D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Helldritch]

It never mattered how long it took for hp to recover, since however long it took, it was always "We rest until our hp recover." "Okay, X time passes, on with the adventure."

Ishhh... my players would never do that and never did. It is a call for a few rolls.

Wing it mode = when the players say "we go north" and the DM decides what is north = procedurally generated hexcrawls (with a slight variation of randomly rolled vs pulled out of the DMs kiester and squares vs hexes). It eliminates any preplanned material like stocked dungeons, modules and APs since there is no guarantee the players will take the hook.

"But Remathilis," you say, "a good DM could just repurpose a dungeon. He can add bread crumbs back to the module or he can add consequences that steer back to the AP's boundaries. That material isn't wasted!" To which I reply that nothing in that "random encounters" list is either, it just needs to be repurposed if the PCs don't take the bait. There is a meme I saw: a railroad is forcing your PCs to go to a specific town, a sandbox is giving them a choice of three towns, but they're all the same town anyway. What @Helldritch appears to be doing, though a little more formal than I do, is setting up the same kind of preplanned reusable content and fitting it where the PCs go.

It is simple, what I do is on the fly I adjust the encounters to either softly pushing the players toward my prepared stuff or I can go hard and nudge them in the direction I want them to go or I just drop the matter and let them do whatever they want. It entirely depends on the type of campaign, the goals that the players have decided and the event around the world that will evolve from the players doing or not doing the prepared stuff.

What I like people to be aware of, is that the story is both in the DMs hand and in the players' hands. A big question of mutual respect means that the players will engage in the prepared stuff the DM did most of the time. Of course, sometimes the story develops in such a way that the prepared stuff must either wait or is simply put to rest for an other group. But if the players suddenly decide, out of the blue, to not do prepared stuff for the fun of it... well the last time was 25 years ago and I simply gathered my books and left. I told them that when they would finally ready to play to call me, I would check my schedule if they still fitted... They called, but too late, I had replaced them in a heart beat. Their little joke just fell short.

Or the DM has already decided what is north before the players go there, just in case they someday do.

I've long since learned to throw out a variety of hooks and have several different possible adventures on their ends, and see what if anyhting gets any traction.

And I the same. But there are players, though rare, that will do their utmost not to do planned stuff. To these I simply say, find an other DM. Free form is fun a few games per campaign not always.

 

[Helldritch]

Only if the players refuse to risk anything (if so, why are they adventuring?) and the DM refuses to enforce dramatic consequences in the fiction (if so, whither verisimilitude?).

Not doing the stuff might lead to very dire consequences. Especially if they were doing the stuff then decided to do something else. Finish your peas! I say! After, you can have your treats!

 

[Remathilis]

Or the DM has already decided what is north before the players go there, just in case they someday do.

I've long since learned to throw out a variety of hooks and have several different possible adventures on their ends, and see what if anyhting gets any traction.

So you have every dungeon, goblin warren, hamlet and bandit camp for miles around ready to go before you ever start your game? Talk about design overkill!

 

[Cadence]

So you have every dungeon, goblin warren, hamlet and bandit camp for miles around ready to go before you ever start your game? Talk about design overkill!

Having a thing in each cardinal direction from a starting point seems a bit different than having everything planned out for miles... doesn't it?

I'm guessing a lot of people do a mix of planned things and winging it?

 

[Fifth Element]

According to the rules, the point of the 6-8 encounters day is to diminish resources. Its a game that mechanically revolved around that idea.

The purpose behind a rule is not itself a rule. It's just why the rule was designed that way - even if the rule doesn't actually accomplish what the designers wanted it do.

 

[Fifth Element]

Can you please illustrate me how I can express myself correctly by your standards while I'm saying that the art of D&D is progressively uninspiring to me, product after product and in particular in the last product released?

You don't have to. You already made that point, so we get it. You don't have to keep making it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If the purpose of a rule isn't the important thing, what is? I'm confused.

The purpose behind a rule is not itself a rule. It's just why the rule was designed that way - even if the rule doesn't actually accomplish what the designers wanted it do.

 

[Fifth Element]

If the purpose of a rule isn't the important thing, what is? I'm confused.

Rather than address this tangent, let's just go to the DMG.

Your claim that "According to the rules, the point of the 6-8 encounters day is to diminish resources" is false. In a sense you have it exactly backward. The point of the 6-8 encounters is to give the DM a guideline on how many encounters a typical party will likely be able to get through in day. It's right on page 84:

"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer. In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress."

Which all means that 6-8 encounters is in no way a "rule" of the game, it's a guideline that the designers used when designing the rules. The text specifies that there can be more encounters, or fewer. Encounters were not designed to drain a certain amount of character resources, character resources were designed with the goal of 6-8 typical encounters being the baseline. According to the rules.

But more importantly, we now go to page 85, where "the rules" state that "Some players and DMs view random encounters in an adventure as time-wasters, yet well-designed random encounters can serve a variety of useful purposes." It then does indeed list drain character resources...as the third of six useful purposes. The others are create urgency, establish atmosphere, provide assistance, add interest, and reinforce campaign themes.

As such, "according to the rules", draining character resources is only one of six possible purposes for an encounter. So the claim that according to the rules, encounters are there to drain character resources is blatantly false. According to the rules, an encounter that serves only to reinforce campaign themes (and not drain resources), is still a useful encounter.

 

[overgeeked]

Which all means that 6-8 encounters is in no way a "rule" of the game, it's a guideline that the designers used when designing the rules.

Right. Which is the problem. Character resources are based on the designers' assumption that the PCs should be getting through 6-8 medium-to-hard encounters per adventuring day (aka between long rests). The assumption the designers made, and have explicitly stated is: long rest, two encounters, short rest, two encounters, short rest, two encounters, long rest. And they designed the game based on that assumption. Which is not actually reflected in they way most people play the game. As a result, anything less than the assumed 6-8 encounters per adventuring day throws off the balance designed into the game and the party has too many resources, therefore the encounters you do have are easier to blow through.

 

[tetrasodium]

Right. Which is the problem. Character resources are based on the designers' assumption that the PCs should be getting through 6-8 medium-to-hard encounters per adventuring day (aka between long rests). The assumption the designers made, and have explicitly stated is: long rest, two encounters, short rest, two encounters, short rest, two encounters, long rest. And they designed the game based on that assumption. Which is not actually reflected in they way most people play the game. As a result, anything less than the assumed 6-8 encounters per adventuring day throws off the balance designed into the game and the party has too many resources, therefore the encounters you do have are easier to blow through.

Not only that.
dmg84 says this: "Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.".

Just after that it says this: "in general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day."


The adventuring day is 6-8 medium to hard encounters. Sure someone could broaden the scope of what constitutes an "encounter", but the context of entire section is about awarding experience for an adventuring day & that does not come from what tends to get thrown into that widened scope filler to allow a box of 6-8 to be checked. Mental gymnastics might allow noncombat encounters to award experience, but that section with the 6-8 about awarding experience also includes a number of examples that modify the encounter to raise the encounter difficulty

• The whole party is surprised, and the enemy isn't.
• The enemy has cover, and the party doesn't.
• The characters are unable to see the enemy.
• The characters are taking damage every round from some environmental effect or magical source, and the enemy isn't.
• The characters are hanging from a rope, in the midst of scaling a sheer wall or cliff, stuck to the floor, or otherwise in a situation that greatly hinders their mobility or makes them sitting ducks.

every single one of those is very obviously about combat encounters rather than locked doors puzzles & the like