Player entitlement and "My Precious Encounter"

[Rogue Agent]

My problem with the phrase "My Precious Encounter" is that it seems to assume that the GM is framing situations in response to his/her own preferences, rather than those of the players.

"My Precious Encounter" refers to encounters which

(A) Are prepared before play which are so painstakingly balanced that they are inflexible in actual play: Their location can't be changed (because the monsters have tactics that sync with the location). Reinforcements can't be added (because the balance of the encounter would collapse; besides where would they come from? everybody else is tied up in their own precious encounters). (Taken to a sufficient extreme (as seen in some of WotC's products), the starting positions of PCs will even be forced in order to create the desired effect.)

(B) Encounters into which so much effort or emotional investment has been poured that they can't be be disrupted, changed, and/or avoided because they have become too precious to the GM.

So, in short, the phrase means absolutely nothing like what you claim it means. If you're flexibly framing, creating, and adapting encounters during play based on the choices of your players, what you're doing is pretty much exactly the opposite of encounters so precious to you that you refuse to change them.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

"My Precious Encounter" refers to encounters which

(A) Are prepared before play which are so painstakingly balanced that they are inflexible in actual play: Their location can't be changed (because the monsters have tactics that sync with the location). Reinforcements can't be added (because the balance of the encounter would collapse; besides where would they come from? everybody else is tied up in their own precious encounters). (Taken to a sufficient extreme (as seen in some of WotC's products), the starting positions of PCs will even be forced in order to create the desired effect.)

(B) Encounters into which so much effort or emotional investment has been poured that they can't be be disrupted, changed, and/or avoided because they have become too precious to the GM.

So, in short, the phrase means absolutely nothing like what you claim it means. If you're flexibly framing, creating, and adapting encounters during play based on the choices of your players, what you're doing is pretty much exactly the opposite of encounters so precious to you that you refuse to change them.

While I agree with your definition I cannot see how it applies to WoTC products. They cannot force DM to maintaining the purity or an encounter. Their modules have never stopped me from having monsters flee hopeless battles to reinfore other encounters and so forth.
I do think that their modules could enifit from some DM advice to that effect though.

 

[S'mon]

While I agree with your definition I cannot see how it applies to WoTC products. They cannot force...

Maybe they can't, but they certainly try!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Maybe they can't, but they certainly try!

Brandy laced with senna usually keeps them occupied on other matters and giuves time to hide the books

 

[Rogue Agent]

While I agree with your definition I cannot see how it applies to WoTC products. They cannot force DM to maintaining the purity or an encounter.

That's just a variation on the Rule 0 Fallacy: "Since I can rewrite this module to eliminate your critiques, your critiques don't apply to this module."

Their modules have never stopped me from having monsters flee hopeless battles to reinfore other encounters and so forth.

In some cases, this can also require a substantial revision of the rules themselves.

D&D Gamma World is an extreme example of this: The system completely resets the party's resources after every encounter. There are no long-term mechanical consequences for engaging in combat whatsoever. This means that any encounter which isn't balanced on the razor's edge of "this could kill you" is irrelevant: If the encounter doesn't provide an immediate threat, there's no challenge whatsoever.

Because of the reset, you don't get the 15MAD. But the razor's edge remains equally problematic on other levels: There's no margin for error, no forgiveness, and no flexibility. The system requires My Precious Encounter design because anything else will either be a cake-walk or a TPK.

4th Edition isn't quite that bad, because it still retains some strategic components and, as a result, includes resources which allow recovery from encounters that go bad (or get a little too strong due to GM miscalculation) and which also make "weak" encounters relevant.

But the distance between 4th Edition and D&D Gamma World is not great, and the overwhelming tactical emphasis of the game similarly pushes the GM towards the My Precious Encounter school of design.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It further follows, then, that a 4e GM who tries unilaterally to constrain player choice of race, class, theme etc - who tries unilaterally to constrain the signals that the players are able to send - is in danger of compromising those signals, and therefore of ending up framing scenes that are a waste of everyone's time.

This is why so-called "player entitlement" is a different matter in a situational game than in (say) a sandbox game or an adventure path. It's not about "pushy" or "whiny" players. It's about giving the players the tools to send the signals that the GM needs to do his/her job successfully. A secondary reason for letting players make the PC build choices that they want to make (including, in some systems - like 4e - magic item choices) is to enable them to take their PCs - the ones they have chosen to play - into the encounters that the GM is presenting them with.

