D&D General No Fixed Location -- dynamically rearranging items, monsters, and other game elements in the interests of storytelling

[lordabdul]

I'll leave you to re-read Monayrius' and Lanefan's posts as they speak for themselves.

What I understood from their posts is that they don't want the GM to rob them of their agency (which I totally agree is an important thing). If there's a choice between going left or going right, it shouldn't lead to the same thing: the players' choice should matter. But this has nothing to do with players who want the GM to run things "by the book", because, first, the book could be written in a railroady way, so in that case changing things is fixing things, and second there might not even be a book. A GM could have improvised the whole left and right paths in the first place, with 2 different things at the end, because she thought there hadn't been a meaningful thing happening in a while. GM improvisation is orthogonal to preservation of player agency.

 

[iserith]

What does "sufficiently prepared" mean in this context? In my example I was assuming it was fully prepared, but the party elected to travel there other that at the beginning of a session.

I don't see why it matters to pacing that they travel anywhere they want whenever they want in a location-based game. That's just part of the game. As long as Point A, Point B, and all points in between are rife with opportunity to adventure, then it's all good, right?

An occasional cliffhanger can work, but that will throw off pacing for the next session, so you're just kicking the can down the road. Also, anything more than an occasional cliffhanger makes it problematic to run an episodic campaign (something that location-based games can otherwise excel at).

You have some work to do to prove that the pacing is thrown off in the subsequent session by starting with action.

As an aside, this is just my own preferences/biases showing, but I'm hard-pressed to imagine a random encounter ever being "compelling". By virtue of the fact that it was random I already know that these are opponents who either didn't exist until the dice were rolled, or would have been somewhere else had the dice come up showing another number. I also know that if the DM isn't allowed to change unseen setting elements to weave in the random encounter, the encounter can't matter other than as a threat of death or lost resources. If a DM ended a session with a cliffhanger made from a random encounter I would not be particularly looking forward to the chore of fighting it the next week. But that's just me--my strong dislike of random encounters is very idiosyncratic.

Random encounters create urgency, establish atmosphere, drain character resources, provide benefits (because not everything is a fight), add interest, and reinforce campaign themes. They also make Activities While Traveling more relevant as some useful activities are trade-offs against keeping watch for danger.

You don't have to like them or use them, but they do serve a purpose in a location-based game. I strongly recommend them in that context, especially since players can spend the whole night wandering around encountering stuff if that's what they want to do. In a plot-based game, I would recommend it less except as a means to drain resources ahead of the planned villain fight or whatever. There are never any random encounters in my current plot-based Eberron game, for example.

I am somewhat surprised, though, that those who hate the idea of (e.g.) the DM adding/moving/removing an extra slime from a dungeon (for any reason) are totally fine with letting the dice add an extra slime in the form of a random encounter. But that's probably because they're looking at it through an "authenticity of the challenge" lens whereas I'm looking at it from the point of view of verisimilitude.

It's probably because it's part of their understanding of the environment. Every 10 minutes in a dungeon (or whatever), a wandering monster may come around. Each day and night in overland travel, a random encounter may occur, for another example. You can plan for it and make informed decisions. The DM isn't just doing it during play for no established reason.

 

[Lanefan]

I wonder if people's head would explode if they realized that an adventure/module is occasionally written from the start explicitly with "dynamic" content: "the key will be in the second closet the PCs inspect in this room", "if they fail to get the information from the blacksmith, the GM can introduce a beggar outside his shop, who will have overheard what the guards said", etc.

Yeah, I've seen that sort of thing in a few published modules.

For something specifically intended as a tournament dungeon, this is cool. Otherwise, not a fan.

 

[iserith]

What I understood from their posts is that they don't want the GM to rob them of their agency (which I totally agree is an important thing). If there's a choice between going left or going right, it shouldn't lead to the same thing: the players' choice should matter. But this has nothing to do with players who want the GM to run things "by the book", because, first, the book could be written in a railroady way, so in that case changing things is fixing things, and second there might not even be a book. A GM could have improvised the whole left and right paths in the first place, with 2 different things at the end, because she thought there hadn't been a meaningful thing happening in a while. GM improvisation is orthogonal to preservation of player agency.

You should read Monayrius' posts in particular to learn more about this.

 

[Xetheral]

I don't see why it matters to pacing that they travel anywhere they want whenever they want in a location-based game. That's just part of the game. As long as Point A, Point B, and all points in between are rife with opportunity to adventure, then it's all good, right?

You have some work to do to prove that the pacing is thrown off in the subsequent session by starting with action.

If each location is designed to take one session to complete (as is common in episodic games where the party returns to a neutral/safe point at the end of every session), then an inability to start exploring a given location near the start of a session will prevent completing the location before time runs out. There's nothing wrong with starting with action, but if finishing last week's action delays the start of this week's location, the pacing of the location and the pacing of the session won't align.

