D&D 5E Why does WotC put obviously bad or illogical elements in their adventures?

[Tormyr]

So I was prepping for tonight's SKT session which occurs in the Maelstrom. Great setting - looking forward to presenting it to my players and hoping they get the right feel.

However, I then read that the two guards of the throne room are stupid Hill Giants??!! And you can easily fool them into letting you pass?? WTF? The giant world is in turmoil and the Storm Giants are relying on a couple of idiots to guard their leader? Was it done for laughs?

Then there's a room with a geyser that erupts every hour (damaging a creature if they're in the room when it goes off) - but no advice on how to track time (perhaps there's something in the DMG but I don't think so...)

Then there's some sharks that are locked behind portcullises and no indication on how/when they might be released effectively making them a non-entity.

This is not the first time I've run into stuff like this. But what gives? Why are things like this put in the adventures? With all the assets they have why make these kinds of bad choices.

(The "Harshnag ex machina" was another crappy design element too IMHO).

Spoiler

[sblock]
1. The Hill Giants might not even come into it as the PCs have to get past the party first, but they are probably dumb but loyal. Serissa is also guarded by Imryth and Uthor and has possession of the Wyrmskull throne. She is probably okay.
2. I just checked whether the PCs were in the room at the stroke of the hour in real (not game) time.
3. My party figured out how to sneak through the central vortex, come up through the the tank for Serrissa's whale, come up the stairs, find the secret door, and enter the throne room from the back. They barely got away from the whale. It also states in the Maelstrom's features that the various portcullis are raised or lowered with a DC 26 Strength check, and if one of the sister's tries to escape, they go to their whale, raise the portcullis, and escape on the whale. So it is raised or lowered by physically moving it.
[/sblock]

 

[robus]

As the DM, you are supposed to track every action that everyone takes so that you always know exactly what time it is. If they spend five minutes searching a room, then half a minute in combat and three rounds healing up afterward, then you know that 5 minutes and 48 seconds have passed. If they cast a ritual and then walk down a 120 foot hallway, then that's another 10 minutes and 30 seconds. As the DM, you always know exactly how much time has passed.

The real question is how well the characters are able to track time. They probably aren't counting the seconds as they search each corridor for traps.

You seriously track world time down to the second? I'm impressed!

I've been winging it up till now, an hour here or there (and I think that's what most DMs do) so being confronted with a clock-based trap is quite a shift (especially if you don't want to be a gotcha DM and just say "ah bad luck the geyser goes off just as you enter the room! Ha, ha - take X points of damage").

There is really nothing in the DMG about tracking time as you describe. There's a bit in the PHB but the method of tracking time is not described for the DM. I do like the idea suggested by the AngryGM where you add a time token for each 10 minutes of time taken.

For this situation I think I'm just going to have a rumbling sound build while they explore the chamber and if anyone choses to stay in the room after that warning then the geyser will erupt.

 

[iserith]

So I was prepping for tonight's SKT session which occurs in the Maelstrom. Great setting - looking forward to presenting it to my players and hoping they get the right feel.

However, I then read that the two guards of the throne room are stupid Hill Giants??!! And you can easily fool them into letting you pass?? WTF? The giant world is in turmoil and the Storm Giants are relying on a couple of idiots to guard their leader? Was it done for laughs?

Just sounds like a social interaction challenge.

Then there's a room with a geyser that erupts every hour (damaging a creature if they're in the room when it goes off) - but no advice on how to track time (perhaps there's something in the DMG but I don't think so...)

How do you track time now?

Then there's some sharks that are locked behind portcullises and no indication on how/when they might be released effectively making them a non-entity.

I'm not familiar with the adventure, but this could be an escalation to a combat challenge or part of an exploration challenge. There's no lever or winch or something like that? If not, then maybe it's just meant for giants to lift it up by hand.

 

[discosoc]

However, I then read that the two guards of the throne room are stupid Hill Giants??!! And you can easily fool them into letting you pass?? WTF? The giant world is in turmoil and the Storm Giants are relying on a couple of idiots to guard their leader? Was it done for laughs?

The end of that description also mentions they aren't allowed to enter the throne room. That tells me the other giants would rather not have hill giants interrupting their little opera and politics thing, so decided to assign the hill giant envoy to simple guard duty. You'll also notice that the Great Hall next to it has a sort-important giant NPC for each giant type -- except for hill giant. For all we know, these two stupid giants are the official envoy of hill giants to participate in whatever social gathering is happening. It's like a family reunion where you still invite the racist uncle and his family, but everyone kind of ignores them so they end up doing their own thing somewhere else. Also remember, this place is at the bottom of the ocean and really only accessible to most via conch given to important giant leaders. The fact that PC's can slip in the way they do is not something the storm giants were counting on.