Of course, there's no reason why a group couldn't buy into a game in which (for example) there is no divine magic - "Hey guys, let's play Dark Sun". But that would be a group decision, not a unilateral GM decision. (The Burning Wheel books have good advice on how to go about putting together a starting situation for the game as a group thing rather than just a GM thing.)

We do group campaign limits via discussion--consensus when possible, voting when necessary. However, once the campaign limits are in place, and I start work on the campaign background, we are essentially locked barring agreement from me to change. That is, I get a veto at that point. I only use that veto if it is necesary to save me a lot of work already spent. And then once play starts, I'm also the lead person in charge of seeing that we stick with the agreed upon framework, since the players don't have as much information as I do.

Certainly, if the limits are breached and the players are aware of it, they'll correct it themselves. And if a breach of any kind occurs, we might stop and collectively decide to allow it.

If someone came into the game after the first session or two, it might very well appear to them that I had "excluded" things that might interfere with flags from the players. In the past, I've had to deal with "player entitlement" issues because the player agreed to limits upfront, but then wanted to renege or otherwise abuse the agreements. As point enforcer (and not afraid of confrontation), it has been my job to protect the other players from the "entitled" player. But I solved that problem a long time ago by refusing to run games with people that acted that way.

Merely a note that the surface evidence of what is going on with "entitlement" may be at odds with the actual situation at the table.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

That's just a variation on the Rule 0 Fallacy: "Since I can rewrite this module to eliminate your critiques, your critiques don't apply to this module."

Does playing to monsters so that when they realise that the fight is hopeless they flee to their comrades, count as a re-write of the module?

In some cases, this can also require a substantial revision of the rules themselves.

Revision of what rules?

D&D Gamma World is an extreme example of this: The system completely resets the party's resources after every encounter. There are no long-term mechanical consequences for engaging in combat whatsoever. This means that any encounter which isn't balanced on the razor's edge of "this could kill you" is irrelevant: If the encounter doesn't provide an immediate threat, there's no challenge whatsoever.

Because of the reset, you don't get the 15MAD. But the razor's edge remains equally problematic on other levels: There's no margin for error, no forgiveness, and no flexibility. The system requires My Precious Encounter design because anything else will either be a cake-walk or a TPK.

4th Edition isn't quite that bad, because it still retains some strategic components and, as a result, includes resources which allow recovery from encounters that go bad (or get a little too strong due to GM miscalculation) and which also make "weak" encounters relevant.

But the distance between 4th Edition and D&D Gamma World is not great, and the overwhelming tactical emphasis of the game similarly pushes the GM towards the My Precious Encounter school of design.

I cannot comment on Gamma World as i have not fully read it, much less run an actual game.
It does seem to me that you are using 'my precious encounter' in a broad sense similar to pemerton earlier in the thread.

 

[pemerton]

If someone tells you that you play a game using My Precious Encounters, they are insulting you.

I know. That's why I said I would normally describe my game using a less pejorative phrase.

When I see "My Precious Encounter", I don't think necessarily about strong GM authority over framing: I think about a GM that has a specific situation in mind -- a particular tactical challenge he wants to explore regardless of play choice and plausible consequence.

<snip>

the ultimate devolution of the syndrome is railroading. You can't do anything except those things that lead to the encounter, because that's what'll be really fun!

I'm going to try and restate this back to you, just to check that I've understood you - you're saying "My Precious Encounter" isn't about strong scene framing, but inflexible scene framing ie running a give situation without regard to where the players' previous choices may have been taking things.

Is that right?

"My Precious Encounter" refers to encounters which

(A) Are prepared before play which are so painstakingly balanced that they are inflexible in actual play

<snip>

(B) Encounters into which so much effort or emotional investment has been poured that they can't be be disrupted, changed, and/or avoided because they have become too precious to the GM.

<snip>

If you're flexibly framing, creating, and adapting encounters during play based on the choices of your players, what you're doing is pretty much exactly the opposite of encounters so precious to you that you refuse to change them.

This suggests to me that My Precious Encounter is not about situational authority but plot authority - ie excessive GM force in encounter resolution, piled on top of what Nagol also described ie a GM who frames scenes indifferent to prior player choices.

D&D Gamma World is an extreme example of this: The system completely resets the party's resources after every encounter. There are no long-term mechanical consequences for engaging in combat whatsoever. This means that any encounter which isn't balanced on the razor's edge of "this could kill you" is irrelevant: If the encounter doesn't provide an immediate threat, there's no challenge whatsoever.

Because of the reset, you don't get the 15MAD. But the razor's edge remains equally problematic on other levels: There's no margin for error, no forgiveness, and no flexibility. The system requires My Precious Encounter design because anything else will either be a cake-walk or a TPK.

