Is Tailor Made Better? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Quertus

2017-10-14, 12:25 AM

What do I have experience with? How should it be? Are those the questions of this thread? Let me start with the second one: it depends. Different orders, different couplings will produce different results. So the answer depends on what you have, and what you want.

Me, I want the old-school D&D drop in game mentality. So, that's system<->character>world<->campaign>party. Now, why do I have 5 elements, and what do I mean by them?

Well, if I have my handy notebook full of existing characters, the first thing I have is my character. But, the first thing the GM has is the system. If the character hasn't been instantiated in the system yet, some translation may be required.

The GM may have already created/picked the world/adventure, or that may happen later.

Lastly, all the players who sit down to play, their characters constitute the party.

So, hmmm, I guess I need to write that differently. Let me try again. I have seen drop in games with

system<->character>world<->campaign>party

system<->character>party>world<->campaign.

system<->character>party>world>campaign.

The way I like to run sandboxes looks more like this:

system>world>character>party>campaign.

But, sometimes, I get people asking for

genre>character>world>system>campaign<->party

Or even

party<->campaign>system<->world>characters

Now, as many GMs don't really create much outside the rails, you can also have orderings like the above, but where "world" is moved to the end, or even removed entirely! And, of course, since most good rulings become house rules, that portion of the System generally only comes into being after the game has begun.

In short, I suspect that just about any ordering would work, and that which one is optimal depends on what you want, and what you have to work with.

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Now, let's come back to the "should" part again. I, personally, love the "and how are we going to work with this?!" minigame. The party consists of three archers and a fire demon... Ok, where do we go from here? The modern cookie cutter mindset of "the party must have one tank, one striker, and 2.5 children" just doesn't appeal to me, as a general rule.

However, some campaigns, the plan should come before the characters. Ocean's Eleven comes to mind. So, imo, the only time "should" comes into play is for the exceptions, not the Rule.

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As to the more general topic of "tailor made", I've gotta say, I personally find it a detriment to my enjoyment.

If the characters are a hand-selected team for this job, that's fine - so long as the players know the system well enough to actually create characters who would be selected for this job.

If the job is hand-selected by the players, that's fine, too - although it's rare that GMs will let you pull this off well, IME.

Otherwise, I absolutely do not want "CR Appropriate" , "This looks like a job for Aquaman", or any other contrived BS anywhere near my games.

But there are other types of tailoring. I don't much like them, either.

Tailor my character to the world? No thanks. I want my characters to be "not from around here". There are a lot of reasons for that.

One is that the aesthetic/engagement that I most enjoy is Exploration. I don't want to know about the World, I want to learn about it in character.

Another is that the tailoring process, IME, generally fails, and products a character with horrible setting dissonance. I'd rather not go through that again.

One thing I really do want tailored is that I want the world/setting to be tailored to the system. Don't tell me that everyone in the entire world has to hold the idiot ball in order for the setting to make sense.

And then, of course, there's GMs trying to shoehorn their plot into a system / onto a party that's just not compatible. It's just too contrived to remake Lord of the Rings with D&D. Don't do that.

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I'll hit this again from yet another PoV later.

NichG

2017-10-14, 05:32 AM

Campaign -> world -> system -> party -> campaign.

Start with a question or theme that ties things together. Determine a scenario that would best enable it to be explored. Write or adapt game mechanics to express the underlying patterns that would lead to that world. Then let it make contact with the players, who will inevitably interpret it differently thus leading to exploration and change - thus feeding into how the campaign evolves.

NorthernPhoenix

2017-10-14, 07:06 AM

Mastikator

2017-10-14, 08:07 AM

It all comes down to the author and how well the PCs backstory are integrated into the campaign setting. That's at least 3 variables right there.

Slipperychicken

2017-10-14, 09:48 AM

The best thing is to talk with players about the vision you have for the game, what they'll want to see, and what sort of characters are best. That will empower players to make more appropriate PCs.

Knaight

2017-10-14, 10:40 AM

I generally run Group->Genre->Concept->System->Setting->Party->Campaign. With that said, these can also go backwards along that chain in influence to some extent, and they can certainly have effects go more than one step forwards. Step by step, here's the process:

Group: A current RPG group breaks up, usually because of logistics, often mapping really well to semester changes at the local university or community college (and if it's not that it's probably someone changing jobs). So a new group is assembled who can all meet regularly. A GM is also picked at this step; it's generally me.

