The Scop: Improvising Like a Pro

[Psion]

For anyone that can spontaneously generate a 3.x monster stat block in their head: I salute you.

Not that I think the players would ever notice if I got something wrong winging a stat block, but:
Why is spontaneously generating stat blocks a requirement for winging adventures? It sounds like you are adding extra burden for no reason. If, for some reason, you need a whole new creature to bring your spontaneous creation to life, it's pretty easy to grab a level appropriate creature and tweak its abilities.

 

[Halivar]

If, for some reason, you need a whole new creature to bring your spontaneous creation to life, it's pretty easy to grab a level appropriate creature and tweak its abilities.

This is true, and it may be that I am needlessly complicating things, but I've got a self-imposed rule on my DM'ing: at no point during the session do I open books. Furthermore, I encourage players to do the same. If at all possible, I try to keep the narrative going as smoothly as possible, and without interruption. I know that, as a player, I get ticked when other players open books. As a DM, I try to provide the same courtesy to players. But, like I said, it's just a self-imposed thing at my table.

 

[Psion]

This is true, and it may be that I am needlessly complicating things, but I've got a self-imposed rule on my DM'ing: at no point during the session do I open books.

Ah, well, I don't share that rule. And I'll submit to you that with that rule, there are much better systems for this purpose. (I find FATE/Spirit of the Century to be a dream this way).

 

[Hella_Tellah]

Not that I think the players would ever notice if I got something wrong winging a stat block, but:
Why is spontaneously generating stat blocks a requirement for winging adventures? It sounds like you are adding extra burden for no reason. If, for some reason, you need a whole new creature to bring your spontaneous creation to life, it's pretty easy to grab a level appropriate creature and tweak its abilities.

The stats-by-level page in 4e--can't remember if it's in the DMG or MM--looked really familiar to me. I took one look and said, "Get out mah head!"

The number one thing that lets me "wing it" in any combat-oriented game is my little GM cheat sheet. I make a generic stat block, then adjust to taste based on the situation. Usually I do it by taking an average of the PCs' stats, then setting up Gaius Genericus Maximus (as I lovingly label him) so the PCs can hit him about 70% of the time, he hits them 50% of the time, he dies in 1 hit per PC (on average), and he can kill a PC in two hits (or so). Slap on a special ability or two, and he's good to go! When there are multiple baddies on-screen, I divide Genericus' hit points between them.

Challenge Ratings and Monster Levels in 3e/4e do that for you, sort of, but it's really good for games like Victoriana, which doesn't have preset guidelines. For the WFRP session I did yesterday, I just used the stat blocks in the book and let the chips fall where they may, but players sort of expect awful things to happen in Warhammer.

 

[Pbartender]

Yep. That's a mental block I just don't encounter. I really don't get why so many people got so hung up on looking up just the right DC in 3e.

For me, I think, I got into the habit because of players who could do exactly this...

Not that I think the players would ever notice if I got something wrong winging a stat block...

...with just about anything -- listed DCs, creature stats, whatever -- and then argue with me about it. It turned into a mild obsession about looking up the correct stats and DCs into order to avoid unessessary arguments at the table.

I have other players now that are less concerned with it, but I haven't been able to complete shake the habit.

 

[I'm A Banana]

My preference for 4E at the moment, stems from the way I view the rules of games... For me, if there a is rule or a statistic already in place, I'd rather use it than making something up. If I know the rule, it doesn't really present a problem. But if the rule is obscure or I am unfamiliar with it, I often feel compelled to look it up so I can get it right, often wasting minutes at the table to find the appropriate reference -- usually at a dramatically important time when the action should have kept moving.

3E had very detailed rules, with DCs and modifers for most situations. If I was prepared ahead of time, there was no problem. If an unexpected situation came up, the game ground to a halt. The only other way to deal with it was to make something up... While 3E was consistant enough to come up with something reasonable, it was inconsistant enough with the "mini-games", that "let's use this, and we'll look up the real rule later" became a constant annoyance.

Because 4E rules are a little bit looser about non-combat hazards, I feel more free to make something up on the spot without having to look up a specific rule.

I can see this, and I see it as an example of a problem I honestly never had. I never felt particularly compelled to get the exact right rule from 3e's admittedly labyrinthine pool. But I also never really based these DC's on a character's level. I based them on the "game world baseline" of 10, based on how well I think some normal person off the street would fare in this situation.

If the streets were likely to cause this idealized normal to slip and fall, I might make it a DC 12 or even DC 15. If the streets could be navigated safely, maybe more of a DC 5 or a DC 7 (knowing that this isn't much of a challenge, but that they're rolling every round in this combat, so there's a chance...). If the normal person probably couldn't walk it without falling, maybe a DC 17 or DC 20.

I might justify an especially high or low DC in my description: "The fresh mist has just crystallized over the twigs of trees, and the black ice undoubtedly lurks just beyond torchlight," or something.

If I ever had a complaint about how "usually the Balance DC is 15!" or something, I can easily say, "Yes...so what does that tell you about this particular situation?"

I didn't base my mechanics on the capabilities of the PC's, but rather on the reality of the campaign world around them. This made it feel much more real when I pulled a number out of my hat. I'm not much of a simulationist, but the narrative is more satisfying for me when it's not about what the PC's can do, but rather about what they end up doing. Their level doesn't matter. Their particular training doesn't matter. This is the difficulty the situation presents, and I don't know what they're going to do to overcome it, but sooner or later, they might, if they do something that can overcome it. Or they might not, and they might go somewhere else. I'm ready for that, too.

