To all the other "simulationists" out there...

[roguerouge]

At some point on the ocean voyage after the dragon turtles, rocs, kraken, and so forth have been beat off, you have to ask yourself, "Just how do ships make this voyage when the PC's aren't around?" or "Why are we such wierdness magnets anyway? Do we have an aura of tastiness that draws every leviathan from 500 miles around just so we can be served up XP?"

You know, after Arkham Asylum filled to capacity, Batman started to wonder exactly the same thing. Wackiness then ensued.

 

[hong]

I personally hate it when it shows up in PnP games. If there are hordes of low level mooks running around, where did they go after I level up?

They are still around. However, they now exist to give you an opportunity to throw your superiority into sharp relief.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Unless there is some reason why the hobgoblin equivalent of Delta Force is sitting around a guard tower, I'm calling "poor adventure design" on this one.

There is a reason the Hobgoblin Delta Force is there. The enemy commanders understood that defending the bridge that was attached to the guard tower was very important. Super duper important. A high priortity if you will. Important enough to put those veteran Hobgoblins there because losing the bridge would have been pretty bad.

 

[mmadsen]

It seems that everyone agrees that it's poor adventure design to have all opponents scale up with the PCs, Red Queen style. High-level characters should get a chance to wade through hordes of orcs.

But what happens when a rogue gets the drop on a lone member of the hobgoblin Praetorian Guard? Should it be impossible to slit his throat? He's a great soldier, but he's neither the hero nor the villain of the story.

 

[Silver Moon]

So now we're 215 Posts into an interesting Meta-discussion of combat systems and I've yet to see the solution that my party came up with when in an almost identical situation.

The Rogue managed to get up to the guard tower, but instead of attacking once he got there he first made the bell inoperable. How? He wrapped the clapper on the bell with padding so that if rung it wouldn't chime. We were using 1E rules so I required another Move Silent roll followed by a Dex Check. Using 3E rules the Move Silent/Disable Device combination would be the alternative. The Rogue also set up a low tripwire across the tower floor before beginning the attack, requiring another Move Silent and Dex Check to accomplish (Move Silent and either Disable Device or Craft roll in 3E).

The Rogue then attacked the foe, missing, and the bell was rung but only made a muffled sound. The guard's next move would have been to hit the bell with his broadsword but didn't get a chance as the Rogue pushed him into the tripwire and off the tower by that point.

So I see the Rogue's pirmary failure as having been thinking like a figher rather than a thief. The alarms being sounded however doesn't blow the module, it just changes it. That scenario happened when my party did the "Beast of Burden" module and what followed was still loads of fun, as described in this Story Hour thread:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=63210

 

[roguerouge]

It seems that everyone agrees that it's poor adventure design to have all opponents scale up with the PCs,

I'm not totally decided on that issue yet, at least where it doesn't conflict with narrative plausibility.

As an antecedent for scaling games that don't reward players for advancing but rather punish them with more difficulty, look to old arcade games, especially Donkey Kong. That approach did rather well, actually.

 

[Lizard]

It seems that everyone agrees that it's poor adventure design to have all opponents scale up with the PCs, Red Queen style. High-level characters should get a chance to wade through hordes of orcs.

But what happens when a rogue gets the drop on a lone member of the hobgoblin Praetorian Guard? Should it be impossible to slit his throat? He's a great soldier, but he's neither the hero nor the villain of the story.

If you're playing Amber, you decide.

If you're playing D&D, you roll the dice and you take your chances.

The story isn't determined by the will of either the DM or the players, or by 'what makes a good story' -- it's determined by choices (good or bad) and luck (ditto). Often, the consequences of an unexpected high or low roll make a better (more interesting, less by-the-numbers) story than one which was decided by pure narrative fiat.

 

[Celebrim]

As an antecedent for scaling games that don't reward players for advancing but rather punish them with more difficulty, look to old arcade games, especially Donkey Kong. That approach did rather well, actually.

I think you are completely failing to understand the premise.

No one is complaining that when you overcome challenges, you are rewarded with more and greater challenges.

 

[roguerouge]

Wow, Celebrim, aren't we crabby? I was providing an example that supported your videogame analogy (the Diablo comment), but also observing that there was another model from the one that has all challenges keep pace or one that provides a mix of easy and hard challenges; namely Donkey Kong, which made things much, much more difficult, insanely difficult (not more and greater challenges.) Donkey Kong's reputed to be one of the toughest games ever made as a result of this dynamic. The punishing term came from:

You're right. Personally, I don't even understand the point of punishing the players for having levelled up their characters. If you make it to 5th level, you should cut a swath through the extras. If you can't, what's the point!

When the party levels, the whole rest of the world shouldn't level up right along with them. This happens in video games, too. "You gained a level, so now all goblins you fight will be 1 level higher as well." "Well then why the heck did I even bother gaining a level?"

In Donkey Kong, to borrow this metaphor, the gorilla gains two levels each time you level.

I was also the one making your exact point earlier on in the thread when I was questioning why a watch post guy in a large army would even have more than one or two levels, and stating that the OP's INITIAL description lacked verisimilitude. Just like you.

 

[mmadsen]

As an antecedent for scaling games that don't reward players for advancing but rather punish them with more difficulty, look to old arcade games, especially Donkey Kong. That approach did rather well, actually.

That's an interesting point -- but I think we can achieve the same effect, of ever-increasing challenges and rewards, without straining credibility by having gangs of 1st-level warriors, then gangs of 2nd-level warriors, then gangs of 3rd-level warriors, and so on, with no explanation for why everyone got tougher.

For instance, the world can be full of dangerous things that the PCs know about and avoid -- until they're ready. Also, at higher levels, the PCs can continue to run into 1st-level warriors -- they're just not "real" encounters meant to challenge them. Or we can come up with a good reason for why the enemy soldiers keep getting tougher -- like there's a war going on, and they're all veterans, with more and more experience as the war rages on.