Genre: At this point we all see what we're feeling in terms of genre, which is mostly a pitch and veto process. Someone suggests hard science fiction, someone else tosses that, someone suggests fantasy, someone tosses it, etc. Eventually it settles into either a genre or a genre hybrid. Ocassionally the process is a bit weirder - I ran a cyberpunk/steampunk campaign once that spun out of us arguing about whether it could even be done*.

Concept: Concept is a mix of campaign and party structure, at a high level. Once we know we're doing space opera it's time to hash out what that looks like. Is it a crew on a space ship doing missions? It is a military campaign about a team of infantry soldiers. Is it daily life on a scientific space station out in the middle of nowhere? This can feed back to genre in a big way, but eventually the core concept of the game is hashed out. It might change after an adventure, but we know how we're starting.

System: This one is affected more by group than anything, and most of the time it comes down to which generic system we're feeling like. Occasionally the system will show up earlier in the process, or I'll have one friendly to the concept with only a little tweaking. Everyone feels like pulp? That's what Hollow Earth Expedition or Terra Incognita are for. We have a team of pilots? Warbirds time. In practice, it's usually Fudge.

Setting: Now it's time for the specific setting details. I have a supply of existing settings to tweak into shape, or I can get a small setting in place quickly, building it up over a few sessions. Obviously this only works if you have improv specialists for GMs, but local group culture supports that.

Party: This is where specific characters are made, which can easily feed back into the setting. I might be running a short campaign about cultural clashes and interactions between divergent cultures, which in this case means a spaceship crash landing a day's journey away from a wizard college. If a player decides they want to play a dragon, I can add dragons to the setting then - they don't conflict with anything, they're far enough away from the parts of the setting that I actually care about, so whatever.

Campaign: I don't plot out campaigns at all, but more local setting elements are developed here, along with the inciting incident (the spaceship crash in the example above, the PCs being sent on a corporate espionage mission to repay their crippling medical debts they all have in the cyberpunk/steampunk example). Then it all comes together. This is also where tailoring happens, and while I don't like to tailor the setting I am willing to tailor how it is represented mechanically if using a complex system. A city guard is a city guard, but the mechanics behind them would vary for a low optimization and high optimization group in D&D.

*It can be, the genres mix just fine, and that campaign was a lot of fun.

Pleh

2017-10-14, 12:09 PM

Ok, what I usually do is project a point in the story I'd like to get to. I take some time to consider which sources and material are appropriate to the themes. Then I create a starting point that logically connects PC backstories with the projected goal. I prepare a few unconnected stepping stone encounters as filler to lead us up to the intended milemarker encounter. Finally, I follow up mid campaign with lots of questions and feedback requests, trying to iron out the less predictable problems.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-14, 01:30 PM

BWR

2017-10-14, 02:37 PM

Either World/system>campaign>party or campaign>world/system>party
I put world and system as one because I almost exclusively run established settings, and in some cases there really is only one system for a given setting. In the cases where there are more than one edition, or even system, there is only one I want to use, so the others are irrelevant to the question. I have yet to come across a system I think is good enough to run something on for its own sake, but I have come across many settings with their own system that I like.

Quertus

2017-10-14, 02:44 PM

Imo, for pre-written/"adventures path" style games, obviously it's system>world>campaign>party/characters. For other stuff I still do system>world>party/characters>campaign because I use established settings, FR/Golarion/etc.

IME, most modules are portable between worlds. So system>campaign>world>characters would be an expected ordering.

But this brings up another point: how much do each of these inform each other? The answer can vary from "not at all" to "very little" to "a lot". How much should porting Tomb of Horrors to Ravenloft or Dark Sun change the module? I'm guessing "a lot".

If I know that we're playing "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil", am I going to build/pick a character customized to the module? On the plus side for making the choice blind, you get the "how do we work with what we've got" minigame, which I personally love. On the plus side for making an informed decision, it can help increase the odds that I'll be running a character that is optimized for my enjoyment of the adventure.

And, as I said earlier, the system should definitely inform the world (or possibly vice versa, I suppose), such that things make sense.

Quertus

2017-10-14, 03:37 PM

Group->Genre->Concept->System->Setting->Party->Campaign.

I'm gonna largely steal your divisions here.

How much should each of these inform the other?

You know, I was going to make a big, long spiel, detailing my opinions on the healthy relationships between each of these, but you know what? Group is Trump. The thing that should inform everything is Group. Group can veto systems, can can veto character ideas, can veto campaign premises. Everything else is secondary, at best.

I may later give a more detailed version of my opinion on the matter, but I don't want people to lose the forest for the trees: Group is Trump.

I'm System>World>Party>Campaign.

