Why do DM's like Dark, gritty worlds and players the opposite?

[Garthanos]

This is either a really, really transparent strawman, or you never played 1e. Pray tell, to which die roll are you referring?!?!

Sorry... you went through all that work to accomplish the adventure lots of intelligent choices and battles fought... then you missed the cool magic item I stuck behind a hidden door. You must not have earned that magic item. There were tons of reasons other than you didnt deserve the reward why somebody could end up missing something.

Reusing things both rewards and challenges that didn't get used last adventure (and sometimes reskinning them a little) is and was very common before 4e wish lists.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Sorry... you went through all that work to accomplish the adventure lots of intelligent choices and battles fought... then you missed the cool magic item I stuck behind a hidden door. You must not have earned that magic item. There were tons of reasons other than you didnt deserve the reward why somebody could end up missing something.

Sure. In an ongoing campaign, you might come back and find it later. Or another creature/character might find it. Lots of things might happen. One thing that surely didn't happen, though, is that you didn't find it this time. And if you were following the guidelines in the 1e DMG, it was not suggested that you teleport it or make it easier to find next time, either.

Surely it is not that difficult to envision a gaming philosophy where "winning" and "earning treasure" are not all-or-nothing on/off switches, isn't it?


RC

 

[Garthanos]

Sure. In an ongoing campaign, you might come back and find it later. Or another creature/character might find it. Lots of things might happen. One thing that surely didn't happen, though, is that you didn't find it this time. And if you were following the guidelines in the 1e DMG, it was not suggested that you teleport it or make it easier to find next time, either.

Suggested or not I designed my own adventures and rarely used modules. Encounters, monsters and or rewards that weren't used including room detailed descriptions that nobody seen in one game was often used in a game coming down the road. There is no issue of oops that got teleported. ..if they revist a place I am not leaving that place the same as it was anyway the details of how or why it wasnt the same is something the dm can elaborate on as much or as little as he wants to.

Surely it is not that difficult to envision a gaming philosophy where "winning" and "earning treasure" are not all-or-nothing on/off switches, isn't it?
RC

Nothing wrong with it. --- That thinking was real not a game encouraged thing either..Even if you had no interest in gold... experience points and gold all wrapped in to one huzzahh!

 

[Raven Crowking]

That thinking was real not a game encouraged thing either..Even if you had no interest in gold... experience points and gold all wrapped in to one huzzahh!

Sure it was. The DM's perspective and the player's perspective in 1e are different. That the player says "experience points and gold all wrapped in to one huzzahh!" doesn't mean that the DM should simply begin flinging gold like a mad Midas who......Oh, sorry, that comes from the 1e DMG.

Nor does it matter if you use modules or design your own, re: my earlier comments. Nor does it matter if the area changes or not between visits (depend upon location & time between visits IMHO, YMMV). "Ongoing campaign" =/= "using modules".

As a note, TSR-D&D encouraged you to create your own areas and, if using modules, to adapt them to fit your campaign milieu.

Discussing the merits of the DMG philosophy between 1e and 4e is a seperate issue to whether there is a difference between the two philosophies. I have a hard time believing that anyone who is familiar with both books would claim that there is not!



RC

 

[SkidAce]

I wonder how many people who use that term now actually remember Monty Hall?

Me!

...wait, that makes me old...

Who?

 

[Ariosto]

As a DM, one ought to expect secret doors not to be found. Not that one should make everything depend on players not finding one, either, which would also be foolish.

"Monty Haul" is an issue with DMs who make things too easy, predicated on the assumption that players want challenges commensurate with rewards. The ideal (presumed to be shared by players who really understood the situation) was "The Price is Right" (a la Goldilocks -- Monty HALL hosted "Let's Make a Deal"). If players quite honestly view D&D not as a test of skill but as the story of "my awesome character getting always more awesome", then the only trouble with an old-style "give-away" game is that it's too hard! The new scheme is not a little boost of "something for nothing" -- more accurately too much for too little -- but everything as entitlement.

See how it's not "just a matter of degree" but a fundamentally different conception of the purpose of the undertaking? I recall no evidence of such a conception up to the 1990s at least. Even in Candy Land (which involves no decision-making at all), one can get stuck (losing turns) or sent backwards.

I suppose some players in the 1970s might seriously have entertained the notion under false pretenses; today, it's "out of the closet". Indeed, its expectations seem to carry about as much weight in "official" circles as the traditional expectations of a well-run D&D game.

 

[SkidAce]

High Fantasy also does not lend itself to episodic adventuring, nor does it lend itself to sandboxing. In episodic, you don't have a large overarching plot, thus, no world shattering threat, and in sandboxing, you again don't have overarching plotlines.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with both premises here.

Episodic with overarching plotlines include the new Doctor Who, Torchwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Star Trek Enterprise.

Likewise, a sandbox can have many overarching plotlines.....it just should not force the players to follow them, and the results of not foiling them therefore should not destroy the campaign milieu.


RC

What I was going to say...said better.

 

[Ariosto]

Discussing the merits of the DMG philosophy between 1e and 4e is a separate issue to whether there is a difference between the two philosophies.

Yes! For that matter, I do not see that the designers of 4e have fully embraced the "entitlement" concept. They have bowed in its direction, though. The new work goes further faster than 3e in dumping 'sacred cows', but still tries to be both fish and fowl.

 

[Hussar]

Unfortunately Skidace and Raven Crowking, you ignored the other half of what I said.

Yes, certainly, you can have ongoing, overarching plotlines in a sandbox campaign. However, if you are "free to ignore them" then they are hardly threatening the entire realm are they?

That's what characterizes high fantasy - that threat to the entire realm.

So, yeah, sandbox campaigns could have overarching plotlines, but the fact that the players can ignore them with no consequence (at least no personal consequence - like Sauron winning and everyone being killed/enslaved) means that it's not high fantasy.

Thus, sandbox does not lend itself well to high fantasy.

Sandbox, otoh, because the players can ignore whatever they don't feel like persuing, fits an episodic campaign much better, since you have no reason to follow a particular plot threat, other than personal interest.

Buffy's plotlines were contained to a single season and besides that, I'd hardly call Buffy episodic. It was serial. You started each season with a large plotline and probably half a dozen subplots that would take the entire season to resolve. How is that episodic? ((To be honest, I only really watched Buffy from about season 3 onwards, so maybe the first two seasons were more self contained, but, most of the series was certainly not episodic.))

Star Trek:TOS was purely episodic with almost no carry over between episodes. ST:TNG carried some over, the Borg for example, but, the vast majority of episodes were completely self contained. DS9 was serial. Voyager was more episodic although, obviously, it had one large plotline - trying to get home.

The new Dr. Who is almost entirely self contained. One episode does nothing to inform the next episode. Other than the Bad Wolf plotline of the first season, which was simply a series of foreshadows, a theme that was repeated in the last season, what carries over from episode to episode? Character changes I suppose.

Anyway, I've wandered far afield. You guys are arguing only half of the equation. Can you have sandbox with long term plots? Sure. But, high fantasy is characterized by world threatening events. Sandbox isn't.

 

[Stoat]

You could do something like Morrowind or Oblivion, where the overarching plot advances whenever the PC's turn their attention to it, but that seems somewhat contrary to my understanding of sandbox D&D.