D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[pemerton]

Do players earn XP for "bypassed" encounters?

Which rulebook? I've quoted the XP rules from Gygax's AD&D.

 

[Lanefan]

These aren't really techniques, but I've found the following really helps with sandbox play.

1. Proactive players. Proactive players will often find something that looks interesting on the map and start researching what's there or even just pick up and go to see. That gets the ball rolling and once the ball is in motion, it's like a snowball rolling downhill. More and more gets added to the game and gives the players branches to explore.

I think it starts and stops right here.

2. Backgrounds. Players who write backgrounds for their PCs often tie those backgrounds into the game, which gives them avenues to get information and potential goals to go after. It's a smaller snowball than being proactive, but it can work.

3. This is the biggest one. Goals. My players create characters with goals, desires, flaws, etc. and those kickstart things in a big way. If the player has a goal set for his PC, then as soon as session 1 starts, he can begin working his way towards that goal and the interaction with the game world begins. The more PCs that have goals like that, the faster things get going.

The issue with goals is that those goals IME often either directly conflict or try to lead the party in completely different directions, meaning that if the DM wants to tailor something to one character's goal it comes at the expense of either ignoring or even acting against the goals of other characters. Result: the DM has to keep the adventures somewhat goal-neutral and nobody advances toward their personal goals except during downtime one-on-one play.

 

[pemerton]

Yet I find Ironsworn quite fun--and it is, in my opinion at least, even more of a sandbox than the "traditonal GM" approach being discussed here.

And thus we in this thread return to where we began . . .

 

[AlViking]

OK, so "encounter" is generally used to mean "combat" so that "bypass the encounter" means "didn't fight but did something else instead".

I'm still curious about where these encounters "live" if the GM hasn't yet described the situation to the players. In @Maxperson's goblin example, the GM had described the situation; but in your teleport example, it seems that the GM may not have described any guards etc.

An encounter, according to the dictionary: a meeting between hostile factions or persons : a sudden often violent clash. According to D&D 2024 DMG:
Encounters are the individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure. Reduced to fundamentals, an encounter is an objective with an obstacle. It accomplishes one or more of the following:

• Moving characters closer to achieving a goal
• Frustrating the characters’ progress toward a goal
• Revealing new information

Of course it only exists in notes and imagination because we're playing a game. It doesn't matter if the players are aware of it or not.

 

[pemerton]

In BW, if the players decide to follow the tracks and, die rolls and GM permitting, find out who or what made them, then that’s an encounter. If they decide to ignore the tracks and continue onwards, they have bypassed it.

In the latter case, there is no "it" that is bypassed.

To elaborate: two of my BW games occur in and about Hardby. Presumably there are villages all around Hardby, given that it is a pseudo-mediaeval city. When playing, we have never talked about the PCs visiting those villages. Perhaps some of the PCs, in their travels between Hardby and the Abor-Alz, have visited some of them, but we didn't talk about it.

Just as there are villages in the imaginary setting that no real-life game participant has ever turned their mind to, so there are people, shops, streets and street corners and the like that also none of us has ever thought about or imagined.

The players are not "bypassing" all those things that are not described, and that have no salience to our play.

And if the creator of the tracks is never talked about in play, then there is nothing that has been bypassed, anymore than those other things have been bypassed.

 

[pemerton]

I think the 2024 DMG is much better written and while the text on creating adventures doesn't explicitly call out sandboxes but they do talk about giving the players meaningful options and choices and warns against railroads.

As relates to his specific post, here's how they now describe encounters:

Encounters are the individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure. Reduced to fundamentals, an encounter is an objective with an obstacle. It accomplishes one or more of the following:

• Moving characters closer to achieving a goal
• Frustrating the characters’ progress toward a goal
• Revealing new information

Then they talk about a variety of encounter types including combat, exploration and social encounters.

So in this usage, an encounter is a particular sort of component of a GM's prep? It is something that the GM "creates" when they "create" an adventure?

 

[pemerton]

i believe at some point upthread it was mentioned in earlier editions the guide for earning EXP is something to the effect of 'the players gain EXP for encounters they intentionally/knowingly bypass equal to as if they had faced it directly, ones they do so by accident/unknowingly don't provide EXP'

if that's inaccurate someone can correct me but i think that's the spirit and the gist of it.

Which version of D&D is this? It is not Gygax's AD&D. And it is not 4e D&D.

In game texts I have really only seen bypassing encounters addressed in regard to games where you specifically receive XP for overcoming combat challenges. There is a bit of combat being the assumed form of conflict in some more conventional games (D&D 3e to 5e, Pathfinder, Iron Kingdoms, etc.) It's really only worth covering in games where it has an impact on experience and/or resource attrition.

4e D&D doesn't use a notion of "bypassing encounters" in its XP rules.

4e D&D gives XP for combat success; for skill challenge (including failed skill challenges, in the Rules Compendium); for completing quests; and (in the DMG2) for free play that progresses things.

In some of these "bypass the defenders" examples, the resolution would be by way of skill challenge, and that is how XP would be accrued.

 

[AlViking]

So in this usage, an encounter is a particular sort of component of a GM's prep? It is something that the GM "creates" when they "create" an adventure?

For the umpteenth time, yes. GMs prepare encounters that may or may not occur based on possible scenarios. As you've been told. Repeatedly.

 

[pemerton]

For the umpteenth time, yes. GMs prepare encounters that may or may not occur based on possible scenarios. As you've been told. Repeatedly.

Other posters - @Maxperson and @Faolyn - are saying that this has nothing to do with prep.

 

[pemerton]

How about the GM’s imagination? They’re allowed to use that when improvising and not relying on prep, right?

OK.

If we are describing play by reference to the GM's imagination - I imagined/anticipated the players doing X, but they did Y - to me that suggests a type of GM primacy, at least in perspective on play and possibly on how play actually unfolds.

An encounter, according to the dictionary: a meeting between hostile factions or persons : a sudden often violent clash. According to D&D 2024 DMG:
Encounters are the individual scenes in the larger story of your adventure. Reduced to fundamentals, an encounter is an objective with an obstacle. It accomplishes one or more of the following:

• Moving characters closer to achieving a goal
• Frustrating the characters’ progress toward a goal
• Revealing new information

Of course it only exists in notes and imagination because we're playing a game. It doesn't matter if the players are aware of it or not.

Ditto.