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

[hawkeyefan]

Doesn't mean they can't be placed, there's just not much point to going through the motions of resolving them. You hand-wave the former, and offer a Skill Challenge to avoid/escape the latter.

The possibility of them is much more useful than actually playing through them, yes. One thing BA has done (and murky encounter guidelines abet it), is made it more plausible to play through a badly mismatched encounter, because the trivial encounter could still result in the odd hit/crit & minor HP attrition, and the PCs theoretically have a chance to do something even when wildly overmatched. Mostly likely the trivial fight will be trivial and the overwhelming one a TPK, of course... but sometimes the designed-to-be-trivial fight will hit harder than planned, or the overwhelming one turn out to be a paper-CR tiger.

I don't think you need to hand wave an easy encounter. You can, from time to time, especially if it's the equivalent of the entire party knocking out one inept guard or something like that. But most fights that are trivial don't take long, and you can breeze through them. Again, I think doing this helps prevents players from becoming too accustomed to a specific approach. Take one encounter that seems like it will be a breeze, and then in the middle of it, introduce some element that totally changes the difficulty (reinforcements, some crazy terrain element, etc.) and your players will remember that, and in the future will be less likely to assume victory.

And with a overly difficult encounter, you need not TPK the characters. You have to give them alternatives to the fight, but if they go ahead and attack, you can always leave an out of some sort....they can escape, or their foes could underestimate them or what have you.

My point about these kinds of encounters is not necessarily about the outcome of the specific encounter so much as how it affects how the players view encounters in an ongoing way.

Reaching? Probably. Social media, meetup, play videos and the like were already out there when Encounters got rolling, and I did see the heightened interest at that time. Now we have the surge in interest in boardgames going, as well, drawing more folks into the FLGS. We no longer have the profound negativity of the edition war mitigating against all that, either. So, yeah, it's fair to think more people might be trying (or, especially, returning to) D&D lately.

Sure, all of that is huge. In a way, 5E benefits by being the most recent, with the most proliferation of social media to help it spread. But even just a few years ago, if you'd told me that people would watch other people play D&D online, I'd have said you were nuts.

The streaming shows are brinigng a whole new element to the equation.....D&D as viewing entertainment where the audience is not taking part. Some of this certainly started with 4E and Pathfinder, but it has exploded lately. Probably a bit of a chicken/egg thing, but there it is.

Retaining? OT1H, I'm not seeing the phenomenon of new players becoming DMs in the next Encounters season, or an Encounters table of new players becoming a regular table, then spinning off to a home game, anymore. OTOH, I'm not seeing returning players getting confused or turned off and bouncing to Pathfinder so much, either.

Other than observing the general staying power this edition seems to have so far, there's no real way to say if it's retaining people beyond the anecdotal. Sales seem to hold up, each release that they put out seems to garner lots of attention.

The thing about slow deaths is they take a long time.

Sure, but I think such a prognosis would be too early for this particular edition. Would you agree with that, or do you think we've started to see the beginning of the end?

That's at least /some/ support. There were 4e tables that bought no books and all shared one DDI, so you did your bit more than they did.

True, I suppose. But like I said, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't sunk the amount of money into the edition that I did. This kind of topic comes up from time to time when I discuss comics with people. You'll have someone who is a fan of Spider-Man, let's say, and he always buys Spider-Man even when he thinks it is terrible. I always say you shouldn't continue to pay for a product that you don't like....doing so does more to make sure that the product remains the same than it does to make it improve.

Playing is supporting, especially participating in organized play - at least, if your attitude is positive.

True.

Although, you'd have to be pretty awful to make an organized play session so bad that other players are turned off the hobby. I'm sure there are such players out there, but I would hope most people wouldn't blame the game in that case.

I agree. 5e seems like it could very easily be the last ed of D&D.
Then again: After 2e had been out for a bit, I felt like it hadn't really been that necessary. I certainly felt like there'd be no need for rolling revs after D&D went all open-source as d20. So, I'm used to being wrong on that topic.

Yeah, I wouldn't say never, but at this point, that's my feeling about it. This edition has reminded me that I don't need to buy every book that comes out in order to play and enjoy the game (mostly by not producing a whole lot of books, but also in the design approach, etc.).

