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

[Hussar]

The thing is, D&D doesn't have a single setting. So, the mechanics have to be applicable to a broad swath of settings. So, the mechanics are largely setting agnostic. Even the backgrounds in the PHB aren't really doing much lifting for world building. Yup, my character is an Acolyte. Sure... and that means what exactly? Do people treat him differently? Does that affect his relationships with other people? Does it affect his disposition or personality? What does that actually mean?

Well, the system is largely silent on the issue and it's left to the table to run with that. Fair enough. I have no problems with that.

Now, think of Vampire:The Masquerade. My choice of vampire clan has enormous implications on the entire campaign. Whether I'm Ventrue or Malkavian, this is going to affect every single scenario we play in. Of course, Vampire has the advantage of only having one setting and the game is built for that setting. So, it becomes a lot easier to tie world building elements into the mechanics.

For D&D though, because the system is largely setting agnostic, settings generally don't follow logically from the system. There is exactly one published setting (at least from TSR/WotC) that was built with an eye on the mechanics and that's Eberron. All the other settings were built and then the system bolted on top with honking big lampshades thrown over the inconsistencies.

Stop and think about random encounter tables for a moment. Say we've got a 1 in 12 chance rolled every 4 hours. That's 6 checks per day. Or, roughly a 50% chance per day (yes, I know it's not 50%, but, it's close enough for this). That means anyone traveling for 2 days or more is most likely going to bump something that wants to eat them.

Sure, I'll buy that in something like Darksun or Ravenloft. But, that's insanely dangerous anywhere else. How would you even get a society started if the world was that dangerous? No one can travel more than 15 miles without being killed? Because, remember, this is world building time. This applies to ALL NPC'S. Not just PC's. EVERYONE. It's a ridiculous world.

But, we'd use those random tables any time in game and not even blink.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's all fine.

But if someone says bananas are a better snack than granola bars, you shouldn't take that to mean that they are saying granola bars don't exist.

It's a silly analogy, but I'm reasonably sure we're not really going to see eye to eye on this.

I think world building is integral to D&D or any other RPG. But I think it's something done more with the imagination than with any system or rules within the D&D game. Excepting perhaps the general sort of advice suitable for any RPG or other creative endeavor.

A random government table? Roll an 8 and it's a monarchy!!! I don't see that as much of a worldbuilding tool.

Actually, it appears we largely agree: D&D doesn't support a robust set of world building mechanics; other systems do a better job of provide such mechanics; D&D requires worldbuilding, but it's an informal process.

What we appear to disagree on, though, is defending Hussar's claims that you [-]can't[/-] shouldn't do worldbuilding in D&D because the game mechanics don't tie into hard worldbuilding mechanics. His point is ridiculous, even if he occasionally says decent things like pointing out D&D has fewer worldbuilding mechanics than Traveller. That's been what I'm arguing against: that D&D doesn't require worldbuilding and that, therefore, you can't/shouldn't be concerned about it. I disagree strongly with both statements.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The thing is, D&D doesn't have a single setting. So, the mechanics have to be applicable to a broad swath of settings. So, the mechanics are largely setting agnostic. Even the backgrounds in the PHB aren't really doing much lifting for world building. Yup, my character is an Acolyte. Sure... and that means what exactly? Do people treat him differently? Does that affect his relationships with other people? Does it affect his disposition or personality? What does that actually mean?

Well, the system is largely silent on the issue and it's left to the table to run with that. Fair enough. I have no problems with that.

Now, think of Vampire:The Masquerade. My choice of vampire clan has enormous implications on the entire campaign. Whether I'm Ventrue or Malkavian, this is going to affect every single scenario we play in. Of course, Vampire has the advantage of only having one setting and the game is built for that setting. So, it becomes a lot easier to tie world building elements into the mechanics.

No, the mechanics don't require your clan to have implications on the campagin -- the setting does. The worldbuilding done for you does. The mechanics, much like D&D mechanics, don't care what clan you are outside of limiting your choices of abilities. Clans are akin to classes in D&D.

