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

[Tony Vargas]

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

We're having a blue-plate special on Adventurers - they're the guys in the back talking the the 'mysterious stranger'-shaped lure. Yeah, the ones in blue plate-mail. Help yourself. What? Nah, it's not real plate mail, it's the same coating we put on jordan almonds, I told 'em it was 'mithril.'

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.

They really /shouldn't/ be literally random, or you might not get the right number of right-difficulty encounters to satisfy the Elephant.

 

[Caliban]

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.

In my current campaign I don't really use random encounters. At least not rolled on a table/chart. I just check the environment and then before the game setup 2-3 encounters of monsters that I find interesting and fit the story or environment. Then I toss them in whenever I feel like it. Plot point encounters are generally NPC's with levels or class abilities and feats added to the MM stat block.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Absolutely. Until...

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.

... the adventures you run or want to run - particularly wilderness or travel adventures - clash with the world you're trying to build.

Wilderness ones are the biggest headache. During worldbuilding you might have decided that as the general idea the average forest will have danger level x, where x is low enough not to pose a huge threat to nearby habitations most of the time; and that such forests tend to be what is found near and among most civilized or inhabited areas. Then you go to run the adventure and find it has far more wandering or random encounters than you ever dreamed of for an average forest, meaning either you have to pare back the number of encounters (both reducing the danger of the module and screwing up the resting rules) or move the adventure to somewhere way more remote where that kind of danger level makes sense (a bloody nuisance, much of the time), or - after running a few of these - change your view of what makes an average forest tick...and bang goes your worldbuilding.

In other words, yes I want the encounter tables to reflect what I want the world to seem like to the PCs...and by extension to the rest of the world's inhabitants as well. I also want the tables to, for various wilderness or travel scenarios, present enough danger and-or encounters to make resting and resource management relevant in those situations. These are mutually incompatible goals based on the current game mechanics, and to line them up means either the mechanics or the world has to change.

Lanefan

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

Well, yes, but angry ancient red dragons where the example given that the discussion was revolving around in that bit, so I carried on with it. It's a clearly extreme example, and so rather good at exploring things bigly, rather than diving down into minutia of whether or not it's 20 CR 1/8 things or 8 CR 1/2 things or whatever -- it was a big stick to get at big ideas. And, clearly I thought so, as I directly called it out.

 

[Imaro]

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.

Okay I'm with you so far...for me encounter tables CAN be a statement about the world but they don't necessarily translate on a one for one basis. Because you encountered a dragon in the hills... there must be dragons in the hills... perhaps the dragon is migrating or was just gated in by a mad wizard and just an anomaly... perhaps not. The point is I don't necessarily tie encounter building for the PC's to worldbuilding. What if the PC's have someone or something following them into the Dragon hills that wasn't there before? How do I account for that with an encounter table that deals with what is in the area form a worldbuilding perspective? It wasn't there when the world was built and it doesn't relate to what is found in that part of the world... and yet it can be an encounter for the PC's.

It's not as black and white as I believe you and some others are making it... there is a middleground but n order to be there one has to accept that the guidelines for building encounters isn't in and of itself necessarily a tool for extrapolating the world.

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.

I don't think encouraging ones players to think about what they should do and what others might do around themis particularly unique to one approach or the other... I also don't think one method precludes a "living" world. In fact I'm not so much getting if this is just you talking about your likes or if there is a differentiation in our styles being drawn here... because I'm not seeing anything that is precluded by not using encounter tables as a worldbuilding tool. I never claimed anything about there being a bubble around the PC's or even that I don't build a world... and I'm not sure acknowledging that I am in fact using a certain tool for the PC's (as opposed to NPC's or to extrapolate the details of my world)... such as the guidelines for encounter building stops me from having a consistent world. I've yet to see anything posted that comes close to proving that is the case. I get preferences and you may not like how I build my world but claiming it must be a bubble or must lack consistency has no basis.

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

I would think that since the encounter tables must extrapolate into the world at large... it would by necessity limit the stories, which of course isn't necessarily a bad thing if you value consistency...

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

Do you know how I know you don't actually read my posts...?

I asked no such thing, in fact, I was very specific about the party traveling the Nevertrouble Way and the immediate settlements thereabouts. That's, like, a few miles, maybe a dozen, not an entire campaign world.

But, sure, fine, whatevs. Let's settle it into a single town, outside of which is a dungeon, and the party travels from town to dungeon a day away for Adventure!(tm). The players have (planned) or (random) encounters, as you wish, with creatures you wish, provided the encounters are deadly and come in 3's. Do you have what they encounter ever be an issue for the town, or is it just something that happens to the PCs and no one every notices how increasingly dangerous the area around the town becomes as the adventurers have Adventure!(tm).

If anything is bothersome or too restrictive a choice above, or if the town is too big or too small, or if the dungeon is too far away or too close, or if the monsters are too many or too few or just not the right [-]Scotsmen[/-] monsters, feel free to make adjustments.

 

[OB1]

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

Oh, got it and agreed. The current rules do not make it easy to vary pacing in a meaningful way, which I mentioned in that post is what the "elephant" is really about and certainly has an effect on world and adventure building. So you have to accept that your wilderness trek won't be very dangerous to the PCs, or you have to decide to fill it with monsters.

That being said, I would say that character level would have far higher implications for the challenge of random encounters and related world building than the rest system.

 

[Caliban]

Do you know how I know you don't actually read my posts...?

I asked no such thing, in fact, I was very specific about the party traveling the Nevertrouble Way and the immediate settlements thereabouts. That's, like, a few miles, maybe a dozen, not an entire campaign world.

But, sure, fine, whatevs. Let's settle it into a single town, outside of which is a dungeon, and the party travels from town to dungeon a day away for Adventure!(tm). The players have (planned) or (random) encounters, as you wish, with creatures you wish, provided the encounters are deadly and come in 3's. Do you have what they encounter ever be an issue for the town, or is it just something that happens to the PCs and no one every notices how increasingly dangerous the area around the town becomes as the adventurers have Adventure!(tm).

If anything is bothersome or too restrictive a choice above, or if the town is too big or too small, or if the dungeon is too far away or too close, or if the monsters are too many or too few or just not the right [-]Scotsmen[/-] monsters, feel free to make adjustments.

Oh yeah, once the PC's hit lvl 15 or so they are a traveling holocaust. Bizarrely powerful creatures are just attracted to them, and if they avoid the encounter or don't finish all of them off...well whole towns have been wiped off the map after the group travels past, even if they never enter it.

By lvl 18 whole towns are depopulating overnight as the citizens flee ahead of the PC's, except for convicted criminals forced to stay behind and sell them ale and iron rations.

How else do you play D&D?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Do you know how I know you don't actually read my posts...?

He doesn't agree with you?

 

[Tony Vargas]

That being said, I would say that character level would have far higher implications for the challenge of random encounters and related world building than the rest system.

Unless you lost me, BA reduces the implications to the world of challenging high-level characters, no? You don't need to upgrade from Orcs to Drow to Swordwings* as you go, just more orcs do the trick.










* don't ask.