D&D General Alternate thought - rule of cool is bad for gaming

[Maxperson]

I took @TwoSix's point to be this: if you don't want Ancient Red Dragons to show up as wilderness encounters, then what are they doing on the table that you use to resolve wilderness travel? That is where the GM shows they lack the courage (ie to follow through) of their convictions (as expressed by their encounter tables).

The answer to that is easy. It's because sometimes you do want it to show up. I don't have the time or inclination to make a separate table for every class, subclass and level combination for 4 players x every terrain type. It's far better to make one more generic table and ignore the rolled encounters that don't apply to the particular party make-up that I'm running for.

Another possibility is that I have a generic table for mountain encounters, but I know that the particular country the party is in no longer has any dragons in it for reasons. I'm going to ignore any rolled dragon encounters because none exist to encounter.

I'm sure if I thought about it further I could come up with even more reasons why such a thing would be done.

 

[tetrasodium]

Wow... Don't think I've ever seen someone argue that players should have omniscient knowledge of the world beyond what their PC could possibly know or be aware of and be proactivelt allowed to know how those unknown details could impact any action before taking it or the game becomes one where it is impossible to learn...

 

[Maxperson]

And the way people actually talk about this stuff? It's a HELL of a lot more than "one in a million." It's "this monster isn't doing what I want, I'm going to change its stats." It's "I don't want this boss to die before it gets to attack." It's "the players have already figured out the mystery, I'm going to change who is guilty." It's quantum ogres and "invisible rails" that guide an entire game.

I've said in this thread that it's once every 1-2 years of real time for me. That's playing one 4-6 hour session a week. And I've said that I only do it to balance out extreme bad luck with player die rolls COMBINED with extreme good luck on my part.
About once every campaign or two, and they last a year or so each, there will be an encounter where none of the players is rolling above a 10, missing like crazy, while at the same time I'm rolling very high, including lots of critical hits.

I'm not going to TPK a group that has done everything right and is just have some extreme bad luck. What I do is fudge a small bit to balance things out. They can still lose, but it won't be because of extreme bad die rolling luck.

Is it around 1 in a 1,000,000? No. Is it around 1 in 10,000? Yes. Perhaps even more than 10,000 given the number of rolls that occur in a combat. So at least 99.99% of the time my rolls are adhered to.

With player rolls I will sometimes ignore a roll if during the roll of the die or right afterward I decide that I shouldn't have called for a roll. When I do that, though, the players are always aware of it since I say something to the effect of, "Never mind the roll. X happens anyway. I shouldn't have asked for the roll."

 

[TwoSix]

The answer to that is easy. It's because sometimes you do want it to show up. I don't have the time or inclination to make a separate table for every class, subclass and level combination for 4 players x every terrain type. It's far better to make one more generic table and ignore the rolled encounters that don't apply to the particular party make-up that I'm running for.

Another possibility is that I have a generic table for mountain encounters, but I know that the particular country the party is in no longer has any dragons in it for reasons. I'm going to ignore any rolled dragon encounters because none exist to encounter.

I'm sure if I thought about it further I could come up with even more reasons why such a thing would be done.

I think that's interesting, because it shows how a singular tool (the encounter table) can be repurposed for different play styles.

I was envisioning the encounter table under the OSR paradigm, where the encounter table, and random encounters in general, have rules functions and procedures. The table is meant to be a model of worldbuilding, it's reflective of the inhabitants of the environs and nothing else. Pacing is not a consideration; nor is the composition and levels of the party.

For trad type play, the encounter table is more of a tool for the "rule of cool" (to drag this back to the thread topic). It's a DM tool to make suggestions that the DM might not have thought of, but always subject to the DM need to control the pacing and overall challenge level to the party. Modifying or nixing encounters with a high chance of PC death and TPK potential is expected and encouraged behavior for this playstyle. The encounter table gives the illusion of procedurally generated verisimilitude while still allowing for maximum DM latitude to frame encounters to the needs of the story.

 

[pemerton]

We're talking general approaches to game philosophy. I don't see why the specific PbtA based game matters.

I'm not. I made a simple point about a particular game (Apocalypse World): namely, that its rules govern the resolution of any declared action.

 

[pemerton]

People forget that encounters don’t necessarily mean combat. If you roll a dragon for a random encounter, the encounter could consist of the players sighting the dragon in flight moving towards or away from them. Most tables I’ve seen give zero context to the encounter, leaving that completely within the DM’s control.

This just pushes the issue back to the reaction table: if the GM rolls a low reaction for that Ancient Red Dragon, hostilities may ensue!

 

[pemerton]

I gave an example of the DM using dice to determine something and then using his human instinct to decide that the result would be detrimental to the game. The example is itself irrelevant. Because it sets up a sort of paradox: if the DM cannot alter the results for the better of the game, why have a human DM at all?

I answered your question not far upthread with reference to four different RPGs (Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Marvel Heroic RP and 4e D&D). There are many other RPGs that are relevantly similar to these.

no DM should fail to keep an ace up their sleeve and use it when the game stutters. It's all part of the show.

I do a fair bit of GMing. I'm not an illusionist. And I play systems that don't require me to break or ignore the rules in order to introduce interesting fiction. A RPG that (i) is intended to generate interesting fiction, and (ii) that requires the GM or players to suspend or break the rules in order to do that, is a badly designed RPG.

(Point (i) matters, because some RPGs are intended for things other than interesting fiction - eg Moldvay Basic is more about wargaming (broadly construed) and puzzle-solving than about interesting fiction. The fact that people still use techniques from that game, like wandering monster tables, even though they have completely abandoned its goals of play, is one of the more curious feature of RPGing as a hobby.)

 

[pemerton]

For trad type play, the encounter table is more of a tool for the "rule of cool" (to drag this back to the thread topic). It's a DM tool to make suggestions that the DM might not have thought of, but always subject to the DM need to control the pacing and overall challenge level to the party. Modifying or nixing encounters with a high chance of PC death and TPK potential is expected and encouraged behavior for this playstyle. The encounter table gives the illusion of procedurally generated verisimilitude while still allowing for maximum DM latitude to frame encounters to the needs of the story.

Who is the audience for the illusion? The players? Well, not if they know how the game works, which after 40+ years they probably do. The GM? What is the point of the GM fooling themself?

If the goal is to have tools to prompt the GM's imagination, is the method that Gygax came up with for a completely different purpose 50 years ago really the best that can be done?

 

[Maxperson]

Who is the audience for the illusion? The players? Well, not if they know how the game works, which after 40+ years they probably do. The GM? What is the point of the GM fooling themself?

40 years or 400, if they aren't looking at the rolls, they aren't going to know what was rolled. It doesn't matter how well they know the game at that point.

If the goal is to have tools to prompt the GM's imagination, is the method that Gygax came up with for a completely different purpose 50 years ago really the best that can be done?

Maybe or maybe not. It really depends on the group, the DM, the game in question, and the goals of the DM with regard to the tool(s).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Being aware of the terrain and having an exit strategy are good ideas too.

Sure, but sometimes your options are just bad and that's all there is to it, and the kind of terrain you have to deal with locally doesn't allow you to avoid that. As long as things outspeed you or have ranged weapons, and you don't have really long abstracted turns, you're going to have a problem in the environments I mentioned, and there are parts of the world where those environments are more common than not.