They can even /also/ play those games, in addition to playing the current ed. For instance, an old ed as a home campaign, and the current version in organized pay.

Sure, of course. I personally would prefer not to play more than one edition....I still mix up some rules in my head from prior editions, and there are certain improvements or changes in the game that I'd not want to go without.

 

[Hussar]

I'm sorry but what evidence is there that DND is losing popularity recently? You don't squat in the top 100 of all books on Amazon for three years if you're not selling.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't think you need to hand wave an easy encounter. You can, from time to time

I think that was in reply, ultimately, to something about trivial encounters being boring. The more confident you are something is genuinely going to be trivial if you play through it, the more sense it makes to hand-wave it, instead of getting bored by it.

But most fights that are trivial don't take long, and you can breeze through them. Again, I think doing this helps prevents players from becoming too accustomed to a specific approach.

Anything that keeps your group out of a rut may well be worth it, yes.

Sure, all of that is huge. In a way, 5E benefits by being the most recent, with the most proliferation of social media to help it spread. But even just a few years ago, if you'd told me that people would watch other people play D&D online, I'd have said you were nuts.

People were doing it a few years ago, more than just a few.

Other than observing the general staying power this edition seems to have so far

The slow pace of release really helps, IMHO.
2e, 3e, & 4e all drowned in supplements. Rapid release was a standard strategy for the hobby (how else do you flog revenue out of a small/fantatical customer base?) - I first recall seeing it with Battletech, which wasn't even an RPG, in the 80s. WWGS/WoD used it to great effect for a while.

Sure, but I think such a prognosis would be too early for this particular edition. Would you agree with that, or do you think we've started to see the beginning of the end?

Like I said, I've thought that each WotC edition could plausibly be the last, or at least have a much longer run than it did. I think 5e is going to have a 10+ year run, I thought it might very well be the last edition during the playtest...

Although, you'd have to be pretty awful to make an organized play session so bad that other players are turned off the hobby.

Depends on what you're introducing them too, of course. TSR era D&D did not have a great track record, that way. Lots of people bought it, but it turned out to be a fad and most didn't stick with it.
4e (anecdotally, I can only speak from my own experience) surprised me in that it didn't result in a lot of genuinely-new players shrugging and walking away after one experience - some returning players throwing a fit and running straight to PF, sure, but not the new ones.
5e's DM Empowerment focus lets an experienced and/or talented DM deliver a great experience customized to the preferences of his players. With new players, you don't always know what that is (heck, they probably don't know yet, they'll just know if they had fun or not), but you can still give a generally positive first experience. But it's still D&D, still hard to wrap your head around all at once. A good DM, an experienced player to help, and a good attitude, and that's doable. The climate of the community helps, now, instead of hurts. But, I still don't see the kind of retention of new-to-RPG-players we had with Encounters. I guess we don't /need/ it with the returning players, and no small number of PF players coming back to the fold, I see as well (the new AL coordinator, for instance, came from the 3.x/PF side, he even did sign-ups via Warhorn for a while).

I'm sure there are such players out there, but I would hope most people wouldn't blame the game in that case.

Since other games don't have the problem, yeah, I kinda do. We are a very small hobby, in spite of a lot of people having tried it - overwhelmingly in the form of D&D. We could blame the game or eachother, but that's the way it is.

I personally would prefer not to play more than one edition....I still mix up some rules in my head from prior editions, and there are certain improvements or changes in the game that I'd not want to go without.

I do that whether I'm running the old edition or not. But, no, on balance, I've never found an edition to completely eclipse all that came before. 3e was a great improvement, but I still played 1e from nostalgia, 4e was clearly superior, technically, but I still had character concepts that would only work in 3e (in part because 4e closed their loopholes), 5e is a blast to run, but if I'm going to play on the other side of the screen, 3e, 4e & 1e are all more appealing.
Besides, I can lift neat bits from a different game or edition, if I want. I can crib the Escalation Die from 13A, Adv/Dis from 5e, Skill Challenges from 4e, Take 10/20 from 3.0, etc...

... OK, not sure what I'd actually be running at that point, but I'd've imported some nice mechanics into it....

 

[pemerton]

I thought I'd catch up on this thread, and I found some posts about stuff I know something about!