For D&D though, because the system is largely setting agnostic, settings generally don't follow logically from the system. There is exactly one published setting (at least from TSR/WotC) that was built with an eye on the mechanics and that's Eberron. All the other settings were built and then the system bolted on top with honking big lampshades thrown over the inconsistencies.

It's setting agnostic so long as the setting adheres to the core assumptions provide on the first page of Part 1 of the DMG. Outside of that, no, it's not setting agnostic. I can't run a high-tech, hard sci-fi, starship combat game with D&D, because that goes in total opposition to the core assumptions. And all game systems lampshade their settings. You mentioned Traveller above as a system with good worldbuilding. Well, shockingly, it turns out that Traveller doesn't work well if strictly applied to everything in the world that you can use it to build. You're throwing out red herrings and saying 'but this game system, built to approximate a reality (not ours), isn't perfect, so you shouldn't ever try to do anything with it because it won't perfectly work.' Well, duh. I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of my good, or even workable, but you go ahead.

Stop and think about random encounter tables for a moment. Say we've got a 1 in 12 chance rolled every 4 hours. That's 6 checks per day. Or, roughly a 50% chance per day (yes, I know it's not 50%, but, it's close enough for this). That means anyone traveling for 2 days or more is most likely going to bump something that wants to eat them.

Sure, I'll buy that in something like Darksun or Ravenloft. But, that's insanely dangerous anywhere else. How would you even get a society started if the world was that dangerous? No one can travel more than 15 miles without being killed? Because, remember, this is world building time. This applies to ALL NPC'S. Not just PC's. EVERYONE. It's a ridiculous world.

But, we'd use those random tables any time in game and not even blink.

Depends on the encounter table, doesn't it? And this, this exact thing -- hang on, I want to make this stupendously clear:

THIS EXACT THING IS WHAT YOU STARTED ARGUING WITH ME ABOUT!

And no, I'm not angry, hence the soothing purple, just wanted this point to be abundantly clear and unmissable.

... this is what I was saying -- if your encounter tables have only deadly entries on them for the characters, then you hit this exact issue -- civilization ceases to be able to exist without serious modifications. However, if you have an encounter table that isn't all deadlies for the PCs, then, no, travel may occasionally be dangerous in some areas and stupidly dangerous in others as the encounter tables change. But you can't have a meaningful difference in encounter tables if they're all full of whatever is currently deadly to the PCs.

And, if your point is that you have to completely simulate the entire world all the time in order to have any kind of worldbuilding, yeah, no, insane argument doesn't really deserve much rebuttal. All I have to do is eyeball it to the point it makes some sense, like saying that encounter tables in the core of the Kingdom are mostly other travellers or the occasional bandits group or ankheg, and it works. I can roll on it or not for the PCs to provide spice for travelling in the inner kingdom. Along the edges, where the encounter table gets a bit harder, travel is in caravans, with guards, for things likely to be attacks, and towns have walls and militia patrol inhabited areas. In the wilderness, most people don't go, and it's dangerous.

I don't need to roll an encounter for every NPC to eyeball that and see that it works for my worldbuilding of a fairly safe kingdom with some wilder frontiers. You can, but that's insane. and will end up about the same.

 

[Lanefan]

Nope. There are no deadly encounters wherever they don't go because wherever they don't go doesn't actually matter. No one actually uses their random encounter tables for areas where the PC's aren't. Do you actually roll random encounters for EVERY single NPC EVERY single day? No, of course not.

As you say, of course not. But by no means does that mean those things aren't happening in the game world; they're just not on-screen at the time.

It's the same as game-world weather. One must assume the game-world has differing weather conditions all over it at any given time, even though the only ones that get called out are those occurring where the PCs happen to be.

So, any NPC's and any areas that aren't being engaged by the PC's are not actually covered by the mechanics in any way, shape or form.

In any granular detail, no; but as with weather the baseline assumption has to be that if it's happening wherever the PCs are it's also happening wherever the PCs aren't, if the game world is to preserve any internal consistency.

Of course they are. There's no avoiding that. Again, are you running thousands of NPC's every single day to determine what happens in your game world outside of where the PC's are? No, of course not. So, the mechanics only apply where the PC's are and what they are doing.

