Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6594932" data-attributes="member: 82106">Which I think is the 'beating heart' of what [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], and possibly [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] are motivated by. They don't want to present the players with any opportunities except those of their own making. Again, this stems right back to the earliest days of D&amp;D where it would be a 'dick move' to put 4 orcs and a bunch of treasure right in front the PCs when you know that's exactly as many as they can probably handle, and not for any other reason. Its like saying to the players &quot;I'm going to go easy on you, you're never going to be put in an unwinnable situation where all you can do is run for your life.&quot; OTOH it would clearly, by any of our standards, be a dick move for the DM to put 20 orcs there and wipe the party with them. By consulting the 'random encounter table' and the 'number appearing' entry the DM is simply absolving himself of responsibility, he's just a neutral arbiter.Again, this sort of does work in the very limited and heavily keyed dungeon crawl environment where the rules can practically cover a wide variety of situations. It still OFTEN does break down, like as soon as the thief decides to vault over the tops of the orc's heads and disappear down the corridor beyond them, the rules (up through 2e at least) don't have a way to resolve this. Its now a DM judgment call. Obviously once the game extends much past a very controlled and contrived environment all bets are off 90% of the time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6594932, member: 82106"] Which I think is the 'beating heart' of what [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], and possibly [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] are motivated by. They don't want to present the players with any opportunities except those of their own making. Again, this stems right back to the earliest days of D&D where it would be a 'dick move' to put 4 orcs and a bunch of treasure right in front the PCs when you know that's exactly as many as they can probably handle, and not for any other reason. Its like saying to the players "I'm going to go easy on you, you're never going to be put in an unwinnable situation where all you can do is run for your life." OTOH it would clearly, by any of our standards, be a dick move for the DM to put 20 orcs there and wipe the party with them. By consulting the 'random encounter table' and the 'number appearing' entry the DM is simply absolving himself of responsibility, he's just a neutral arbiter. Again, this sort of does work in the very limited and heavily keyed dungeon crawl environment where the rules can practically cover a wide variety of situations. It still OFTEN does break down, like as soon as the thief decides to vault over the tops of the orc's heads and disappear down the corridor beyond them, the rules (up through 2e at least) don't have a way to resolve this. Its now a DM judgment call. Obviously once the game extends much past a very controlled and contrived environment all bets are off 90% of the time. [/QUOTE]

Verification