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

[AnotherGuy]

We can then suppose a number of methods for the party to get past the monster - they could both be bribed with the wine, distracted by an illusion in the same way, persuaded or deceived with the same difficulty (it'd be reasonable that the Giant is harder to intimidate, but we could imagine a slightly bolder Ogre or more cowardly Giant if we like). The point is that the difficulty of getting past the monster is identical in all ways aside from combat.

So, if we assume that the system we are using gives xp rewards for getting past the monster (as all 3+ editions do) then how much should we award? Should it be dependant on the method chosen? Should we have a Combat CR and a non-Combat CR? (4e sort of does this - we might class getting past the monster without fighting as a lower level Encounter and use that to determine the appropriate DCs and rewards, it's not really well spelled out in the text though)

Thumbs up for this comment on the determination of XP for similar methods used for different CR monsters.
This is a fine point to consider for tables using XP.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Speaking for myself, it's because I'm not willing to lie and say that I am.

I normally try not to assign motives to others… but when it’s done to me, I’ll do it right back.

In this case, I should have also included “can’t” along with “won’t”.

I struggle to take this statement seriously. Clearly "encounter" is in D&D terms. It doesn't matter if nobody would describe a town as encountered in normal conversation. In D&D terms a group who crests a hill and finds a town is encountering that town.

Clearly nothing. The word encounter has been used in this thread both as it’s standard definition and as game jargon.

Now, when it comes to arriving at a town, I don’t think that’s an encounter per the word’s use as D&D jargon. You can resolve an encounter in some way. You don’t resolve a town. It’s a location, not an encounter.

As for how you were using the word, here’s the original quote:

A freeway bypass is a road that lets you avoid a town. The town is never encountered. That's what bypass means. To pass or go around something.

Are there lots of freeways in your D&D setting?

It seems more like you were using the word per its standard definition.

Clearly.

 

[Lanefan]

There is no XP for "outwitting" if that doesn't yield treasure.

You go on to quote the DMG...

The judgment factor is inescapable with respect to weighting experience for the points gained from slaying monsters and/or gaining treasure. You must weigh the level of challenge - be it thinking or fighting - versus the level of experience of the player character(s) who gained it. . . .​

​

Tricking or outwitting monsters or overcoming tricks and/or traps placed to guard treasure must be determined subjectively, with level of experience balanced against the degree of difficulty you assign to the gaining of the treasure. . . .​

I've always read the bolded as being separate and discrete from any xp given for the treasure itself that those monsters or tricks were guarding.

If - as I-as-DM "determine subjectively" - I feel their outwitting of the guards on the bridge is worth 100 xp then that's what they'll get, divided among the characters who helped with said outwitting. If there's 845 g.p. worth of treasure behind said guards the PCs will divide 845 xp between them for this as well, assuming a) said treasure is taken back to town and b) subject to the rules quoted below.

​

Convert all metal and gems and jewelry to a total value in gold pieces. If the relative value of the monster(s) or guardian device​

fought equals or exceeds that of the party which took the treasure, experience is awarded on a 1 for 1 basis. If the guardian(s) was relatively weaker, award experience on a 5 g.p. to 4 x.P., 3 to 2,2 to 1,3 to 1, or even 4 or more to 1 basis according to the relative strengths. . . .​

​

Treasure must be physically taken out of the dungeon or lair and turned into a transportable medium or stored in the player's stronghold to be counted for experience points.​

​

All items (including magic) or creatures sold for gold pieces prior to the awarding of experience points for an adventure must be considered as treasure taken, and the gold pieces received for the sale add to the total treasure taken. (Those magic items not sold gain only a relatively small amount of experience points, for their value is in their usage.)​

There are two sources of XP: treasure, and creatures slain or captured. Treasure XP is weighted by the difficulty of obtaining it, be that via fighting or outwitting or avoiding a trap or whatever. Creature XP is based on the strength of the creature; or, if sold/ransomed, on the money received.

There is no separate XP award just for outwitting people to no end.

Outwitting them just for the hell of it, no. Outwitting them in pursuit of some other goal (usually treasure) or to defuse or negate their threat, sure.

A Thief who successfully disarms a trap can be said to have outwitted the trap (well, technically, to have outwitted the designer of said trap, but whatever), and should get xp for it.

