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

[hawkeyefan]

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'".

Asking people to explain is not refusing to accept.

It's interesting how such a simple question has evoked such a strong response. It's because it highlights what's happening at the table.

Encounter as a noun or future tense has been around ever sense the word was defined so I disagree.

Okay. Like I said, you can use whatever word you like.

I'm not sure this is actually true of 5e. Back in the early days of 5e, Jeremy Crawford mentioned that they assumed 6-8 encounters a day, with 2-3 short rests, per adventuring day. Plenty of people - my self included - understood this (as far as D&D is concerned) as any situation that was specifically designed to drain resources - combat is the obvious one, but environmental hazards, trap rooms, social events, etc. could all count. Then a year or so later, Crawford confirms that it was specifically 6-8 combat encounters. I've considered that to be the main flaw of 5e's design: I don't think that's remotely representative of the average table.

Well, regardless of the daily encounter, it would seem that they still consider social or environmental interactions as encounters. A trap, a hazard, a mysterious person... these would probably still all be considered encounters, I would think, regardless of whether they counted toward the daily goal of 6 to 8 (of which I am at least skeptical, but there's no reason to go down that road... that way lies madness).

For the sake of examining this idea of bypassing encounters, and the difference between combat and other possible types of encounters, let's say the PCs meet a stranger on the road. They're getting ready to camp for the evening, and a one-eyed man with a walking stick and a wide-brimmed hat wanders up. If the PCs are friendly to the man, he will share some tales with them around the campfire, and those tales may help them with the trials they face ahead. If the PCs are rude or otherwise anger the wanderer, he will attack them and will prove to be more than just a simple old man.

If the PCs are friendly and don't anger him, have they bypassed an encounter? Have they substituted a friendly encounter for a hostile one? Or would we just say they had an encounter with an old man on the road and he told them some strange stories?

Does how we discuss this change if we look at it from purely a gameplay perspective versus an in-world perspective?

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, as I said it might not be applicable to your group but...

... This indicate we might be talking somewhat past each other. In my mind the scenario we are looking at is the situation where a DM has made significant effort to prepare something. If that DM felt confident that they would be able to provide just as good experience by just winging it, why would they spend so much effort on prepping that dungeon? Or similar, if they were aware that they were playing with a bunch of fully chaotic players quite likely to just skip the dungeon, how could they motivate/justify for themselves to do that prep?

Easy, says he from long experience.

If I prep a dungeon now but don't get to use it now, I've still got the bulk of that prep for later: if I suddenly need a dungeon two years hence I can just haul out this one and, if necessary, quickly repopulate it with occupants that make more sense for the location and maybe make a few tweaks to the map so the place fits into the new site. That's about 90% less work than designing a dungeon from scratch.

Also, personally I'm not bad (I hope!) at winging random or random-ish encounters and even making them look like part of a coherent whole but am quite poor at winging site-based adventures in their entirety: I can't dream up coherent maps on the fly. And this is relevant because my players map everything and are quick to (quite rightly) point out errors where two rooms overlap or this floor of a cube-shaped keep is bigger than the one below.

The other risk with chaotic players is that every now and then they'll stumble on to a way of defeating an adventure while bypassing nearly all of it. For example, if their mission is to rescue a prisoner from a castle they might find or create some unexpected way in, by sheer luck happen to find the prisoner in the second room they check*, get him out, and leave; thus bypassing 95% of the prepped adventure (I've DMed this exact situation).

* - because that's where the prisoner was all along; I'm not the sort of DM who would move the prisoner's location just to make things easier or harder for the PCs once I see which approach they're going to take.

 

[JConstantine]

They're getting ready to camp for the evening, and a one-eyed man with a walking stick and a wide-brimmed hat wanders up.

Odin really needs to change it up a bit.

If the PCs are friendly and don't anger him, have they bypassed an encounter? Have they substituted a friendly encounter for a hostile one? Or would we just say they had an encounter with an old man on the road and he told them some strange stories?

The framing means the GM has thrust an encounter upon the party. They have some choice in how they resolve it, but the hard framing precludes bypassing being a possibility.

 

[AlViking]

Asking people to explain is not refusing to accept.

It's interesting how such a simple question has evoked such a strong response. It's because it highlights what's happening at the table.

What's "interesting" it that people feign shock and amazement and pretend not do understand plain English because we aren't using forge terminology.

Okay. Like I said, you can use whatever word you like.

