D&D (2024) D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024)

[TiQuinn]

Post hoc.

Or maybe in advance, if the GM tells the players what they have to do to earn XP (eg rescue the princess, kill the vampire or whatever).

The PCs don’t know how many XPs the diamond is worth until they appraise it. They don’t know how many XPs the dragon is worth til they kill or subdue it. There’s no difference.

And in the case of a story based adventure, as I’ve said repeatedly, no one playing Ravenloft doesn’t know that the goal is to kill the vampire. It’s self-evident.

This is not the same as a win condition established by the game, which then permits the players to make their own choices about how they wish to do that - choices about risk and reward, scouting out possible treasures in the dungeon, etc.

I disagree. There’s no difference. The players make their own choices in story-based adventures as well.

Yes, it is a thing that I've encountered. I've played plenty of railroading, GM-decides D&D. Thankfully not since the 2nd ed AD&D era. In my view it's bad RPGing.

Railroading is a separate, undiscussed topic.

And what does "exploring it", "interacting with NPCs", etc mean? These things don't exist. They are imaginary.

I mean…you had no problem using that word.

The way the players "act upon" a dungeon is by exploring it,

The game is imaginary. There is not really a dungeon. There is no Mr. Boddy. There is no Park Place and Boardwalk.

Therefore, what we are really talking about is how the outcomes of declared actions are established. In the context of the dungeon, the fiction is artificially austere, generally quite simple, and - as @AbdulAlhazred has already posted - there are known conventions and tropes for adjudicating the relevant actions. The GM's key can also deal with most if not all of the salient things - distances, portals and furniture.

@AbdulAlhazred described a situation where a PC stuck their hand in a chest and it was sliced off. Where’s the mechanic for that? Where’s the reasonable risk/reward cue for the PCs there? How was that not “GM Decides?” How was that not completely arbitrary?

Once the fiction becomes about more realistic things, there are too many possible action declarations to be covered by known conventions, and the key can't even aspire to be complete. So the way those outcomes are established becomes simply by the GM deciding.

I mean, it's no coincidence that RPGs that aim to support more "realistic", non-dungeon-crawling scenarios, and that want to avoid GM-decides railroading, adopt pretty different action resolution frameworks from those found in AD&D. This has been evident since Greg Stafford designed Prince Valiant in the late 80s.

And yet, games exist that do this all the time. You just like games with an extremely fixed set of rules and actions (even though that doesn’t prevent silly results like the aforementioned hand chopping trap). As I’ve said several times, the differences in the editions produce different motivations from the players, but I think you’ve reached a set of conclusions about the game that don’t really hold water.

And I noticed you didn’t answer my last question.

 

[mamba]

"milestone leveling helps remove barriers that would otherwise encourage the players to push back against that problem behavior."
I know that part of Canada is pretty adamant about speaking French but I didn't think you were in that part and you literally quoted it for a second time. In addition there was a long back and forth over how it does so. You also quoted this one originally

maybe you have to spell it out, because I am not seeing it either… if anything it is the opposite. If you get XP every time you kill a monster you can go on any side trek and progress, with milestone leveling there is more pressure to get ‘back on track’

 

[mamba]

Post hoc.

Or maybe in advance, if the GM tells the players what they have to do to earn XP (eg rescue the princess, kill the vampire or whatever).

that is no different from the game telling you ‘what you have to do is get the gold out of the dungeon’, just more varied

This is not the same as a win condition established by the game, which then permits the players to make their own choices about how they wish to do that

it is still leaving choices with the players, the only thing that changed is the choice they never had, the win condition(s)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

"milestone leveling helps remove barriers that would otherwise encourage the players to push back against that problem behavior."

You seem to think that just because you said something means that I understand what you're talking about. This isn't the case.

I know that part of Canada is pretty adamant about speaking French but I didn't think you were in that part and you literally quoted it for a second time. In addition there was a long back and forth over how it does so. You also quoted this one originally

Come now - there's no need to insult my English.

Your communication style just doesn't jive with me. You may notice that I'm not the only one. I do my best to fairly interpret what you're saying, but it's not always easy. You tend to weave in-and-out of a series of exaggerated hypotheticals.

I often feel that you have some good points, but I've got to dig for them.

