D&D General IS the 5 min work day a feature or a bug?

[James Gasik]

Doesn't Gygaxian style play promote metagame knowledge and sacrificing the lives of many hirelings to clear dungeons?

 

[Minigiant]

Doesn't Gygaxian style play promote metagame knowledge and sacrificing the lives of many hirelings to clear dungeons?

That's the thing

1. Metering out resources over a long dungeon
2. Novaing your resources and using guerrilla tactics
3. Spending gold to men and items to create more usable resources
4. Hoarding resources and attampting to avoid all combats and traps

It's all metagaming. They only work if the players have metagame knowledge that they do. Each strategy works different in a 1, 5, or10 encounter dungeon or a 2, 4, or8 encounter day or vs smart, dumb, rich, or poor foes.

It's just favoritism of tactics by different sections of the fanbase.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree on everything you say.
But,
The goal is to show E that not caring is not what the others want.
And you apply your rules to my table. In mine, treasure is always divided evenly and magical treasures go to the best in slots/capacity to use it.

Which means, in theory, E will be just as often that "best in slots/capacity" as any other character, right? If not, you're playing favourites; and I'd further posit you're pulling an end run around your group's democratic process by arbitrarily doing so.

Treasures will quickly favorise the "caring" ones and E WILL die and E will be lower level. This is not an eventuality, it is a certainty.

Why would E be lower level, unless you're giving xp for treasure? E has been around longer than any other character in the party.

And by "E WILL die" do you mean you'd unfairly pick on E during the run of play?

Either E quits the table or E amends itself and start caring. And all this will be with the accord of the other players. Remember, at my table, all players have a say in how I handle things. Even E. They can out veto me at any times but they usually do not need to. (I don't remember when it happened that I have been out voted...). But E is but one vote. E has 5 other players and 1 DM to convince that its uncaring way is THE way...

Do you see now the difference?

I see the difference but it's not something I'm really on board with in any version. Sure, the idea that you have a democratic way of doing things is great, but all you end up with is individuality being stifled - at the player level but more sadly at the character level - in favour of groupthink.

It also sounds like a breeding ground for arguments if all it takes is one player saying they don't like how another player's character is being played to put that character's (and that player's?) continuance to a vote. End result: in effect the players end up getting told how to play their characters - albeit by the whole table rather than any one person - which is the antithesis of player agency.

Edit: And today, I would simply kick that player out if, after a talk, I could not make him change his/her mind. And even then, players would vote on that topic too.

 

[Lanefan]

in @Helldritch's defense the thing he described with holding back magic items worked very well in past editions because of magic item churn & required magic items. If a particular player is causing problems in how they play out their lack of care they will quickly wind up being deeply incentivized to find any reason to care so they can pursue the magic items they need to keep up.

Only if the DM gets to decide how the party divides its treasure; but from what I gather it's almost universal that treasury division is left in the hands of the players/PCs, and in past editions where magic was required it could usually be purchased with cash somehow if it didn't appear in treasury.

Thus, even if the DM doesn't directly place magic suitable to a given character, assuming an even-by-value treasury split that character would still be able to keep up via the cash-and-purchase route.

 

[Lanefan]

Doesn't Gygaxian style play promote metagame knowledge and sacrificing the lives of many hirelings to clear dungeons?

It strongly frowns on the former but does support the latter.

 

[Lanefan]

That's the thing

1. Metering out resources over a long dungeon
2. Novaing your resources and using guerrilla tactics
3. Spending gold to men and items to create more usable resources
4. Hoarding resources and attampting to avoid all combats and traps

It's all metagaming. They only work if the players have metagame knowledge that they do. Each strategy works different in a 1, 5, or10 encounter dungeon or a 2, 4, or8 encounter day or vs smart, dumb, rich, or poor foes.

Which are things* the players can figure out through their PCs without resorting to metagame tactics, by simply doing some in-game scouting and info-gathering which might even include a few probing raids or sorties into the place.

* - e.g. the relative size and-or population of the adventure or dungeon, what that population consists of, how it tends to fight or otherwise conduct itself, what some weaknesses might be, etc.; on which cumulative knowledge the PCs can base their strategies, recruitment of NPCs, resource load-out, initial approach, and so forth. No metagaming required.

 

[James Gasik]

It strongly frowns on the former but does support the latter.

I only say that because of adventures with puzzles that require OOC smarts to solve, like the rather infamous golem puzzle that requires you know what prime numbers are in White Plume Mountain.

I know, meant for a tournament, but that's not how I encountered it!

 

[delericho]

I only say that because of adventures with puzzles that require OOC smarts to solve, like the rather infamous golem puzzle that requires you know what prime numbers are in White Plume Mountain.

Is knowledge of prime numbers really something we'll consider OOC knowledge? In the real world we've known about them for millennia, and if D&D is tech-equivalent to the Roman Empire, the middle ages, or the Renaissance then society must surely know roughly comparable math. (Just after a fall of empire or apocalypse might make for an exception, depending on just how much was lost.)

So shouldn't any reasonably knowledgeable character be aware of what prime numbers are and what they mean?

 

[Seramus]

So shouldn't any reasonably knowledgeable character be aware of what prime numbers are and what they mean?

Hard to say. There was a Leno skit where he asked modern people what prime numbers were, and it was a train wreck. I'm sure most adventurers can do math, but they might not know the concept being referenced.

 

[delericho]

Hard to say. There was a Leno skit where he asked modern people what prime numbers were, and it was a train wreck. I'm sure most adventurers can do math, but they might not know the concept being referenced.

Without having seen the skit, it's hard to know what to make of that. Did he take a genuine random sampling of people, or did he just show a montage of all the worst (and thus funniest) answers?

I would argue that pretty much any Wizard, Cleric, and anyone skilled in architecture (including, in more traditional times, all dwarves) would know the concept. And certainly, I'd argue it's reasonable to assume that someone in a typical adventuring party would be aware.