Yes, but get off mechanics and get on to a wide view of the world. If these encounters are happening no matter where the PCs may go then they're still by simple extension set to occur even if the PCs don't happen to go there (but nobody bothers tracking them). And that's where the idea of having to have so many encounters affecting the PCs all the time crashes hard into world-building; and for my part I'd far rather the encounter guidelines concede than the worldbuilding guidelines, as one certainly has to in order for the other to work.

Even in such a campaign, you're still only talking about the mechanics of the game actually applying to an easily ignorable rounding error of the population. A tiny, tiny percentage. The rest of the world doesn't care or notice the existence of these PC's. Well, until they do something big enough to be noticed, I suppose, but, not that many campaigns feature PC's becoming gods.

Even though you have deadly encounters going on in 10 different locations, you still have the out 99.999% of the game world where mechanics have ZERO to do with anything.

No, the mechanics have everything to do with everything.

The mechanics have to be assumed to be consistent throughout the game world whether a PC is involved or not. A foot soldier fighting in a skirmish in Althasia uses the same game mechanics as a farmer shooting at a wolf in Cymrug or a PC Ranger swinging a sword at an Orc in the forests of Artemae. The ONLY difference is that the run of play at the table doesn't see or notice or probably care about what happens to the foot soldier or the farmer and thus those mechanics aren't rolled out or played out or anything else...but they are still assumed to have happened nonetheless, in a consistent manner with how they would have occurred had any PCs been involved.

Internal consistency. It's your friend. Rely on it.

Lanefan

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know if I agree with that need for consistency. To me, as a DM, I can simply decide the outcomes of any conflicts not involving the PCs. Very much along the lines of "if there's a chance of failure, roll the dice." To me, there's no chance for the townsfolk to fend off the orc horde. The outcome is a foregone conclusion.

By default, it does not follow the game rules. It is simply narrated.

I would also point to the design of NPC statblocks compared to PC design as an indication that the rules are different for PCs.

 

[Tony Vargas]

As you say, of course not. But by no means does that mean those things aren't happening in the game world; they're just not on-screen at the time.

Unless they're being tracked on the players' side of the screen, they're may or may not be happening - not until they or their consequences become evident.

I know there are those who disapprove because it can be used for 'illusionism,' but until the players learn of an event they were not previously aware of, the DM may not have decided not even thought about whether it had happened or how it turned out.

One must assume the game-world has differing weather conditions all over it at any given time, even though the only ones that get called out are those occurring where the PCs happen to be.

If the PCs are unaware of such conditions, and the DM spares them no thought, they are not, in any sense happening. It's an imagined world, it only exists while it's being imagined...

It's not like the old tree-falling-in-the-forest thing.

In any granular detail, no; but as with weather the baseline assumption has to be that if it's happening wherever the PCs are it's also happening wherever the PCs aren't, if the game world is to preserve any internal consistency.

Assumed something may be happening, sure, but the DM is free to fill in what later, so it hasn't really happened, at all.

Sticking with the weather, say the party has been adventuring on one side of the world, and in a lull, one of them teleports to the other side, and asks a local what the weather was like last Tuesday.

Now, at that point you're not just making up the weather records for that region, you're probably making up the local. You might give him a whole life with a bit of tragedy, or a nefarious purpose - or not even give him a name...

that's where the idea of having to have so many encounters affecting the PCs all the time crashes hard into world-building; and for my part I'd far rather the encounter guidelines concede than the worldbuilding guidelines, as one certainly has to in order for the other to work.

Are there really that many of that important (to the play experience) world-building guidelines to collide with? Rather, the mechanics can get in the way of your vision of the world/campaign/story, and, yeah, you can see to it they back down. So if it'd be just wrong for PCs to rest in Pandemonium, you don't let 'em. If the story just doesn't call for 5 filler combats ahead of a set-piece, you don't force them, and if that dramatically effs balance, you compensate - or you do force 'em, because you can (even if you resort to DM force, which, for the record, I would liken to a fish resorting to swimming). Either way (or some other) you deal with it, or with the consequences. Often, especially if you've been running for decades, you do so as a matter of course, all part of the art of DMing...

