Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9324285" data-attributes="member: 20323">I think it's one of the strengths of D&amp;D and D&amp;D-adjacent games (d20 leans into wildly divergent results after all), so I wholeheartedly embrace randomness.That said, I think it needs to be applied with a human touch.For example, I have a house rule &quot;Let the Roll Stand&quot; where if you have a gnome wizard fail to break down a door, then it's fine for the hulking barbarian to try. But if the barbarian fails, there's no way for the gnome wizard to break down the door – it's not consistent with the shared fiction – unless the situation changes meaningfully (e.g. the gnome taps out the hinges on the door and then tries). This is what I mean by a human touch.Similarly, I've used the DMG random dungeon generators, which will get you so far. But they're just a starting point. They're not actually inspired creative things, they're just a vehicle for you to build on with your own creativity. When I did <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/labyrinth-tomb-of-the-minotaur-prince-and-other-random-dungeons.432707/" target="_blank">Labyrinth Tomb of the Minotaur Prince</a> it was about 65% rolled content, 35% GM instincts/massaging/art.Same thing applies to random encounters &amp; monster/NPC reaction rolls. That randomness is only as good as the underlying creativity that went into the random tables. Crappy tables yield crappy results, requiring that much more GM work to make it into something interesting. So, the randomness isn't really good or bad – it's a tool to access new thought connections and ways of mixing/matching game content with unexpected timing. The good/bad distinction comes in the quality of the generator I'm making or borrowing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Quickleaf, post: 9324285, member: 20323"] I think it's one of the strengths of D&D and D&D-adjacent games (d20 leans into wildly divergent results after all), so I wholeheartedly embrace randomness. That said, I think it needs to be applied with a human touch. For example, I have a house rule "Let the Roll Stand" where if you have a gnome wizard fail to break down a door, then it's fine for the hulking barbarian to try. But if the barbarian fails, there's no way for the gnome wizard to break down the door – it's not consistent with the shared fiction – [I]unless [/I]the situation changes meaningfully (e.g. the gnome taps out the hinges on the door and then tries). This is what I mean by a human touch. Similarly, I've used the DMG random dungeon generators, which will get you so far. But they're just a starting point. They're not actually inspired creative things, they're just a vehicle for you to build on with your own creativity. When I did [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/labyrinth-tomb-of-the-minotaur-prince-and-other-random-dungeons.432707/']Labyrinth Tomb of the Minotaur Prince[/URL] it was about 65% rolled content, 35% GM instincts/massaging/art. Same thing applies to random encounters & monster/NPC reaction rolls. That randomness is only as good as the underlying creativity that went into the random tables. Crappy tables yield crappy results, requiring that much more GM work to make it into something interesting. So, the randomness isn't really good or bad – it's a tool to access new thought connections and ways of mixing/matching game content with unexpected timing. The good/bad distinction comes in the quality of the generator I'm making or borrowing. [/QUOTE]

Verification