"Guess and Check" Encounter Design

[GrahamWills]

"Do you walk through the mysterious archway?"

"Do you drink the potion?"

"Do you push the big red button?"

If you're an old-school D&D player, you've probably got the necklace of strangulation and The Tomb of Horrors in the back of your mind. As such, the answer to all of the above is no doubt "hell no." My question is whether we, as GMs, should try to encourage daredevil behavior.

Yes, in general we should. Because if there was a catastrophic disaster involved in doing so, we would be complete dicks as GMs not to signal it. The Tomb of Horrors was designed specifically to break that rule; it is an exception to normal dungeon design.

If a GM has a big red button, with no way to get information on it, then if I push it I expect either something trivial, but probably fun to happen, or something with a mix of positive and negative consequences to happen. My first D&D game was a trap encounter like this: "You see a patch of flowers by the road"; "I sniff them"; "Save versus poison"; "12"; "you die". No-one nowadays thinks this is the way to design games.

 

[Fenris-77]

The context matters a lot. When the tension is dialed up to 11 and the fate of the world hangs in the balance, then yeah, quaff, push and stroll. That's sounds like fun. However, that's not the same thing as being foolhardy in a more general sense. The potion is the best example - why drink it unless you need to right now? The button and the doorway both feel like they'd mostly show up at key plot crescendos, and elsewhere it would be manky GMing to put something like that where children can reach it, at least it would be manky if there's no "warning label" (as mentioned above).

Let's talk about dragons for a moment though. So yeah, doorways are for walking through, and buttons are for pushing. But are dragons for killing? I'd submit that they are not, or at least not necessarily. So I guess I'm saying there's a line here somewhere, probably right before I charge the Ancient Red Dragon with my 2nd level Paladin. Maybe we can coin a phrase like moderate foolhardiness to cover this concept?

 

[the Jester]

"Do you walk through the mysterious archway?"

"Do you drink the potion?"

"Do you push the big red button?"

If you're an old-school D&D player, you've probably got the necklace of strangulation and The Tomb of Horrors in the back of your mind. As such, the answer to all of the above is no doubt "hell no." My question is whether we, as GMs, should try to encourage daredevil behavior.

HELL YEAH we should. But these things shouldn't be reliably good or bad; you should never know whether eating the weird fruit will melt your face or give you a free level, unless you discern clues on the subject.

 

[Fauchard1520]

HELL YEAH we should. But these things shouldn't be reliably good or bad; you should never know whether eating the weird fruit will melt your face or give you a free level, unless you discern clues on the subject.

Well we all know how likely players are to pick up on clues. There's the "three clue rule" after all: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

More generally though, what do you think the percentages ought to be? Is it a 50/50 on weal or woe, or should random acts be rewarded slightly more than punished...?

 

[the Jester]

Well we all know how likely players are to pick up on clues. There's the "three clue rule" after all: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

More generally though, what do you think the percentages ought to be? Is it a 50/50 on weal or woe, or should random acts be rewarded slightly more than punished...?

It should depend on what it is. For a "touch of Chaos" type of thing, I prefer about a 30:30:40 ration of good to bad to neither but odd (e.g. "hair changes to a random color"). I do like having weird fountains, magic pools, eldritch meals, etc that give pcs the opportunity to take a chance, and I try to make most of them noticeably different from the rest. Heck, some are even reliable- drink from this fountain and you can smell gems- but before someone tries it, you can't be sure what a given incidence might cause.

But one thing that often gets overlooked with these instances is that the pcs have ways to check their odds. From "I feed some to my canary" to "Let's make the goblin prisoner try it" to "I cast augury", the pcs can always obtain some kind of clue if they just work at it.

 

[Fauchard1520]

Fortunately, I have a player, my youngest son (age 13), who ALWAYS takes the risk.

As a GM, I always want that guy in my group. It can get old if it's a "look at me I'm being silly" sort of thing, but more often than not I just want to see the encounter actually do its stuff. It's no fun with the fireworks fail to go off because no one would light the fuse.

 

[Campbell]

It obviously depends on the game. When it comes to old school design I am much more of a Moldvay fan. I don't favor gotchas that are more targeted at the player, but make little sense in the fiction and are not meaningfully knowable. Still I let the chips fall where they may.

 

[Darth Solo]

You need to ask this question?

GMs ALWAYS have to teach players. They're all over the place! Without GM guidance, players will usually arrive at a nice TPK.

Consider their limits --- then, educate them.

The education is how they grow to be GMs.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You need to ask this question?

GMs ALWAYS have to teach players. They're all over the place! Without GM guidance, players will usually arrive at a nice TPK.

Consider their limits --- then, educate them.

The education is how they grow to be GMs.

The TPK the GM built, set up in play, and then executed? Yes, surely the GM must educate players to play how the GM wants them to play or else the GM will punish them. This is right and proper. /sarc

 

[Lanefan]

It should depend on what it is. For a "touch of Chaos" type of thing, I prefer about a 30:30:40 ration of good to bad to neither but odd (e.g. "hair changes to a random color"). I do like having weird fountains, magic pools, eldritch meals, etc that give pcs the opportunity to take a chance, and I try to make most of them noticeably different from the rest. Heck, some are even reliable- drink from this fountain and you can smell gems- but before someone tries it, you can't be sure what a given incidence might cause.

This is more or less the ratio of effects on my wild magic surge table.

But as for actual dungeon design - as a DM I tend to prefer high risk-high reward and (to my characters' everlasting detriment) as a player I'm often the one who takes the gamble; and far too often it's because no-one else has the nuts to do it.

But one thing that often gets overlooked with these instances is that the pcs have ways to check their odds. From "I feed some to my canary" to "Let's make the goblin prisoner try it" to "I cast augury", the pcs can always obtain some kind of clue if they just work at it.

Absolutely. Augury is sometimes the best spell in the game...but casting it Every. Single. Time (as some would have us do) gets boring in a hurry and is a drain on spell resources.

Reveal, True Sight, and all the various Detect xxxx spells are also handy here; better yet if someone in the party has an item that can do such.

But trial-and-error in general is 100% the way to go, and that "modern" game design has removed so much of this - e.g. items are now auto-identified after a few moments use - is to me a disappointment.