I think a lot of it is the split between types of Campaigns:

The Open Ended Campaign-The DM makes the world, and the Players make their characters. The idea here is the players will use the characters for an open ended, long time doing a large number of things to make up a campaign. This can take years.

The Closed Min-Campaign-The Players make characters and the DM makes the campaign around them. The idea here is to have a very specific goal that will only take a short time and that takes up the whole campaign. This often takes less then a year.

The first is the classical group of adventurers that wander the world looking for adventure. The second is more for the much more directed group of heroes that will stop the dragon lord.

The first is more for players that simply want to make any character they feel like, the second is more for very, very, very specialized characters that can only work in the mini campaign.

The first is more for players that just want to explore and see what is in the game world, the second is more for players with a very set goal: they want to do X.

Although this may not be inclusive of every possible gaming style, I must say, this is an amazingly well-reasoned description of the most popular ones. I'm... kinda embarrassed about how shabby my first post looks in comparison now. :smallredface: Kudos!

Darth Ultron

2017-10-14, 07:07 PM

Although this may not be inclusive of every possible gaming style, I must say, this is an amazingly well-reasoned description of the most popular ones. I'm... kinda embarrassed about how shabby my first post looks in comparison now. :smallredface: Kudos!

Thanks.

It does help with all the ideas bouncing around in the forum for the last couple weeks.

Like I tried to point out over in the ''tier'' thread a big problem is focused mini campaigns. If the campaign is just ''fight the undead horde'', then the players can make characters that can be amazingly good vs undead....but suck at anything else. And this leads to very over powered characters.

And it came up in the martial vs spellcasters. Where martial can handle a lot of changes as they are very general, but a spellcaster can get 'stuck' very easily.

Concept is one to add too. And it is a very tricky one as everyone has different concepts in mind. One of my gaming classics is the A-team one. The players want to be an A-team, a special group that does special missions for someone. It's a fine concept, but soon after the game starts some players will complain that they ''don't want to do missions'' or ''follow orders'', but that breaks the game as the concept is the characters ''must'' follow orders and ''must'' do missions.

Pleh

2017-10-14, 07:19 PM

One of my gaming classics is the A-team one. The players want to be an A-team, a special group that does special missions for someone. It's a fine concept, but soon after the game starts some players will complain that they ''don't want to do missions'' or ''follow orders'', but that breaks the game as the concept is the characters ''must'' follow orders and ''must'' do missions.

So they go AWOL, become Mercs, get hunted be the B Team, and continue on. Doesn't really break the concept (A Team going rogue was the more recent movie plot, after all).

Quertus

2017-10-15, 07:42 AM

Ok, let's see if I can add to my opinion on healthy relationships between the components of a game.

Group->Genre->Concept->System->Setting->Party->Campaign.

Still mostly stealing your words, although I'm probably changing them slightly.

Let's start with what I've already said in previous posts.

Group

Group is Trump. It should inform everything.

System <-> Setting

These two should be tightly coupled, to ensure that the setting makes sense.

Party - Character

Personally, I prefer the drop-in game mentality, where the party is a collection of random people, and you get to play the, "and how do we work with this?" minigame. But you can also play the game with a "color by the numbers" party, where they are constructed to fill certain requirements / quotas.

In the drop-in game mentality, casually, what characters people bring informs what the party is. In a more "color by the numbers" scenario, party can inform (limit) character selection: we already have 3 rangers and a Jedi, we need a demolitions expert or a healer.

Character - Setting

Personally, I prefer for them to be completely divorced, at least insofar as my characters are concerned.

If a character is from a setting, they should be tightly coupled. A character's past greatly informs who the character is. But there are problems with this.

When Setting informs Character, you get stupid arguments about how a character from Thay would never think that way (much like stupid alignment arguments of "a good character would never do that").

When Character informs Setting, you get complaints of how a player is trying to bend the campaign setting around their character.

Now, all this would be bad enough for most characters, but, personally, I agree with the sentiment behind these statements.

I don't give players narrative control in my games. No, you can't just state that the Baron has had an affair, because the Baron's fidelity to his wife informed some of the decisions he has made, including ones made after resisting some behind the scenes seduction attempts.

So you clearly can't walk into an existing campaign, and declare that your character is the illegitimate son of the Baron, if that doesn't match established facts. But the players are not actually in a position to know what facts have been established, because they don't know all the hidden machinations that have produced the small portion of the world that their characters can see.

Similarly, as a player, I will never understand all the details of the world the same way as the GM (who may or may not be the world's creator). There will always be this dissonance, where my character just doesn't feel "right", to one or both of us, especially if we care about the setting.