Then again, I've personally never had to worry about the treasure aspect as, following the lead of my then-DM, I took out xp for treasure right from day one (and beat 2e to the punch by about 5 or 6 years in the process ).

 

[Maxperson]

I normally try not to assign motives to others… but when it’s done to me, I’ll do it right back.

In this case, I should have also included “can’t” along with “won’t”.

I don't know what you are talking about. There was no motive assigned to you by me. My statement was purely for myself. I won't lie and say that my game is not player driven, because it is player driven.

 

[Lanefan]

On the subject of Encounters and Bypassing them - instinctively as a GM I think of "bypassing" to mean avoiding a fight - there's an assumption that I don't think is uncommon that we are generally referring to combat by Encounters.

It might be worth considering an example.

Let's presume we've got a fairly standard D&D party of Rogue, Bard, Wizard, Fighter and Cleric. And for the sake of this example, they've also got a large cask of wine that they've picked up as they had been reliably informed it would be a good bribe for the monster.

The party, for whatever reason, wishes to enter a cave guarded by a monster.

Let's consider two cases.

In the first case the monster is an Ogre (so for 5e, CR2)
In the second case the monster is a Hill Giant (so for 5e, CR5)

Let's also assume that for our purposes that the two monsters have the same overall senses, mental statistics and overall personality (which is why this pair - I know they aren't in 5e but they are fairly close and are overall similar in default personality - the 3e ones are closer)

We can then suppose a number of methods for the party to get past the monster - they could both be bribed with the wine, distracted by an illusion in the same way, persuaded or deceived with the same difficulty (it'd be reasonable that the Giant is harder to intimidate, but we could imagine a slightly bolder Ogre or more cowardly Giant if we like). The point is that the difficulty of getting past the monster is identical in all ways aside from combat.

So, if we assume that the system we are using gives xp rewards for getting past the monster (as all 3+ editions do) then how much should we award? Should it be dependant on the method chosen? Should we have a Combat CR and a non-Combat CR? (4e sort of does this - we might class getting past the monster without fighting as a lower level Encounter and use that to determine the appropriate DCs and rewards, it's not really well spelled out in the text though)

Let's say the character party successfully bribes the monster (they've done their research, come prepared and this is very plausible for what we know of both monsters) with the cask of wine - the actions they take are the same, the costs are the same, the risks are broadly similar (we could assume the monster would be angered by the characters entering their cave and might be a problem in future, but that's hardly a given). Is this Encountering the monster, or Bypassing the Encounter?

This is encountering the monster; you interacted with it, and it with you.

Bypassing the encounter would be if you sneaked past it while it was asleep and it never knew you were there.

In either case I'd give more xp for the Giant than the Ogre due to the significantly greater risk-threat-downside if-when things go wrong.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know what you are talking about. There was no motive assigned to you by me. My statement was purely for myself. I won't lie and say that my game is not player driven, because it is player driven.

I didn’t say it was by you.

@AlViking made comments about my motives, so my comment was directed at him. Then you responded to that.

 

[AlViking]

I don't know what you are talking about. There was no motive assigned to you by me. My statement was purely for myself. I won't lie and say that my game is not player driven, because it is player driven.

Same here. I consider my games player driven for the players that want a sandbox (not all do). So I'm not going to say my games are not player driven when they are just to make some random person on the internet doesn't think it's possible.

 

[Faolyn]

See I think you’ve been confused in how you’ve approached this topic. You said before you were just using the word per its natural language definition. You even quoted the Dictionary at me.

Now here, you’re saying that you’re talking about it as a “game term” which I earlier described as jargon.

Yes, because I was showing how the game term uses the same meaning as the real-world term and thus wasn’t as mysterious as penerton kept claiming.

I’m literally not doing that.

You literally are.:

I didn’t say anything about combat. I said “X number of rooms in a dungeon” or “X encounters per day”. I said nothing about those rooms or encounters being all combat.

And yet you set this in a dungeon and with an X-per-day qualifier, something that nobody does when talking about social encounters. why would you talk about dungeons and X/day encounters and not be talking about combat and traps? Who talks about X/day social encounters?

This is the problem. It doesn’t always make sense to everyone in every game to use it. That’s what I’m saying.