From what I understand, converting any module into 4e is trickier than converting a 4e module out to something else.

You can't just take a 1e adventure and put some orcs or bugbears in a dozen rooms and call it a day.

I've used plenty of modules written for other editions/systems in 4e. For me it's not been very different from using a module that was written for 4e. In either case, the module is providing me with maps, NPCs and their motivations, and similar elements of background/backstory. And it generates ideas about what sort of thing might be where.

When I ran the goblin parts of B10 Night's Dark Terror, all I had to do was decide what sorts of goblins to use in lieu of ordinary B/X goblins, sub-chiefs and chiefs.

When I ran a ruined temple vignette from the d20 book Wonders out of Time, I had to make more elaborate decisions like how to handle a water weird (which didn't exist in the 4e rules, at least at the time in question).

On the mechanical side, I wouldn't say it is any different in kind to using material from other systems with Rolemaster. The main thing I found different was the need to draw up maps for areas where I expected to have to run an intricate combat.

A good example might be stealth and hiding. To me, it's nearly impossible to write a good rule for this.

I've never had any issues with stealth or hiding in Rolemaster, Burning Wheel or 4e. The fact that it's a major topic of discussion and contention in 5e seems to me to be something distinctive about this particular edition.

Yeah 4e was great for DM Light and Big Challenge, bad for Big Empowered DM and Big Story.

I think my games (in 4e and other systems) count as "Big Story". But I don't think my preferred methods fully fit your description of Big DM.

4e worked great for me.

From what I can tell, in a very generalized way, the "Say Yes" crowd also tend to eschew outright failure in favour of what they call fail-forward

This is not correct, or at best is partially correct for a particular (I would say generally bowdlerised) version of "say 'yes'" GMing.

In its origins, "say 'yes' or roll the dice" is a technique for managing pacing and related matters like anti-climax, focus of attention, etc. It depends upon some formal or informal mechanisms for establishing - as between players and GM - what is at stake in a certain episode of play (say, a session, or an adventure). When action declarations don't bear upon those stakes, the GM "says 'yes'" - that is, the PC succeeds at whatever it is that s/he is attempting. When an action declaration does bear upon those stakes, the GM frames the situation in mechanical terms and the action resolution mechanics are invoked (ie "the dice are rolled").

"Fail forward" is a concomitant technique, also for managing pacing and related matters. When the dice are rolled, the PC might sometimes fail. (These sorts of games may start to break down if success is mechanically automatic. I know from experience that this can become an issue with skill checks in upper Epic 4e.)

A GM using "fail forward" narrates those failures in a certain way - namely, so as to sharpen the focus upon, heighten, or otherwise connect to the stakes in some way that is adverse to the PC. The point of this is to use the failure to frame the player (via his/her PC) into a circumstance where some sorts of stakes-addressing choice is required. Hence the failure doesn't bring the narrative trajectory of play to any sort of halt - thus the "forward" in "fail forward".

Here are two examples of fail forward (I made up the first; the second is adapted from an example in a BW rulebook):

(1) A PC is looking is in a cellar, looking for the secret entrance s/he is sure must be there somewhere, leading to the cultist headquarters. The check is framed and failed. The GM narrates that the PC, having found nothing on the first wall s/he checks, turns to the next wall - only to have an (undiscovered) secret door in that first wall slide open, from which emerges a cultist who attacks the PC from behind.

(2) A PC is at a social gathering and wants to assassinate an enemy. The PC approaches the enemy, dagger concealed up his/her sleeve. At the last minute the PC pulls out the dagger, intending to stab the enemy and then - as everyone looks to see why the NPC is collapsing - melt into the crowd. The check is framed and failed. The GM narrates that the PC stabs the enemy but - as s/he withdraws her bloodied blade from the dying NPC - is not able to melt into the crowd at all! Rather, s/he has been spotted performing the killing, and the other NPCs in the room are now all looking aghast at the PC as s/he stands there with a bloody knife in his/her hand.​

In (1) the PC suffers outright failure: s/he does not find the secret door. In (2) the PC suffers failure: s/he does not melt into the crowd, but rather is caught in the act. But it is not outright failure: s/he does kill the enemy NPC. Both (1) and (2) are illustrations of "fail forward" narration.

