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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9246532" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>Yeah, "we play to find out" feels especially resonant. I suspect that there may not be a good answer for the general case of "what should happen when any given monster meets the party?" Depends on the monster. Depends on the party. Depends on the tactical choices made by each. Depends on the DM's framing and the context it occurs in. We play to find out.</p><p></p><p>There's something very appealingly Toolbox about "Here is the challenge. Could be easy, could be hard, that decision is on you and how you use the tools at your disposal." And then letting you assemble your legos however you want to in order to accomplish your goal. It's kind of a shame your character's toolbox in 5e is pretty inflexible day-to-day. If all you have is hammers...</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>To extend and maybe break the metaphor...</p><p></p><p>An encounter is a verse. A D&D session is a song. A campaign is maybe an album. The notes that you play in the verse aren't independent of the sound of the song, right? There's a context. They need to go together well, and their value is dependent on what's around them, what instruments your band can play (and how well!). If you're trying for a jazz sound, the rules are different than if you're trying for a pop punk sound. These aren't interchangeable.</p><p></p><p>So, like, I can't swap out a CR 12 monster for another CR 12 monster and expect that it won't affect the encounter and the session and the campaign overall. They aren't mechanically equivalent, despite that identical CR number.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Keeping the analogy ball going as long as it's useful: musicians do this by performing. There's an audience. It's not a win/loss condition, it's a condition where people like you (or not). And there's a lot of ambiguity - am I doing this right? Was the night off? Was the venue right? But iteration and practice is what, for the most part, makes good working musicians. Not everyone's gonna be John Lennon, but with enough practice, you can be Pretty Good at the Guitar.</p><p></p><p>Bringing the analogy back home to roost, I think we could understand that great DMs are built by iteration - by performing D&D in front of a lot of people, multiple times.</p><p></p><p>So, then, the powerful tool to grow the TTRPG community is to bring new DM's into new groups and public spaces and lean into the <em>performance </em>of D&D. We build skills like improvisation. We build our knowledge of various fantasy tropes and works (a little Appendix N homework). We include advice in the DMG for how to not freeze up, how to be a good host, how to attract players, how to help the party build characters with hooks and drama and backstory, how to present a setting without lore-dumps, etc. A lot more advice cribbed from screenwriting and acting and improv than we have now!</p><p></p><p>And we still have the home games, just as we have the local band of 5 dads who jam together at the local pub on Monday nights. They're happy doing their thing. And we also have D&D celebrities, who, through luck and charisma, are able to get followings.</p><p></p><p>And in that context, what is CR? It's best use case is guard rails - to give DMs a pool of monsters for the session that wouldn't end in a sudden TPK or a one-round stomp-fest. And for that, something <em>less </em>precise than current CR might be better. Maybe something tier-based, that accepts that you aren't going to easily quantify the resource drain of every individual orc, but that lets you know, hey: this is the antagonist menu for you in these levels. An orc? That's a 1-4-tier antagonist. An orc general and his warband of 1,000 orcs? Now we're talking maybe 10-15. An ancient white dragon is clearly 17-20. A single mind flayer might be 5-10, though a mind flayer armada feels more 17-20.</p><p></p><p>That also lets you calibrate non-monster threats. A desert trek is probably a 1-4 antagonist, but a sandstorm might be 5-10, and the Black Flats, a continuous expanse of solid obsidian that turns the sun into an oven and is filled with literal demons might be 10-15. And the Nine Hells itself has gotta be 17-20 (at least at the lower layers). Dinner with the king is 1-4, dinner with the emperor is 5-10, dinner with an Archon is 11-17, etc. This helps us set DCs and imagines that the PC's will use special abilities (charms or magic items or enchantment spells or something) to navigate these increasingly supernatural challenges. This maybe even helps us when the Fighter in heavy armor is wondering how she's going to contribute to the political intrigue theme of this session (if we're having dinner with the emperor, then we've got a 7th-level fighter feature of Great Renown where their combat reputation proceeds them and allows them to be seen as an expert consultant when it comes to imperial security).</p><p></p><p>The encounter design is fuzzier. Is this Easy or Medium or Hard or Deadly? Well, maybe any of those things. The CR is only going to tell you what genre it's going to be. It's the "you're going to be OK" sign. It's the list of interesting antagonists for your story (given PC abilities at that level). Maybe it's no more precise than that.