You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Celebrim]

Does that make the difference clearer?

No, because everything you've said is based on assumptions. With different assumptions, you obtain different results of 'relevance'. Personally, I think you aren't being fully honest with your self or really analyzing your feelings here. I think boiled down it comes to this - you've played lots of travel in the wilderness scenarios and no longer have a lot of interest in them, but you probably haven't played a lot of siege or mass combat scenarios and those sound exciting. I think we've already established that your agenda is 'fast pacing' (lets get to the conclusion), 'regular emotional payout' (you want to do things you are emotionally invested in and resolve them quickly) and to a certain extent 'new and exciting experiences' (you've got lots of experience and not all of its positive). I think you are letting your argument getting side tracked into defending completely different agendas of play.

Consider that you've stated that the siege scenario is exciting and therefore 'relevant' (strictly speaking I don't think you really care for 'relevant', only that it emotionally engages you). But the location of the siege in time and space is irrelevant. You could while travelling through the desert to Los Vegas discover that there is a huge horde of zombies coming from every direction on their way to the city. Thus, your relationship to the siege is you must convince the inhabitants of Los Vegas of the danger and possibly help prepare for it. This depends on the same assumptions you previously made for the siege scenario, "If the city is beseiged, I care."

Likewise, suppose you come to the seiged city in the Abyss. Your goal is to acquire the particular tone required to tune the tuning fork that is the component of the plane shift spell that is needed to reach a particular secret demiplane. You know this tone is hidden in a cathedral to a dark god in the city, and you find the city besieged. You decide to fly over the seige, avoiding it and its series of planned combat encounters altogether, quickly make your way to the temple, find the clue and plane shift off to your next location. This is fundamentally identical to the way you wanted to play out the wilderness travel scene, and relies on the same assumption - the siege really has no relevance to our interest in the city. The seige is only relevant if you interact with it, and only if actually relates to your goals in the city.

Which is the 'correct' obstacle or complication? It depends entirely on the implementation of the scene. As it is, we both agree that in the particular case of the example that started this discussion, the implementation of scene wasn't well done. But I completely disagree that the reason it wasn't well done was 'desert'.

 

[N'raac]

So, if the players make their knowledge checks and roll very low and gain no knowledge, would you be perfectly happy to let them go straight on to the city?

Or, if the players actually do succeed in their checks but decide that they do not want to interact with the stuff between them and the city, would you allow that?

Same disconnect. I am perfectly happy that neither the players nor the PC’s see any reason to do anything but press on to the city, in either case. That does not mean they automatically achieve that success. Much like when your party engaged the Grell with the intention of slaying it and passing beyond he choke point it guarded, but your intentions failed and you were driven back, and lost a party member.

Or, are the checks largely superfluous and the PC's are going to interact with pretty much everything that you've placed between them and the city whether they want to or not?

If they want to get to the city beyond the desert, they must pass through the desert. If they see a distant spire glinting as if made of gold as they cross the desert, they choose how to react, with “investigate” and “ignore” both being perfectly valid choices.

If three Giant Desert Scorpions spring from hiding, they also have choices. I guess they could choose to deny all interaction and just keep walking, but unlike the spire, the scorpions will take actions themselves. With the scorpions defeated or driven off, the PC’s could carry on, investigate their hiding places, search for a lair, bury their bodies, or eat them, with varying potential results.

The players control the actions and reactions of their characters, and what those characters try to do. Perhaps they avoid the scorpions entirely because they take a different path, or evade them by flying overhead. They do not, however, dictate the results. It would be cool to slay one with a single mighty blow, or resist their poison and valiantly battle onward, but those desired results materialize only if the dice permit.

 

[sheadunne]

You've reached the plane via Plane Shift which has a large known positional uncertainty. The city you seek lies across this desert. You must cross to reach your goal! <Unfun>

I agree. My problem with spells like Plane Shift (keep in mind that I think they should exist) are that they tend to punish the DM as much as the players. What if I don't have anything prepared for a 100 miles from the destination? Now I have to improvise something that may not be relevant to the game. Etc.

Spells like Plane Shift, Teleport, etc, if they have a negative, should have a negative that doesn't require changes in plot/story or the creation of an entirely new mini-game. It puts unneeded pressures on both the DM and the Players.

I love the spells but would rather have a more concrete event occur that doesn't require a 100 mile trek across the Abyss. Perhaps even requiring a condition. Plane Shift: All travelers are shaken for 1 hour, as an example. I don't know, but something that doesn't require either a hand-wave (you're there!) or a bunch of exhaustive encounters (wandering monster rolls).