No, the mechanics have everything to do with everything.
The mechanics have to be assumed to be consistent throughout the game world whether a PC is involved or not.

Actually, in 5e, the basic resolution mechanic stars with 'player declares action' - no player, no declaration, not the same mechanics, anymore.

Internal consistency. It's your friend. Rely on it.

The only internal consistency in a D&D campaign is that not noticed as inconsistent by the players.

Trying to get there, for the whole world, by depending on the consistency inherent in adhering to the same mechanics at all times (DMing as Science) works, in theory (apropos, that) but is prohibitive. Using the mechanics of the game only for the game, itself, and overruling them when they aren't consistent with your vision of the world (DMing as Art), is theoretically going to be inconsistent, some of the time, but it's practicable.
JMHO

 

[Hussar]

Actually, it appears we largely agree: D&D doesn't support a robust set of world building mechanics; other systems do a better job of provide such mechanics; D&D requires worldbuilding, but it's an informal process.

What we appear to disagree on, though, is defending Hussar's claims that you [-]can't[/-] shouldn't do worldbuilding in D&D because the game mechanics don't tie into hard worldbuilding mechanics. His point is ridiculous, even if he occasionally says decent things like pointing out D&D has fewer worldbuilding mechanics than Traveller. That's been what I'm arguing against: that D&D doesn't require worldbuilding and that, therefore, you can't/shouldn't be concerned about it. I disagree strongly with both statements.

Sorry, no, never said you can't or even shouldn't do worldbuilding in D&D. Of course you can.

Thing is, the worldbuilding you do is largely independent of the mechanics.

Which has been my point all the way along. Just because the PC's meet 3 Deadly/Day encounters does not in any way shape or form mean that monsters only travel in Deadly groups. It only means that your PC's meet Deadly groups because, you, the DM, have decided on that pacing. It has ZERO impact on the rest of the world.

It's only when you try to force adventure building mechanics (which is precisely what the pacing, or XP/Day guidelines are) onto a larger world implication that you have problems. Once you realize that adventure building mechanics are entirely divorced from world building concerns, all your inconsistencies vanish.

IOW, just because your PC's meet two vampires, does not mean that vampires are common in the setting. It could very well be that they met the only two vampires in the entire setting. Unlikely, but, possible. Now, as I argued previously, you shouldn't be static with your encounter/day paradigm anyway. It's predictable and no fun. One day you might meet 3 deadlies and the next day you meet 7 Easies. Whatever. Mix it up.

But, at no point does that have any implications on the larger world. The fact that D&D game worlds have almost all been built first and then mechanics laid overtop pretty much shows the path here. Other than Eberron, none of the settings were built based on the mechanics. Because, quite frankly, the mechanics first model leads to very inconsistent settings.

The mechanics have to be assumed to be consistent throughout the game world whether a PC is involved or not. A foot soldier fighting in a skirmish in Althasia uses the same game mechanics as a farmer shooting at a wolf in Cymrug or a PC Ranger swinging a sword at an Orc in the forests of Artemae. The ONLY difference is that the run of play at the table doesn't see or notice or probably care about what happens to the foot soldier or the farmer and thus those mechanics aren't rolled out or played out or anything else...but they are still assumed to have happened nonetheless, in a consistent manner with how they would have occurred had any PCs been involved.

Why? Why are we assuming mechanics are used at all? The DM simply rules the results and moves on. There's no engagement with the mechanical side of the game whatsoever. If I want that farmer to get eaten by the wolf, or the farmer to have a nice new wolf pelt jacket, it's got nothing to do with mechanics.

There is zero assumption of mechanical resolution here. The mechanics apply to the PC's and the PC's ONLY.

 

[shoak1]

Sorry, no, never said you can't or even shouldn't do worldbuilding in D&D. Of course you can.

Thing is, the worldbuilding you do is largely independent of the mechanics.

Which has been my point all the way along. Just because the PC's meet 3 Deadly/Day encounters does not in any way shape or form mean that monsters only travel in Deadly groups. It only means that your PC's meet Deadly groups because, you, the DM, have decided on that pacing. It has ZERO impact on the rest of the world.

