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

[Enrahim]

I think I've lost the plot (pun intended) here a bit.

If the character would remember something significant from two days ago that's been a month for the player, I'll usually remind the player about it (or suggest the player read the game log; if it's that significant it would, ideally, be in there).

Otherwise, sometimes one or two low-fun high-learning experiences now can pay off big time later on, particularly for...

...new groups and especially new DMs. There's always going to be a shakedown period for any new DM (in any edition) while they learn the ropes; ideally the players are forgiving during this period, and if those players are at all experienced they might even expect a few low-fun sequences while the DM - though floundering now - learns better how not to flounder in the future.

Short term pain for long term gain.

Thank you for your patience! I am satisfied. Your advice is clearly well meaning, well founded, and applicable to a wide range of situations. I still think there are situations where stopping the game to meta are going to be the best choice, but I accept that this is not as clear cut as I initially thought. As such I now appriciate you asking why

 

[Enrahim]

I gotta say, this one has me confused as well.

If someone asked me-as-DM to say yes or no to if I have a desire that a path is not further pursued in game I can't think of any non-extreme instance where my answer would not be, in effect, "What you guys do in-game is up to you". And if we're into extreme instances then something bigger has come adrift.

Yes, that quote is horrible. I am sorry, this was first written in one way, then after posting I realised my initial formulation was awful so I hurried to edit it into something I thought might be slighlty better - but I am really not happy with this version either.

Take 3 on the idea I tried to convey: If you ask out of game ask the GM about a spesific thing would be something they might not want ("Would you rather we are not spending time investigating what happened in the castle") Then this is a type of question that can be anwered yes/no (As opposed to "Please explain why you decided this should happen in the castle").

The negative formulation is also of some omportance in this. Confirming that they are not wanting something is easier on their concience than confirming that they want something, as exclusion tend to leave more options on the table. In a sandbox a "no, do what you like" to the question asking if this is something we shouldn't try is the "default" and are not realy providing any new information. Asking positively "Do you want us to investigate what happened in the castle" would require a more elaborate example as you provide rather yhan a simple yes/no to approperiately respond to in most circumstances.

I hope this was less confusing!

 

[robertsconley]

So. That's a planned sequence of events* that will happen if an alert is sounded, unless amended by something specific to that particular alert (for example, if the alert is due to someone trying to gain access through the postern gate the guards there will simply try to hold it until reinforcements arrive). And for me, this is perfectly acceptable.

One additional comment: if that castle really existed as described, the owner, staff, and guards would almost certainly have such a plan already in place. Maybe not down to the minute, but barring overriding factors like corruption or incompetence, a competent ruler and their advisors would have prepared contingencies, especially for something as basic as “what to do in case of an alert.”

Such a plan is a natural consequence of how people in that setting would behave.

And because this keeps coming up: this doesn’t make other play styles that prioritize different things, like narrative arcs, or testing characters’ beliefs or motivations, any better or worse. But for campaign styles like my living-world sandbox, this kind of planning is just as in-game as the NPCs themselves or the contents of the castle.

This also implies side-effects. For example, the plan might be discoverable, either fully or in part, if it was written down. Key personnel may know its elements. Enterprising adventurers can account for this in their planning: maybe they have a burglar who can sneak in, or they discover the captain of the guard drinks too much at the local tavern. And so on.

These second-order effects are a critical part of how I run a living-world sandbox. Decisions have consequences that ripple in all directions. In this case, the wise decision by the ruler and staff to make a plan also creates the possibility of a weak link, one that the players might find and exploit.

 

[Emerikol]

Note: I DO NOT MEAN POLITICAL CONSERVATISM. This is not a thread about politics.

I mean "conservatism" as in resistance to change. You see it all the time -- people complaining about the new art or aesthetics, literally saying things like "if they used the old art I would be in." It is so mind boggling to me.

D&D is a living game. OF COURSE the new books etc are going to adapt to the new market. If you literally won't play a newer version because tieflings or whatever, then it isn't for you. Don't demand it regress to the era you discovered D&D because that is what makes you feel good; play the version you discovered.

