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

[Imaro]

The latter, where 'PC' status has no meaning, is not to me an extreme at all. In fact, it's my default - inhabitants of the game world don't go around with little 'PC' or 'NPC' stickers on their foreheads and nor should they. The PCs, if they're going to stand out at all, do so because of their deeds (for better or worse), not their special-snowflakiness. There's a mechanical difference between special characters and commoners, but by no means are all special characters PCs: nobility, NPC adventurers, just about anyone with class levels - all these count as specials, along with the PCs.

The way I see it, the random blacksmith you meet in town today could end up being your PC next year when you need a replacement and you roll 'blacksmith' as her secondary skill.

Lan-"has anyone ever had the cojones to name their character 'Snowflake'?"-efan

I would assume in this is type of play... well you wouldn't be worried about balancing encounters around PC level... would you? Doesn't that make them "special snowflakes"? If not well then this all becomes moot for a game like yours.

EDIT: To further expound... I have run sandboxes where the PC's aren't special but then I designed the world and they had at it... I didn't concern myself with balancing their encounters around the expected encounter assumptions at their level... the whole point would be that they explore as they want to.

 

[Lanefan]

I guess my counter question to you is why do you use the exact same chances to determine everyone encountering such things? Is Nix the NPC noble traversing the exact same path the adventurers take? Is he taking the same precautions? Is he as enticing a target? Is he as infamous or known as the PC's... In other words I don't do it that way because I don't see Nix as having the same chance of an encounter as the PC's. I'll also readily admit I tend to go with the narrative clause that most sword and sorcery fiction, high fantasy fiction, and even D&D fiction use in that adventurers are just more likely to encounter these things than those minding their business and looking to avoid desolate ruins, deep places in the wild, abandoned temples to old gods and so on.

It's a well-known trope within fantasy fiction and D&D, where something's been preying on travellers on a particular stretch of road and the heroes or PCs either blunder into the situation or are specifically asked to do something about it. In this case it's the same road for everyone, with the same chances of getting raided; the only difference is that the heroes/PCs will (usually) face the trouble head-on rather than surrendering, fleeing or dying.

In more direct answer to your question: the intelligence and-or motives of the Threat (dragon, ogre, bandits, whatever) will be what determines whether Nix the Noble or anyone else other than the PCs gets attacked:

If the Threat is specifically looking for one or more of the PCs for some reason and knows its target, chances are everything else is mostly safe until the PCs come along.
If the Threat is simply hungry or greedy and looking at the road as a nice self-replenishing feed trough or bank machine then anything incapable of putting up a staunch resistance is at risk.
It's also possible that the Threat has a specific target in mind that's not a PC - for example, good ol' Nix - but attacks the PCs and others by mistake.

It's the second type of Threat - the one with no specific reason to be there other than it can be - that impacts general worldbuilding when it occurs often enough to poke the elephant; as its frequency of occurrence here implies a similar frequency of occurrence anywhere else similar conditions exist.

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

The latter, where 'PC' status has no meaning, is not to me an extreme at all. In fact, it's my default

Fine. You're an extremist. ;P

Seriously, though, that does put you at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the PoV on the other extreme - and everything in-between.

Lan-"has anyone ever had the cojones to name their character 'Snowflake'?"-efan

I think I have a vague memory of one. She was a PC in a Champions! game, had ice powers. Don't remember who played her, though...

 

[Lanefan]

I would assume in this is type of play... well you wouldn't be worried about balancing encounters around PC level... would you?

Not so much. It's up to them to gather what information they can and then assess the threat - if 100 of the King's elite soldiers (each one more competent than any of the PCs) went up that road last month and only 17 returned, that's a pretty good clue to not go there.

If not well then this all becomes moot for a game like yours.

Actually, not quite. The discussion is still relevant, as to how people see the PCs fitting in to the game world and how (or even if) the game world is built around them.

EDIT: To further expound... I have run sandboxes where the PC's aren't special but then I designed the world and they had at it... I didn't concern myself with balancing their encounters around the expected encounter assumptions at their level... the whole point would be that they explore as they want to.

Exactly. And there's relatively safe areas, relatively dangerous areas, and don't bloody go there unless you want to die areas; and these are more or less known (or soon made known) to most adventuring types as well as anyone else who does a lot of off-track travelling.

Even when the PCs go looking for an adventure, one of the considerations in their minds (and that they make inquiries about) particularly at lower levels is whether they think they can handle it.