They're tough spells to manage without preparation.

 

[N'raac]

The GM doesn't have to do this, because the GM can always choose not to introduce the unsavoury hireling into the encounter. Or, if the GM does decide that that would be a fun complication to introduce, there are literally dozens of other ways to have the players respond to or engage with that short of running the hiring episode that Hussar objected to.

And if players accept that, great. Where I see the problem is pretty similar to Hussar’s comments – if the players are prepared to accept complications as they arise, then a behind the scenes roll works fine. But Hussar doesn’t like those complications, from what I’ve seen, so he will insist on playing out the hiring, despite hating every minute of it, just in case this is the one case in the whole campaign where a detailed interview saves him from a negative complication.

I’d be fine asking the players “which approach do you want to take”, but that means they live with the consequence of that choice. If Hussar’s choice is to take a Local Knowledge (or whatever) roll, and it comes up 1, too bad – his character probably makes a bad hire.

And to elaborate on this - once you turn the hiring into a major piece of action resolution, you are conceding that - if the players succeed - then the PCs will have the benefit of the hired mercenaries. Which is to say you've conceded that the hirelings won't wreck the game.

Perhaps I have conceded you can have the advantage of the mercenaries if you earn it, through clever play, investment of character resources and judicious risk management.

At which point, the players mght reasonably ask, as Hussar has, "Why are we wasting time on this boring hiring stuff when the real action is waiting for us with the grell?" Turning the hiring into a major piece of action resolution isn't serving any balance purpose (so it's not like, for instance, the classic D&D spell research rules, which are all about sucking up treasure). It's just making the game be about one thing (hiring) rather than another (grell vengeance). And a GM who makes the game be about stuff the players don't care for is (I think pretty obviously) running the risk of being dumped on, or dumped.

Let’s flip that around. Why are we playing out the Grell battle? I’ve conceded that – if the players succeed – they get the benefits of having defeated the Grell. I’ve concluded it won’t break the game. So let’s just call the Grell defeated and move on.

I agree that the GM and players need to come to common ground on what the game will focus on. I do not agree that the right to make that decision properly devolves to any one player, and that includes the GM.

The difference is as per Hussar's post quoted immediately below. The goal is the city - the siege is about the city. As @Hussarpointed out, the players can even potentialy exploit the siege to facilitiate their dealings in the city.
Whereas the desert has nothing to do with the city. Unless (to borrow Hussar's phrase) the
GM drops some bread crumbs that lead the players to something with info about the city (eg the hypothesised prisoner of the hypothesised nomads).

Discussed pretty thoroughly above. The desert and the siege are both obstacles between the PC’s and the city. Both could be made relevant (or, if you prefer, have bread crumbs dropped into them), both could be engaging and exciting, or boring slogs.

And, if the centipede got us past vertical escarpments and fast moving desert creatures, let it run through the besieging force’s camp at night, up the city wall and down the other side. How did it suddenly lose all that effectiveness?

 

[N'raac]

When those complications might be someone who will kill the party in their sleep? When the complications might very well delay us significantly for no relevant purpose? When those complications could lead to failing to achieve our stated goals?

If the GM is out to kill the party, delay them for no relevant purpose (and I include “player enjoyment of the game” as a relevant purpose) and/or never let them achieve their goals, he has an infinite array of mechanisms to do so. The problem here is not the complications, but the GM. So we come back to your assumption that ever GM is out to screw you over.

The GM can easily give that Grell some bonuses and lots of hit points so it slaughters the entire party. Does that make it a good game because you wanted to fight the Grell and you did?

You decided you wanted to hire mercenaries to help fight the Grell. You have stated that added combat punch was valuable, if not essential. You gave the mercenaries importance by adding them to your plan, and in so doing, you made them relevant.

Had there been prior easy hirings of mercenaries in that game, or did you just assume that hiing mercenaries was simple and easy in this game? If the players have done this half a dozen times before, and now the ground rules are changing, a discussion seems to be in order. If you just assumed it would work one way and the GM assumed it would work another, it does not follow that the GM is the problem. It seems the other players were fine with it playing out this way, so I suspect either that is the way they are used to playing, or no similar situation previously arose.

 

[Celebrim]

They're tough spells to manage without preparation.

Complete aside here...

