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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6986218" data-attributes="member: 42582">That seems to be the approach I called out as (1) - the MacGuffin approach - even down to the mechanics not being very important.I see levels as basically a pacing device. The pacing has two dimensions - mechanical and fictional - and they can  be decoupled at least to some extent (as eg the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Guide illustrates).From the mechanical point of view, as PCs gain levels they typically become more mechanically complex, more mechanically specialised (those two can often go together) and more mechanically effective in relation to baseline elements of the gameworld (eg 10' pits, sailing across a sea without drowning, etc).From the story point of view, as PCs gain levels the challenges that they face escalate. In D&D, I see it (speaking roughly) as a trajectory from kobolds at 1st level to demon princes somewhere about or above name level. 4e rather formalised this through the idea of tiers (Heroic, Paragon, Epic) which bring PC-build elements with them (paragon paths, epic destinies) that not only give mechanical growth but also (mostly if not always, depending on the details of the particular path/destiny) frame the PC into the developing story in a particular way. (Eg when I describe the PCs in my 4e gods as demigods this is not just a metaphor: one of them is literally a demigod, another is the chief Marshall of the Raven Queen (god of death), another is the Eternal Defender of the mortal realms from the threats of chaos, and has recently taken on the mantle of god of imprisonment and punishment also.)If I wanted to use an epic level threat (eg Demogorgon) in a Heroic tier encounter, it would be a relatively hard scene frame, and I wouldn't pretend anything otherwise to the players. But I would also be very cautious about this, becaus the risk of railroading is (in my view) extreme - because the capacity of the players to take charge of and direct that fictional situation, when their mechanical resources are so slight compared to the resource I as GM have in virtue of Demogorgon being on the table.A related reason that I would be very cautious in this sort of situation is that, if I want the players to engage the situation via their PCs, I need to signal in some way what is at stake for them (eg if they insult Demogorgon, or in any way oppose him, is he going to just blast them into smithereens with his gaze?). And if what is at stake is TPK, and if I frame things as Demogorgon making some demand of the PCs, then (in effect) I as GM am telling the players what they have to do with their PCs. Which I prefer not to do.Something like that could be a consequence of failure, though - more on that below.Presumably a horde contains a countable number of enemies, even if the PCs haven't actually counted them. And if one 12th level fighter can take on 20 with a real prospect of success, then maybe five of those characters could take on 100 (or more - by fighting back-to-back they might reduce the number of attacks each suffers per round).At 15th level the PCs in my 4e game <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324018-Wizard-PC-dies-returns-as-Invoker" target="_blank">defeated about 160 hobgoblins, arranged in 4 phalanxes, plus 40 other "rabble" in a looser formation</a>; although in the course of the fight (which also included an angel of battle sent by Bane) they did suffer a PC death.That victory was possible because of the way I statted the creatures: each phalanx was a 17th level gargantuan swarm; the rabble were statted as minions. Given the trajectory of the campaign to that point that seemed the right way to go; the players certainly didn't think there was anything absurd about their mid-paragon tier heroes being able to do this.The PCs didn't have to fight the hobgoblins, of course. They could have tried to bargain with them. Or to trick them (which is how they got past them the first time, to get into the temple they were raiding, before then fighting them on their way back out).Generally I would only confront the PCs (and thus their players) with a combat threat, like a hobgoblin army, that they have no prospect of defeating, as a consequence of failure. Eg if the PCs decide to try and bluff the hogbolins, and fail, then maybe sufficiently many hobgoblins become visible around the corner of the ravine that the PCs realise they have no choice but to retreat. (Again, more on this below.)I guess I don't really have a strong handle on what "get out of hand" means.Generally I don't like metagame uncertainy - eg the players know their PCs can see orcs, but wonder whether or not they are MM orcs or something tougher the GM has served up. I think it tends to increase the GM's control over the way events and unfolds and makes it harder for the player to make decisions.I prefer uncertainty to be statistical/mechanical uncertainty (eg following a successful knowledge check I give the players a runddown of the monsters abilities and they say "Uh oh, I think we might be toast now!") or dramatic/fictional uncertainty (eg the PCs, and hence players, have reason to think there is a group of powerful Disciples of Gruumsh in the vicinity, and so when they see these 4 orcs they wonder whether they are those Disciples).If the trajectory of the game gave no reason to think that powerful orcish clerics would be around and doing things, I woudln't see any point in using them.But the mechanics tell you whether or not it is climable, don't they?Eg the GM sets the DC for climbing the cliff at 20. Let's say the 12 level rogue has a +9 bonus (+8 from expertise, +1 from STR). Suppse