And as I said, I'm not the one who expressed supposed confusion about a basic use of a term.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree that hidden information does not, on its own, imply total control. Your point is well-taken, and I have previously gone too far with it. My concern, then, is that we have more than just "hidden information". Were it only that, I'd have fewer, milder concerns. As I see it, we have:

• Not just a little hidden information sometimes, but a large amount of it, for long stretches of time (months at least)
• Few bounds on what info may be added to, struck from, or changed in it--and many such bounds are very soft/easily ignored
• No ability for players to know or learn of adding, striking, or changing that info, outside of GM actively choosing to express it
• Many incentives, internal and external, to consider "untouched" info (for lack of a better term) non-binding

The second and third points are the parts that push this toward such sheer power, and limit player response outside of (1) lodging a complaint, (2) dragging the problem into the social arena (aka "kicking up a fuss"), or (3) departing the table.

In sequence:

1. That a large amount of information is hidden is in itself fine, provided the next few pieces are done with integrity.

2. Hidden info can be changed or tweaked or amended until and unless it has in any way come into, affected, or influenced actual play, at which point it has to be locked in. For example, in my setting there's a great big empire to the south that the PCs have never been anywhere near; other than a few key cities and that it's faux-ancient China it's a big blank space on the map. As DM I can change my mind about the Emperor (or Empress) all over the place until something about that person comes up in play, at which point that aspect is locked in (e.g. if they find or hear reference to Empress Tan, that locks in that she's at least perceived as a she and that a name for her is Tan).

3. Players don't get to change hidden info but they can often find out about it (and thereby lock it in) by in-character investigation.

4. That untouched info is non-binding I kind of take as a given. No DM is going to have every detail of everything prepped before play begins; parts of the map are going to be blank and as play goes along (and-or as inspiration strikes) they can be filled in later.

And with encounter tables, we have the (as mentioned above) "pass the buck" problem. That is, those tables are written by the GM in most cases. Others have already noted that the GM can effectively force encounters simply by drafting a table that favors, or even just includes, the one(s) they want to see--roll many times, most/all results show up. I can see how, if those tables are set in stone before any play begins, that would be a procedural limitation. But I don't see people speaking of them that way. What I've seen implied (but, I admit, did not explicitly say) that these tables would be drafted or re-drafted continually over time. Or, pithily: the GM can't pass the buck to the encounter tables...when the GM is frequently creating afresh those very encounter tables herself. Would you agree or disagree with my perception there?

One minor way to reduce the ability to use a table to force favoured encounters is to make sure the number of options on the table is somewhat larger than the number of times you vaguely expect to roll on it. If, for example, you kind of guess you might roll on the wilderness encounter table 20 times during this adventure, make sure the table is at least 30 entries long with more-or-less equal chances for each one to be rolled.

Side benefit: less chance of repetition.

The drawback, of course, is this represents more prep work.

 

[Enrahim]

Easy, says he from long experience.

If I prep a dungeon now but don't get to use it now, I've still got the bulk of that prep for later: if I suddenly need a dungeon two years hence I can just haul out this one and, if necessary, quickly repopulate it with occupants that make more sense for the location and maybe make a few tweaks to the map so the place fits into the new site. That's about 90% less work than designing a dungeon from scratch.

Also, personally I'm not bad (I hope!) at winging random or random-ish encounters and even making them look like part of a coherent whole but am quite poor at winging site-based adventures in their entirety: I can't dream up coherent maps on the fly. And this is relevant because my players map everything and are quick to (quite rightly) point out errors where two rooms overlap or this floor of a cube-shaped keep is bigger than the one below.

The other risk with chaotic players is that every now and then they'll stumble on to a way of defeating an adventure while bypassing nearly all of it. For example, if their mission is to rescue a prisoner from a castle they might find or create some unexpected way in, by sheer luck happen to find the prisoner in the second room they check*, get him out, and leave; thus bypassing 95% of the prepped adventure (I've DMed this exact situation).

* - because that's where the prisoner was all along; I'm not the sort of DM who would move the prisoner's location just to make things easier or harder for the PCs once I see which approach they're going to take.

Ok, I think you have given a good argument that in your group this both is a reasonably realistic situation, and that for you to halt the game would likely be a suboptimal response to the situation. However then I still think there is another point to clarify from the post I initially reacted to:

Why? If they want to go somewhere else then IMO it's on you-as-DM to run that, even if you have to cover with random encounters until you can more fully prep something for next week.