You know, I don’t recall ever saying that you had to use the term. I didn’t say you must use them in your games. I said I consider those things to be encounters, and I call them encounters.

You then got angry because I have D&D cooties.

 

[robertsconley]

Following on from my recent conversations with @pemerton which touched on GM-centric play I thought the below may help with others to define/analyse their game.
The below are different sandboxes each with their own level of GM-centric play. There are probably others feel free to add - I'm not sure if @robertsconley's game falls into Homebrew prepped or something different. He would do better justice to his style as to where he lands.

It is my opinion the looser homebrew content sees greater player-driven play.

APs/Modules
APs/Modules + Homebrew prepped
AP/Modules + Homebrew loose
Homebrew prepped
Homebrew loose

I define our table's play as the bolded option. I try mitigate the GM-centric story that comes with AP/Modules with a little bit of player-facing mechanics here and there but we are not at 50/50 yet IMO. As the AP/Modules comes closer to finalisation, I expect the homebrew content to increase based on the direction/story the players want to engage in.

The issue isn’t the source of the content but how that content is used. Sandbox campaigns and published adventures both need characters, locations, and underlying events. In most cases, NPC goals produce a larger chain of events. However, in Adventure Paths, the playstyle assumes players will follow that chain; the structure expects them to progress from Book 1 to Book 2 because it’s the most likely or logical next step.

A skilled AP designer stacks the deck to make sure continuing to the next chapter feels like the obvious choice. The structure itself is part of the design.

This mirrors my experience designing LARP modules in the 1990s and early 2000s. Due to logistical limits, most LARP adventures had to be structured as a sequence of planned encounters. You couldn’t build a site-dressed ruin or dungeon on the fly. To work, each encounter of the LARP module needed to feel like the logical next step. These were linear by necessity, and when Adventure Paths appeared in tabletop gaming, their design felt very familiar.

In contrast, sandbox play doesn’t rely on that kind of sequencing. You can still use published material, locations, NPCs, and their motivations, but not as a chain. Instead, they go into the "Bag of Stuff" that comprises the broader setting. The content becomes part of a living world, a world in motion, not a predetermined storyline. What the players choose determines what gets used, and in what order, if at all.

To stress a point I made earlier: unlike a LARP, I’m not constrained by the logistical limits of live action. When I bring the world to life for my players, I don’t need to steer them toward a particular outcome. My prep consists of location descriptions to relay, a list of NPCs with outlined goals and motivations to roleplay, and a timeline of probable events. This timeline doesn’t dictate outcomes; it functions like a battle plan, providing guidance and tools to manage the chaos created by player choices.

It doesn’t matter whether I wrote the content myself or pulled it from published material. Locations, characters, and events all go into the same toolbox. They’re not paths, they’re options, waiting to be acted on (or not) by the players.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, because I was showing how the game term uses the same meaning as the real-world term and thus wasn’t as mysterious as penerton kept claiming.

But it doesn’t. The definition from the 5e DMG is different from the dictionary definition.

You literally are.:


And yet you set this in a dungeon and with an X-per-day qualifier, something that nobody does when talking about social encounters. why would you talk about dungeons and X/day encounters and not be talking about combat and traps? Who talks about X/day social encounters?

There can be non-combat encounters in a dungeon. There can be non-combat encounters in an adventuring day.

You are imagining that I’m saying something I’m not. I’ve now explained this to you four times.

You know, I don’t recall ever saying that you had to use the term. I didn’t say you must use them in your games. I said I consider those things to be encounters, and I call them encounters.

Oh no… you said that no matter what, they’re encounters. Here:

So basically, even if you don’t really think of them as encounters… they’re encounters.

So my guess is that your answer… when I asked if you can simply accept that I view it differently than you… is “No”.

You then got angry because I have D&D cooties.

Oh I’m not angry. And any issue I have with you is not because of you liking D&D. I like D&D myself, and have for decades.

No, the issue was you put some confusing comments out there and then accused others of bad faith when they expressed confusion over them.

Then, rather than acknowledging that either (a) your ideas were not as coherent as you thought, or (b) that because of differing definitions of the word “encounter” as game jargon versus its standard usage, there could perhaps be more than oneway to interpret things… you just doubled down on blaming others and accusing them of bad faith.

So if you have any kind of cooties… it’s whatever you’d call those kind.