D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Lanefan]

Again, he literally said those sessions were frustrating, to the point they cheered when it was over. And I don't recall Lanefan answering me when I asked if they had enjoyed those sessions or not.

I must have missed this the first time round.

If memory serves (this happened in about 1992), there was quite a bit of laughter along with the rueful hair-pulling every time someone came up with an answer and it turned out to be wrong. The very fact I remember that sequence this long afterwards and not in an "I never want to play through that again" sense tells me it can't have been all bad.

Victory is sweet, yes. Spending that much time on an epic battle, a dangerous (but maybe smallish) dungeon, or some other major undertaking, sure. Two and a half sessions, which Lanefan has said, IIRC, are in the 4-6 hour range each, or even longer, on what he also said was a "simple" puzzle, is not, to me, a sweet victory.

The longest combat I've ever run was also about 2-and-a-half sessions. Nowhere near as much cheering afterwards, though: the party mostly lost and the few survivors had to negotiate for the return of the corpses of their fallen so as to get them revived; in return giving up an artifact they'd just spent ages getting their mitts on.

A typical adventure in our crew is about 8-10 sessions including between-adventure downtime, though for the last year or so they've been super-efficient and are cracking along at about a 5-6 session average for adventures I mostly expected would take a lot longer.

As for that door, I wish I could remember the exact riddle he used on us - I'd post it here if I did, but all I remember is one line of it (I think there were four) and the answer.

 

[Lanefan]

Because you never slip up or make nonsensical errors when reading from notes?

It's taken a whole lot o' practice, to be sure, but these days I rarely goof up when reading or paraphrasing notes unless the notes themselves throw me off (e.g. the module notes don't agree with the map, or - all too often - I can't read my own writing).

 

[Lanefan]

That doesn't actually put the game in a good light...

That's just how that DM ran it: tough challenges to which he wasn't going to give you the answers. The riddle was an oddity in that other than being unable to progress there was no in-character danger involved; most of his challenges tended to bring the pain, and ot deadly levels.

 

[SableWyvern]

The bolded is in itself a fairly big assumption.

Not to put words in @zakael19's mouth, but I took it to be an assumption that, one way or another, this is what will happen in the general style of play where you are looking to maintain a specific narrative thread, not that it happens in any and every game.

 

[Maxperson]

But, if the party was a couple of miles east, then they would still be in the forest but not at that location. So, still quantum. Note, you admit it yourself - AREA. The encounter occurs because of a completely arbitrary roll on a completely arbitrary table and occurs at whatever location the PC's happen to be in, regardless of their actual location. So long as they are somewhere in that forest, they will have that encounter.

So. Quantum. Unless your encounter can only happen in a specific location, then it has to be quantum. There's no way for it not to be. A few hundred yards in any direction and that encounter never happens unless our random encounter somehow, through some unspecified manner, always appears exactly where the PCs are. I wonder what that unspecified manner could possibly be.

It's not quantum. It's entirely irrelevant whether or not it's quantum to me. Once the encounter is established, it can't be quantum to the PCs. The monster is established to be in a very specific area.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Way to tell people they don't GM hard enough for your liking.

Way to assume the worst. As has already been explained to you… by me and by @Campbell , it’s just a different type of GMing.

Must you always take everything so personal? It’s like you’re looking to be offended.

It's connected in the same way that I'm connected to grass because I ate a steak.

Weird, I thought it was connected because a cook could possibly hear someone picking a lock.

Because it's the middle of the night, not early morning. She wouldn't need to be up at midnight to 2am to make breakfast for dawn. And I already pre-established in prior posts that she sleeps upstairs. Am I supposed to alter the physical structure of the tower, and the reality she remembers just because someone failed to pick a lock?

Why would the cook sleep on the second floor? Why wouldn’t she sleep near or even in the kitchen? She likely wouldn’t sleep near the family.

Starting a fire to cook is something that would have to be done very early… before dawn. A cook may very well be up when it was still dark out.