Then there's a room with a geyser that erupts every hour (damaging a creature if they're in the room when it goes off) - but no advice on how to track time (perhaps there's something in the DMG but I don't think so...)

Then there's some sharks that are locked behind portcullises and no indication on how/when they might be released effectively making them a non-entity.

This is not the first time I've run into stuff like this. But what gives? Why are things like this put in the adventures? With all the assets they have why make these kinds of bad choices.

Because when you write adventures, it can be good to include things that make sense outside of the immediate adventure, and can also spark the reader's imagination. You see some caged sharks doing nothing and think it's stupid, but someone else might see some caged sharks and thing they'd make an awesome fight scene and decide to make it happen. Even if you can't imagine a scenario where those sharks are involved, it should still contribute to understanding just what kind of place this is -- something that you should hopefully be able to pass on to your players.

(The "Harshnag ex machina" was another crappy design element too IMHO).

Annoying, perhaps, but not crappy. Without him, it would be harder to setup a first encounter with Iymrith that doesn't end in a TPK. Remember, Harshnag doesn't exist to save the day; he exists to fill in blanks on giant culture that the players might have, to introduce Iymrith to the story, and to contribute to an event that prevents the players from returning to the temple whenever they feel like they need answers or something. He's a plot mechanic, and if you don't bother fleshing him out and giving the players a reason to care for him, then his actions will obviously not resonate.

Final note: SKT is a sandbox of sorts. It's the DM's job to make sure all those pieces come together properly, so if you're expecting a linear adventure where everything is fully explained without any extra work on your part, then you picked the wrong AP.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Cause it wouldn't be Dungeons and Dragons without illogical adventure elements?

Sent from my VS990 using EN World mobile app

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You seriously track world time down to the second? I'm impressed!

Not to the second. The smallest amount of time worth tracking is six seconds, and even that isn't usually necessary. For most purposes, it doesn't matter whether you get somewhere at 11:05 or 11:07, and small errors in tracking tend to cancel each other out over time.

I've been winging it up till now, an hour here or there (and I think that's what most DMs do) so being confronted with a clock-based trap is quite a shift (especially if you don't want to be a gotcha DM and just say "ah bad luck the geyser goes off just as you enter the room! Ha, ha - take X points of damage").

Since the book doesn't say that the geyser goes off every hour, on the hour, you could easily find yourself in the situation where you don't know how long until the next eruption. That's the danger of playing in a world that you didn't create. In order to avoid bias, I recommend rolling a d600 to impartially determine how many rounds until the next eruption. That tip could stand to be presented in the book.

There is really nothing in the DMG about tracking time as you describe. There's a bit in the PHB but the method of tracking time is not described for the DM. I do like the idea suggested by the AngryGM where you add a time token for each 10 minutes of time taken.

It's kind of like how you don't need a rule to explain how positioning characters and measuring distance work, in order to adjudicate the effects of a fireball spell. In the absence of some sort of codified rules for how to abstract things (such as using a grid), the DM needs to mentally track the position of every creature in a room, in order to determine how everything resolves. It's strictly necessary. How many goblins can you get with a fireball? If the DM can't visualize the scene, then that question cannot be answered; therefore, the DM must be able to visualize the scene.

The same goes for time. In the absence of codified rules to explain how to abstract time, the DM needs to mentally track how long everything takes as it happens. The book doesn't need to tell you that, because it's necessary in order to play the game. There are no alternatives.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

This is not the first time I've run into stuff like this. But what gives? Why are things like this put in the adventures? With all the assets they have why make these kinds of bad choices.

SKT is particularly bad for this and it's my belief that it's due to not having a proper revision and testing procedure in place for that particular adventure. My guess is that Chris was initially tasked with creating a sourcebook for the north and to lace it with plot hooks, but then WotC were like, "No, no, make it a campaign book as well!" All the design aspects of it scream sourcebook. It's actually incredibly well researched and draws on a huge amount of lore from the Forgotten Realms and ties it together like no other book I've seen. It also screams, "Last minute scramble to turn it into a campaign book,". So many elements seem shoehorned in without any, or very little, consideration for the logic or consequence of them and because of that, it comes across as very disconnected and random with a thin veneer of "story" to it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hill Giants were what is available. Dumb guards are better than no guards. Why does my country not have F22 or F35 fighter planes.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Why does my country not have F22 or F35 fighter planes.

My country doesn't have F35's because the entire program is a massive boondoggle for a 5-eyes black budget which was never meant to deliver a workable system given the laughable requirements which were set over twenty years ago.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why does WotC put obviously bad or illogical elements in their adventures?

Tradition!



See a great example here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-worst-TSR-adventure-module(s)-ever-published