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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7887868" data-attributes="member: 42582">Two thoughts in response:(1) Is it skilled play to circumvent the dungeon? How then does one get treasure, or XP? This doesn't seem quite analogous to getting the map and the key to (say) Tomb of Horrors.(2) To push what seems to me the disanalogy to fire vs troll: if I know that only fire will beat the troll, but as a player do something else, I am (i) willingly risking my PC's death, and (ii) not getting any closer to being able to make a genuine guess at using fire. The whole thing is contrived.But if, as per [USER=2525]@Mistwell[/USER]'s initial post in this thread, I just have my PC continue through the dunes as I would have in any event, using some standard procedure or even just rolling a die, (i) I'm not taking any particular risk with my PC (for all I know there are healing potions or loot as much as random hit point loss in those encounters, and there's probably a reasonable chance the party has surplus healing available in any event), and (ii) the play experience isn't particularly contrived - the GM tells me what I find and I respond to that narration in a completely sincere way. It's true that, having seen the map, I know I'm going to encounter something - but that doesn't stop me being genuine in my response to whatever the something is. Which is quite unlike the troll case.I think the general point is that choosing where to go is analogous to choosing what attack mode to use against the troll only in a narrow range of cases (eg the fiery death corridor in ToH). I don't know the recent Saltmarsh module but I don't get any overall impression that 5e modules are much like that.</blockquote>

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