players at any point, or did you alter how your world presents so the Dark Forest of Wyrms is only interesting in the band in which it matches the player power levels? If the former, there's some issues, because what you find in the forest at level 1 is vastly different from what you find at 15. If the latter, then you've intentionally built your world with zones of encounters so that you can support your fixed encounter pacing within it.

Either way, you're building to suit your chosen encounter pacing.

clearstream · Aug 18, 2017

Ovinomancer said:
You're skipping the part where you apply a fixed encounter pacing mechanic, so that all the encounters, no matter the X, Y, or Z, are now all tied directly to the level of the PCs. So you can have your preplanned Dark Forest of Wyrms, but the only Wyrms are those that come in deadly job lots for the current power level of the players -- and must change those job lots if the player power levels change. Now, the question is, did you build the Dark Forest of Wyrms so that it logically supports the power level of the players at any point, or did you alter how your world presents so the Dark Forest of Wyrms is only interesting in the band in which it matches the player power levels? If the former, there's some issues, because what you find in the forest at level 1 is vastly different from what you find at 15. If the latter, then you've intentionally built your world with zones of encounters so that you can support your fixed encounter pacing within it.

Either way, you're building to suit your chosen encounter pacing.

I don't tie my encounter tables to the power of the party. My encounter tables describe something real about the world, not the players.