GM Prep Time - Cognitive Dissonance in Encounter Design?

[Wicht]

Look damnit, I have the module in front of me right now. Would you like to read it to me? Where on the map is the toilet?

The module says Nualia is two floors beneath the area where the horse is. Hussar asked if it was in her vicinity. I do not consider something 2 floors above me to be within my vicinity.

Calm down please. I thought you appreciated humor. I even put in a smilie

While you are correct that the stats for Nualia are attached to room E4, there's a horse in c18, a toilet hole in c24 (I actually assume the humans on the lower level use chamber pots and then dump it up there). Nualia's bedroom is in D5 and one would assume that despite her activities she sleeps there sometime. There's a chapel in d12 and the text explicitly states she conducts services there and the PCs will encounter her and the whole tribe there if they attack at the wrong time.

In point of fact, in my home game, I had the PCs meet Nualia in the chapel after fighting the Yeth Hounds instead of downstairs. There's no reason a DM couldn't have Nualia flee to the horse. She does, after all know its there one would presume. Running the game PbP, the PCs rested after wiping out the goblins, the others, alert to the danger had begun to pack and thus the bugbear was helping Lyrie pack the relics. I frequently move NPCs around if I think there is a logical reason for them not to be in the room with their text.

 

[Fifth Element]

Is there anything in her statblock dealing with what happens if the characters encounter her in the toilet?

 

[Wicht]

Is there anything in her statblock dealing with what happens if the characters encounter her in the toilet?

Possibly Concentrate +5 or Intimidate +9.

I doubt that encounter would be a pleasant experience. For anyone.

 

[Rechan]

Nualia's bedroom is in D5 and one would assume that despite her activities she sleeps there sometime.

The module says "she's not spent much time here recently". Assumption nothing, that does not establish any routine.

There's a chapel in d12 and the text explicitly states she conducts services there and the PCs will encounter her and the whole tribe there if they attack at the wrong time.

This is the place where the module says she will be somewhere beyond E4 and specifies a different routine for the PCs to enter and Nualia's location. I'm glad we isolated the place where the module says she will be somewhere different than she is specified in E4.

In point of fact, in my home game, I had the PCs meet Nualia in the chapel after fighting the Yeth Hounds instead of downstairs. There's no reason a DM couldn't have Nualia flee to the horse.

So now we've moved from "Is there a horse in her vicinity" to "If the PCs enter the dungeon during the single time of day that the NPC is in 1 room, then it's possible that she could seek a horse that is one level above her, closer to her vicinity".

Glad we cleared that up.

If the DM chooses to set her down in the area right next to the horse, then of course she can go for it. But that's the DM deviating from the obvious. Hussar didn't ask "Where might the DM put her that a horse is in her vicinity?"

I frequently move NPCs around if I think there is a logical reason for them not to be in the room with their text.

Emphasis mine. I'm glad you admit that you move them around, not the module. That is your decision to deviate from the text.

The issue here is what the module says. Not how you divert from it. If I make rewrites of KotS, that doesn't change the module's design.

 

[Azgulor]

Regardless the PCs don't get to meet Nualia. Just like Kalarel they get notes about their plans, but that is sub par to any actual legitimate interaction.

Look damnit, I have the module in front of me right now. Would you like to read it to me? Since you know it so well, where on the map is the toilet? I have looked over the Thistletop writeup three times now, and see no mention of Nualia's movements. The only mention of her location is in the description of E4: "The primary villain of this adventure is likely encountered here". Everything past that point is going on about her motivations/ritual.

The module says Nualia is two floors beneath the area where the horse is. Hussar asked if it was in her vicinity. I do not consider something 2 floors above me to be within my vicinity.

I think the toilet reference was a jibe to illustrate something you might consider wasted space.

At this point, people are just talking past each other. I get what you're saying - Nualia having a ride skill is of no value to you. For those of us who like our NPCs to be built according to the rules, if Nualia didn't have skill points in Ride, she'd be lacking skill points b/c that's the way characters are built in 3.5.

While the idea that omitting those ranks and the background/character text might satisfy your "it's wasted space" point, at the end of the day, that's just your preference.

Is it likely the PCs will/can interact with Nualia? No. Is it likely she could escape to fight the PCs? No. However, if either of those unlikely scenarios does occur the GM of Burnt Offerings is in a position to run that without missing a beat or having to improv or rule by GM fiat. If you don't need that or like GM fiat, that's great. Other GMs like that kind of detail and want in when they're paying for a module.

And as for the Ride skill being a shining example of wasted space cluttering up the stat block - you're talking about Ride +2. THAT'S 7 FRAKKIN' CHARACTERS! (if I include the space).

At this point, you're right. She doesn't need those ranks in Ride - the darn horse has been beaten to death!

 

[Neonchameleon]

As a DM, there are two things I need to know to run any monster. Its rough capabilities and how it thinks. The way it thinks can be broken into two things - its tactical sense and its motivation.

