D&D General No Fixed Location -- dynamically rearranging items, monsters, and other game elements in the interests of storytelling

[hawkeyefan]

Sure would - if it's that easy it won't take very long to play through.

All it means in the long run is that their pre-intelligence on the place was a bit faulty.

But nor would it be particularly fun. What's the point of playing out scenarios when the outcome has almost no doubt? It'd be pretty tedious. I'd either narrate the results and move on, or change things up so that the remaining encounters are worthwhile.

Adhering to the script, for me, isn't a justifiable excuse for a boring session.

For example, for whatever reason I was really beating up our poor monk last session. So next session I'll probably make sure to focus a little more on some of the other PCs. Which is about the only place I fudge the dice - if there are multiple targets and no best choice from the perspective of the monster - I'll roll randomly to see who gets hit. So that's the one exception to my rule above. I roll and then decide who should be attacked, ignoring my result.

At other times I'll hold back that second wave, not focus fire if the PCs are having a tough time of it, go after the tank fighter with a super high AC so he can ignore the attacks and so on.

Here's the thing.....people in the real world don't always do what's "optimal". In these discussions, tha tfact is largely ignored when some folks claim that a particular action "makes no sense". Sometimes, people do foolish things. They aren't always totally rational, or they make mistakes.

I think it's much more easy to justify a less optimal action on the part of a NPC than many are willing to admit.

Going the other way, if the party is facing highly intelligent or tactical enemy I'll adjust things on the fly occasionally. The NPC may know the party extremely well, understand their general tactics, know who should be targeted. Sometimes they'll have a spell I didn't think to give them ahead of time and so on. A super genius should be able to think two steps ahead even if I can't.

This is where I think what many classify as "meta-gaming" can really come in handy. The rules can't replicate everything. There would be way more information at a character's disposal from their world than what the DM can provide to the player. That's just a fact, no matter how detailed and descriptive your DM can be.

So adjusting with those kinds of factors in mind is perfectly valid. Granting the villain a spell in order to make the confrontation more interesting or dynamic? That and similar adjustments by the DM aren't just valid, I think they're useful tools for the DM to help simulate the fictional world and its inhabitants.

 

[Gradine]

Disagree.

Someone has to bang this drum - good on Saelorn for doing so.

Metagaming from the player side doesn't make for a better game in any way. Sometimes the opposite might appear to be true at first glance, but on closer review there's almost certain to have been some very avoidable mistake made in order to get to that point.

Metagaming from the DM side doesn't often make for a better game, but can in unusual and-or infrequent circumstances.

I should note that I don't think the conversation in general, in re: DM styles or the role of meta-gaming is useless or unproductive. Quite the opposite. Just that trying to have that argument with Saelorn is. One would have better luck trying to battle a brick wall, and likely suffer less abuse in the process.

 

[aco175]

Going the other way, if the party is facing highly intelligent or tactical enemy I'll adjust things on the fly occasionally. The NPC may know the party extremely well, understand their general tactics, know who should be targeted. Sometimes they'll have a spell I didn't think to give them ahead of time and so on. A super genius should be able to think two steps ahead even if I can't.

This is where my players get frustrated. There is no planning or real tactics charging an ogre den or dealing with a bunch of zombies, but throw in a smart BBEG and problems start when they cannot simply "walk into Mordor". The first no plans charge usually means that they will need to retreat and think some on finding a way in or a spell to overcome something.

These scenes are where I need to ad-lib the most. I will play the BBEG taking almost everything the players are talking about and just think that the super-genius has already planned for it. If the players look for a secret door- it has a trap and ubdead guarding it. If they look for a spell to make him weak- another NPC party is looking for the same. If they ask around town- a commoner tells the guy.

The players always come up with many ways to go about things once they are planning, so I try to use some against them with smart NPCs and give them rewards for the others.

 

[Fenris-77]

Ha. That's one way to telegraph secret doors. I'm picturing a pair of skeletons outside every one. Hey, why are there two skeletons just hanging around in the middle of that corridor. Oh, wait a minute...

 

[ART!]

I am keenly interested in this right now, as I prepare to run Tomb of Annihilation. ToA seems like a perfect example of a published adventure for which a DM should definitely keep this approach in mind.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I am keenly interested in this right now, as I prepare to run Tomb of Annihilation. ToA seems like a perfect example of a published adventure for which a DM should definitely keep this approach in mind.

I ran Tomb of Annihilation for my group. I thought a more old school dungeon delve type of adventure would be a nice change of pace from our normal adventure-type games.

I liked the adventure a lot, but my group found the procedural aspect of dungeon delving to be too much of a change. It created some frustration at some points, so I addressed it and I made some changes, and we also established a basic way to handle the procedure.

I think there's a lot of really awesome content in the adventure, and I was excited to run it. And although it worked out, there was some frustration. It just goes to show that every group will react to an adventure differently.

 

[Fenris-77]

The En World thread about ideas for running ToA is here. I always like to look at these if I'm thinking of running a published module.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Ha. That's one way to telegraph secret doors. I'm picturing a pair of skeletons outside every one. Hey, why are there two skeletons just hanging around in the middle of that corridor. Oh, wait a minute...

Speaking of secret doors......I almost never use them. I just find them annoying. This is one area where I may add a secret room if my players have latched onto some detail in a room description and are adamant about searching. It's like, wow you really think there's something here....hey, guess what, there is! This seems very much in line with what was mentioned in the OP.

Aside from that, I rarely use them. I think they add very little to the game, but can potentially take a lot away.

If there's a non-secret way to get to the other side, then that's one thing, but areas of dungeons that are only accessible through a secret door? Blech.

 

[Fenris-77]

I might use a secret door in a place where the player would reasonably expect to find one. Creepy old mansions, for example, have secret doors. What I'm not down with is secret doors in, say, the middle of an otherwise unremarkable stretch of corridor. That's silly and just results in players wanting to search every square inch of every room, which is even sillier.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I might use a secret door in a place where the player would reasonably expect to find one. Creepy old mansions, for example, have secret doors. What I'm not down with is secret doors in, say, the middle of an otherwise unremarkable stretch of corridor. That's silly and just results in players wanting to search every square inch of every room, which is even sillier.

Exactly. If it's thematic, okay yeah....but their abundance in a lot of the old modules is just ridiculous.