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

[AlViking]

Because an encounter is a thing that occurs.

If no encounter occurs, then what is it that was bypassed?

The answer seems to be - the thing the GM had otherwise planned to have occur.

(An alternative answer: "bypass the encounter" really just means "resolved the encounter".)

Not in D&D terminology.

 

[CellarHeroes]

No, the encounter is not resolved. The guards remain there guarding, just as the peddler's dead body remains on the trail until discovered by a PC or another NPC travelling to Kensla on the same road.

I was going further along in the scenario as I was imagining it. In my head, the adventurers entered the castle, did their thing, and left without confronting those guards at all. Yes, of course, the encounter isn't resolved until those guards no longer pose an immediate threat.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Thanks for that. I don't know which statement of @Faolyn you are referring to. A map and key are not a requirement of bypassing encounters; it just requires a sense of space and where the characters are located within that space.

So, if the referee can verbally paint a picture of a castle with walls and a drawbridge with guards, then the guards can be bypassed by the players stating they climb over one of the other walls of the castle.

Exactly, my ambush had no official map-key I could have run it ToM or pulled out my grid.
The idea of an ambush was in my head and I had noted several page numbers from various sources of the possible monsters I was to use.
I did little prep because there was a strong possibility they were going to try not engage and neither try capture one of the ambushers.
There were leads for larger concerns.

 

[AlViking]

...
Well, we’re in a thread that is challenging the way D&D does things. Why on earth is it an issue that we’d challenge the way D&D does things?

I'm using D&D terminology used throughout the books where potential obstacles are considered encounters. It's commonly accepted language for the game. Nitpicking the words used by the game for planning sessions is not about challenging the way D&D does things, it's just annoying.

 

[TwoSix]

No. The GM can completely improvise something and the players can still avoid it. Example: the player asks if they see tracks. The GM didn’t plan anything previously but, due to the game they are playing, says yes—they see heavy boot prints (maybe this is a PbtA game and the GM is using a “reveal future badness” move, without having planned out the future badness). The players can say “let’s not go that way.”

Well, yes, obviously.

The problem is the natural usage of the word encounter means to actually, ya know, interact with something.

“Encounter” as a term of game jargon generally means some pre-prepped bit of interactable content, which conflicts somewhat with its natural usage. Modules are a chain or matrix of encounters. BG3 at its core is a map of possible encounters.

So, to “bypass an encounter” means that the party does not encounter (natural usage) the encounter (game jargon usage).

 

[AnotherGuy]

I think it’s more about the “bypassed encounter” which is a bit of an odd way of looking at it. It’s more a “potential encounter”, and people seem to be shortening that to just encounter.

It’s that potential element that I think is causing the miscommunication here. In a game that is largely prepped ahead of time, such potential encounters make sense. In a game that is not, there are no potential encounters of that sort.

But with many people downplaying the role of GM prep in guiding play, it’s interesting to see how even the language used to describe it shapes itself around that idea of prep.

Honestly I do not think language has been shaped because if it had been, then APs and Modules would label everything as Potential Encounters.
The reason they don't do it, is because the idea is superfluous.

 

[TwoSix]

This is how I view the word usage.

If the DM narrates the party seeing a patrol of orcs a few hundred yards ahead, the party has had an encounter (game usage).

If the party proceeds to stealth around the orcs and continue with their travels, they did not encounter (natural usage) the orcs. The party bypassed the orcs, the players resolved the encounter (game usage).

 

[zakael19]

Well, yes, obviously.

The problem is the natural usage of the word encounter means to actually, ya know, interact with something.

“Encounter” as a term of game jargon generally means some pre-prepped bit of interactable content, which conflicts somewhat with its natural usage. Modules are a chain or matrix of encounters. BG3 at its core is a map of possible encounters.

So, to “bypass an encounter” means that the party does not encounter (natural usage) the encounter (game jargon usage).

When I see the term “bypassed my encounter” used colloquially in D & D space it almost universally has a negative connotation from the GM where they’re going “darn I’d planned this cool thing and then the players used magic/asked about other options/rolled well on skills/went off a different way and I didn’t get to use it.” Often they’re asking for feedback on how to handle that, or reuse the encounter again to not “waste prep.”

If you’re even doing situation-style prep there should be no notion of “bypass” since you drop a potential problem or goal and it’s up to the players to find a solution. Avoiding the problem entirely is a valid solution.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This is how I view the word usage.

If the DM narrates the party seeing a patrol of orcs a few hundred yards ahead, the party has had an encounter (game usage).

If the party proceeds to stealth around the orcs and continue with their travels, they did not encounter (natural usage) the orcs. The party bypassed the orcs, the players resolved the encounter (game usage).

If avoiding an encounter makes sense then bypassing an encounter makes sense.
Please lets not make common parlance a onetruewayism.

 

[pemerton]

Different games may use different terms, but the concepts are the same.

I don't think the concepts are the same at all. The concepts used to understand how scenes/situations are presented to players in classic dungeon-crawling D&D, for instance, or in DL-esque D&D, are quite different from those used in (say) Burning Wheel, which are in turn different from those used in Apocalypse World.

Part of this difference pertains to relationships between presenting scenes in play, and prep prior to play. Other differences pertain to what sorts of events, at the table, prompt the GM to present a situation to the players: contrast, in this respect, the players in a classic dungeon game declaring that their PCs open a door, or listen at a door, compared to how such an action declaration and its relationship to a possible scene might be worked out when playing AW.