It's not just Plane Shift. One of the reasons that that I think 3e really soured on a lot of people is that it encouraged high level play as the norm, and high level play is just so much more challenging for a DM that they really shouldn't even attempt it until they've had a lot of experience. The prospect of improvising a 100 mile journey doesn't particularly daunt me, but I can definately see how people could stumble all over that. But everything about high level play is tough to manage for a DM, but in terms of preparation and the pressure it puts on you to improvise. That's one of the reasons why I think 'Gandalf was a 6th level wizard' is such a hugely important essay, because it attacks the misperception that usually lies behind high level play that you have to be 15th level or something in order to have epic meaningful story lines.

Looking at 1e level tables, I don't think I ever assumed as a player or DM that we'd reach the last entry in the table. If you look at 1e adventure paths like GDQ (possibly with lead ins from ToEE), or Desert of Desolation, or DL, they always end well before the last entry in the level table and there is no assumption that the epic stuff only begins when you hit very high level. Yet, right from the start 3e applied pressure on the DMs and players to see playing at 10th or 15th or 20th level as the normal experience of play, rather than something you'd do because you were highly skilled and experienced. Right from the start there was pressure to feel 'left out' if you didn't get to 20th level, and pressure to see the game as incomplete if it didn't finish at 20th level. You see this implicit design pressure all over how people responded to the 3e game, from how the tiers of classes are discussed, to how preparing to play is discussed, or in how where the character is going to be at 20th level is considered so critical to describing chargen. And, I'd argue that many people who fell for it ended up really ruining themselves on the game not just because 3e really didn't deliver on that level of play without a lot of help (and it got worse over time) but because the GM just didn't have the experience to deal with it and ultimately found they didn't have the desire to deal with it either.

 

[sheadunne]

Complete aside here...

It's not just Plane Shift. One of the reasons that that I think 3e really soured on a lot of people is that it encouraged high level play as the norm, and high level play is just so much more challenging for a DM that they really shouldn't even attempt it until they've had a lot of experience. The prospect of improvising a 100 mile journey doesn't particularly daunt me, but I can definately see how people could stumble all over that. But everything about high level play is tough to manage for a DM, but in terms of preparation and the pressure it puts on you to improvise. That's one of the reasons why I think 'Gandalf was a 6th level wizard' is such a hugely important essay, because it attacks the misperception that usually lies behind high level play that you have to be 15th level or something in order to have epic meaningful story lines.

Looking at 1e level tables, I don't think I ever assumed as a player or DM that we'd reach the last entry in the table. If you look at 1e adventure paths like GDQ (possibly with lead ins from ToEE), or Desert of Desolation, or DL, they always end well before the last entry in the level table and there is no assumption that the epic stuff only begins when you hit very high level. Yet, right from the start 3e applied pressure on the DMs and players to see playing at 10th or 15th or 20th level as the normal experience of play, rather than something you'd do because you were highly skilled and experienced. Right from the start there was pressure to feel 'left out' if you didn't get to 20th level, and pressure to see the game as incomplete if it didn't finish at 20th level. You see this implicit design pressure all over how people responded to the 3e game, from how the tiers of classes are discussed, to how preparing to play is discussed, or in how where the character is going to be at 20th level is considered so critical to describing chargen. And, I'd argue that many people who fell for it ended up really ruining themselves on the game not just because 3e really didn't deliver on that level of play without a lot of help (and it got worse over time) but because the GM just didn't have the experience to deal with it and ultimately found they didn't have the desire to deal with it either.

That's certainly a fair enough assessment. I don't recall in my early AD&D or even 2e games reaching much above the lower teens and most games I ran were never intended to get much past 12th, which wasn't really a decision on my part, but rather a limit on how much XP could be reasonable accumulated over years of playing the same campaign. 3e did indeed tease on higher level play, but most certainly failed to deliver. It will be interesting to see if 5e breaks new ground on high level play.

 

[nijineko]

huh, i had the completely different experience with 1e and 2e. looking at the level achieved by various significant npcs, both dms and players of my experiences had full expectation to reach an equal if not greater level. we may have started at 1st, but reaching 20-something or 30-something in levels was the expectation and the norm, not the exception.

i have had similarly good experiences with high level play in 3e. i am currently running a group that has reached 18th and 19th level, and is on track for figuring out how to achieve connection with an epic power source. due to campaign and plot specific reasons, there is more than one way to go about it. it will be interesting to see which method is chosen, and how they deal with the consequences.



i begin to wonder how much early experiences and exposures sets in place the expectations and abilities of a given player's development.