Again, if we try to make the situation not work, it won’t work. If you try to make it work, it easily can.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's not quantum. It's entirely irrelevant whether or not it's quantum to me. Once the encounter is established, it can't be quantum to the PCs. The monster is established to be in a very specific area.

Yes… the area where the PCs are!

 

[Lanefan]

This is a very simplistic way to view it.

Why must the cook be in a deep sleep? Why can’t she be in the kitchen? The lord breaks his fast at dawn… she needs to begin prep at least a couple hours prior.

Which is fine, but then there'd be light in the kitchen both for the cook to see by and from any cook-fires she had going. Odds are very-to-extremely high the thief would notice this as light coming through the keyhole and-or cracks around the door before even starting to pick the locks (the light would be blatantly obvious, of course, if the kitchen has any windows to the outside!), and could then choose to bail out completely or find another way in to the place or go high-violence or whatever. The cook would also likely be making a bit of noise - maybe not much as she doesn't want to wake the household - but enough that the thief might notice it before starting to work on the lock.

Or perhaps she sleeps on a cot in the kitchen? Or in a nook just off the kitchen?

This one I'd deal with separately from the actual pick-lock attempt. If she's asleep I'd give her a roll to awaken during the lock-picking/door-opening sequence, made much easier should the thief do anything noisy by mistake. What this does is, quite intentionally, separate her sleep status from the pick-locks result: on either success or failure on the lock attempt she could be either asleep or awake.

Once the thief notices her, if she's still asleep or if she has yet to notice him, it'd come down to his own stealth rolls.

 

[Maxperson]

Why would the cook sleep on the second floor? Why wouldn’t she sleep near or even in the kitchen? She likely wouldn’t sleep near the family.

Because it's a wizard's tower and the first floor is for entertaining guests, not living. Remember, it's her, the apprentice and the wizard.

Starting a fire to cook is something that would have to be done very early… before dawn. A cook may very well be up when it was still dark out.

Yes. That's exactly what I said. Early MORNING, not middle of the night. Waking up at 4 or 5am should be sufficient for all of that.

Again, if we try to make the situation not work, it won’t work. If you try to make it work, it easily can.

It doesn't work because I would have to re-write the fictional reality to accommodate the changes to the structure of the tower and alter the memories of all the inhabitants.

You may not pre-establish stuff, but I do and that stuff isn't going to be altered by a pick lock roll.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Which is fine, but then there'd be light in the kitchen both for the cook to see by and from any cook-fires she had going. Odds are very-to-extremely high the thief would notice this as light coming through the keyhole and-or cracks around the door before even starting to pick the locks (the light would be blatantly obvious, of course, if the kitchen has any windows to the outside!), and could then choose to bail out completely or find another way in to the place or go high-violence or whatever. The cook would also likely be making a bit of noise - maybe not much as she doesn't want to wake the household - but enough that the thief might notice it before starting to work on the lock.

Right… again, the example as presented was not great. It’s really incomplete and was only meant to give a basic idea of the fail forward method. It was woefully incomplete.

As I said above to @The Firebird , I’d have telegraphed the presence of the cook. Probably the light of a cookfire and maybe some faint chopping noise. Something that establishes the risk of picking the lock. This way, when things go bad… what happens isn’t perceived as being totally unconnected.

If what happens as the result of a failed roll is actually unconnected to the situation and what’s being attempted, I think the GM has messed up in some way.

This one I'd deal with separately from the actual pick-lock attempt. If she's asleep I'd give her a roll to awaken during the lock-picking/door-opening sequence, made much easier should the thief do anything noisy by mistake. What this does is, quite intentionally, separate her sleep status from the pick-locks result: on either success or failure on the lock attempt she could be either asleep or awake.

Once the thief notices her, if she's still asleep or if she has yet to notice him, it'd come down to his own stealth rolls.

Sure, this is a way it could be handled. For me, I find all that too granular… I’d like to resolve it in fewer rolls.

Also, it very much depends on the game. In some games, for example, the GM doesn’t roll dice for NPCs. Players roll for their PCs.