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

[Ovinomancer]

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.

Ha! I get internet prognostication points for predicting this response and you lose points for not reading to the end.

[emoji38]

 

[Tony Vargas]

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?

For that matter, who says PCs find adventure when they go looking for it? As soon as six Zeroes walk into a tavern, boom, there's an adventure in the offing, and there off to become Heroes or corpses in short order.
But not if, by default, they're like everyone else. When Joe Peasant walks into a bar, there's some drinking, he pays his copper, and he sleeps it off, 9999 times out of 10000. How'd that work out for a D&D game? Not very well.

For that matter, if the PCs aren't special, how is it that they're all together? They might've been born in different periods of history or on the other side of the world. Do they roll to survive childhood maladies?

There's a great deal of assumed specialness in even the most pointedly "you're not special" D&D campaign. Where you draw the line is arbitrary, might as well draw it somewhere that facilitates telling a genre story /about/ the PCs - or at least a bit of fun.

 

[Imaro]

Ha! I get internet prognostication points for predicting this response and you lose points for not reading to the end.

[emoji38]

Uhm...ok, so you're basically asking me to create an entire campaign world on the fly in a forum post... uh ok, yeah not going to happen. But you win... I guess.

 

[Caliban]

Uhm...ok, so you're basically asking me to create an entire campaign world on the fly in a forum post... uh ok, yeah not going to happen. But you win... I guess.

I think the Sheep Wizard is referring to the last few sentences of his post:

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.

I haven't really been following this thread, so this comment may not be relevant to the discussion (but I've never let that stop me before): If the PC's are of a sufficient level that Red Dragons, or a Tarrasque, or a pack of Rabid Hydra's, or the Hill Giant Mercenary Regiment, etc are an appropriate encounter for them...then even though the dice may serve them up as a "random encounter", narrative wise I'd make them anything but random in the context of the story - someone sent them, something related to the PC's current adventure caused them to be targeting the PC's specifically, or something about the PC's is causing them to be summoned/planeshifted into their vicinity etc.

Bizarre monster encounters happen to PC's, but that doesn't mean things can't be adjusted so that they make sense in context. (Either by adjusting the narrative a bit, or adjusting the details of the "random" encounter to match the current narrative or environment.)

 

[Lanefan]

But is that really your default? Do you ever actually use something like a random encounter table for anyone other than the PCs?

No, but that doesn't by any means indicate that those random encounters never occur in the game world. They still happen, they just don't have any impact on the characters whose lives we're playing out and thus can be - for play purposes - ignored.

Same rationale applies to the real world - as I walk down a street on the far western edge of Canada a thunderstorm in Birmingham England* doesn't affect me at all. Doesn't mean the thunderstorm doesn't exist, and anyone who ventures outside in Birmingham is still going to get soaking wet...but I'm not there and nor do I know anyone who is, so my not knowing about it is irrelevant.

* - for discussion purposes only. I've no idea what the actual weather is in the UK right now.

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

And this is what I'm trying to focus on: that in the game world the PCs are - or certainly started out as - much the same as everyone else; and real-world us putting them in the spotlight doesn't change that.

....but to us, playing a game? Yeah, they're the focus.

In the obvious meta-game point of view of the real-world people sitting at the table, yes. That's a given.

It's also irrelevant to what's being discussed.

We're talking about the game world, and how the mechanics of the game (specifically resting, in this case) might force how that game world is built, and how it internally functions when the PCs - and thus the spotlight - aren't around. In theory, when PCs are out interacting with the game-world (as opposed to dungeon-crawling or other serious adventuring activity) what happens on camera should largely mirror what happens off camera. For example, if they meet loads of wandering monsters while travelling through a remote forest (assuming they're not carrying a device of monster attraction) that somewhat sets a standard for what to expect in any other remote forests anywhere else...which means my worldbuilding has just been affected.

It also means that if the PC party travels the road from Althasia to Corwallen and gets attacked by 37 hungry monsters and a flock of insane camels it's beyond simple inconsistency if nobody else had any trouble on that road before or since; or that the dangers only happen to exist on this particular road at this particular time. Which kinda leads back to...

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).

I never said anything about people believing the road to Mt. McGuffin was safe, which perhaps wasn't clear. I was thinking of a wilderness trek where people don't often go, where there's enough danger to cause maybe an encounter a day on average; and saying how this mangles up the resting rules. It's not a Mundane Day, as there's danger; but it's not really an Adventuring Day either as there's not enough going on. More like an Adventuring Week, but the rest rules are based on a day; and if you change them to base on a week then dungeon-crawling gets messed up.

