"Unscaled Adventures" -- good, bad or ugly?

[Crothian]

I just got Villagoe of Oester in the mail (Thanks Ed!!!) and as I'm slowly reading it there are some notes for the GM. The first one is "Remind PCs at the beginning of the session about options of hiding or running away." Now that's the way to start the game session: Warn the PCs that they can be getting in way over their head. Everything should not be tailored to the PCs level. At low level they should have a chance of running into something powerful, and on the flip side at high level they should also run into very low level thing. My 9th level party last week fought off second level would be assassins.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I voted for the Versimlitude option. In my very first dungeon for first level characters there were a pair of Stone Golems. You had to get past a permenant Prismatic Wall to get to them, but they were there as ancient guardians of the royal treasury. If the players had found a way through the prismatic wall, they would have had to deal with them. They didn't, though, but they sure as hell tried.

 

[S'mon]

As for realism... its isn't a simulation, its a story. All the guys who ran into great wyrms at first level are dead now, and didn't get stories written about them.

Darn Narrativists! Who let them in?

I play & GM it as a game, not a narrative ("Story Now!") or a simulation. This means that IMO the PCs should have some chance to survive & succeed through good play. I temper this with a desire for realism. A good DM gives the PCs the opportunity to run into 300 orcs at 1st level - and the opportunity to avoid running into them, or to flee.

 

[d4]

i like my games to feel like action movies or comic books or similar kinds of media. the world really is built around the heroes. in those kinds of stories the heroes rarely encounter something they can't beat with a little ingenuity.

realism is for real life. i don't want it creeping into my games.

 

[BlackMoria]

Anyone remember a FR module called Under Illefarn?

It was a module for 1st - 3rd level characters.

In the module was a Stone Golem, guarding a helm of brilliance, two stones of summoning earth elementals, a crossbow of speed and some other stuff.

The chief villain was a 8th level necromancer with a staff of power with some powerful henchmen (4th - 5th level) as I recall.

And this was a module for 1st - 3rd level characters???

The module had no play balance at all, so to speak. The golem was in an area behind a secret door but you know how it works.....if the characters are not meant to find it, they will

That adventure was so long ago - all I remember of it was some incredible luck on my part (as the wizard) against the necromancer (who killed 3/4 of the party) and I had the staff of power. The Stone Golem killed the entire party except for me, who through cleverness and an obscene amount of luck, managed to escape the Golem with the helm of brillance and the other items.

So, there I was - 2nd level, trucking back to Daggerford with a staff of power, helm of brillance and other items that in today's D&D probably would amount to in excess of 200,000 gp of items. I remember the DM was NOT a happy camper and my character was 'voted off the island' (along with the magical gear) and I was forced to make up a new 1st level character with the others.

The point is this - noone in their right mind today would even try to run a module like 'Under Illefarn' because the threats are just so above a group of 1st- 3rd level characters. And the treasures were comparable to what you would give out for a group of 18th level characters.

Yet, anyone who remember my character pulling off the seeming impossible and surviving alone to bring back the 'big score' still remembers it to this day. There is something to be said about surviving against seemingly impossible odds...

 

[Sir Whiskers]

As a player, knowing that encounters aren't balanced will encourage me to be more cautious and careful. I have no problem with the GM running a campaign like this, however - he/she has to also allow the party to act intelligently. That means letting them run away, unless they do something completely dense. It means letting them scout ahead, without always losing the scout to save-or-die traps which just happen to be impossible to spot. It means having sources of information available, if the party makes the effort to search them out.

In other words, if the deck can be stacked against the party, the GM has to work overtime to flesh out other options. Then it's up to the players to use them.

 

[Gothmog]

I definitely go for verisimilitude as a DM and player. 3E had some great innovations, but the CR system wasn't one of them. Many DMs believe they MUST follow the CR system to have a "balanced" game, whatever that means. Hogwash! Equal CR level fights are ok on occasion, but quickly become boring since there is little risk involved. If the PCs are to be believable characters in a game world, they should face similar challenges to what real people face: some tasks in life are easy, others seem overwhelming.

The one thing the DM can expect is his PCs will do unexpected things. Suppose the PCs hear a rumor in a city about strange ratlike creatures running in the sewers when they are 2nd level. They have no magical weapons and limited magic, but decide to investigate anyway. The DM knows that a small band of wererats infests the city sewer, and are involved in an illegal slave trade he is planning on bringing into the campaign later. Is the DM supposed to scrap this plan entirely so that the PCs aren't overwhelmed by the wererats and replace them with dire rats? Hell no. There are ways to work around this though. Maybe the PCs are overwhelmed and taken captive or turned into wererats themselves. Suddenly a whole new aspect of the campaign has opened up, because the DM didn't use the CR system that almost assures the PCs of destroying any opposition they face. Using on CR (-1/+1) fights falls too much into a cinematic or tv show style for my taste, and makes the world wholly unbelievable. Its the unexpected and dangerous situations that make gaming fun, not the assurance of constant success that the CR system drags along with it.

 

[el-remmen]

It is all about verisimilitude.

Example: The party that would come to be known as the Fearless Manticore Killers passed through a town where the local "warlord" was an ornery bad-ass that could have killed the whole group if they tangled with him. But the "adventure" they were completing didn't require them to tangle with him (though they might have accidentally).

He was 7th level.

Now if the party were to pass through there they'd have no trouble defeating him.

It all comes out in the wash.

 

[wocky]

An encounter with an EL 3 or 4 above the party's average level is an encounter to take seriously, in which running might be the best option if the circumstances are not the best. That I like...

... but when I was unlucky enough to play 3rd Ed. Ravenloft I hated how "There's always someone more powerful than you" became an excuse for railroading us through the hoops instead of a tool for verosimilitude.

 

[Numion]

I definitely go for verisimilitude as a DM and player. 3E had some great innovations, but the CR system wasn't one of them. Many DMs believe they MUST follow the CR system to have a "balanced" game, whatever that means. Hogwash! Equal CR level fights are ok on occasion, but quickly become boring since there is little risk involved. If the PCs are to be believable characters in a game world, they should face similar challenges to what real people face: some tasks in life are easy, others seem overwhelming.

..snip..

Using on CR (-1/+1) fights falls too much into a cinematic or tv show style for my taste, and makes the world wholly unbelievable. Its the unexpected and dangerous situations that make gaming fun, not the assurance of constant success that the CR system drags along with it.

Good points, but really don't have much to do with the 3.0E CR / EL system. That system merely tells how difficult a certain creature or encounter will be. 3.0e DMG tells you, independent of the CR system, what could be a good mix of ELs / CRs in a given adventure.

Those guidelines do indeed encourage DMs to use ELs of up to party level +5, hardly only CR (-1/+1) as you implied.

Also 3.0e DMG talks about status que encounters, which you mentioned. Wererats in the sewers would be such an encounter. There are WRs in there, no matter the PCs level. So, despite or because of the CR system D&D is indeed intended to be played with both very easy and very difficult encounters.

RTFM