It's only when you try to force adventure building mechanics (which is precisely what the pacing, or XP/Day guidelines are) onto a larger world implication that you have problems. Once you realize that adventure building mechanics are entirely divorced from world building concerns, all your inconsistencies vanish.

IOW, just because your PC's meet two vampires, does not mean that vampires are common in the setting. It could very well be that they met the only two vampires in the entire setting. Unlikely, but, possible. Now, as I argued previously, you shouldn't be static with your encounter/day paradigm anyway. It's predictable and no fun. One day you might meet 3 deadlies and the next day you meet 7 Easies. Whatever. Mix it up.

But, at no point does that have any implications on the larger world. The fact that D&D game worlds have almost all been built first and then mechanics laid overtop pretty much shows the path here. Other than Eberron, none of the settings were built based on the mechanics. Because, quite frankly, the mechanics first model leads to very inconsistent settings.



Why? Why are we assuming mechanics are used at all? The DM simply rules the results and moves on. There's no engagement with the mechanical side of the game whatsoever. If I want that farmer to get eaten by the wolf, or the farmer to have a nice new wolf pelt jacket, it's got nothing to do with mechanics.

There is zero assumption of mechanical resolution here. The mechanics apply to the PC's and the PC's ONLY.

LOL I just reread the last dozen posts 3 times and I still have no idea what you guys are talking about

 

[Tobold]

Outside of what the players see and know, the world in an RPG doesn't actually exist. Everything that exists in an RPG world is there for the benefit of the players, having been created by the DM with the effect on the players in mind. It follows rules of narrative, not rules of logic.

 

[clearstream]

Because virtually all game worlds are inherently illogical? Because there are pretty much no D&D game worlds that hold up under any serious degree of scrutiny. Certainly no published ones. You can poke GIANT holes in the logic of pretty much any game world with little effort.

Traveller worlds are just as faulty. Let's face it, roleplaying games aren't first port of call for simulating reality.

Nope. There are no deadly encounters wherever they don't go because wherever they don't go doesn't actually matter. No one actually uses their random encounter tables for areas where the PC's aren't. Do you actually roll random encounters for EVERY single NPC EVERY single day? No, of course not. So, any NPC's and any areas that aren't being engaged by the PC's are not actually covered by the mechanics in any way, shape or form.

But I do think about what the encounter tables imply for settlements, traders, etc. Even if PCs don't go to a settlement, it will conform to the game rules. There very well could be one or more low level clerics. There almost certainly won't be a laser pistol toting shark man. Those clerics will be able to cast Detect Poison and Disease and Purify Food and Drink as rituals, so will be welcome members of the settlement. Any dragonborn living in those settlements will have a base speed of 30'.

Of course they are. There's no avoiding that. Again, are you running thousands of NPC's every single day to determine what happens in your game world outside of where the PC's are? No, of course not. So, the mechanics only apply where the PC's are and what they are doing.

For me the world is a living place. For example, after Demogorgon smashes Sloobidop in the Underdark, I tracked with arrows on the map some reasonable migration paths for the Kuo Toa. That certainly took into consideration hundreds of NPCs, using Underdark movement rates defined by D&D rules.

Even in such a campaign, you're still only talking about the mechanics of the game actually applying to an easily ignorable rounding error of the population. A tiny, tiny percentage. The rest of the world doesn't care or notice the existence of these PC's. Well, until they do something big enough to be noticed, I suppose, but, not that many campaigns feature PC's becoming gods.

Even though you have deadly encounters going on in 10 different locations, you still have the out 99.999% of the game world where mechanics have ZERO to do with anything.

Your point seems to be that wherever we are not looking, the rules cease to apply. That's really not true for me. We might not be worrying about how the rules apply right there at this exact moment, but if we turned out attention to it then sure enough, the rules are there. The reason I find this a strange criticism is that it applies to Traveller just as much as D&D. Those worlds we haven't mapped yet? What's going on there? Well, a UPP will exist in potential for them just as much as one exists in actuality for worlds we've already surveyed.