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

[Enrahim]

Most groups are not friends who have been gaming together for 30+ years.

That, alone, already puts Lanefan's group well outside the bounds of most TTRPG groups.

None of which has anything to do with the explicit claim that it's somehow totally okay to assume that players are dirty rotten swindlers who need to be constantly watched lest they get away with their chicanery, while GMs are pure as the driven snow and must be implicitly trusted until you can build an ironclad case that they've done something wrong.

I wasn't aware @Lanefan had only played with that group in his 30+ years? Has that been confirmed?

 

[CreamCloud0]

Even suppose this is true - and frankly it's a bit of a strained usage of "bypassed", which is a verb that pertains to locations or to events that are located (like traffic jams) rather than to creatures - whatever it is that caused the footprints is not an encounter.

if you can avoid creatures by choosing to take a different path, be that a completely divergent route, a roundabout side path or sneaking past in close vicinity, how does that not make the creatures a location based event? a traffic jam involves creatures, in fact, if the creatures weren't there then there wouldn't be a traffic jam, unless you routinely encounter traffic jams where the vehicles spontaneously appeared with no-one driving them.

 

[CreamCloud0]

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.

i mean, how much does modern EXP levelling incentivize those things either? i admit i'm a bit out of touch with how people are actually playing right now and fully admit i might be wildly wrong but i get the impression that for the most part groups are functionally treated as a single conglomerate entity for the purposes of EXP, i mean, the rogue might go down on the first round of combat and never actually get to take a turn before the battle ends but for all their ineffectualness they still earn their equal slice of EXP for 'surviving' the fight just as much as if they had been the lone member of the group to sneak into an enemy stronghold to steal something or other because 'the group' completed their objective and everyone gets their EXP reward.

 

[Hussar]

It's rather funny that people talk about being able to "presume" things in the game world. My current Out of the Abyss game is pretty sandboxy. They have just arrived in Gracklstugh - a duegar city - in the Underdark.

Can I buy a bow or a crossbow in the Blade Bazaar in Gracklstugh? How about a staff? Leather armor? Rope?

After all, we're in the Underdark. There aren't any cows, so, where would you get leather armor? There isn't any wood. How would you get a bow or crossbow? Now, I know all this. Because I'm the DM. But the players? They don't know much of anything about the Underdark and wouldn't even know where to begin asking questions.

The idea that this isn't 99% DM driven is ludicrous. Of course it is. There's no way it cannot be. It's 10 times worse in any homebrew world that isn't just Generic D&D Land. How could the players possibly know what to ask?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There aren't any cows, so, where would you get leather armor

Cave lizards.

How would you get a bow or crossbow

Bone. Although I would rule that only crossbows (bone and steel) are available in Gracklstugh, because dwarves.

 

[Enrahim]

i mean, how much does modern EXP levelling incentivize those things either? i admit i'm a bit out of touch with how people are actually playing right now and fully admit i might be wildly wrong but i get the impression that for the most part groups are functionally treated as a single conglomerate entity for the purposes of EXP, i mean, the rogue might go down on the first round of combat and never actually get to take a turn before the battle ends but for all their ineffectualness they still earn their equal slice of EXP for 'surviving' the fight just as much as if they had been the lone member of the group to sneak into an enemy stronghold to steal something or other because 'the group' completed their objective and everyone gets their EXP reward.

I want to second this. I once had a group that had a severe attendance problem. At some point I as GM i suggested limiting XP to characters not present (Maybe half share, I do not remember the details). I almost got a full blown player riot in my hands for merely suggesting such a thing.. (Important context: this was an adventure path using pathfinder. The situation is very different in for instance an OSR west marches)

 

[pemerton]

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.

As I've posted, not far upthread but also back when you first mentioned this thing happening at your table, the whole thing struck me as bizarre: the use of "hooks" and the planning of encounter that the players aren't interested in. And the current discussion reinforces my sense that it's strange: the GM is coming up with plans, and "encounters", but the players are "bypassing" them.

It's like there are two parallel games going on: the one in the GM's head, and the one at the table.

 

[pemerton]

5e absolutely ties advancement to encounters (primarily combat) unless you move to milestone leveling.

Milestone leveling is GM fiat leveling unless you tie it to sessions played per level and autolevel based on that.

I found that 4e D&D actually played fairly close to this: if the game is played fairly seriously, then every hour of play is about one-twelfth of a level (for a 5-PC party).

 

[pemerton]

Encounter hasn't meant "combat" for decades.

by repeatly talking about social encounters, and to a lesser degree exploration encounters, I by default am moving away from D&D, which uses the term primarily to mean combat.

Which of these two propositions is correct?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Which of these two propositions is correct?

@Maxperson