 

[Celebrim]

huh, i had the completely different experience with 1e and 2e. looking at the level achieved by various significant npcs

Ahh... you played in the FR didn't you? Yeah, that set a completely different expectation. FR NPC's were about double the level of NPC's in any prior setting, which totally could mess with expectations. Or to put it another way, FR NPC's were roughly on part with the power level of dieties of prior settings.

That being said, if you had PC's that reached 30th level, my first question is, "How long did that take?" Higher levels were soooooo slow. And my second question is, "Considering that our 13th-15th level characters were quite capable of challenging and often outright wiping the floor with fiend lords, what in the world did you do at 30th level?"

i have had similarly good experiences with high level play in 3e.

I'm guessing significant experience with high level play prior to 3e is a big part of that.

i begin to wonder how much early experiences and exposures sets in place the expectations and abilities of a given player's development.

Lots.

 

[JamesonCourage]

When those complications might be someone who will kill the party in their sleep? When the complications might very well delay us significantly for no relevant purpose? When those complications could lead to failing to achieve our stated goals?

Really?

Really. People fail all the time.

And really, it's okay for it to happen in-game, too.

And, JC, could you point to where I am trying to make sweeping claims? I'm not saying my way is great for all tables. I've actually repeatedly stated that that's not true. Most definitely my approach would not work for your table or for Celebrim's. And I've stated that pretty clearly more than once.

This is how I want to play. Nothing more.

Well, you've said it was "your advice to DMs" without qualifiers in that advice, and you've had a couple "this guy isn't a bad DM?" posts. Both of those strike me as generalizations on what a "good" way to play is, and what a "bad" way to play is.

But, I consider many of the campaigns I've played in (and more than a few I've DM'd) to be journeys with very little purpose.

I don't play that way anymore. So, no, I don't want to play in a game where I am obligated to explore every single complication that the DM wants to toss onto the table just because the DM puts it out there. I want to have the option to ignore complications and move on to stuff that I am engaged in. At some tables, that won't happen. At others it will. I'll play at the latter tables thanks. You can keep yours.

It feels like you're still ignoring what I've explicitly stated (you don't have to explore every single complication), but okay. It basically does boil down to "play style difference", and even if I can't quite parse what yours is based on this discussion, I'm okay saying "sounds good to me; you play your way, and I'll play mine."

Yeah, I'd say that's pretty spot on. The desert is not, in any way, related to the city, other than by the most casual - location. The fact that I have to cross a desert to get to Las Vegas doesn't make the desert relevant to Las Vegas. If, OTOH, there are a bunch of zombies trying to break in past the barricades to eat the brains of those in Las Vegas, I'd say that's pretty relevant.

I see part of the disconnect. Just a couple pages ago, in post #612, I said "Depending on the context of the siege, yes. The same could be said of the desert (again, depending on context)." There's absolutely nothing stopping the desert (or anything in it) from being related to the city.

Also note, that the siege is relevant for the entire time that we are in the city. Unless, of course, we decide to end the siege first, which is possible. But, in all likelihood, the siege will be a relevant complication for the entire scenario.

Yes, you've now established this as a long-lasting complication, as compared to a short one.

The desert only becomes relevant after we have interacted with it. And, once we have interacted with the stuff in the desert and reached the city, the desert stops being relevant.

Um, only if it's literally "cross the desert" and that's it. But, other options have been proposed, but they are "railroading" or "contrived", while the siege isn't. And, both the siege and desert can be pre-planned for by the GM, or improvised, or rolled for, or whatever. I can't see the difference yet, assuming both hold something relevant to the city.

And that's the primary difference for me. The desert is just a road block. It's dragging out the scenario for no purpose, AFAIC. There's nothing there that we want to engage with, although post hoc there could be justifications added later (hey, it's a good thing we stopped and talked to those random nomads, it let us know about that secret entrance). But, once it's been interacted with, it's done.

The siege is a major element linked and entwined with our goals. The desert is just one more roadblock on the way.

Does that make the difference clearer?

Not quite, no. The desert, even without anything extra, is serving the same exact purpose as the siege -stopping you from getting in the city. The circumstances are different, as are the ways of dealing with it, but both the desert (without anything extra) and the siege both only serve one function at any base level: they stop you from getting to your goal in the city. You can make both more relevant by adding more to it.

Is the backdrop the big difference here? If you say yes, I'll accept that. I just can't see another difference yet. As always, play what you like