You quoted that as well as quite a few posts talking about specifics of it and secondary mechanics that help or hinder post450 Bob in other ways.

Sure, but in this case, I disagree with the parts that I think that I understand.

 

[tetrasodium]

maybe you have to spell it out, because I am not seeing it either… if anything it is the opposite. If you get XP every time you kill a monster you can go on any side trek and progress, with milestone leveling there is more pressure to get ‘back on track’

Not seeing what? The mere idea that a "subverter/abused gamer syndrome player" could expose weakness in milestone leveling? Covered that earlier in posts like this this while folks were trying to justify reasons why the gm should be cool with post 450 bob behaving as described by others here and here.. Yes under an experience system players get quantifiable amounts of experience for killing monsters & such, but that experience can be adjusted up or down as the GM sees fit & frequently is. Milestone leveling lacks anything quantifiable that can be reduced in a way the GM could say "well yea, I had to improv that whole thing because you guys went off [chasing windmills] while ignoring all of the tries at hooks that might lead back to the adventure & stuff going on in the world".

Perhaps the missing element is a result of the apparent effort from more than one poster to explain what the GM should do if the seemingly obvious problem player post 450 Bob was presented as were not a problem player causing past comments to be misinterpreted as a call for GM advice rather than examples of a weakness present in milestone leveling?

@FitzTheRuke I included those two bolded links because the disconnect you present seems to rest largely in some level of disbelief that a player might ever act like post 450 Bob often enough for him to serve as an example. I don't think that you are missing the idea that other players might feel primed to push back against Bob's subverting tendencies out of self interest if they are worried about not getting enough experience or falling behind on the gold they expect their character to need even if they just want to play dnd & don't care what the adventure is without the GM needing to push & we've gone over all manner of specifics. Have you considered that you seem to be giving too much benefit of the doubt to a hypothetical player described by their demonstration of problem behavior?

Why is there pushback over the mere idea that milestone leveling being weak to players like bob in ways that experience for deeds & gold for experience are more resilient to. Don't forget that same sort of "exaggerated hypothetical" behavior described for Bob was also described by the linked dndshorts & alexandrian video/blogpost.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Not seeing what? The mere idea that a "subverter/abused gamer syndrome player" could expose weakness in milestone leveling? Covered that earlier in posts like this this while folks were trying to justify reasons why the gm should be cool with post 450 bob behaving as described by others here and here.. Yes under an experience system players get quantifiable amounts of experience for killing monsters & such, but that experience can be adjusted up or down as the GM sees fit & frequently is. Milestone leveling lacks anything quantifiable that can be reduced in a way the GM could say "well yea, I had to improv that whole thing because you guys went off [chasing windmills] while ignoring all of the tries hooks that might lead back to the adventure & stuff going on in the world".

Perhaps the missing element is a result of the apparent effort from more than one poster to explain what the GM should do if the seemingly obvious problem player post 450 Bob was presented as were not a problem player causing past comments to be misinterpreted as a call for GM advice rather than examples of a weakness present in milestone leveling?

@FitzTheRuke I included those two bolded links because the disconnect you present seems to rest largely in some level of disbelief that a player might ever act like post 450 Bob often enough for him to serve as an example. I don't think that you are missing the idea that other players might feel primed to push back against Bob's subverting tendencies out of self interest if they are worried about not getting enough experience or falling behind on the gold they expect their character to need even if they just want to play dnd & don't care what the adventure is without the GM needing to push & we've gone over all manner of specifics. Have you considered that you seem to be giving too much benefit of the doubt to a hypothetical player described by their demonstration of problem behavior?

Why is there pushback over the mere idea that milestone leveling being weak to players like bob in ways that experience for deeds & gold for experience are more resilient to. Don't forget that same sort of "exaggerated hypothetical" behavior described for Bob was also described by the linked dndshorts & alexandrian video/blogpost.

I am happy to report that I can entirely follow this post without scratching my head. Thanks for that! I sincerely appreciate it.

Yes, absolutely - it is true that I sometimes have trouble following you because of my reluctance to "go there" with the sort of exaggerated hypothetical behaviour that you use to illustrate "problems".

"Post 450 Bob" just doesn't exist at my table, so even as an intellectual exercise, he's hard to account for. But how he relates to Milestone Leveling, and how he'd somehow be "better" with XP, when he's as bad as you've built him, IDK. It becomes even harder to "go there".