Where WoTC excels with the monster manual is the tactical sense of the monsters. The MM and particularly the MM2 are outstanding about this. They tell me how the various monsters move, how they think, how they react, and how they organise. And do so far more clearly than in any other edition of D&D - just the difference between Goblin Tactics and the Kobold's Shifty makes Goblins and Kobolds more different in 4e than Kobolds are than Half-Orcs in any previous edition. They react differently, move differently, and behave differently. And all this despite a small statblock.

The second part of the information I need as a DM is best summed up as the old actor's question "What's my motivation?" And here is where WoTC sucks. For unnamed characters, pay, fear, or group loyalty are just fine. But more important ones need both foreground and background (to borrow Weem's description) - and WoTC seems to make these thin whereas Paizo excels most of the time. If I have a history, I can work out whether someone is likely to have e.g. good riding skills. If I have a motivation I can tell how someone will act mid term (rather than short term - which the statblock covers) when a PC throws the inevitable spanner in the works. And no module writer can cover everything.

Questions of motivation don't belong in the MM (except as minor hooks) unless it's for a specific world (Privateer's excellent Monsternomicon for 3e is the best single world monster manual I've read). They belong in the module. Or the worldbook.

I wonder whether it is because the 4e monster manuals are so good and provide so outstanding a mix of fluff and rules that WoTC is so weak on the motivation side. On the other hand, the 3e statblocks are dire (hell, they make you look up other books, which defeats the point) - which forces Paizo modules to be good at the motivations because they aren't doing much with the tactical reactions.

 

[Rechan]

For those of us who like our NPCs to be built according to the rules, if Nualia didn't have skill points in Ride, she'd be lacking skill points b/c that's the way characters are built in 3.5.

Emphasis mine. There is the difference.

They have formula for HP, Defenses, and Attack bonuses. NPCs work different than PCs. That's how NPCs are built in 4e. It's not that "she's missing skill points". In 4e, she has no skill points to spend. For 4e, no superfluous details are NPCs built by the rules.

I don't think 3e statblocks should be smaller, should have the things omitted. Because I don't play 3e. The rules of 4e state how statblocks are written, and I don't want 4e statblocks that break the rules any more than you want 3e statblocks that break the rules.

 

[pemerton]

Here we have another part of the problem. Skill challenge mechanics issues tend to mask the skill challenge concept issues.

I don't know if any interaction between the players and an NPC/monster will involve skill use, combat, neither, or both. As DM I do not dictate how the PC's interact with elements of the game world, that is the player's job.

I can make notes on the relative difficulty of certain courses of action, such as an overly paranoid and suspicious guard being very hard to bluff but writing out a lengthly encounter on the premise that the players will attempt this tactic is a waste of time.

Pre-defined encounter types are the antithesis of meaningful choice. If an encounter involves an NPC that the players may come into conflict with, then combat stats as well as some notes about how the NPC behaves
in non-combat interaction are both needed.

<snip>

The moment the DM tells them when to fight, when to bargain, etc, is the point at which player decisions stop mattering.

I agree with all the above, but can't give more XP at this time!

the 4e stat block ALREADY includes the Monster's skill levels.

I have no desire to return to the page long statblock, but in modules I purchase, I would like to see some depth given to NPCs and BBEGs beyond their combat stats. It isn't really needed for the 35 orc guards scattered around the stonghold, but for the chieftain and his shamen, a litle more information would be great to give me ideas about how to use them other than as a tool for beating on the PCs.

And no, I'm not talking about wanting to know whether they have allergies to strawberries or use their left hand.

I agree with this too - and it answers AllisterH's question.

But I don't blame this on Dave Noonan. I don't think Noonan's comment is about removing plot elements - at least as I read him, he's just talking about stat blocks. In the original essay, he even referred to plot elements as a substitute for stat blocks (eg a Marilith has minions to animate dead if it needs them).

WotC seems to me to have had trouble with plot elements in its modules more-or-less from the get-go. Look at the widespread criticism of the Heart of Nightfang Spire, the Andy Collins and Skip Williams modules in the same series, Bastion of Broken Souls, etc.

What is needed is not more stats, but more presentation of plot elements - and not as background scenery for the GM and perhaps the players to enjoy, but as game elements that the players can engage with and potentially change. (For examples, look at the Penumbra modules from Atlas Games for 3E. Or even What Evil Lurks, from Necromancer games.)

 

[Dark Mistress]

I think you guys should strip down and oil up to fight about this. It would be more fun to watch.

 

[Wicht]

I don't think 3e statblocks should be smaller, should have the things omitted. Because I don't play 3e.

If you don't think that the 3e stat blocks should be smaller, why are you criticizing a stat block from a 3e module for having things you don't want?

As for calling me out for "deviating from the text," I've read plenty of DMing advice telling me to do just that, and its part of the reason I like modules that have that "extra information." I enjoy games with vibrant dungeons as opposed to static dungeons. Paizo throws that extra bit in to allow DMs to do just what I routinely do. I'm not doing something strange with the module, I'm using it more or less as its intended, to present a vibrant world in which things happen for a reason.

Again, my main point is that what one person considers wasted ink, another might consider relevant information.