4th Edition isn't quite that bad, because it still retains some strategic components and, as a result, includes resources which allow recovery from encounters that go bad (or get a little too strong due to GM miscalculation) and which also make "weak" encounters relevant.

But the distance between 4th Edition and D&D Gamma World is not great, and the overwhelming tactical emphasis of the game similarly pushes the GM towards the My Precious Encounter school of design.

But this seems to be about scene framing, not a lack of flexibility.

I don't know Gamma World, but the characterisation of 4e differs from my own experience with that system. It also seems to disregard thematic and other non-operational dimensions of signficance. But even were it true of a system that it requires balanced encounters to work, I don't see how that would relate to being flexible or inflexible in an encounter. For example, if the GM had planned that the balance in the encounter would include 2 guards, and the PCs bump off those guards first (via some stealthy techniques), then the GM can (for example) put another elite bodyguard in the throneroom, or ad lib in a Jabba-style pit in front of the throne, or any of a dozen other techniques for rebalancing an encounter on the fly.

It does seem to me that you are using 'my precious encounter' in a broad sense similar to pemerton earlier in the thread.

Perhaps. I agree that there seems to be a difference between flexibility in scene adjudication - which is what Rogue Agent seems to be talking about in the follow-up post - and flexibility in scene framing - which is what Nagol talked about, and what Rogue Agent seemed to be talking about in the earlier post.

 

[Loonook]

i find this thread humorous because the arguments we make seem to fly in the face of everything the gaming industry overall has been changing over the last twenty years. Think about Action games and other sources of amusement. I love the fact that in certain games AI will actually run away to fight another day, use cover intelligently, make use of ample resources, and target individuals... Heck, some (in the modern/future realm) even have AI that will use suppressive fire to lock you down and choose your spots!)

I love this bit of realism, and think it really works within D&D. A group of creatures using darkness, concealment, or outright cowardice to cover their escape to the Big Bad (or a lieutenant, or just their specific smaller leader). Creatures that soak damage to lure into poor combat situations? Heck, if the players can do it why not the DM? I would personally take into account any module and what would be done by a group of creatures of known intelligence, tactics, skills and abilities with time given from their arrival and Round 1. A group of tricksy Kobolds in their own warren with decades of digging and alterations? Well, we have ourselves a trap shoot so bring your 10 foot poles and expendable helpers. Same group caught off-guard when they just arrived a day ago? You may catch a surprise as Pvt. Scaly is seen around the corner hitching on his swordbelt with his breeches round his ankles in a compromising privy position.

You as a DM have to take into account everything that could and would happen. Some creatures will just beat on you, some are going to be three moves ahead (of what they expect). PCs have the right to perform an overview of the room when they are going in, and possibilities for tactics abound in almost any room.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Does playing to monsters so that when they realise that the fight is hopeless they flee to their comrades, count as a re-write of the module?

No. But if the reinforcements they fetch from the next room will result in a TPK due to the way the module has been designed, then fetching reinforcements is not really a viable option for a DM that isn't primarily interested in killing the PCs.

Which is not to say that PCs should never face overwhelming forces from which they will need to flee. But it is to say that this kind of "balance on the razor's edge" encounter design is inherently fragile. The reinforcement thing is just a specific example of how ridiculously fragile My Precious Encounter design is; and the way in which that fragility encourages (and, in some cases, enforces) a blandness in adventure design (as all encounters present the exact same level of threat).

Revision of what rules?

I proffered explicit examples. What did you find confusing about them?

It does seem to me that you are using 'my precious encounter' in a broad sense similar to pemerton earlier in the thread.

Well, I said the exact opposite of that. Not much point in continuing a conversation with someone who's professed an inability to comprehend the basic meaning of what I'm writing.

Mod Note: Folks, announcing that the discussion isn't worth your precious time, but continuing anyway, is rude, a little bit hypocritical, and a pretty sure sign to the mods that you shouldn't be continuing. If you don't want to discuss, then don't discuss. If you do want to continue to discuss, don't make yourself look like a jerk in the process. ~Umbran

For example, if the GM had planned that the balance in the encounter would include 2 guards, and the PCs bump off those guards first (via some stealthy techniques), then the GM can (for example) put another elite bodyguard in the throneroom, or ad lib in a Jabba-style pit in front of the throne, or any of a dozen other techniques for rebalancing an encounter on the fly.

Okay, now that sort of railroading is a perfect example of My Precious Encounter design: "You've ruined the encounter I planned?! FINE! THEN I WILL ADD MORE MONSTERS TO FIX IT!"