D&D General Wishing Away The Adventure

[Micah Sweet]

If that bodyguard is wearing plate armor, odds are your average half-starved bandit is going to think twice just because of that.

Of course the flip side is that this is just a game. In general PCs fight appropriate challenges because we don't want to waste time on easy encounters and TPKs tend to end campaigns.

IMO, this is not an area in which gamist ideals should hold sway.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Are you all saying the idea that a group of bandits surprise the party and hold them at crossbow point actually being dangerous to PCs, a situation that has occurred many, many times across similar media, should be preposterous?

No, but it only works with low level characters. High level characters are hyper competent action heroes that know that they can easily block the incoming arrows as they run to chop the bandits into pieces.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I do actually, sometimes.

Then play it. Because I have listened a lot what sort of game you want and that ain't D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, but it only works with low level characters. High level characters are hyper competent action heroes that know that they can easily block the incoming arrows as they run to chop the bandits into pieces.

What's the cut-off then? All I know is that it's considerably lower than it used to be.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then play it. Because I have listened a lot what sort of game you want and that ain't D&D.

It ain't WotC 5e, that's for sure. There are several things in Level Up that make it an acceptable compromise for my 5e-loving players. What I really want is to play some OSR, but my wife isn't interested in gaming from the 20th century (or inspired by such). It is what it is.

 

[Oofta]

Why would the adventurers be likely to be recognized?

After the first few levels in many campaigns the PCs become local heroes. By the the time they're 5th, their notoriety has spread beyond their base of operations. Above 10th? I wouldn't be surprised to see statues going up. At least that's a base assumption for many games as noted in the DMG > Creating a Campaign > Tiers of Play.

Of course that will vary from one campaign to the next.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What's the cut-off then? All I know is that it's considerably lower than it used to be.

Depends on how many bandits there are and how much distance there is! And it might be lower now than in some prehistoric editions, but it is definitely higher than it was in the previous edition.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

We recently played a session that saw us near our goal of level 1-6’s quest.

One player thought the going was hard and wanted to use the scroll that would teleport the party back home after weeks of travel and toil without our prize in hand.

Bye Felicia.

Always the same with that guy. Self preservation above all else including sense of fun and adventure.

Intolerable. I mean play a cowardly character here or there but don’t BE the cowardly character.

Why come along weekly to play when you are willing to quit the adventure so lightly?

 

[Reynard]

No, but it only works with low level characters. High level characters are hyper competent action heroes that know that they can easily block the incoming arrows as they run to chop the bandits into pieces.

The best part is that it can be very dangerous for the characters on their way out to the first dungeon, and then trivial on the way back after gaining 2 levels in the Sunless Citadel.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Inspired by the High Level Adventures thread, but focused on a particular thing.

There seems to be a concern that high level PCs, or even lower level ones in possession of a wish, would use a wish to just not go on the adventure. If the quest is that they retrieve the Sword of Awesome from the Tomb of Badness, they will just wish the sword into their hand.

Haven't had a group specifically do this, mostly because of the bad vibes that still linger on wish because of its old-school "be a jerkass genie" reputation. However....

Or otherwise use powerful magic to circumvent play.

Of course they're going to do this. Why wouldn't they? Play is dangerous (to the characters.) Why do characters seek the highest AC item they can equip that doesn't cause them problems? Is that "circumventing" the play of taking more hits? The exact same logic applies to leveraging powerful spells in order to circumvent the expected play of an adventure. (IMO, excessive focus on verisimilitude to the exclusion of all else and the lingering impulse toward aversarial DMing is a big part of why this logic is so prevalent among players today.)

You are asking an age-old question in game design: Why do players optimize the fun out of games? The answer is that they have been given perverse incentives. The gameplay task, which is meant to be enjoyable, is wholly distinct from the gameplay outcome, which is meant to be valuable. (Using my own terms here, no idea if there's a formal term.) If a different task can be substituted which achieves all of the same outcomes but with lower risk, higher rewards, less time spent, or any combination of the three, players will take it--because you have told them that the outcome is valuable.

Game design which fails to align tasks with outcomes in one way or another has created a perverse incentive. Instead of giving players a motive for doing the things that are fun and constructive and pro-social, it gives players a motive for doing whatever it takes to reach the desired outcome, even if it is an inferior experience to do so.

Solving this problem is a serious challenge for any game designer. Solving it in ways that don't depend on trivializing the process is that much harder, but sucn nontrivial design is the only design worth pursuing.

Has anyone ever actually done this, or seen it in play? Is it a valid concern? Why would players choose to avoid playing?

I have, yes. I played in an epic-level gestalt 3.5e/PF1e mashup game. We repeatedly no-sale'd the DM's adventures by having ridiculously over-the-top feats of magic. I was playing an Int-SAD Druid|Wizard gestalt (really really fun build, not OP but very versatile), and I single-handedly solved a refugee crisis in a Ravnica-like "city-plane with natural areas outside" area. I could feed thousands of people with a single non-epic spell, and between my magic items and other benefits, I probably could have done a lot more, but I stayed focused on that specific thing while others did other things. (Well, and I used an epic PrC feature to calm people down.)

It is a valid concern, because players will take the most effective strategies to achieve their desired outcomes even when those strategies involve dull, simplistic, annoying, or otherwise not-fun tasks. The outcome is what is valuable, the task is simply a price paid to reach it. Why would you willingly pay more for the same goods, when you could pay less? Why wait longer for the same goods, when you could get them sooner? Etc.

The only way to avoid this problem consistently is to design the game such that doing the enjoyable thing is the most effective way to make the wanted result happen. When it is fun to do the optimal thing, you will never have players caught between whether they should do something that is "boring, but practical" or something that is "cool, but inefficient," as TVTropes would put it.