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

[pemerton]

Is anyone insisting this is in-fiction talk?

There are posters who are insisting that it is not game jargon, but rather just a naturalistic way of speaking about the events in the fiction.

I don't agree.

I have rarely used the word encounter in my life to describe an interaction of some sort with another person. I’m not saying I never have… but it’s not a common way to talk about these things.

In the realm of RPGs, the primary use of the word is definitely the jargon… your capital E Encounter. So much so, that there’s often no distinction made between capital E and lowercase e.

But I can tell you that when I GM games that aren’t in the D&D sphere, I don’t think of the game in terms of capital E Encounters. And guess what? As a result, I don’t describe everything that happens as lowercase e encounters.

<snip>

In my last session of Blades in the Dark, the characters took turf from a rival gang. They didn’t have “an encounter”… they friggin assaulted them! in the last session of a two year Stonetop campaign, the character’s didn’t “encounter” Hlad the Devourer… they exorcised it from its host while the entire town was in its thrall, and then banished it with the sacrifice of the Blessed of Danu.

Why would anyone ever call these things “encounters” except for the fact that it’s a bit of game jargon?

Right, exactly this.

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 creature isn't an event. It's a being.

I'm making the same point as @hawkeyefan. If we're talking naturalistically, using ordinary language such as the people in the fiction might use to describe their own lives, then these aren't encounters. And when these potential meetings don't occur, because the two parties never meet, they've not been bypassed.

 

[AlViking]

Is anyone insisting this is in-fiction talk?

In addition the dictionary says that encounter can also be a noun, one which matches up to how the word is used in D&D and some other games.

 

[AlViking]

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.

The last time I remember a DMG mentioning anything about handing out XP to individuals was back in 1e. @Lanefan runs a unique game, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not anything I see anywhere else.

 

[CreamCloud0]

@Faolyn says its primarily combat, when used in D&D. @Maxperson disagrees. Which is correct?

what does it matter what specific percentage of encounters are combats in which specific system, they're still all encounters.

 

[pemerton]

If I don't go to the movies, we don't say that I bypassed seeing the movie. Events that don't occur haven't been bypassed.

These "encounters" that are being bypassed don't occur in the fiction, but they are being given some sort of credence by the GM at the table. They owe their "existence" to the orientation of the GM towards them.

 

[pemerton]

what does it matter what specific percentage of encounters are combats in which specific system, they're still all encounters.

Some people are using "bypass an encounter" to mean "resolving an encounter other than by way of combat". Others are not: they are using it to mean that an event the GM expected to occur in play has not actually occurred.

Those aren't the same thing, and the conversation would be clearer, I think, if this was expressly recognised.

 

[AlViking]

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?

DM driven or module driven? It's a bit of both but I also don't see much of an issue as long as the general theme and options are discussed ahead of time. I played a couple of campaigns a while back, Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation where we couldn't buy much of anything. Other campaigns the only restrictions was nothing that gives you flying before level 10. If you are invited to a game and it has restrictions you don't care for you always have the option of not joining.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The last time I remember a DMG mentioning anything about handing out XP to individuals was back in 1e. @Lanefan runs a unique game, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not anything I see anywhere else.

oh for sure, i'm not trying to calling individual EXP wrong by any measure, except perhaps as the assumed norm to compare milestone to.

 

[AlViking]

Although the games I tend to prefer - BW, TB2e, Prince Valiant, MHRP and variants - aren't the same as Stonetop, speaking with a level of generality they are pretty similar to what you describe here.

The players have provided signals - formal and/or informal - about what is interesting to them, and how they want their PCs to be challenged. And I frame scenes that speak to those things.

This is why @Faolyn's example of the ignored hook is strange to me. If I frame a scene and it fizzes, that isn't about the players just making a choice: rather, it means that communication between player and GM has broken down (at least for the moment) and I as GM need to find a way to get my scene-framing back on track.

Providing options to do things players might be interested in is no different in a sandbox campaign. On the other hand if I provide 3-4 hooks they can only choose 1 (or suggest a different direction) and it's a group decision. It's not strange that they can't do multiple things simultaneously.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To me, this is making it all the more difficult to work out what is meant by "bypassing an encounter".

That's because people are using natural language, not jargon, and therefore might be talking about different things.

It could mean, the encounter occurs, but the players avoid directly interacting with it: "you see a band of orcs encamped on the road ahead"; "We try to sneak round the camp." A few successful stealth checks later, and the encounter is bypassed. Note that as a consequence, the players never learn that the orcs were friendly.

Or, it could mean that the player miss the encounter, because they did not pass through the location were the encounter was. For example: "I think we should try to avoid attention, and avoid traveling on the road. We cut through the forest, guided by Ranger Bob". As a consequence, the players do not encounter the orcs encamped on the road, and therefore will never know that they were there.

And there are many other situations could also be described, in natural language, as bypassing the encounter.