Player entitlement and "My Precious Encounter"

[Balesir]

Why bother really doing anything smart or unexpected to change the situation if no good comes of it?

Because it's fun, and for the kudos of showing off to your friends how clever you can be?

 

[korjik]

This is all kind of underscoring the whole My Precious Encounters thing. The encounter, as designed, is too important to sacrifice to changes the PCs bring in the environment. Why bother really doing anything smart or unexpected to change the situation if no good comes of it? The encounter is static for fear of it being anticlimactic.

Why would the players have any idea that taking out the two guards didnt make the fight easier, even tho you made two guys appear out of nowhere? The fact that your notes say "5 guards, even level encounter: Two guards are out on guard duty and will enter the fight on turn 2" does not mean that if the players take out those two guards, you should make the fight vs. 3 guards. There is no reason for the players to know that there were only five beforehand. You still have a good fight, and the reward is 2 extra guards of xp.

 

[pemerton]

This is all kind of underscoring the whole My Precious Encounters thing. The encounter, as designed, is too important to sacrifice to changes the PCs bring in the environment.

You say "important" as if that's a bad thing. Let's replace "important" with "giving the players the exciting encounters that they crave" - then how is it bad GMing to do that?

Why bother really doing anything smart or unexpected to change the situation if no good comes of it?

Because you, as a player, may not be playing with an eye to changing the odds of future encounters. You may be playing with any eye to doing interesting stuff in this encounter, and changing the story of your PC and of the campaign world more generally. Your PC is not going to earn the moniker "the guard ganker" unless s/he ganks a few guards, and that story element is completely independent of how the GM balances or rebalances any subsquent encounter, on the fly or otherwise.

Your reply, for me at least, reinforces my earlier reply to Rogue Agent - this concern about rebalancing encounters on the fly in order to maintain mechanical pace and excitement makes sense from the point of view of Gygaxian, operational play. But it is just wrong to project that one preference for play over D&D or RPG play as a whole, and imply that anyone who is running a game where the pleasure and the fun come from something else is making some sort of error.

Why would the players have any idea that taking out the two guards didnt make the fight easier, even tho you made two guys appear out of nowhere?

<snip>

the reward is 2 extra guards of xp.

That's one way to look at it. I'd be happy to tell my players, if they asked, that I tweaked the encounter on the fly. (They might guess, too). In my own game I tend to see XP more as a campaign pacing thing than a reward, but if you play with XP as reward then getting two easy kills would certainly be a benefit of ganking the guards, even if the subsequent encounter is then rebalanced.

Because it's fun, and for the kudos of showing off to your friends how clever you can be?

This. Also, because you might think it matters whether or not your PC is a guard ganker. (This seems to have different implications for a paladin or a warpriest, compared to a rogue or assassin, for example.)

I do not accept you contention about the "razor edge" nature of 4e encounters. I have never experienced it. Also I dispute that an encounter must be tough enough for a TPK to be interesting or exciting. This is however, just my experience and your views and experienced could be very different to mine.

My experiences are the same as yours.

 

[B.T.]

Although it has already been said, I will reiterate: the concept of "My Precious Encounter" has nothing to do with scene-framing. The idea behind MPL is that every encounter must be precisely balanced to ensure that the party is challenged just so. Not more, not less, but just so, with every encounter consuming the party's resources just so, with each attack striking each character just so, with every spell calibrated to affect an enemy just so.

The reason people dislike it is because it's boring. Sometimes the best encounters are completely unbalanced trainwrecks.

 

[SlyDoubt]

That's why random encounters are AWESOME.

 

[billd91]

Because it's fun, and for the kudos of showing off to your friends how clever you can be?

It's just another couple notches on the belt. That's not clever. I want the my characters to have a meaningful impact on the world. I don't want the DM undermining that because it disrupted his carefully planned encounter. If I managed to make my future encounter easier by removing some actors from the mix, I want that encounter easier.
As a DM, I am not going to take that from my players. Of course, if they make things harder for themselves, I'm not taking that away either...

 

[billd91]

You say "important" as if that's a bad thing. Let's replace "important" with "giving the players the exciting encounters that they crave" - then how is it bad GMing to do that?

Ask yourself - by doing so, are you making the choices and actions of the players meaningless? If the PCs take a risk and stealthily take down some guards who would be in the final showdown encounter with the BBEG, are you rendering that choice meaningless by replacing them? ...assuming events have not transpired that would allow the BBEG to replace them, of course.

If you do so just to retain the "balance" of the encounter, I think you do. Is that really what you want to do or should do?

 

[pemerton]

The idea behind MPL is that every encounter must be precisely balanced to ensure that the party is challenged just so. Not more, not less, but just so, with every encounter consuming the party's resources just so, with each attack striking each character just so, with every spell calibrated to affect an enemy just so.

Is this compatible with pacing of encounter difficulties - say in the style of HeroQuest revised with its pass/fail DC-setting mechanic, or in 4e by using encounter levels for a similar effect?

The reason people dislike it is because it's boring.

But does that mean if some groups don't find carefully-crafted scenes/encounters boring, it's OK to use them?

 

[pemerton]

Ask yourself - by doing so, are you making the choices and actions of the players meaningless? If the PCs take a risk and stealthily take down some guards who would be in the final showdown encounter with the BBEG, are you rendering that choice meaningless by replacing them? ...assuming events have not transpired that would allow the BBEG to replace them, of course.

If you do so just to retain the "balance" of the encounter, I think you do. Is that really what you want to do or should do?

As I said earlier, this seems to assume that the relevant dimension of meaning is "has an effect on downstream mechanical difficulty". But that is only one possible dimension of meaning.

Balesir gave a different candidate one: a player looking cool to his/her fellow players by having his/her PC cleverly gank some guards.

I also gave a different candidate one: having a player make a decision about his/her PC that carries thematic weight - such as the player of the paladin choosing to have his/her PC sneakily gank some guards.

On neither mine nor Balesir's suggested approach does the significance of ganking the guards turn on the mechanical contribution that is made to the difficuly of a subsequent encounter. So on neither approach does the GM undermine that significance by setting the difficulty of the subsequent encounter without regard to the ganking. (Of course, the story of the subsequent encounter should reflect the ganking - so upon entering the throne room the PCs might say "We ganked two of your guards - surrender or we'll gank you too!"

 

[billd91]

As I said earlier, this seems to assume that the relevant dimension of meaning is "has an effect on downstream mechanical difficulty". But that is only one possible dimension of meaning.

The example I've been working on, the one with a downstream effect, was yours. To remind you:

For example, if the GM had planned that the balance in the encounter would include 2 guards, and the PCs bump off those guards first (via some stealthy techniques), then the GM can (for example) put another elite bodyguard in the throne room, or ad lib in a Jabba-style pit in front of the throne, or any of a dozen other techniques for rebalancing an encounter on the fly.

Now, in this case, you are actually stripping that particular meaning from the encounter. Other dimensions of meaning may not be affected, true, but you can at least be certain of stripping one by negating the consequences of their actions. The way I see it, you're protecting your encounter from being screwed up by the PCs with an unforeseen action. You're adding complications to prevent them from securing themselves an easy ride. And that seems more like punishment of the players than anything Hussar brought up in the thread that inspired this one.