Speed bumps, yes or no?

[Greenfield]

I'm curious how you handle things in your games.

Our group swaps the DM hat around. As one DM finishes an adventure run, another is ready to take over, and the story continues.

Recently though, our group did something we haven't done before: The PCs turned and walked away from a challenge.

That left us in the odd situation of swapping DMs before the next one had anything ready to run.

I took over, for the interim, and pretty much told the players what their next mission was: To escort the body of a fallen comrade home for a proper Viking funeral. (He'd been a Cleric of Baldur, a Norse god.)

Now I had pretty much nothing ready. But, since I don't play that the world levels up with the party, I took some relatively standard encounters and ran them.
"Relatively" being the operative term. Bar room brawl, being challenged by the road patrol as a group of outland mercenaries, some pirates trying to sneak aboard their ship while they were in port waiting out a storm, some highwaymen, etc.

Now, exactly zero of these were worth any Exp for a 15th/16th level group. At least not according to the Exp table in the DMG. They were, functionally, speed bumps. Ways to waste time until a new DM was ready to take over.

So, do you ever fill time this way? Do your heftier leveled parties still deal with the relatively mundane tasks of life like showing their papers to the road patrol, or having to deal with some pirates or highwaymen who mistook them for somebody they could take in a fair fight?

(As a note: My group's encounter with the Highwaymen caused one PC to reveal that he's a Shadowdancer, and that will have fun/drama impact in the future. And I actually got a PC to barter away 10% of his soul to a Devil to get him to spare the life of a common thief. That's a service the PC owes. And what's fun is that the PC could have taken that Devil to the cleaners all by himself, had he chosen to fight.) I managed to seed in several juicy plot hooks this way, things that I or any other of our DMs can pick up and use.

So, do you make them play out the speed-bumps, hand wave them, or never mention them at all?

(Good stories are always appreciated, of course, so feel free.)

 

[N'raac]

I think encounters should have some meaning/relevance. However, that relevance doesn't have to be xp, wealth, or similar. It seems like these encounters had meaning, given their consequences.

If "speed bumps" are always ignored, then anything that is played out must, by definition, be powerful enough to challenge the PC's, so the players know that those bandits must not be what they appear to be. It doesn't seem unreasonable for some encounters to serve only to demonstrate how powerful the PC's have become in comparison to the world around them.

 

[Warbringer]

At that level, they walked away from something which by definition should have been important to the realm ... Whomever they turned down will slighted, if there was a key item in the quest, it falls into the hand of their nemesis (and they better have some by now), bards start singing songs of their cowardice, betrayal, lack of honor...

make fun of them

 

[Grogg of the North]

I've run "speed bump" encounters. Usually after a long slog through a challenging dungeon or something like that. Especially if they're creatures they fought several levels ago. It helps illustrate how they've grown in power. I don't do it often but every now and then it's fun to just completely steam roll a challenge.

I've also seen it the other way.

The farmer walks into the forest to gather firewood. The goblins look at him and go "he doesn't have anything good" and ignore him. The farmer gathers his wood and sees a cave and says "Nothing good ever came out of a cave" and goes home.

The low level adventurers go into the forest and the goblins think they can take them. They fight and the low level adventurers go home with their spoils (hopefully).

The high level adventurers walk into the forest. The goblins either miss them (magic/skill) or are too scared to fight them. The high level adventurers come upon the cave and say "Caves usually have treasure!" and fight the green dragon.

 

[the Jester]

So, do you make them play out the speed-bumps, hand wave them, or never mention them at all?

(Good stories are always appreciated, of course, so feel free.)

It depends. Sometimes we play them out, sometimes we handwave.

Playing out a speed bump often leads to interesting roleplaying (as you noted), and it's fun to let the party feel like a bunch of total badasses once in a while.

 

[Stormonu]

It can work the other way too - things too powerful for the characters to fight that they need to find a way around. An example might be the 2nd level group I had who encountered a Storm Giant on the road. He had a simple purpose - he was offering a present to anyone who could answer his riddle. It cost 10 gp for three guesses. Or the time the party (about 5th level) had to sneak past a sleeping green wyrm dragon to enter an old, forgotten dungeon.

And I do also run the converse - encounters the party can trounce or interact with in which the opponents would normally be just speed bumps. As others have said, sometimes it nice to see how far the characters have really come.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So, do you make them play out the speed-bumps, hand wave them, or never mention them at all?

I do all of the above. What I don't do is waste time. If I think there's something dramatic (or comedic) to an encounter, I'll play it out. If it does't require dice rolls to determine the outcome, I'll skip those. If there's nothing to be gained, I'll move on.

One of the great things about being a DM is that you aren't just a referee. You're a writer/producer/director/editor (and more). The point is, you decide where to point the camera; you decide what is worth your group's time to play. When it comes to these kinds of issues, if you realize you're in control, and you have a goal (or good instincts), you can't go wrong.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Speed bumps are fun. When you're always facing level-appropriate challenges it feels like you're really not making any progress. When you curb-stomp the guys that kicked your butts 5 levels ago it feels awesome.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

At that level, they walked away from something which by definition should have been important to the realm ... Whomever they turned down will slighted, if there was a key item in the quest, it falls into the hand of their nemesis (and they better have some by now), bards start singing songs of their cowardice, betrayal, lack of honor...

make fun of them

Reminds me of a song I once heard about "brave Sir Robin"

 

[Empirate]

Having mere speed bumps once in a while is incredibly fun as a player IME. You see how powerful you've become (especially if you just trounced something that posed a real challenge some time ago!), you get some cheap gratification from the victory itself (nice to get once in a while), and most importantly, it's a change of pace, so the more important, more difficult encounters become more memorable. Not everything you do can possibly be the same level of awesome, so might as well throw in a deliberate dud when it suits the game's pace! As others have said, easy encounters also provide a reality check: "So this is how normal people fight. Seems like we're actual heroes, after all!"