This is assuming that locations are designed to take one session (or, perhaps, an integer number of sessions) apiece as that's really the only session pacing tool available if the DM can't alter the content on the fly. Of course, this example is only relevant to location-based games that care about session pacing, and I'm sure plenty don't.

 

[iserith]

If each location is designed to take one session to complete (as is common in episodic games where the party returns to a neutral/safe point at the end of every session), then an inability to start exploring a given location near the start of a session will prevent completing the location before time runs out. There's nothing wrong with starting with action, but if finishing last week's action delays the start of this week's location, the pacing of the location and the pacing of the session won't align.

This is assuming that locations are designed to take one session (or, perhaps, an integer number of sessions) apiece as that's really the only session pacing tool available if the DM can't alter the content on the fly. Of course, this example is only relevant to location-based games that care about session pacing, and I'm sure plenty don't.

Why are we assuming an episodic game or that the party returns to a safe point at the end of each session? That's not a given. And even if we do assume that, why are we further assuming that the adventure location can be "completed" in that session? Lots to unwind here about these assumptions.

Do you generally run plot-based games? I'm sensing some disconnect here.

 

[Lanefan]

Why are we assuming an episodic game or that the party returns to a safe point at the end of each session?

That's kind of what Gygax had in his games as shown by some things in his DMG and PH.

That's not a given. And even if we do assume that, why are we further assuming that the adventure location can be "completed" in that session? Lots to unwind here about these assumptions.

For us, the sessions ends when it ends, preferably but not always at a logical break point e.g. they sack out for the night or end on a cliffhanger having just rolled for surprise; but I'm not sure I've run a fully-played-out campaign adventure* in a single session in my life. They tend to run anywhere from 7-12 sessions each on average, with occasional outliers getting well up into the 20s or down as low as 3 or 4.

* - as opposed to what I call "mini-dungeons" where we're mostly trying to catch up a single out-of-date PC via some very stripped-down rolling to see how it did in whatever adventures it went on while away form the main group.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why are we assuming an episodic game or that the party returns to a safe point at the end of each session? That's not a given. And even if we do assume that, why are we further assuming that the adventure location can be "completed" in that session? Lots to unwind here about these assumptions.

Do you generally run plot-based games? I'm sensing some disconnect here.

Is there no room in the location-based model for DM pacing? I ask because I think it's not uncommon for some groups to want session-sized adventure bites as the normal fare. This may be because they have a meeting schedule that's not conducive to recalling all the events from last time, like meeting once a month. Games like that truly benefit from good pacing to close a session on returning to base. Or, maybe it's a preference the group has. It seems, though, that your idea of a location-based adventure is incompatible with these gaming goals? I'm curious as to how you might ensure single session pacing in prep rather than in play (by DM moving things to suit play) as you allude to in an earlier post?

I get the usefulness of the separation of event-based versus location-based play. I use a mix, myself, with a heavy slant towards location-based play. I call it my 'linked mini-sandbox' approach. But, it appears that the definition of location-based is getting really narrow and is supporting fewer play goals as the thread progresses. Is this because you're actually advocating for this, or because it allow you to continue playing devil-advocate for a borrowed argument? In other words, I'm not quite able to suss out your motivations, here, and would like to provide a posting response better suited to your goals.

 

[iserith]

Is there no room in the location-based model for DM pacing? I ask because I think it's not uncommon for some groups to want session-sized adventure bites as the normal fare. This may be because they have a meeting schedule that's not conducive to recalling all the events from last time, like meeting once a month. Games like that truly benefit from good pacing to close a session on returning to base. Or, maybe it's a preference the group has. It seems, though, that your idea of a location-based adventure is incompatible with these gaming goals? I'm curious as to how you might ensure single session pacing in prep rather than in play (by DM moving things to suit play) as you allude to in an earlier post?

I could put this all on the design side, but probably the most effective way is through DM design and player buy-in on when it's time to head back to town (before session end). The DM won't need to mess with anything during play in this case.

This reminds me of my first D&D 5e town-to-dungeon campaign which was designed to have the PCs return to town at the end of each session for long rest (1 week long). The game basically ran like this: Town Phase (downtime resolution), then Overland Travel to Dungeon, then Dungeon Delving, then Overland Travel to Town, then End of Session Discussion. What would trigger the return to town was actually real time. The fictional contrivance was that the dungeon only appeared in the world for a certain amount of time and if you stayed in there when it transported back to whatever gods-forsaken demiplane it came from, you went mad and became an NPC dungeon denizen. So, about 30 minutes before session ended, I'd sound a horn and they had to haul butt out of the dungeon. Sometimes that was easy. Other times it was not. Thirty minutes was sufficient time to resolve overland travel back to town and any wandering monsters plus the end of session discussion. On time, under budget, every time.