But one thing about both "say 'yes' or roll the dice" and "fail forward" is that they are inconsistent with (at least some forms of) "Big DM" approach, because they can't be used in the context of a pre-authored storyline, because (i) they depend upon taking the dice rolls, including failure, seriously and so there is simply no prior guarantee of how events will unfold, and (ii) they depend upon the GM narrating failures that are apt to the circumstances, context, stakes etc of the check, and there is no prior guarantee in respect of these things either, meaning again that there is simply no prior guarantee of how events will unfold. And (i) and (ii) compound one another as the game is played, to mean that while there is a narrative trajectory, its direction and destination aren't known in advance.

What I have described as the "bowdlerised" version of "fail forward" is an attempt to adapt the technique to "Big DM" storytelling: the GM has a conception of where the narrative is headed (eg the PCs need to find the map so they can get to the temple so they can free the sphinx so they can solve the riddle so they can get the clue so they can find the tomb so they can recover the MacGuffin). But if the PCs fail a certain check (eg they fail to find the temple, or they fail to solve the riddle) then the pre-planned narrative will not eventuate. Hence, instead of failures the GM narrates successes but with a cost (eg the PCs find the temple but are tired when they get there; or they solve most of the riddle but can't work out whether one particular bit is referring to the east or the west, and so have a harder time in exploring the area to find the tomb).

This sort of "fail forward" does, indeed, preclude outright failure. The reason I describe it as bowdlerised is because it is turning the original conception of "fail forward" on its head: instead of being a technique for reconciling the possibility of failure with the continuity of narrative trajectory, achieved in part by giving up on "Big DM" storytelling, it is a technique of reconciling Big DM storytelling with its continuous and preconceived narrative trajectory with rolling of the dice by eliminating the possibility of failure. So you end up with either "saying 'yes'", so no dice are rolled, or "saying 'yes'" but the dice are rolled to see if the "yes" comes with a cost.

 

[pemerton]

I really like to see the players get into their characters, that, to me, is why I play this game. To see how a group of players turns a sheet of stats into living characters in a living world.

I just prefer the focus to be on the content of the game, rather than the mechanics.

I would agree with the first statement, but don't feel the force of the contrast drawn in the second. For instance, the content of the game (as a player playing my PC) is I am hurt. Mechanically, I would expect this to manifest in some fashion (eg penalties to actions, limitations of some sort on action declarations, etc). If the mechanics don't in some fashion (and there are many, may such fashions) express this element of the content in the process of resolution, then I would find them an obstacle to focusing on the putative content.

Hence when playing D&D I don't focus on any content around particular injuries, because the mechanics don't express any such thing. Whereas when my BW character had a piece of masonry fall on him and break some ribs, I couldn't but focus on that content of the game, because it ramified into the resolution of action declarations.

I love starting new players who haven't read the PHB yet because they have no preconceived ideas on how to play the game.

How should they play the game? In my mind they should focus on their character and the decisions and actions that they would take. I'll let you know what you need to do to do that, if anything. For example, I can't stand questions that start with, "Can I make a skill check to...?" The answer it generally no. Because you're not doing anything. Yes, you can utilize your skills to attempt something, but until you actually attempt it, I can't help you.

I find that players that have played for a while, are often surprised by the newbies, "wait, I can do that?" Sure, why not? You can do that here in this world, why wouldn't your characters be able to do that in their world? Combat is often based on how many squares they have to move, to get into position here, to do this. That's not combat. That's a game.

There are two orcs charging at you with axes, what do you do? "I want to chop off the first one's head." Hey, go for it. It might not be easy, but go right ahead and try.

I prefer players to have some sense of how action declarations are resolved.

For instance, in an early 4e session I GMed the PCs were defending a homestead against a goblin assault. The PCs knew the goblins had wolf riders, and one of the PCs - the player being inspired by his knowledge of military history - wanted to make tank-trap style timber constructions to dissuade wolf charges and channel them into zones where the PCs could better attack them.

Now some of this is just fictional positioning: Is there timber available? (Yes, it's a homestead, in a forest, whose inhabitants are primarily foresters.) Are there tools for cutting the timber into lengths and rope for binding it into the caltrop-like shapes? (Yes, mostly for the same reasons.)