Lanefan

 

[Ovinomancer]

I am saying that if I created the above encounter table for my game it would serve two purposes listed below, though not necessarily presented in order of importance...

1. To provide a way to either measure or enforce the threat level/XP of the adventuring day for my PC's

2. To give/provide the chance that the PC's encounter a particular thing within the area.

What said chart doesn't do is tell me what the chances are for every NPC to encounter X... or how often does X encounter Y (where Y is a different monster) or how prevalent X is in a particular section of my world... all it tells me is what the PC's chances of encountering them are....


I guess my counter question to you is why do you use the exact same chances to determine everyone encountering such things? Is Nix the NPC noble traversing the exact same path the adventurers take? Is he taking the same precautions? Is he as enticing a target? Is he as infamous or known as the PC's... In other words I don't do it that way because I don't see Nix as having the same chance of an encounter as the PC's. I'll also readily admit I tend to go with the narrative clause that most sword and sorcery fiction, high fantasy fiction, and even D&D fiction use in that adventurers are just more likely to encounter these things than those minding their business and looking to avoid desolate ruins, deep places in the wild, abandoned temples to old gods and so on.

Okay, let's accept ad agumentum that only PCs get random encounters. So, using vonklaude's encounter charts, the PCs travelling the Nevertrouble Way encounter an angry ancient red dragon and have an encounter. They then ask, "do we know where this dragon's lair is? We want to loot it!" Do you now just arbitrarily place it nearby and neglect to explain how there's a lairing ancient red dragon just along the Nevertrouble Way? Or do you punt it, and say they can't find it, and they shrug and move on and then, the next day, have an encounter with 2 angry ancient red dragons and now start asking why there are all of these angry ancient red dragons about but no one else ever sees one or has any trouble with it. Do none of the towns along the Nevertrouble Way start to panic at the stories of the recent attacks on travelers (the PCs) along the Way by fearsome monstrous dragons? Does the party begin to get a reputation of being trouble magnets of the worst kind and if they just stay away the towns won't be bothers? (That... isn't a half-bad short campaign idea, honestly.)

Or do none of these things every come up in your games? Points off for complaining about the encounter being angry red dragons -- supply whatever appropriately dangerous encounter of whatever mix of foes with whatever mix of numbers you want, the points remain.

 

[OB1]

All good, except that once again it runs aground on "travel" adventures; the sort of adventure where the PCs think they're going to Mt. McGuffin to do some Heroic Deeds but the actual adventure this time is in fact the journey to get there. (Mt. McGuffin itself is the second module in the series...)

In a travel adventure, Mundane Days and Adventuring Days cross paths because what the PCs are travelling through is in theory the regular steady (mundane) state of the perhaps non-civilized bits of the world and yet they're finding danger (adventuring) at every turn...which sets a standard for other similar regions and thus affects worldbuilding.

I'm not following. If people in the world believe that the road to Mt. McGuffin is a safe road, but the PCs find it to be otherwise, that's a change in the world that might lead the players to investigate why there are suddenly dangerous monsters on a previously safe road. Not sure why that necessarily has an effect on other regions (though it could).

When the DM makes the decision to roll for random encounters, that means that there is uncertainty about the threat level of that particular region. If there is not, she shouldn't be rolling dice and either deciding that the trip is uneventful and thus a MD or has set encounters along the way and thus an AD. Whatever choice the DM makes has implications for world building, but it's always the DMs choice for how to build the world.

 

[Imaro]

Okay, let's accept ad agumentum that only PCs get random encounters. So, using vonklaude's encounter charts, the PCs travelling the Nevertrouble Way encounter an angry ancient red dragon and have an encounter. They then ask, "do we know where this dragon's lair is? We want to loot it!" Do you now just arbitrarily place it nearby and neglect to explain how there's a lairing ancient red dragon just along the Nevertrouble Way? Or do you punt it, and say they can't find it, and they shrug and move on and then, the next day, have an encounter with 2 angry ancient red dragons and now start asking why there are all of these angry ancient red dragons about but no one else ever sees one or has any trouble with it. Do none of the towns along the Nevertrouble Way start to panic at the stories of the recent attacks on travelers (the PCs) along the Way by fearsome monstrous dragons? Does the party begin to get a reputation of being trouble magnets of the worst kind and if they just stay away the towns won't be bothers? (That... isn't a half-bad short campaign idea, honestly.)

