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

[EzekielRaiden]

What milestone levelling really devalues is individual character bravery and risk-taking. It doesn't matter what you do or how many risks you take (or conversely, what you don't do or how many risks you stand back and let others take), you're all gonna level up at the same time.

Which means there's no incentive whatsoever to stick your neck out and (try to) be The Hero, and every incentive to sit back and let others take the risks....which really sucks if those risks carry serious potential consequences e.g. PC death.

People have been so quick to jump on the slightest whiff of perceived accusation that GMs might act in bad faith.

Yet here we have the exact same in the other direction. Direct accusations that players will ruthlessly exploit things. Instant assumption that, because there isn't special extra reward for playing the game, people will exploit others to get their benefits while participating in bad faith.

Why should I take seriously all these arguments demanding I only ever presume good faith from GMs when players are always assumed to be dirty money-grubbing exploitative jerks who will use and abuse their fellow players at every opportunity?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My incentive is that the more you try to avoid the risk the more likely you are to be the target of a surprise flanking maneuver. Hmm. Does that mean I am an evil GM?

If the shoe fits...

More seriously, I would 100% consider this an outright bad GM decision if I saw it at the table. I also don't see how it is possible to square punitive GMing with preserving a logical world independent of the PCs. If you're punishing the player for not taking enough risks, how is that not reshaping the world to manipulate player choices?

 

[AlViking]

So...you can assume everything is standard, except that assumption may be undercut at any time?

That doesn't sound like a solid foundation to me. It sounds like building on sand.

It's called ask the GM. A lot of games, especially D&D, have minor house rules. The core loop doesn't really change much in games I've played, the overall theme and group has more impact.

But it looks like you're looking for a molehill to make a mountain again.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Might be a dumb question, but isn't that exactly the same principle as dropping adventure hooks in a sandbox game, only on a smaller scale?

If that's the case, doesn't that mean all GM actions ever count as "hooks...only on a smaller scale?"

Because if the thing described counts as a hook "on a smaller scale", then every encounter the GM ever creates is such a "small" hook. Every shopkeeper. Hell, every NPC with motives is a "small" hook.

It would seem to me that accepting this definition would mean all possible GM prep becomes a forest of hooks, at which point we would have erased any difference between sandbox and railroad. Seeing as I doubt (very much) that you want to do that, I suspect this is not a standard you would want to adopt.

 

[Faolyn]

I think perhaps his questions stem from his inability to reconcile certain ideas from some posters rather than him being unable to understand the things you’re saying.

So his inability is that he doesn’t recognize that different people are, in fact, different people who may phrase things differently?

Like… maybe try and approach this conversation from the POV of someone who doesn’t accept that encounters are an essential unit of play? Maybe accept that, based on the many posts about what “encounter” means, there’s not some universal version that everyone accepts and understands?

He doesn’t even accept or recognize one version. Like I told you, he was completely baffled by the idea I didn’t force my players into an encounter and that I was fine with them ignoring it. Even though I explained it to him multiple times that it was their choice as to whether they bit the hook or not. That doesn’t strike me as someone who simply doesn’t understand, especially when you consider comparisons he has made re: his games and GMing style versus other people’s (more intimate, more empowering), and who continually uses the words fictional and imaginary when we discuss how we do things, as if we’re either stupid of outright delusional and believe our settings and situations are literally real, or how he wouldn’t use that term (bypassed encounter) in-character, therefore it’s incorrect, while thus far not answering my question as to whether he uses terms like “ob 2 test” in character.

That strikes me as someone who has preconceived notions about how other games are run and refuses to let go of them.

Like… I could insist that your game contains a downtime phase or a town phase as they exist in other games, and then I can make comments about that… and if I did, I should just accept that you understand those comments?

See, it would be one thing if I explained things to him once or twice. That’s fine. But we have several people explaining the exact same things, using pretty much the same language and even the same examples, probably thirty or more times by now. Or more.

Plus, as I’ve said before about this, if I don’t know what you mean when you say downtime phase, I would just google it. “RPG downtime phase.” In fact, I just did, and got a bunch of hits: blogs, reddit posts, info directly from various games’ own websites, etc.

If you had to explain a very common gaming term like “downtime phase” to me thirty times, I’d bet you’d start wondering if I were actually troll.

That’s not what I said. I said “resolving encounters”. I said nothing about them having to be solely combat encounters.

Except that was in relation to advancement:

I think the advancement angle is an interesting one, and now that you say it, i think it connects with the very idea of encounters and then prep.

And we’ve been talking about D&D which, and specifically about XP versus milestone. And D&D doesn’t do XP for social encounters—except possibly with some optional rule tucked away somewhere in the DMG that I can’t remember right now—and I can’t remember what the rules for XP are for resolving hostile situations peacefully because I don’t use them. But both you and @zakael19 made some big assumptions about how I play without asking me first, and got it wrong.

And this still ignores that I’ve been talking about encounters in improv games. This is something you’ve done consistently, no matter how many times I’ve talked to you about it.

Right. And don’t you think that certainty of the purpose of the encounter is kind of a key element here? That you have a purpose for it… so it is expected. So if the players don’t engage with it, you think of it as being bypassed.

