The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

[Micah Sweet]

I am genuinely interested, could you show some examples of such tables and tell how you use them?

I'll see what I can do. I use tables from a variety of sources, WotC, 3pp, OSR, and so on. AEG's Ultimate Toolbox supplement from the early 2000s is particularly useful.

 

[TiQuinn]

See post #8.

How long has your wife been a DM? These sound like newbie mistakes. I’m also not sure that’s quite the same thing as quantum ogre. It sounds more like a set encounter but with a lot of railroading around what you can actually do within the encounter.

 

[TiQuinn]

There was a scenario for the 1st edition of Legend of the Five Rings where the PCs are traveling on foot (or horse) and encounter a merchant. It doesn't matter whether the PCs are on a main thoroughfare or traveling the backroads to avoid authorities, the PCs were absolutely going to encounter the merchant. How or even if the PCs interact with the merchant is entirely up to them. They can ignore him, talk to him, maybe even help him with his stuck cart, but it's their choice.

Okay, but this sounds like it’s the just the starting hook for the scenario. Most scenarios start with the players are given a call to action, like “you meet in a tavern and a hooded figure beckons you to their table” stuff. The alternative seems to be there is no adventure that day because the DM is not running a sandbox.

 

[prabe]

Okay, but this sounds like it’s the just the starting hook for the scenario. Most scenarios start with the players are given a call to action, like “you meet in a tavern and a hooded figure beckons you to their table” stuff. The alternative seems to be there is no adventure that day because the DM is not running a sandbox.

Yeah, even if a given DM might tend more to start things off by instigating harder and/or more directly than that, it's common and easy (though not universal) to put all the PCs in the same place at the same time before doing so.