D&D 5E Sharpshooter/Great Weapon Master and Why They Are Broken 101.

[Tony Vargas]

I used to think that doing so was more work for the DM, and that it was beyond my skill as a DM.

'more work' and 'beyond your skill' are worlds apart. Sure, imposing balance (if you want it) is a burden on the DM, but it's as much a matter of how you run in the moment as of putting in, say, additional prep work. If you try to 'fix' the system by modding, that could be a crazy amount of work, though.

I'd say it's more than just a counter balance. It doesn't simply create an incentive to avoid the 5MWD; I find that it significantly enhances the campaign.

If you like it any way, great.

Indeed. But it's like the 6-8 encounter day that the DMG recommends. You don't have to use it all the time. You don't even have to use it a majority of the time. You just need to use it often enough that the players are never entirely certain whether going nova will make them struggle later.

Depends on exactly what you're going for. The guideline is there for DMs who want that kind of formula to help them impose class & encounter balance. Presumably, if you want it, you want to use it, just like you want to use a 'living world' approach, so don't need it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I used to think that doing so was more work for the DM, and that it was beyond my skill as a DM. The funny thing is that once I actually gave it a whirl, it was the most natural thing in the world. It's what we, as DMs, are already doing. At least unless you're following the written text of the adventure in lockstep, which I don't think happens outside of the very most inexperienced DMs. It's like if the party decides to walk through the dungeon loudly banging pots and pans together; do the denizens remain static in their rooms waiting for the PCs to enter, or might they come out to investigate what the noise is about?

This is just going one small step further and giving a quick thought to what the wider implications of the PCs actions are. It's what every DM has to do if the PCs go even slightly off script (assuming there is a script). It's simply thinking 'The PCs did X; what happens as a result?'. I'd been so daunted at the prospect of "creating" a dynamic world that I never broke it down into its components to consider how it worked. Once I did, I realized that it was really quite simple; I'd effectively been doing it all along, just restricted to a smaller scope. Since the campaign world exists primarily in the mind of the DM, changing your scope isn't hard to do unless you convince yourself otherwise. It's nothing more than making stuff up for the entertainment of the table. IME of course.

IME, the difficult part of the "living world" model isn't the part where you let your mind range outward and extrapolate consequences. It's where you then have to bring all those threads back to convergence--in a way that will still provide a good experience for the players at the table!

It's fun to work out how the player incursion is obviously going to get the local goblin tribes to unite and smash the local humans in the middle of the night. But dying in your (unarmored) sleep in an inn to a massive-but-realistic horde of goblins with crushing numerical superiority isn't likely to be a fun or fair experience for the players. So, once you figure out what the goblins are going to do now, you have to spend some time thinking about how they are going to do it in a way which is fun for the actual, live human beings who are playing at your table.

That's what makes DMing harder than novel-writing or theory-crafting.

 

[Fanaelialae]

IME, the difficult part of the "living world" model isn't the part where you let your mind range outward and extrapolate consequences. It's where you then have to bring all those threads back to convergence--in a way that will still provide a good experience for the players at the table!

It's fun to work out how the player incursion is obviously going to get the local goblin tribes to unite and smash the local humans in the middle of the night. But dying in your (unarmored) sleep in an inn to a massive-but-realistic horde of goblins with crushing numerical superiority isn't likely to be a fun or fair experience for the players. So, once you figure out what the goblins are going to do now, you have to spend some time thinking about how they are going to do it in a way which is fun for the actual, live human beings who are playing at your table.

That's what makes DMing harder than novel-writing or theory-crafting.

I don't find it to be difficult at all. For example, in your above scenario, perhaps a heavy fog envelops the goblin horde as they march and they get split up into something more manageable. Now I've got another hook if I feel like it, that being the entity who used their abilities to summon the fog. If not or it slips my mind, then it was merely a fortuitous natural phenomenon. It took me longer to read your scenario than to come up with this "solution" to it.

It's like that quote, "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff." As long as you keep to the KISS principle, you can make up whatever you want and justify it in retrospect when (and if) your players investigate the reasons. Admittedly, if you want complex justifications where there are "wheels within wheels" then that will likely be more work and you'll want to prep for it. However that's a choice, not a necessity, when running a dynamic world. I've found that as long as I relax, keep it simple and don't try to overthink things, minimal effort is involved in improvising anything I might need. I usually take the first thing that comes to mind and run with it. Most of my best sessions have heavily relied on this "technique". Obviously, it does require a "quantum" style of game where many things aren't fixed until observed. It probably wouldn't work as well for a DM whose style is more "deterministic".

 

[Helldritch]

It's fun to work out how the player incursion is obviously going to get the local goblin tribes to unite and smash the local humans in the middle of the night. But dying in your (unarmored) sleep in an inn to a massive-but-realistic horde of goblins with crushing numerical superiority isn't likely to be a fun or fair experience for the players. So, once you figure out what the goblins are going to do now, you have to spend some time thinking about how they are going to do it in a way which is fun for the actual, live human beings who are playing at your table.

That's what makes DMing harder than novel-writing or theory-crafting.

You are right about that. That is why dreams of ill omens are for. I usualy make clerics/druids and paladins really important on the religion side. When something really bad comes up with some actions/courses taken, a dream will serve as a warning.
I don't use that often, and it must be from something they could not have a clue from their experience/point of view when they made the "bad" choice. It would go something like this:

You wake up in sweat filled with a sense of dread. You dreamt of an endless goblin horde attacking you. You are awake yet you still hear a voice saying:"They are coming!"

If the players do not get the hint...