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

[Hussar]

Because the players assume a patch of grass is a putting green doesn't mean it is one, nor does it mean it suddenly changes height because an ambush is triggered.

No. It absolutely does suddenly change height. You describe it as some grass over there and nothing else. That means that the players have a very incomplete view of the scene. That the grass might be long enough for someone to hide in is absolutely something that adventurers traveling through dangerous wilderness would immediately note. Heck, that's part and parcel of basic training.

But, you just describe it as "grass". So, the players don't pay any attention to it because if there was any reason to pay attention to it, you should have told them so.

But, you don't. Dm's never do.

Again, it's the one eyed man in the land of the blind. The players cannot possibly know what they should be asking about because they are never given enough information to actually form any questions. So, again, let's not pretend that this is something that it's not. The grass is ONLY long enough to hide in because the DM needs something for the baddies to hide in to spring the ambush.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agree with Micah that these read identically to me. The GM decides, based on what the roll says and how they interpret it, suggests that the cook could be there or could be somewhere else...hence, both there and not there.

What the fudge does this even mean? IN THE FICTION there either is or is not a cook in the kitchen. The GM says "there is a cook in the kitchen" for <insert real world reason here> and it is so! It strikes me that many posters here, who have all been arguing about this cook for, IIRC at least 400 pages now, are going pretty far out into some very strange places. Come back to Earth!

 

[Hussar]

This example would only have been relevant if somehow you on success the grass had to be short.

This could easily be true. The PC's spot the ambush because the grass wasn't long enough. They succeed on their perception check, so, now the grass is not long enough to hide the ambushers.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But, you don't. Dm's never do.

Hey. A little less universalization here.

 

[Campbell]

GMs having a mental model they develop and evaluate is only more like our moment-to-moment existence as long as we are dealing with environments that have a fairly definite status quo that player characters are exploring and interrupting. Particularly if they are foreign environments player characters have little meaningful connection to or knowledge of that precedes play. It happens that this aligns very well with the sorts of fictional situations we see in most adventure fiction and the more popular tabletop RPGs.

This sort of breaks down when we move into the sorts of fictional situations where NPCs are as apt to disrupt the status quo as player characters or different characters are interacting with different parts of the environment or there's more familiarity and connections involved.

Take a fairly simple court scene where you have 3 different characters petitioning the king about how they think the would-be assassin of the prince should be handled. One is spymaster who believes the assassin should be cut loose so his agents can track them back to the person who hired them. One is the queen who wants a public execution. One is the master of arms who wants the assassin questioned and then disposed of. 2 of these characters are player characters. 2 are NPCs. This is a confab that could take a day or two with interjections by other NPCs along the way. Playing this out in a way that feels real and gets close to our moment-to-moment experiences is much, much harder to handle in a GM's mental model sort of way. My experience is that at least some active scene framing helps to bring this sort of situation to life.

This is why I think a focus on how explorable the situation (and what level of zoom we are operating at) is more apt than trying to argue over which approach is more real (which is going to be very subjective and contextual to the sorts of fiction we are dealing with).

One of the things that is always bizarre to me is that our discussion of different techniques and approaches always seems to land on the sorts of fictional situations that are most appropriate map and key task resolution. Locked doors and mountains to climb with sparsely detailed fictional situations that give them none of the rich situational context* that other approaches require to functionally address.

This is not to say that a rich situational context is not amenable or desirable with map and key task-resolution oriented play. It's just like not necessary for functional play or addressing the GM decision space in the same way it is necessary in other approaches.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

No. It absolutely does suddenly change height. You describe it as some grass over there and nothing else. That means that the players have a very incomplete view of the scene. That the grass might be long enough for someone to hide in is absolutely something that adventurers traveling through dangerous wilderness would immediately note. Heck, that's part and parcel of basic training.

But, you just describe it as "grass". So, the players don't pay any attention to it because if there was any reason to pay attention to it, you should have told them so.

But, you don't. Dm's never do.

Again, it's the one eyed man in the land of the blind. The players cannot possibly know what they should be asking about because they are never given enough information to actually form any questions. So, again, let's not pretend that this is something that it's not. The grass is ONLY long enough to hide in because the DM needs something for the baddies to hide in to spring the ambush.