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?

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Part of it, though, is the idea that once you have bypassed it, that encounter is no longer available. If it’s creatures, they’ve moved. If it’s a hazard of some sort, there’s generally no reason to risk it again. So there’s no more potential there.

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.

Except there are. @pemerton even mentioned one in either BW or TB: the players seeing signs of orcs in a particular direction. I don’t think he had planned out orcs beforehand. Instead, he improvised it, as per the rules of that game. It’s what I referred to when I talked about the PbtA GM moves called Reveal Future Badness. If the GM for that game decides to drop hints about something bad ahead, and the players decide to not go that way but to go around in order to avoid that Future Badness, they’ve bypassed it.

You disagree with what? That I don'tt hink of the events in my Spire game as being encounters, even after the fact? Because that’s not how I view them. I don’t look at the meeting with Mother Moon and think of an encounter. It wasn’t anything I’d planned ahead of time. I don’t look at the PCs ambush of The Sisters as an encounter because again, it wasn’t something I planned. In both cases, it was something the PCs did. One was a meeting, the other was an ambush.

You may not think of them in those terms, sure. I would, though, if only after the fact. The concepts are the same, however—if you had actually written the adventure out beforehand, you’d probably would have thought of those events as encounters.

 

[Campbell]

On the players make a premise-breaking but still fictionally reasonable move thing I would have an out of character conversation with the players about what sort of game they want to play and see if it might be a game I would want to run. I do not consider it my obligation to keep running a game if it's not going to be something I can be excited about. I am not here to be anyone's servant, regardless of role.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay. I won't say I'm truly satisfied by this answer, but I accept it, and I will be brief with my concern.

The PCs cannot, frex, talk to an NPC that isn't in the world. The "referee", as you say, defines all NPCs that are in the world. Players (AIUI explicitly?) do not and cannot assert the current existence of any NPC, for any reason. (I say "current" because by existing, most PCs imply the past existence of two parents, for example.) If the GM defines all NPCs the players can talk to, and is expected to sometimes (NOT all the time, but some times) just say "there is no such NPC", "that NPC isn't here", "that NPC is dead", etc., it still looks to me like the GM has the greater influence over whom the PCs can even attempt to talk to.

There are a few things to keep in mind, though.

First, The NPCs are just a sliver of what is going on. To speak with the Innkeeper, the players had to decide to go north to the town of Last Resort, encounter some goblins through a random encounter, decide to track the goblins back to their lair to clear it out and go all murderhobo on stuff, get back on track and reach town, then decide to go to the inn and talk to the innkeeper. That's a lot of player initiated stuff just to reach that NPC to talk to him.

The second thing to keep in mind is that the DM can't possibly detail more than a small fraction of 1% of the NPCs in the world. Quite often game play goes along the following lines.

(The group reaches the citystate of Disrepair)

Players: We need a cart to carry things. We are going to the Dungeon of Really Bulky and Heavy Loot. DM, we are going to the store to see about purchasing a cart.

DM: Okay, you reach the store and after inquiring with the merchant, discover that he only has 1 cart and it will cost 3x the price in the PHB, because it's his personal cart and he needs it.

Players: That's too pricey. We know! Let's go find the cartwright and have him make a cart for us.

DM: (Thinking to himself) Hmm. I didn't put one of those here, but there would be several in a city this size,

DM: Okay. After asking around for a while you find a cartwright named Hoss...

Players cause NPCs to be generated through their actions all the time. I keep a list of names on hand just for that purpose. That way I don't have to pause too often coming up with names.

 

[Faolyn]

Ok, I think you have given a good argument that in your group this both is a reasonably realistic situation, and that for you to halt the game would likely be a suboptimal response to the situation. However then I still think there is another point to clarify from the post I initially reacted to:

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?

In my experience, what @Lanefan does is very common advice, at least in the trad game crowd. Obviously not everyone is going to be great at it, but it’s a skill to be learned and improved.

It’s probably even be easier these days, since pre-made encounters are far more common now and there are easier ways to organize maps or find or generate new ones than there used to be back in the early days of gaming. People who are comfortable with AI tools can even get that to do both the map and the encounters at the same time in seconds.

Plus, if you know the players well, and they’re not simply combat-fiends who care about nothing else, it’s not that hard to introduce something that will keep them busy talking amongst themselves while you hurriedly put together something.