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 9246532, member: 2067"] Yeah, "we play to find out" feels especially resonant. I suspect that there may not be a good answer for the general case of "what should happen when any given monster meets the party?" Depends on the monster. Depends on the party. Depends on the tactical choices made by each. Depends on the DM's framing and the context it occurs in. We play to find out. There's something very appealingly Toolbox about "Here is the challenge. Could be easy, could be hard, that decision is on you and how you use the tools at your disposal." And then letting you assemble your legos however you want to in order to accomplish your goal. It's kind of a shame your character's toolbox in 5e is pretty inflexible day-to-day. If all you have is hammers... To extend and maybe break the metaphor... An encounter is a verse. A D&D session is a song. A campaign is maybe an album. The notes that you play in the verse aren't independent of the sound of the song, right? There's a context. They need to go together well, and their value is dependent on what's around them, what instruments your band can play (and how well!). If you're trying for a jazz sound, the rules are different than if you're trying for a pop punk sound. These aren't interchangeable. So, like, I can't swap out a CR 12 monster for another CR 12 monster and expect that it won't affect the encounter and the session and the campaign overall. They aren't mechanically equivalent, despite that identical CR number. Keeping the analogy ball going as long as it's useful: musicians do this by performing. There's an audience. It's not a win/loss condition, it's a condition where people like you (or not). And there's a lot of ambiguity - am I doing this right? Was the night off? Was the venue right? But iteration and practice is what, for the most part, makes good working musicians. Not everyone's gonna be John Lennon, but with enough practice, you can be Pretty Good at the Guitar. Bringing the analogy back home to roost, I think we could understand that great DMs are built by iteration - by performing D&D in front of a lot of people, multiple times. So, then, the powerful tool to grow the TTRPG community is to bring new DM's into new groups and public spaces and lean into the [I]performance [/I]of D&D. We build skills like improvisation. We build our knowledge of various fantasy tropes and works (a little Appendix N homework). We include advice in the DMG for how to not freeze up, how to be a good host, how to attract players, how to help the party build characters with hooks and drama and backstory, how to present a setting without lore-dumps, etc. A lot more advice cribbed from screenwriting and acting and improv than we have now! And we still have the home games, just as we have the local band of 5 dads who jam together at the local pub on Monday nights. They're happy doing their thing. And we also have D&D celebrities, who, through luck and charisma, are able to get followings. And in that context, what is CR? It's best use case is guard rails - to give DMs a pool of monsters for the session that wouldn't end in a sudden TPK or a one-round stomp-fest. And for that, something [I]less [/I]precise than current CR might be better. Maybe something tier-based, that accepts that you aren't going to easily quantify the resource drain of every individual orc, but that lets you know, hey: this is the antagonist menu for you in these levels. An orc? That's a 1-4-tier antagonist. An orc general and his warband of 1,000 orcs? Now we're talking maybe 10-15. An ancient white dragon is clearly 17-20. A single mind flayer might be 5-10, though a mind flayer armada feels more 17-20. That also lets you calibrate non-monster threats. A desert trek is probably a 1-4 antagonist, but a sandstorm might be 5-10, and the Black Flats, a continuous expanse of solid obsidian that turns the sun into an oven and is filled with literal demons might be 10-15. And the Nine Hells itself has gotta be 17-20 (at least at the lower layers). Dinner with the king is 1-4, dinner with the emperor is 5-10, dinner with an Archon is 11-17, etc. This helps us set DCs and imagines that the PC's will use special abilities (charms or magic items or enchantment spells or something) to navigate these increasingly supernatural challenges. This maybe even helps us when the Fighter in heavy armor is wondering how she's going to contribute to the political intrigue theme of this session (if we're having dinner with the emperor, then we've got a 7th-level fighter feature of Great Renown where their combat reputation proceeds them and allows them to be seen as an expert consultant when it comes to imperial security). The encounter design is fuzzier. Is this Easy or Medium or Hard or Deadly? Well, maybe any of those things. The CR is only going to tell you what genre it's going to be. It's the "you're going to be OK" sign. It's the list of interesting antagonists for your story (given PC abilities at that level). Maybe it's no more precise than that. [/QUOTE]
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