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

[Faolyn]

We've had how many posts of "What does a 'bypassed encounter' mean"? I'm not the one who's refusing to accept other people's verbiage. I may not understand some phrases. I still have no idea what "In order to do something do it" means for example. But I don't get super picky and say "Your fictional character can't actually do anything so what do you mean when they 'say do it'".

From Monster of the Week, the PbtA game I run:

Do It, You Have To Do It
This is important: when you (or the hunters) make any move, you must describe how it happens.

Always say what is happening in the game, not just the rules side of things. Don’t tell someone “roll act under pressure!” tell them “the warlock’s gaze insinuates itself into your mind and as it hisses, ‘Kill your comrades,’ you feel an overwhelming urge to comply. What do you do?”

There’s a flip-side to this as well. When one of the hunters is doing something that is a move, make sure they follow the rules for that move. For example, if someone says “I go up to the park ranger and ask her ‘Did you see anything weird last Sunday night?’” then you should ask them to roll the investigate move before you decide how the ranger answers.

Or in other words, describe what you’re doing without using the mechanics. What you describe, and how you describe it, may trigger a move. Or it may not.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Maybe, maybe not. The party might exit the area through a different way. The party might cause a ruckus which causes all the guards to be summoned to a particular area, leaving none at the original spot. If the guards are on patrol instead of protecting a specific location, they might not even be there the next time the party is there.


Ok, so I have bunches of free time and I use some of it to write reviews of the zillions of games I have for my friends to read. I have nearly three hundred pages of them so far. I’m not going to say I’m a great reviewer or anything, but I will say that I’ve read a fair number of different RPGs at this point.

That being said, there are games I’ve read, or at least skimmed, that don’t have encounters, and they are nearly all very tightly focused in scope. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people would consider them to be RP exercises rather than games. You play as faeries or ghosts and humans have moved into the house you’ve claimed as your own; now deal with them. You play as heroes who are bragging about their exploits over drinks; what are those exploits? You play as dogs trying to bring comfort to your people who are sad; as dogs, you have no idea there’s an apocalypse occurring. (These are all games I actually own.) in short: with these games, you’re not encountering much of anything new because the game’s purpose is quite limited.

The games we’re talking about in this thread are not that kind of game. They’re games that can be described as adventure games. Your characters move around and doing things that are not dictated by the game’s concept, and that means encountering obstacles and threats which are nearly always placed there by the GM (or by a roll on a table, which may or may not have been created by the GM) either at that moment in time or before the game started, during a prep phase.

So basically, even if you don’t really think of them as encounters… they’re encounters.

As I said, I accept that you look at it that way. All I asked was the common courtesy to return the favor and respect that I view it differently. I guess that’s not possible.

Okay then.

 

[Faolyn]

As I said, I accept that you look at it that way. All I asked was the common courtesy to return the favor and respect that I view it differently. I guess that’s not possible.

Okay then.

I already said I understood you didn’t see it in those terms, remember? Then you said that it’s mostly people who prep who think about it that way.

 

[Lanefan]

Again, I think this makes sense for a certain approach to play. When I ran Mothership, this may have applied to some extent. There would be random encounters as the PCs made their way about the space station where they were based, and also when they were on other planets. There were some planned encounters, too. But if they took steps to avoid one, I don't know if I'd have described it as bypassing the encounter. I may have. They may have avoided a possible fight, or avoided the attention of a rival faction. They may have bypassed a security system as part of an infiltration. So it's possible I may have phrased it this way when running that game... I'm not sure, and certainly wasn't making a note of it at the time.

But when I think of my Spire campaign, I don't ever think that we had "encounters" as they're typically thought of. The PCs made their way around the district where most of the game took place, a crime ridden ghetto called Red Row. They interacted with people there. They got into several fights. But none of these were set things... they arose based on what the characters did. And no one said anything like "let's go have an encounter with the gnoll gang boss Mother Moon to see if she'll help us against the Church of the Gun". Instead, they met with her.

Did you ever position a gang of toughs in front of the PCs as a challenge or obstacle and if yes, did the PCs successfully take steps to avoid them?

If yes again, then boom: they bypassed that encounter (and in 1e D&D, would get xp as if they had defeated the toughs in combat).

Someone else could look at that example of play and say "well, that's an encounter" and I understand why... but I don't really see it that way myself, and no one described it as such during play.

I don't know of anyone who describes anything as an "encounter" during play.

 

[Lanefan]

An anticipated planned encounter that was avoided. As many people have told you repeatedly.

I'd define it as a foreseeable or foreseen encounter that was intentionally avoided by the PCs.

That takes the planning piece out of it and also speaks to player/PC intentions.

 

[Lanefan]

Notice how important "planned" is in that definition being viable, and how much it assumes a norm of pre-planned, module or dungeon-crawl style play.

Take out "planned" and replace with "foreseeable or foreseen".

And - sigh - I suppose I have to note that when I say foreseeable or foreseen I mean by the players and-or PCs, not the DM.

 

[Lanefan]

Because an encounter is a thing that occurs.

Not quite. An encounter is also a thing that will occur unless steps are taken to prevent it from occurring.

I see you coming toward me along the street, but you haven't seen me yet. I could keep walking and talk to you (encounter) or I could slip into a store until you've gone by (avoided encounter).

They're searching everyone at the nightclub door, and I want to get in. I could stand in line and be searched (encounter) or I could slip in through a back door and not be searched (bypassed encounter).

Note that in both cases a) I'm the one who gets to decide whether I want to avoid/bypass the encounter or not, and b) I have to proactively do something in order to attempt that bypass.

This just seems like such a simple concept.

 

[Lanefan]

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).

I guess I don't see it as being an encounter until-unless the Orcs also become aware of the PCs. Before that, it's just a potential encounter that can - maybe - be bypassed.

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).

They bypassed the Orcs but didn't actually resolve anything; the Orcs are still out there as a potential threat and that threat has yet to be neutralized be it by negotiation, combat, or whatever other means arise.

 

[Lanefan]

If you had here said "me-as-DM", I think you have now fully justified this statement. But you used "you". So it appears this opinion is aplicable outside your group. I was thinking it was meant as advice, and my replies were based on that assumption. I still cannot see how this advice could be relevant to anyone without your experience and talent for thinking on the fly. What am I missing? Is it that you think the target audience actually posesses that skillset? Or maybe this meant as something else than advice?

I see it as pretty much universal that one of the skills a good DM needs to have (or, over time, acquire) is the ability to hit whatever curveballs the players throw.

 

[Campbell]

Games like Monsterhearts, Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, et al are not adventure games in the same way that D&D is an adventure game though. You do not have the freedom to "go anywhere and do anything". These are games with premises, with characters who have their own premises we are expected to honor. There's no avoiding - there's handling things in a different way - using different approaches, but you are expected to embrace the premise regardless.

They might have similar sorts of fictions, but they are not exploration games where conflict is a thing that can be avoided.

That these things are structured differently is a thing we (as a community) once knew instinctually. While the old story game / roleplaying game divide had its own issues (mostly by setting hard lines, being used in an exclusionary way and overstating the differences) at least we acknowledged and accepted that they were structured differently.