Sure. If I’m improvising a game and I say there are tracks, and the players say “I don’t want to mess with whoever left those tracks” and make an effort to avoid them, then they avoided the encounter that would have happened.

As I have said before.

So I’ll ask you: if you, in a no-prep game, tell the players “you see footprints”—maybe you’re hinting at future badness, maybe the players asked if they found any footprints, whatever—do you truly have zero thoughts about what could have caused them?

Note that I at no point said that thought had to be what ends up actually being the cause that the players will encounter, should they decide to follow the footprints. I have never said that.

I also don’t really care about what the gaming books say you should do. The books can say all sorts of things. I’m asking what you actually are thinking at the time you say there are footprints. That’s what’s important.

If you really, truly have zero thoughts when you hint at future badness, or whatever your game of choice calls it, and it doesn’t end up with your players getting annoyed at false clues, red herrings, or lolrandom results because there’s either nothing at the other end or what you make up doesn’t match what you initially said, then that’s great. I don’t get how you do it, but good for you.

I think this is flavoring your view of things. Which is fine… but maybe allow room for alternate points of view?

Which seems to be “I do this thing that in every way and in every other game would be an encounter, but I don’t think of it in those terms, therefore it’s wrong to call it that.”

Which, to me, is a very silly way of going about things. There are only so many ideas used in RPGs, and a tremendous amount of overlap in how they’re used. Games just give them different names so they stand out.

 

[Faolyn]

Telegraphing a threat is meant to lead to a decision point, especially in an exploration context. I want play to move forward, so I’m prompting them to perhaps Know Things, or Seek Insight, or simply declare a course of action and evolve the situation.

Just because a Threat comes on-screen doesn’t mean that I’m proscribing any future actions either. Last time we played I provided signs of a threat (dead spots of grass, signs of strange animals), on a Seek Insight 6- I Introduced a Danger by having the wolf-deer chimeras closing in with their horrible elk-bugle/howl call, the players did some back and forth and elected to creep out using a magical ability they’d already had in effect.

With some more back and forth and development of signs of a larger problem in the forest behind these things, we left the ruined tower hill behind and the scene concluded.

Did this become an encounter because the threat manifested?

Yes. And then the players bypassed it rather than face it.

Was it an encounter when it was simply a ruin on a hill and a handful of notes of potentiality?

No. There was the potential for an encounter.

Jeremy Sandberg intends exploration in Stonetop to be sort of a “narrativist point crawl.”

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's called ask the GM. A lot of games, especially D&D, have minor house rules. The core loop doesn't really change much in games I've played, the overall theme and group has more impact.

But it looks like you're looking for a molehill to make a mountain again.

I just...the argument given literally said assume everything is standard except that the GM will tell you everything that isn't, which means those assumptions are built on...what, exactly? The fact that lazy stereotypes are common? That's not what I would call knowing anything about the setting, especially when it can be revoked at any time by the GM mentioning "oh right yeah that's not true".

Knowledge is a hell of a lot more than just a not-yet-contradicted assumption!

 

[AlViking]

I can’t argue with this — not even on the internet. That said, I think there is some stylistic nuance.

As you rightly pointed out, XP often emphasizes individualized rewards, while milestone leveling tends to focus on group accomplishments. That distinction reflects a broader philosophical divide.

Where someone places value would be up to the individual DM and group. I think, from my prior posts in this thread, my view is very clear. I view the hobby as inherently collaborative and group focused. My preferred method of advancement should be clear.

However, I fully understand that not everyone shares that view. And I was not advocating people use one over the other. Just pointing out that the GM fiat statement very clearly applies to both.

A more serious response than last one ... I understand what Lanefan is saying but it's rare that one person is obviously holding back. If someone prefers to play a wizard are they playing it safe if they aren't rushing into the front lines? What about that rogue that hides so they can get sneak attack?

If someone is obviously being a coward, it tends to be dealt with by other players in games I've played.

 

[AlViking]

If the shoe fits...

More seriously, I would 100% consider this an outright bad GM decision if I saw it at the table. I also don't see how it is possible to square punitive GMing with preserving a logical world independent of the PCs. If you're punishing the player for not taking enough risks, how is that not reshaping the world to manipulate player choices?

I would have thought that the " " would have clued you in that it was a joke.

The enemy may use tactics such as flanking now and then because in some cases it will be a logical tactic. Especially if you have wizards in back casting fireballs.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Which seems to be “I do this thing that in every way and in every other game would be an encounter, but I don’t think of it in those terms, therefore it’s wrong to call it that.”

See… this is you ignoring what I am saying and insisting on viewing things solely from your view. You’re not willing or able, it seems, to accept that “encounters” aren’t so foundational to all games. Not as they’re described in D&D, and not how the term has been influenced by that concept.

Which, to me, is a very silly way of going about things. There are only so many ideas used in RPGs, and a tremendous amount of overlap in how they’re used. Games just give them different names so they stand out.

Except the games I’m thinking of don’t have “encounters” by any name. This is why the term sheds no real light on broader RPG play, and why it may cause confusion.

You’re just insisting that you’re right and that everyone view it as you do, and some of us are saying “but that’s not how I view it” and you say “but that’s the only way to view it”.

And then you wonder why we’re not getting anywhere.