But some of it also feeds into resolution (eg rolls of the dice to determine how many wolf-riders make it through at what sort of pace; in 4e this might also be connected to a skill challenge). And I prefer the player to have some sense of how this will be resolved, so that s/he can make a somewhat informed choice about how to manage resources (eg in this case the resource of time, among other things). Given that 4e doesn't have a Craft or Woodworking skill, I can't remember what skill was tested - maybe Thievery or Dungeoneering? - but it's over 8 years ago so I'm just making a logical guess.

I'm not a big fan of the player being required to declare the action for his/her PC and then, only once s/he is - in the fiction - committed, learning how the GM thinks it might be resolved.

I think of a declaration that "I want to chop off the orc's head" along much the same lines. Until the player knows how combat resolution is handled in the game, I can't really regard it as a meaningful action declaration any different from "I attack the orc." Until a player knows - via knowledge of the system - what difference is made by adding in the extra detail, I wouldn't really expect him/her to contribute it. I mean, the player could also declare "I want to chop off the orc's head by standing in front of it then, at the last minute, sidestepping to the right, switching my axe from my right to my left hand, and swinging around the orc's out-of-position shield!" But in most RPG systems that's all just verbiage. It's not really content of the game at all.

 

[Imaro]

I've never had any issues with stealth or hiding in Rolemaster, Burning Wheel or 4e. The fact that it's a major topic of discussion and contention in 5e seems to me to be something distinctive about this particular edition.

For 4e was this before or after the pretty extensive errata in the PHB 2? That said a quick google search shows that stealth was quite the contentious topic for 4e, so no I don't think it is distinctive to 5e at all...

 

[Tony Vargas]

For 4e was this before or after the pretty extensive errata in the PHB 2? That said a quick google search shows that stealth was quite the contentious topic for 4e, so no I don't think it is distinctive to 5e at all...

It's kinda weird how it's still going 3 years in, even though the 5e rules are not that different from the 4e errata that cleared it up less than a year into that edition.
I get that WotC has been more 'hands off' with regard to rules errata since Essentials, and 5e DMs are all empowered...

::shrug::

I don't much see the problem with 5e stealth, anyway. You do declare an action to hide from/look for someone/thing, the DM rules on it like any other action...

 

[Imaro]

It's kinda weird how it's still going 3 years in, even though the 5e rules are not that different from the 4e errata that cleared it up less than a year into that edition.
I get that WotC has been more 'hands off' with regard to rules errata since Essentials, and 5e DMs are all empowered...

::shrug::

I don't much see the problem with 5e stealth, anyway. You do declare an action to hide from/look for someone/thing, the DM rules on it like any other action...

I'm actually with you on this one. I don't find it all that confusing when making rulings in my game either.

 

[Tobold]

There are other solutions to the "5-minute workday" problem of players resting too often. Probably the easiest is random encounters: For every short rest the players have to roll for a random encounter once, for every long rest they have to roll for a random encounter 4 times. Rolls a made with a d20, and rolling lower or equal to the "danger level" of the environment results in a random encounter. Danger level is 0 for sleeoing in an inn, 1 for sleeping in average outdoor surroundings, and up to 5 for sleeping in more dangerous places (like the middle of a dungeon).

The beauty of the system is that it is mostly cosmetic. That is to say that announcing a higher danger level is having a large psychological effect on most players, so that they'll automatically rest less frequently. But as a random encounter doesn't technically invalidate the benefit of a long rest, a group could still get to full health and spells after a night with several random combat encounters.

 

[shoak1]

I'm sorry but what evidence is there that DND is losing popularity recently? You don't squat in the top 100 of all books on Amazon for three years if you're not selling.

I had suggested that D and D 5e is a much smaller fraction of the market share of GAMES (not just RPGs) than say 2e was. I had suggested further that 5e has done better in total sales than 4e (but much worse than 3/3.5) because the rpgers came back - NOT because of their success at attracting the GAMISTS. I had suggested further that 5e will suffer a long slow death if it fails to reach out into the GAMISTS that dominate gaming across most genres.

I base these assertions not just on strong anecdotal evidence (how many people I run into that play D and D), but on gaming conventions attendance, game store playing, space dedicated in game stores/book stores to the game, online buzz, the frequency of new products of the game coming out, and number of new blood postings in these forums.