Lan-"speaking of hungry monsters, what is there to eat around here?"-efan

 

[Imaro]

I think the Sheep Wizard is referring to the last few sentences of his post:

Yeah I get it but we were talking about an entire continent... so even if I replace the encounters with ones I want to use I then need to detail said continent to the point that the Sheep Wizard finds acceptable... which of course through the art of nitpicking, combined with a medium where i am being rushed in a forum thread... never comes about. In other words either way it's a trap question because the scope is too large and the time too limited.

 

[Lanefan]

For that matter, who says PCs find adventure when they go looking for it? As soon as six Zeroes walk into a tavern, boom, there's an adventure in the offing, and there off to become Heroes or corpses in short order.
But not if, by default, they're like everyone else. When Joe Peasant walks into a bar, there's some drinking, he pays his copper, and he sleeps it off, 9999 times out of 10000. How'd that work out for a D&D game? Not very well.

For that matter, if the PCs aren't special, how is it that they're all together?

I won't argue there's v-tude problems with the "you all meet in a tavern somewhere" approach to party-starting.

The last two times I've started a campaign I've had the PCs in effect choose to get involved: one was a recruitment drive by a famous adventuring company; the other was a PC Bard making his way up-country bragging about all the hypothetical adventures he was going to get into and scooping up somewhat-gullible volunteers along the way.

There's a great deal of assumed specialness in even the most pointedly "you're not special" D&D campaign. Where you draw the line is arbitrary, might as well draw it somewhere that facilitates telling a genre story /about/ the PCs - or at least a bit of fun.

I usually try to draw it at a place where the party's story can be told, and that fun will be had along the way.

Lanefan

 

[Imaro]

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.

Thank you... it seems like a simple concept and yet time after time we see these exaggerated and silly examples of ... "PROOF" as to why worldbuilding must be impacted that make no sense. It's like taking the worst example of TTRPG games and claiming it's proof all DM'd games are inherently bad and computer games are superior.

 

[Imaro]

I think the Sheep Wizard is referring to the last few sentences of his post:



I haven't really been following this thread, so this comment may not be relevant to the discussion (but I've never let that stop me before): If the PC's are of a sufficient level that Red Dragons, or a Tarrasque, or a pack of Rabid Hydra's, or the Hill Giant Mercenary Regiment, etc are an appropriate encounter for them...then even though the dice may serve them up as a "random encounter", narrative wise I'd make them anything but random in the context of the story - someone sent them, something related to the PC's current adventure caused them to be targeting the PC's specifically, or something about the PC's is causing them to be summoned/planeshifted into their vicinity etc.

Bizarre monster encounters happen to PC's, but that doesn't mean things can't be adjusted so that they make sense in context. (Either by adjusting the narrative a bit, or adjusting the details of the "random" encounter to match the current narrative or environment.)

The weird thing is while we are focusing on random encounters... when addressing the point, the 2-3 deadly balancing quota, they don't actually have to be all random to make it work. Nothing says they can't can be tailored, random or a mix of both.

 

[clearstream]

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....

So I think that explains our differences fairly well, at least in part. For me, encounter tables are a statement about the game world. If my encounter tables have dragons, that is because it is a feature of the game world that in that area there are dragons. Sages have heard about them and dutifully marked their maps "Here be dragons." A hapless shepherd wandering those mountain slopes ought to be careful of pursuing a stray lamb too far up into the crags. Encounters represent - in abstract - something true about the world. If there are trolls in the swamp, anyone travelling there risks encountering them - not just PCs. Stories of close-shaves and luckless adventurers fill the nearby (but not too nearby) taverns.

I encourage my players to think about what they should do, and what others might do around them, from the point of view of meaningful fears and desires in a living world. The burden this places upon me as a DM is to be willing to take the campaign in whatever direction the PCs choose to go. I get excited by surprises and enjoy the challenge! For me, I'm an explorer or maybe a narrator of that world, but not its inventor. From numerous seeds the world grows itself. To my mind it can't do that as well if it's not conceived as a real place. If the world is a bubble around the PCs, then I'd be rushing to continuously invent it around them and no doubt keep running into crossed-wires and unravelling threads. Whereas I value that the broad strokes are there, represented in game artifacts such as encounter tables (hopefully with consistency!) - and thus inspiration abounds.

Taking it back to encounters. Because the table represents a truth about the world, it inspires endless story.