Or do none of these things every come up in your games? Points off for complaining about the encounter being angry red dragons -- supply whatever appropriately dangerous encounter of whatever mix of foes with whatever mix of numbers you want, the points remain.

Dude... seriously?? I now have to explain how I would fit a table of only red dragon encounters that I didn't choose for my table into my game. I mean it's great as a simplified example around what we were discussing... but I wouldn't create an encounter table of only red dragons across the entire continent. It's absurd.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Whether you have 20 1/8th cultists, or 8 1/2 cultists, those farmers being sacrificed aren't going to be able to resist. In a deadly world like that, farming dies unless moved withing city walls or a standing army patrols constantly. Both of those constitute world building. The framework of the world shifts according to the deadliness of the encounter tables.

First, most people in a hamlet aren't fighting types, so making it so that an entire hamlet comes out to fight would be a feat of world building. Second, they aren't going to be all standing in a group 24/7, so they will be picked off and whittled down by raids unless they world build defenses that hamlets typically don't have.

What if the cultists' goal was to simply infiltrate the community and then sacrifice very few townsfolk...let's say one per season. So they aren't just wandering around openly preying on the townsfolk and as such, are not really a danger in the sense of encounter tables and the like. Not to the townsfolk, anyway.

But if adventurers show up in town and start snooping around....that's something else. Then they very well may try to thwart the PCs or even to kill them outright.

So the NPC townsfolk are treated differently than the PC adventurers from a mechanical standpoint. Though I would argue that the mechanics are based on the story decisions of the DM.

But this would be an example where the encounters of the PCs don't match with the typical encounters for the area.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The latter, where 'PC' status has no meaning, is not to me an extreme at all. In fact, it's my default - inhabitants of the game world don't go around with little 'PC' or 'NPC' stickers on their foreheads and nor should they. The PCs, if they're going to stand out at all, do so because of their deeds (for better or worse), not their special-snowflakiness. There's a mechanical difference between special characters and commoners, but by no means are all special characters PCs: nobility, NPC adventurers, just about anyone with class levels - all these count as specials, along with the PCs.

The way I see it, the random blacksmith you meet in town today could end up being your PC next year when you need a replacement and you roll 'blacksmith' as her secondary skill.

Lan-"has anyone ever had the cojones to name their character 'Snowflake'?"-efan

But is that really your default? Do you ever actually use something like a random encounter table for anyone other than the PCs? And on the off chance there is some reason to do so, isn't it more an exception than the norm?

I think applying the pejorative "special snowflakes" to the PCs doesn't really help. I mean, they're the stars of the show. They absolutely are more important than probably 99.9% of NPCs. Sure, if you run a campaign where there is more than one group of PCs, then I can understand the need to treat them all equally, and not to favor one group over another or whatever....but I still don't see how we can ignore the inherent specialness of the PCs. That specialness need not translate to the fiction of the world....to them and everyone around them, they may be the same as anyone else....but to us, playing a game? Yeah, they're the focus.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Okay, let's accept ad agumentum that only PCs get random encounters. So, using vonklaude's encounter charts, the PCs travelling the Nevertrouble Way encounter an angry ancient red dragon and have an encounter. They then ask, "do we know where this dragon's lair is? We want to loot it!" Do you now just arbitrarily place it nearby and neglect to explain how there's a lairing ancient red dragon just along the Nevertrouble Way? Or do you punt it, and say they can't find it, and they shrug and move on and then, the next day, have an encounter with 2 angry ancient red dragons and now start asking why there are all of these angry ancient red dragons about but no one else ever sees one or has any trouble with it. Do none of the towns along the Nevertrouble Way start to panic at the stories of the recent attacks on travelers (the PCs) along the Way by fearsome monstrous dragons? Does the party begin to get a reputation of being trouble magnets of the worst kind and if they just stay away the towns won't be bothers? (That... isn't a half-bad short campaign idea, honestly.)

Or do none of these things every come up in your games? Points off for complaining about the encounter being angry red dragons -- supply whatever appropriately dangerous encounter of whatever mix of foes with whatever mix of numbers you want, the points remain.

The problem with this is that you'd only use such encounter tables if you in fact wanted a world that was being ravaged by ancient red dragons. So this is more an example of worldbuilding shaping mechanics than the other way around. You have an idea for the world, you create a table that supports the idea.

I think this is a good example of why many of us are not agreeing about the impact on worldbuilding....because the encounter tables should reflect what you want the world to seem like to the PCs. You don't pick an encounter table and then shape the world around that.