But I least I see what you're getting at - you think that the desire for XP/treasure, will somehow motivate the rest of the table to help the DM push back against BadBob in a way that their desire to follow the story would NOT motivate them. You treat it as something of a given.

Again, it goes against my experience. IME the players are far more interested in the story than they are in superficial rewards of math. I get the psychology behind XP. Incremental rewards to build anticipation on your way to the Level-Up Payoff. But a lot of people don't buy into that when they realize that it's rather hollow. Many of us aren't that mercenary.

Some people play for the sake of playing. The journey is its own reward. And levelling up is just as exciting when it's the reward for a "job well done" after an actual achievement, rather than the result of the nickels finally adding up to a dollar. And they're motivated to keep Bob in line - because the game is more fun when everyone is on the same page. And Bob himself is responsible for his own behavior, and behaves because it's more fun for him to do so.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Whether or not you hold truck with it is kind of incidental. The point is that the 1e rules are so scattered that people felt it necessary to reproduce and organize the rules in such a way that future gamers could realistically play those rules without having them taught to them by people who had learned them hand-me-down style by whatever table they had learned them from. People literally read the 1e PHB and DMG and went and created their own house rules because the rules as written were all over the place.



Whereas from the time that I started playing, the 1e rules were already a curiosity piece. A bit of history that had already been replaced by 2e rules. Rules one could actually understand and follow.



I mean, I don’t know what to say.

We’ve been going round and round about whether the 1e rules are written in some way that gives some sort of explicit control over risk and reward to the players to allow them to control the game better than in subsequent editions…and you’ve now laid out a scenario where arbitrarily some character just gets their hand lobbed off just because. I got nothing. It’s like we’re talking two totally different languages. The game you describe has no appeal to me.

2e is just as obtuse as 1e, and really barely different at a mechanical system level, combat, magic, classes, items, etc. is all just minor tweaks. You can argue it's more tightly written but there's not a big difference.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So here is my issue with your flesh golem example.

A flesh golem is obviously not a fair fight for low level PCs. New players would likely not know this and die, experienced players would know this and avoid it. They have no way of knowing it's a glass cannon unless you specifically described it as somehow different (damaged, barely still together, etc). How do I calculate risk/reward when my knowledge of the game can't actually aid me? If I engage in combat with it, it will most likely TPK the party before I figure out it's one magic missile from death, and even if I have magic missile and have it memorized, my knowledge of a flesh golem should tell me that 1d4+1 shouldn't be enough to stop it so why even bother. Essentially, it's a puzzle with the solution being "read the DMs mind".

Now if you telegraphed any of this info prior to the encounter (a nearby lab has notes on a failed experiment, the golem is damaged, the room prior to it has a wand of magic missiles next to pulverized wizard) I MIGHT accept that the golem isn't what it appears to be and is quite defeatable at the level I'm currently at). But I don't see anything that implies the fight is winnable or fair.

Honestly? I was 13 when I wrote that dungeon. All of your criticisms are cogent. I was merely illustrating that, indeed, you can do weird things and still stick to a basic paradigm of player risk management. The golem is slow and won't leave its area, so it can be defeated. As I say, your criticisms and suggested improvements are good. They'll improve the players ability to figure out how to safely deal with the problem, though if those solutions are really obvious then perhaps the reward needs to be less.

I addressed this in my design by giving the PCs a clue indicating a large treasure beyond the golem. Eventually they came up with some way past it and got that treasure.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

went to the 1e DMG to look for those rules

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and that kinda is where it ends. There is a table of random traps, but that is not by dungeon level and the advice about treasure is relatively generic.

First of all, not all monsters you encounter have their treasure according to their treasure table.

"All monsters would not and should not possess treasure! The TREASURE TYPES given in the MONSTER MANUAL are the optimums and are meant to consider the maximum number of creatures guarding them. Many of the
monsters shown as possessing some form of wealth are quite unlikely to have any at all."