If the session was fun, I never had a problem with getting a rule wrong. If we couldn't find the rule quickly, I didn't really care if it was wrong: this was the challenge before them. If I did make a mistake and set it to high, maybe I'll give them some extra XP or treasure for it. What's the big deal?

For anyone that can spontaneously generate a 3.x monster stat block in their head: I salute you.

Did anyone say that they could? Or even that they wanted to?

In any given session I might use 4-8 different monsters. If I use a brand new 4-8 monsters in each session, every other week, for a year, I'll use about 200 monsters. I easily had over 3,000 monsters available in any of 3e's huge volumes of monster books, and many, many more if I used palette swaps or stripped stats or added class levels or NPC's or any of the other amazing monster customization tricks that 3e enabled (that 4e doesn't really have a use for given it's primarily results-based monster design).

And that's assuming I'm using a pretty insane amount of monster variety to begin with.

There was never a need to generate monster stats on the fly. Why would I? I've got thousands of monsters ready to go, each of them given loving individual attention that nothing I whip up right now is going to match.

My previous 3.x games I have tried to DM foundered on my inability to act spontaneously in a world where everything has a rule, and I don't necessarily know all of them.

Again, a problem I never encountered. I'm sure I won't be able to finish my 4e campaign, but I finished a dozen or more 3e campaigns, with flare and gusto. I never felt the need to know the rule -- 3e's simulationist elements were reliably there to launch my idea from. I knew that if farmers from podunk did it, it was around 10, and if only heroes could do it, it was around 20. I had an immense pool of monsters to draw from, so I never needed stats. It was especially relevant because I never had a "gap." I would work with what was there. If none of the desert monsters I have available are a high enough CR, and if I can't do a palette swap or something, and I can't have you fight a hoarde of them for some reason, I guess the desert is easy to cross.

Okay, on to the real challenge.

Like Psion and BotE, some of 4e's more nebulous rules make it tough for me to improv with that "emergent atmosphere."

 

[Oni]

For anyone that can spontaneously generate a 3.x monster stat block in their head: I salute you. You have more brain-power things going on than I will ever have. I also salute the guys who pre-stat every single possible monster/NPC the players could ever meet. That's a level of dedication I'll never have, also.

For me, 4E allows me to say, spontaneously, "Hey! I need to put a desert monster here. Ok, without opening a book, I need hit-points, defenses, attack bonues, and damage rolls." And I can do it. My previous 3.x games I have tried to DM foundered on my inability to act spontaneously in a world where everything has a rule, and I don't necessarily know all of them.

For the first time ever, I can run an entire session without writing down a single stat-block or pre-determined skill challenge. After six months, I'm close to finishing my first complete campaign (after 8 years of abortions), and the ease of improv in 4E is directly responsible for it.

IMHO, YMMV, IYKWIMAITYD, TWSS, etc.

I've never quite understood this particular problem with 3e though I've seen it brought up many times. In the 3e campaign I ran I made up stuff all the time and it never bothered me that it might not perfectly match up with the RAW, no players ever complained that I was cheating. I always viewed the rules as a guideline, not hoops I was required to jump through in order to run the game.

 

[Halivar]

Did anyone say that they could? Or even that they wanted to?

Whoah, dude. I'm not attacking anybody. I know people, IRL, who can do this. I'm also pretty sure there are many DM's on EnWorld who can do this, also. I was simply saying I'm not such a person. That's it. Full stop. Nothing between the lines.

There was never a need to generate monster stats on the fly. Why would I? I've got thousands of monsters ready to go, each of them given loving individual attention that nothing I whip up right now is going to match.

You have an amazing treasure trove of creatures that you have built up with years of experience that I don't have.

EDIT: It also seems (to me) you had a far deeper understanding of 3E's world-model mechanics that I ever did. Your understanding gives you the intuition to make accurate estimations of things like DC's, etc., without constant reference. This is one of the areas where I struggled (and ultimately failed) as a DM in 3.x.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I knew that if farmers from podunk did it, it was around 10, and if only heroes could do it, it was around 20.

This was definitely how I managed things in 3rd edition. I don't run 4e, but I imagine you should be able to continue to run things that way. 4e's page 42 is designed (to my mind) for the DM who wants the PCs to succeed at 70% or so of the tasks they attempt. If that's not your goal (and I think it's not), scrap it.

I just ran my first game of WFRP, and I found the skill system really easy to improvise with. Roll D%, if the result is under your attribute, you succeed. GM adjusts between -30% and +30% for difficulty. Success rates for an "average" task are a fair bit lower than in other games (30-50% success rate for starting characters), so players should try to do easy stuff as often as possible. My players took that to mean "gang up on enemies, get an appropriate tool, prepare for stuff, and find a way to bypass difficult things," which is a behavior I love to see and sometimes struggle to incite. A successful PC is both clever and lazy.

 

[Halivar]

I've never quite understood this particular problem with 3e though I've seen it brought up many times. In the 3e campaign I ran I made up stuff all the time and it never bothered me that it might not perfectly match up with the RAW, no players ever complained that I was cheating. I always viewed the rules as a guideline, not hoops I was required to jump through in order to run the game.

You're right about RAW, and ultimately, this had to be my solution to my 3.x DM'ing quandary. Sometimes, though, you get players who know the rules much better than you, and they nit and they pick...

For me, at issue is the comprehensiveness of the RAW that, in effect, forces you to either become a scholar in it, or ignore vast swaths of it. It feels (to me) like 4E covers the 20% of the rules I need 80% of the time. Anything else is strictly and absolutely under the purview of common sense and the needs of my narrative.