I don't liek every artistic or design choice either, but it isn't up to me to demand D&D coddle my unchanging preferences. If I want to re-experience BECMI (the edition I grew up with) I can just play that. And so can you.

/rant

I would never choose a game system because of the art. In fact if it had no art I wouldn't care. I can appreciate art but it's really not relevant to gameplay after a quick glance.

The rules though do keep changing and the underlying D&D worlds. And you are right I can just play an earlier edition or some adjacent game with the old school feel. This is what I do. Or as Gygax understood, a good DM could just write his own rules. When someone says they don't like the current edition and will stick with their own they are responding just as you said they should.

 

[AlViking]

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


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.

Again, appreciate the explanation. But this thread is the first time I remember seeing a real definition although it would have been easy to miss. My only point was that people throw around game specific terms and phrases all the time without explanation. Presumably it's been explained before somewhere, but there's the assumption that everyone understands it. On the other hand "encounter" has been used in D&D since the beginning and is just plain old normal English even if it is an uncommon usage of the word.

On a side note I would find that text quoted kind of off-putting because of it's one-true-wayism. It's not a suggestion or one option, it's saying how the game is played. Not that I want to go down that rabbit hole but every group should find their own groove and for some people it will be very descriptive for absolutely everything and others will be "make a charisma save" (in D&D terms) because it's just their style. This on the other hand is telling people specifically how they must handle it.

 

[AlViking]

I know I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but there's a point I'd really like to see clarified.

In the discussion about "bypassed encounters", I've seen several mentions of GMs planning out encounters in advance, only for the PCs to "bypass" them.

I don't really understand how that squares with the statements folks have made regarding non-planning from the GM, and I think this is at least adjacent to pemerton's questions. Specifically, this implies that there is, in fact, a planned sequence of events that will happen, and the PCs have found a shortcut which skips some of that planned sequence.

Given the pretty strong feeling in this thread about even the slightest suggestion that something has been pre-planned, rather than various other perspectives, I am...more than a little confused by the way this is presented. That is, the presentation seems--I stress, SEEMS--to be far more like what I hear in non-sandbox contexts, where the GM has set out what will happen, but there is some room for PCs to weave around/over/through those things.

Have I missed something? The impression I've gotten thus far is that anything even like pre-planning a sequence of encounters would be verboten. Which, again based on the impression I've gotten, would mean that it isn't possible for there to be a "bypassed encounter". There are simply entities in the world. The party might interact with them, or not interact with them.

Or, in simpler terms, to "bypass" something, I was under the impression that you normally would have to go through it, but you found a way to not do so. E.g. a person can only "bypass security" because enduring security's scrutiny is required, but this person found a way to avoid it.

Nobody has claimed that everything should be improvised even if some do. Of course there's a fair amount of planning involved when prepping for a session. Who are the characters likely to encounter? What do those NPCs know and what are their goals? What possible obstacles are there? In my games I know the basics of the goals of the characters because we talk about it ahead of time, although they are free to change their goal at any time. What we don't plan is that an encounter will happen, how it will happen or what the outcome will be.

It's still D&D. If combat is likely we still need to know what monsters to use, even if we look them up at the start of combat. When planning for a session I write up an extra combat encounter or two with monsters that could possibly be encountered where they are headed even if I don't expect to ever use it. Sometimes the characters are warned them to stay on the path as they go through the Mirkwood but they go off the path anyway because of course they do. So I have an encounter with giant spiders prepped. I'm not planning on using it, it's there just in case.

In my example I had a combat encounter prepared because it was logical that there would be guards to stop entry to the festival for anyone that didn't have a ticket. When the players didn't try to force their way past the guards there was no fight because I don't care if something I had prepared is ever used. Just like in a scenario in a different game where I thought they would fight the pirates but bribed them instead.