I get the usefulness of the separation of event-based versus location-based play. I use a mix, myself, with a heavy slant towards location-based play. I call it my 'linked mini-sandbox' approach. But, it appears that the definition of location-based is getting really narrow and is supporting fewer play goals as the thread progresses. Is this because you're actually advocating for this, or because it allow you to continue playing devil-advocate for a borrowed argument? In other words, I'm not quite able to suss out your motivations, here, and would like to provide a posting response better suited to your goals.

If I'm advocating for anything, it's for folks to realize there's more than one way to design and run an adventure that could suit any audience and that maybe some could benefit from doing something outside their comfort zone. My campaign, for example, is plot-based. My one-shots for pickup groups are location-based or plot-based. My next campaign will be location-based. I'm writing one-shots based entirely on shopping and ordering breakfast in a tavern simply because I hate that sort of thing, but I bet I can make them fun and that's an interesting challenge to my DMing skills.

As I mentioned upthread, most DMs in my experience run plot-based games because it's the easiest to prep. Players on the whole (again, what I'm seeing) are so inured to this that they hardly even know how to act if the DM isn't cramming storyline down their gob. They're passive as heck. But give them some freedom in a location-based adventure and some encouragement to be proactive and they eat it up and come back for more. There's a real hunger out there for this. So yeah, I encourage folks to give it a shot. Design the watch, wind it up, and see what happens without messing about with it during play to preserve a plot or whatever. It's pretty fun and a good learning experience.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I could put this all on the design side, but probably the most effective way is through DM design and player buy-in on when it's time to head back to town (before session end). The DM won't need to mess with anything during play in this case.

This reminds me of my first D&D 5e town-to-dungeon campaign which was designed to have the PCs return to town at the end of each session for long rest (1 week long). The game basically ran like this: Town Phase (downtime resolution), then Overland Travel to Dungeon, then Dungeon Delving, then Overland Travel to Town, then End of Session Discussion. What would trigger the return to town was actually real time. The fictional contrivance was that the dungeon only appeared in the world for a certain amount of time and if you stayed in there when it transported back to whatever gods-forsaken demiplane it came from, you went mad and became an NPC dungeon denizen. So, about 30 minutes before session ended, I'd sound a horn and they had to haul butt out of the dungeon. Sometimes that was easy. Other times it was not. Thirty minutes was sufficient time to resolve overland travel back to town and any wandering monsters plus the end of session discussion. On time, under budget, every time.

Just to be testy (), that's not a prep issue, but more in the toolbox of in-play DM altering of things. It's a convenient tool, to be sure, but not one of the prepped details hard coded to be overcome by PC actions that's been discussed.

To me, that says that prep isn't everything, and it's a spectrum, and no-one's actually at either of the ends as imagined.

If I'm advocating for anything, it's for folks to realize there's more than one way to design and run an adventure that could suit any audience and that maybe some could benefit from doing something outside their comfort zone. My campaign, for example, is plot-based. My one-shots for pickup groups are location-based or plot-based. My next campaign will be location-based. I'm writing one-shots based entirely on shopping and ordering breakfast in a tavern simply because I hate that sort of thing, but I bet I can make them fun and that's an interesting challenge to my DMing skills.

As I mentioned upthread, most DMs in my experience run plot-based games because it's the easiest to prep. Players on the whole (again, what I'm seeing) are so inured to this that they hardly even know how to act if the DM isn't cramming storyline down their gob. They're passive as heck. But give them some freedom in a location-based adventure and some encouragement to be proactive and they eat it up and come back for more. There's a real hunger out there for this. So yeah, I encourage folks to give it a shot. Design the watch, wind it up, and see what happens without messing about with it during play to preserve a plot or whatever. It's pretty fun and a good learning experience.

The fun thing about most of those plot based adventures you reference is that they're really a bunch of linked locations, for the most part. I mean, I don't have a huge experience recently due to be penchant for homebrew, but I did run SKT and played in CoS, both of which had excellent location-based portions linked through Plot(tm)!

Also, if I may, but my impression is that you're a pretty gosh-darned good DM. You also put a lot of work into your games, and the combination of the two is really great. I'd be careful taking the wonderful reception you get from your games as a general trend towards your recent preferences in game design. I have a feeling that you might be able to find a way to make F.A.T.A.L. an enjoyable experience and that it's actually you, rather than a design principle, that's the draw. I say that because I'd like to think I'm not a slouch at these things, and my players vastly prefer games with plot, even though I'm less of a fan. Also, there's that whole Critical Role thingy that seems hella popular.