The grass absolutely doesn't change height, it was from inception tall enough to conceal an ambush. Same as a group of trees doesn't change size if they are peach trees and a player assumes they are redwoods, and a river doesn't change depth because the player do not check before entering. Its just grass, trees, and a river unless they check or have other reason to know without checking.


Back to the example I responded to, grass in a dungeon, not on a savannah swamp or park. If that is not enough to get them curious about it then what will?



I would recommend reading the rest of the posts about in this thread before jumping to conclusions.

 

[Hussar]

There is no pretense. Rolling specifically for a random encounter is very different than having an encounter because you decided to take a bite out of a poisoned orange and rolled a saving throw. One is connected directly to having the encounter, and the other is ridiculous, since a con save vs. poison has absolutely nothing to do with randomly encountering something.

That's the thing. There is no difference. The "random encounter roll" is not connected to anything other than, as you say, having this encounter. It's circular. It's not connected to the game world. It's not connected to anything the PC's are doing. No matter what the PC's are doing, at 6 pm, they meet this encounter. If they are setting camp, then the encounter comes to them. If they are fishing, then the encounter comes to them. If they are moving, then they come to the encounter. It's the ultimate in railroading when you think about it. There is NOTHING the players could do to avoid this encounter. You rolled a failed check on the Random Encounter Table, and poof, the encounter magically teleports to wherever the characters happen to be at that time.

One entirely arbitrary, connected to nothing in the game world die roll is not any different than another completely disconnected die roll. They are exactly the same. The only difference is, you happen to like one roll and you don't like the other one.

 

[Hussar]

Funny - I thought the whole point of playing a game of make-believe was the illusions.

For the players maybe. But, for the DM? Seriously?

 

[Maxperson]

That's the thing. There is no difference. The "random encounter roll" is not connected to anything other than, as you say, having this encounter. It's circular. It's not connected to the game world. It's not connected to anything the PC's are doing. No matter what the PC's are doing, at 6 pm, they meet this encounter. If they are setting camp, then the encounter comes to them. If they are fishing, then the encounter comes to them. If they are moving, then they come to the encounter. It's the ultimate in railroading when you think about it. There is NOTHING the players could do to avoid this encounter. You rolled a failed check on the Random Encounter Table, and poof, the encounter magically teleports to wherever the characters happen to be at that time.

One entirely arbitrary, connected to nothing in the game world die roll is not any different than another completely disconnected die roll. They are exactly the same. The only difference is, you happen to like one roll and you don't like the other one.

The random encounter roll is absolutely connected to the game world. The encounter tables are by terrain type, the terrain being the aspect of the world being traveled through. It's also based on the likelihood in-fiction of randomly running into a monster, which connects to the game world that way.

No. The encounter never moves, because the roll happens at 2pm in the terrain and location that they are at. The monster was always in that spot. There is no, "If they are fishing, then or if they are setting camp, then." There is only one option for what they are doing at 6pm.

Not being able to avoid it is also wrong. Wandering monsters don't just appear in the laps of the PCs. Often they hear the encounter coming from a long away off and can just move, or set an ambush. Other times they can see it coming and opt to try and escape.

In any case, it's not absurdly connected to PC skill such that the PCs would quickly become aware that unskilled people get the group into trouble, because they fail a lot more.

 

[Hussar]

If I used random encounters, I would roll for the encounter and then set the scene for the encounter that's about to happen in. "You come to a small valley that acts as sort of an oasis in this arid lands with tall grass and a few trees. Everybody give me perception checks <continue to the start of combat>." If it was something like gnolls in the desert, they dug shallow holes to lie in and were hiding under camouflage or similar. There is no need to retroactively add anything since there's no expectation that I'm going to give detailed descriptions of every mile of the trip.

And there we have it perfectly laid out.

The encounter is rolled FIRST. THEN the scene is created to make the encounter flow in the fiction of the game.

The ONLY reason that this area has tall grass is so the DM can justify the ambush. Or, the ground will be soft enough to dig holes to ambush from. It is 100% retroactive. You have the encounter, the encounter you want to run needs a specific type of terrain and poof, that terrain is added to the encounter.

Thank you for illustrating exactly how it works.