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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9672807" data-attributes="member: 42582">You?It sounds to me like they had the encounter.Looking through Gygax's PHB, p 101 describes the basic structure of play like this:Your Dungeon Master will have carefully prepared a map of the place you and your party are to enter, a map showing all outstanding features of the place, with numbers and/or letters to key encounter/special interest areas.The next page, in the context of movement outdoors, says that "When an encounter occurs, the movement rate is handled in the same manner as combat movement in the dungeon." (The point of htis remark is to draw a contrast with the use of miles per day as the basic movement rate outdoors.) The same page then notes thatCharacters can be surprised just as creatures they encounter can. Noise and light can negate chances for surprise with respect to characters or creatures they encounter.And then p 103 has a heading "Traps, Tricks and Encounters" with a sub-heading "Encounters":During the course of an adventure, you will undoubtedly come across various forms of traps and tricks, as well as encounter monsters of one sort or another. While your DM will spend considerable time and effort to make all such occurrences effective, you and your fellow players must do everything within your collective power to make them harmless, unsuccessful or profitable. On the other hand, you must never allow preparedness and caution to slow your party and make it ineffective in adventuring. By dealing with each category here, the best approach to negating the threat of a trap, trick, or encounter can be developed. . . . Encounters: A "monster" can be a kindly wizard or a crazed dwarf, a friendly brass dragon or a malicious manticore. Such are the possibilities of encounters in dungeon, wilderness, or town. Chance meetings are known as encounters with wandering monsters. Finding a creature where it has been placed by the referee is usually referred to as a set encounter.Over the next few pages, the term occurs again being used in a more-or-less natural sense to describe meetings between the PCs and other beings.There is no reference to "bypassing" an encounter, but in the context of this game, that language would suggest that (i) the GM had prepared/placed a "set encounter", and (ii) that the players, as their PCs, were able to avoid or go around that area.If there is no map-and-key resolution, then what does it even mean for the GM to position a gang of toughs in front of the PCs? I mean, you could tell the players that their PCs see a gang of toughs in front of them: but that is a situation/threat/encounter that the players (via their PCs) now have to respond to.This a description of the fiction. But at the table, what is happening? In Gygax's D&D, you seem to be describing a wandering monster encounter, where the player/PC achieves surprise, and hence is able to avoid without needing to roll.For this to occur as a "set encounter", the GM would have to have made a decision to narrate this particular event. And then to have implemented that decision. It's not at all clear that it can even fit into Gygax's framework for encounters, given that it seems not to be tied to a particular place on the map.Anticipated or foreseeable/foreseen by whom? The general impression I'm getting is the GM but perhaps also the players because of what the GM has told them. But how is the GM working out that this encounter is anticipated/foreseeable? To me it seems to be linked to some sort of prep.See above for how "encounter" was used in Gygax's PHB. An encounter is either (i) an event that occurs (ie the PCs encounter someone) or (ii) a GM prep of an incipient event, typically something in a room/location that the PCs might (but need not) explore.This is why I have suggested that the idea of "bypassing" an encounter seems closely connected to map-and-key style prep and adjudication.</blockquote>

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