D&D 5E Character play vs Player play

[Hussar]

[MENTION=545]Ridley's Cohort[/MENTION], That is what I was getting at. If elements in the game must always follow causal logic from an in-game perspective, we should never survive past second level.

Even in the most Theme Park style sandbox, you still design locations with an eye to the PC level. You have low level areas and high level areas. Sure, the players could choose to go to a high level area, but, those are sign posted along the way as being too dangerous and to be avoided until later. PC's are punished if they ignore the signposts, and they are free to ignore the signposts, but, the signs are all there all the way along, in order to prevent the players from going somewhere they will get killed too easily.

There's no in-game logic to that. That's all meta-level, based on the idea that we want the campaign to be on-going.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Even in the most Theme Park style sandbox, you still design locations with an eye to the PC level.

What if you don't design sandboxes "Theme Park style"? Like my sandbox campaigns, for example. Just curious on your views on this, I'm not challenging you.

(Jumping in here because I find the sandbox-adventure discussions a lot more productive or interesting than the rest of this thread. I can fork if necessary.)

 

[Hussar]

What if you don't design sandboxes "Theme Park style"? Like my sandbox campaigns, for example. Just curious on your views on this, I'm not challenging you.

(Jumping in here because I find the sandbox-adventure discussions a lot more productive or interesting than the rest of this thread. I can fork if necessary.)

I just used this as an example because people point to this style of campaign as the style that most closely follows "in game causality". My point is that it doesn't matter. Design choices are always grounded in meta level decisions. They might be rationalized by in game fiction, but meta level considerations are always part of every design decision.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] - what is the in game logic that prevents bombing 1st level PCs with adult dragons?

Adult dragons aren't exactly common. It takes a fairly significant ecosystem to support one, and that tends to be far from civilized territories. Or, if there is a dragon near civilization, then the thing protecting the PCs would be the same thing protecting everyone else - such as some sort of periodic offerings to appease the dragon.

A better question would be, what is the in-game logic that would cause any number of adult dragons to attack a bunch of level 1 chumps?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This is an example where ingame causality - the origins of the lich, for instance - is narrated as an afterthought to event generation - the PCs' encounter with a lich. Traditional D&D, based heavily as it is on random encounter tables, is rife with this sort of post hoc narration of newly-determined story elements into the ongoing fiction.

Okay, I get what you're saying now. And from what I recall, that's been fairly constant throughout the editions - the DM is always given the choice of making something up beforehand, or rolling randomly and incorporating it on-the-fly.

Of course, the DM can also roll randomly, choosing to discard any result that doesn't make sense.

But in any event, I don't see that you can avoid doing things for metagame reasons. The encounter table tells you that the PCs encounter a lich - that's a metagame event.

The encounter table represents all of the multitude of factors that are internal to the game world. Everything that goes into it is something that exists within the world. Characters can discuss the probabilities of certain encounters, and gather information by interviewing other travellers.

When the DM chooses to roll randomly, that's not taking a stance on what should exist. It's merely expressing uncertainty on the part of the DM about what will show up right now.

 

[Hussar]

But, again that's just post hoc justification. That random monster has no existence until the pc's meet it. After all, the DM can choose to have it not exist simply by over ruling the random generation.

 

[aramis erak]

But, again that's just post hoc justification. That random monster has no existence until the pc's meet it. After all, the DM can choose to have it not exist simply by over ruling the random generation.

That depends highly upon when the DM is making the encounter rolls. I've been known to delay a random encounter for logic reasons, and to have had a number of encounters prerolled, just waiting for the triggering encounter, so I can be prepped for those randomly timed encounters.

Plus, an encounter with a werewolf at, say, midday, may not result in them noticing him as such until much much later... when the moon rises.

 

[Lerysh]

I haven't really been following this thread since page 20. I'm just going to leave this here tho

 

[pemerton]

The encounter table represents all of the multitude of factors that are internal to the game world. Everything that goes into it is something that exists within the world. Characters can discuss the probabilities of certain encounters, and gather information by interviewing other travellers.

When the DM chooses to roll randomly, that's not taking a stance on what should exist. It's merely expressing uncertainty on the part of the DM about what will show up right now.

What you say about the encounter table, and the notion that character can discuss the probabilities of certain encounters, is not necessarily true. I made this point upthread, in the first post about the AD&D DMG's city/town encounter table:

Likewise, considerations of simulation are secondary. Do these chances of meeting bandits and demons reflect their general prevelance in the gameworld, or is the table gerry-mandered in favour of putting the players (via their PCs) into engaging and challenging situations? Gygax doesn't tell us, and each GM is free to make of that what s/he will. (Although the GM who treats the table as simulationist might have trouble explaining how so many demons, undead etc keep coming into urban areas without completely wiping them out. For some GMs this is a challenge to be overcome by baroque world-building. For others it is a reason to avoid the simulationist interpretation. Gygax does not dictate one way or the other.)

To repeat: nowhere does the DMG assert, or imply, that the random encounter table is to be read in a simulationist fashion, such that anyone who wanders through a city every night will meet a demon or undead on a near-fortnightly basis. Gygax talks about the use of rumours, but he never suggests that rumours might yield the percentage layout of a random encounter table.

This is left for each GM to decide.

Furthermore, even if you do read encounter tables in a simulationist fashion, that doesn't affect my main point, which [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has picked up on in a couple of posts not far above this one: if the GM rolls a lich on that encounter table, then that lich now has to be incorporated into the gameworld, even though the GM may well not have thought about it as part of the campaign backstory until this very moment. In other words, the metagame event - rolling a certain number on a random encounter table - necessitates writing new story elements into the unfolding gameworld, and probably also retconning some ingame causality (eg making up a set of past events, hitherto unknown to any participant at the game table, that explain how this lich comes to be right here, right now).

The reason I am harping on this point is because it is a completely banal example that illustrates the point that, in traditional D&D play, rewriting backstory and retconning ingame causality is regarded as a core GMing skill that is necessary to make the game function. It is not some wacky, deviant idea smuggled in by latter-day "storygamers".

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Why? The horse only exists once I call it. Remember it cannot ever be more than about a week's travel from me. Ever. It only exists when I, the player, make it so. The DM has very little input.

Quoth the 1E PHB:

At 4th level - or at any time thereafter - the paladin may call for his warhorse; this creature is an intelligent heavy warhorse, with 5 + 5 hit dice (5d8 plus 5 hit points), AC 5, and the speed of a medium warhorse (18"); it will magically appear, but only one such animal is available every ten years, so that if the first is lost the paladin must wait until the end of the period for another.

The DMG goes on to mention how, specifically, the paladin will have a magical vision of the horse's location, which is - "as a rule of thumb" - within 7 days ride; and the paladin will have to overcome some not-insurmountable challenge to win it.

So that sounds pretty straightforward. It's entirely within the paladin's ability. It exists entirely in-universe. The DM has very little input because it's the character - not the player - who decides that this happens. The DM only controls the specifics of the resolution, kind of like interpreting a Wish spell.

The horse is created magically on-the-spot when the paladin calls for it. It is created into a situation which will be marginally difficult for the paladin to solve. No retcon required.