As far as the term "encounter" that's just basic English ("I almost had an encounter with a bear but managed to avoid it.") and the term D&D has used for half a century.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Agreed. It's actually much harder to talk about these things because every game where you control a character is now a RPG, no matter how wildly different they are in every other respect.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Does everyone play one-way?
Are you saying everyone uses the same Living World sandbox approach that @robertsconley uses which is the same as @Bedrockgames as @Maxperson as @Lanefan as @Micah Sweet as @SableWyvern as @AlViking as myself or that we all consider our games Living World. Is this really your position?
And all this given how it's evidently clear that there are differences in the way the above run their campaigns and many such differences have been touched on in this thread.

I'm sure you've seen modules with guards at positions a, b, c monsters at d, e, f and BBEG at g and a random encounter table. Now at any time some of us may stick to that, others may roll to see if the guard at post c took a toilet break or whatever, others may use timed patrols. Point is there is a location with several areas where encounters are likely to occur and there usually are listed procedures that take place should something disturb that. There may also be rules about who can hear what or see who should a scuffle breakout in certain areas. PCs may use the Silence spell to ensure they don't find themselves in a series of endless encounters...

This isn't revolutionary or confusing but apparently we need to make it so otherwise we'd have to agree on something and where's the fun in that. Amirite?

EDIT: Players tell the GM they are going to the Fortress of Encounters for next session. DM plans it. How dare he plan Fortress of Encounters in a Living World, everyone knows the Fortress of Encounters is not realistic and consistent.


What I find sad is, is that this thread exhibits a lot of, what we call in Greek, the spirit of contrariness (πνεύμα αντιλογίας) for the sake of contrariness. I guess welcome me to the internet.

And to be clear I've seen it on both sides. It just so happens to be this issue right now.

I am not sure I am fully following this encounter discussion, but no one would bat an eye at a location having specific defenses. Those might become encounters. Sandboxes tend to avoid encounters as set pieces or a structured series of encounters like you had in the 3E era: I.e. a planned sequence of encounters around EL/CR. I think the main thing is having what happens flow from player choice and the logic of the world.

I don’t use D&D but the game I use is a bit crunchy so running encounters off the cuff for me, which is how I mainly run them, is a mix of existing NPCs, generic stat blocks, NPCs made on the fly and running things based on their entries in the Threats section of my book (Monsters, Sect Disciples, etc). In D&D some edition do make this harder than others but I prefer ones where I can easily run an on the fly encounter from the MM

 

[AnotherGuy]

I am not sure I am fully following this encounter discussion, but no one would bat an eye at a location having specific defenses. Those might become encounters. Sandboxes tend to avoid encounters as set pieces or a structured series of encounters like you had in the 3E era: I.e. a planned sequence of encounters around EL/CR. I think the main thing is having what happens flow from player choice and the logic of the world.

I don’t use D&D but the game I use is a bit crunchy so running encounters off the cuff for me, which is how I mainly run them, is a mix of existing NPCs, generic stat blocks, NPCs made on the fly and running things based on their entries in the Threats section of my book (Monsters, Sect Disciples, etc). In D&D some edition do make this harder than others but I prefer ones where I can easily run an on the fly encounter from the MM

The encounter discussion evolved from

• not understanding how players can bypass encounters; to
• encounters should be called potential encounters (because that is how WotC does it); to
• Can a Living World claim realism and consistency if the GM plans a series of encounters.

I think @AlViking summed it up perfectly and succinctly when he said "It still D&D"

 

[Maxperson]

I know I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but there's a point I'd really like to see clarified.

In the discussion about "bypassed encounters", I've seen several mentions of GMs planning out encounters in advance, only for the PCs to "bypass" them.

I don't really understand how that squares with the statements folks have made regarding non-planning from the GM, and I think this is at least adjacent to pemerton's questions. Specifically, this implies that there is, in fact, a planned sequence of events that will happen, and the PCs have found a shortcut which skips some of that planned sequence.

What's not to understand? The DM is reactionary and plans as a reaction to proactive player declarations.

The players decided to travel to Stonewall, so the DM preps some stuff for that travel in reaction to the players decision. The route is up to the players and the DM could not know the exact route in advance, so placed reactionary encounters may or may not be bypassed by further player decisions.

The players are the ones driving all of the play.