he d20 rolls a 1 to 10, and hence is treated as a 10, and so the total is 19. The rogue fails to climb the cliff (let's say the GM is intepreting failure, in this case, as "no progress" rather than "progress with a setback). Isn't that one way we learn whether or not the cliff has sufficient handholds for this rogue to be able to climb it?This is similar to Gygax's example of narrating saving throws in his DMG: if the fighter is chained to a rock and breathed on by a dragon, a successful save might indicate that there was a crevice in the rock in which the fighter was able to hide.Another example would be a failed check to jump a long distance being explained as a sudden gust of wind, or an unnoticed piece of soft ground at the point of take-off which causes the take-off to be poor.I find that if success and failure are never attributed to hitherto unspecified elements of the gameworld, and instead are always attributed to the effort/capabilities of the PC, then (i) the gameworld becomes very austere (eg it has no crevices in the rocks to which PCs are chained), and (ii) the performance of the PCs varies far more from circumstance to circumstance than I personally find plausible.Most of the time I decide based on pacing/drama, as per Vincent Baker and Luke Crane's motto "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" - that is, assuming the action is genre-appropriate, then if nothing is at stake in the situation the GM says 'yes', the PC (and player) gets what s/he wants, and events continue.But if there is something at stake, then I set a DC and the dice are rolled. Setting DCs depends on the system: in 4e, there is a table of level-appropriate DCs, so first one sets the DC and then one supplies the narration that establishes the in-fiction logic of that DC; in Marvel Heroic RP the DC is always an opposed check, either aginst an opposing character or (if no character is acting) against a roll of the GM's "Doom Pool"; in Burning Wheel, DCs are set "objectively" ie based on the objective difficulty of the situation in the gameworld. These different ways of setting DCs produce different dynamics of play: 4e is the most gonzo, because PCs if the action is genre appropriate at all then PCs always have a chance; MHRP has complex (and quite hard to manage, I find) escalation, because the Doom Pool tends to grow over the course of the scenario; BW is the most gritty, because quite often PCs want to do stuff that is objectively hard, and hence it produces the most failures - as a resut it has a far more subtle and extensive suite of advice and techniques for GMs to determine the consequences of failure (if PCs are going to fail a lot of the time, one needs ways of implementing that failure which keep things moving, rather than stall with a TPK or an impassable door or whatever).I also use a "no retries" rule (what Luke Crane, in BW, calls "Let it Ride"). Stephen Radley-McFarland published a piece of advice along similar lines for D&D, during the 4e era. So if a PC has tried and failed then there is no doubt - some other approach will have to be identified.And, developing a point I was making above, I see failure as the best place for the GM to make hard moves against the players. As I mentioned, already, if the PCs fail to successfully bluff the hobgoblins on their way out of the temple, then an unbeatable force is fair game.Or, suppose that at lower levels - when it's obvious from the logic of the fiction and the genre - that the PCs couldn't take on even a phalanx of hobgoblins, then if the players declare an attempt to scout out the hobgoblin camp, and that goes wrong, that again becomes licence for me as GM to confront them with an unbeatable force - the consequence of their failure is that certain options, like physical force, is ruled out - whereas if the PCs were successful then maybe they can get away with ganking the sleeping hobgoblins one-by-one.Getting caught in the Death Star's tractor beam, likewise, is something I'd be far more likely to do as an adjudication of failure (in this case, a failed AstroNavigation roll) than just as a hard frame. (Alternatively - mabye the PCs want to sneak abord the Death Star, and so getting sucked in by the tractor beam is one possible narration of a successful check - it is very dependent on context.)And again, none of what I'm describing is unique to me. It's pretty much the stanard "indie" approach to RPGing, which I personally began to discover for myself around 1986, running Oriental Adventures, and have been using and developing since - over the last 10 or so years with the help of much better thinkers about RPGing than me, like Robin Laws, Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker and Luke Crane.*************************************In some contexts it's probably good advice. But I don't think it exhausts the range of possible discussion, and its salience can depend upon the question being asked or point being made by the other poster.For instance, if you look at low-level fighters - the designers didn't think that environment and tactical choices were the be-all and end-all of playing a fighter. They also gave the fighter some action economy manipulation (via Action Surge). If you look at the CR2 Bandit Captain, that NPC has some action economy manipulation too (via Parry). And also has 3 attacks per action, which gives it a degree of flexibility relative to the action economy that (say) an ogre lacks.I don't think there's anything unreasonable in thinking and talking about these mechanical elements of the game. Clearly the designers don't think they're irrelevant or even marginal. They're fairly front and centre.</blockquote>

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