They do get more treasure deeper down in the dungeon but specifics are pretty nonexistent (apart from the treasure type per monster part)

"In more inaccessible regions there will be stronger monsters — whether due to numbers or individual prowess is immaterial. These creatures will have more treasure, at least those with any at all. Copper will give way to silver, silver to electrum, electrum to gold."

and just to not make it too easy on the players

"Rather than stocking a treasure which the victorious player characters can easily gather and carry to the surface, you maximize the challenge by making it one which ogres would naturally accrue in the process of their raiding. There are many copper and silver coins in a large, locked iron chest. There are pewter vessels worth a fair number of silver pieces. An inlaid wooden coffer, worth 100 gold pieces alone, holds a finely wrought silver necklace worth an incredible 350 gold pieces! Food and other provisions scattered about amount to another hundred or so gold nobles value, and one of the ogres wears a badly tanned fur cape which will fetch 50 gold pieces nonetheless."

and the list goes on

Magic items are also handled rather imprecise

"As the campaign grows and deeper dungeons are developed, you exercise the same care in placement of selected and balanced magic items. Of course, at lower levels of the dungeon you have more powerful single items or groupings of disparate items, but they are commensurate with the challenge and ability of participants. Guardians tend to employ the items routinely, and others are hidden ingeniously to escape detection."

So yeah, a lot of DM fiat and some rough guidelines. Certainly nothing that really restrains the DM and puts the players in control, allowing them real risk vs reward decisions, apart from 'the deeper, the more of both risk and reward'


to a degree, yes, no different from how the game works outside the dungeon as well. In both cases the DM placed level appropriate monsters and rewards in level appropriate environments

I don't really think the packaging of treasure is really any more relevant to risk management in this dungeon crawl paradigm than the sheer amounts of treasure. Anything the PCs cannot possibly haul is worthless to them and just color.

As to the rest... If you look at how play was organized by Gygax, you can see how it all works nicely! No, each room is not a little cruller filled with treasure goodness, necessarily. If you want the full payoff, you gotta actually go kill the orc chief, but you will still get some stuff off each orc warrior! Everyone understands this.

And again, major goals, the big treasure hordes, are indicated on maps, told of by old drunken dwarf warriors in dive bars, or are the subject of legends which the party must figure out the truth of. This is where all that PHB1 advice comes in! It's all about risk and reward, how to make the best of it.

Classic D&D is a game where the players get to decide what level of danger to risk at any given point. Yes, it's not 100% certainty, and that's part of the thrill, but it is skilled play!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The same way you described? By exploring it, interacting with NPCs, searching rooms, casting spells, and so on.

As for “How do they know if they’re winning or losing?”

Is this really a problem you’ve been encountered? I have an extremely hard time believing we’re not theorycrafting here.

I’m going to go back to this - story goals are self-evident. After the DM presents the problem, the end goal is pretty clear. I mentioned several examples earlier. And they’ll know if they’re progressing towards a goal based on how the story progresses:

• They find the holy symbol of Ravenkind that can help keep Strahd at bay.

• They find a clue that says the missing prince is in the lower reaches of the Temple.

Finally, they gain experience points. That’s the metric that everyone uses in terms of meta-gaming. Thr player knows they’re winning because they know they’re gaining XP.

Let me flip that around: Why does the player in your non story based game continue adventuring? The PCs clear out Dungeon Level 1 of all of its gold and find the stairs to Dungeon Level 2 where the monsters and traps are deadlier but the gold is higher. But instead, they say no…”we want you to generate another dungeon because surely there are more. We want to keep clearing out Dungeon Level 1s because we prefer safety. After all, it’s just the gold that matters. There’s nothing in the rules that say we need to accept greater risk.” Would you accept that rather absurd argument from the players?

The point is, only the GM really knows how story goals work and what they're worth. The GM is almost unconstrained here, and there can be huge variation and lack of agreement. Just take the swamp of alignment for example: XP award is now highly dependent on the interpretation of actions WRT it. I carry out actions fully expecting a reward only to be told no, the GM thinks my actions contravene my alignment (class goals can be equally murky).

Things like the consequences of actions in story terms are also highly subject to circumstances that most GMs do not fully explicate and which are not discoverable in any realistically practical way within D&D's structure of play.

Examples of all these issues are rife! Goal/story XP just makes all of this much worse. I know, I played AD&D from 1979, parts of it even earlier, through to the late '90s. Both editions. 2e XP was horrible, we ditched the entire idea pretty quickly. It didn't accomplish what it set out to do, and just disempowered players IME.