So, while it's fine for other people to have setting inform character, or to play narrative games where character informs setting, I'll stick to my characters being "not from around here", and get to enjoy my favorite aesthetic of Exploration - on the GM's setting.

Party - Campaign

For my preferred drop-in game mindset, these should be independent.

In a sandbox, the party chooses what the campaign is all about.

In a module, and definitely in a railroad, the party has little to no say about the campaign.

Concept -> Campaign

This seems obvious. If the pitch is, let's play steam punk horror, the campaign should match.

This is also true for how one populates a sandbox. If the pitch is, let's play a political sandbox, that should inform what elements are available in the sandbox.

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So, that's just 12 of the 28 possible permutations of these 8 elements, but, off the top of my head, I think that they're the most important ones. I reserve the right to revise that opinion later. :smallwink:

jayem

2017-10-15, 08:33 AM

I'm System>World>Party>Campaign.

I think a lot of it is the split between types of Campaigns:

The Open Ended Campaign-The DM makes the world, and the Players make their characters. The idea here is the players will use the characters for an open ended, long time doing a large number of things to make up a campaign. This can take years.

The Closed Min-Campaign-The Players make characters and the DM makes the campaign around them. The idea here is to have a very specific goal that will only take a short time and that takes up the whole campaign. This often takes less then a year.

The first is the classical group of adventurers that wander the world looking for adventure. The second is more for the much more directed group of heroes that will stop the dragon lord.

The first is more for players that simply want to make any character they feel like, the second is more for very, very, very specialized characters that can only work in the mini campaign.

The first is more for players that just want to explore and see what is in the game world, the second is more for players with a very set goal: they want to do X.

I think the two bolded parts conflict very very slightly, and suspect the reason is that the coupling could be done the other way (in analogy you've got lawful-good, chaotic-evil, but not lawful-evil/chaotic good). But I think your right the split is important.

For that matter the initial desire/inspiration. For any variant in each of the 5 parts, there's a reason to say "I want to play That" and then the rest has to fit round it. "That's a really good beautiful strategic system, but all the combat is close, maybe this isn't the time for a space game", "Oh wow that film on regency court politics was really fascinating, I want to play that guy, how the hell do I game that."

JenBurdoo

2017-10-15, 10:10 AM

I'm very much a newbie GM and have run both types, with mixed success. For context, I work/play at a library and am thus time-limited, with very fickle players.

Campaign 1: Players built their characters first and I invented NPCs and challenges to match. The mage was a runaway with a tragic backstory, so mercenaries were on her trail. The half-dragon knight was looking for his father, so I hinted that the BBEG dragon was his relation. The Necromancer was nominally under arrest while he worked off his crimes. The guy cursed to have a lion's head was looking for a way to lift the curse. And so on. This campaign broke down fairly quickly because important players and the GM kept getting sick, transferred or graduated.

Campaign 2: So for the next try, I took inspiration from a coworker who had just had all his 1st-level newbies arrested by an insane tyrant and tossed into the gladiatorial arena. They spent half the campaign learning the rules and hacking random monsters, the other half getting freed from the arena and adventuring normally.

First, I decided the environment was a "city of adventure," and no matter what their character concept, every single PC was a member of the city guard - specifically an "expendable" unit of folks who, for the most part, didn't fit into the classic Guardsman mold but, because of this, could also deal with threats normal guardsmen weren’t equipped to handle. I named it “The Queen’s Own Troubleshooters.”

Traditional Lawful Good types (paladins, warriors, knights, clerics) were simply assigned to the unit in the course of their duties.
Magic-users, adepts, and anyone with white-collar skillsets might be employed already by the city, contracting specialized services, or interning from the local university.
Criminal types (thieves, assassins, black magicians) were prisoners trading bars for stripes.
“Races of the wild” (druids, rangers, barbarians, elven ambassadors, travelers) were new to the city; either looking for work or cross-attached from their guild/council/kingdom to keep an eye on what those crazy humans were up to.
Bards were looking for material for their next ode.
And so on…

Second, the Troubleshooters had a loose organization and chain of command. It didn’t matter how many players turned up, what they were playing or how experienced the PCs were; whoever came to the session were whoever the Captain pointed at when something came up and said, “You, you, and you – go deal with it.”
This enabled me to fit anyone in to the day’s adventure, whatever it might be. Generally it was a straightforward hack-n-slash thing – monster escaped from the royal menagerie, fire in the wizards’ quarter, rioting dockworkers. Sometimes it might be more dungeony, like collecting the royal regalia from the former king’s trapped tomb.

Lots of players for the day? Extra monsters or challenges.
One player? Add a few NPC redshirts.
Someone leaves mid-session? He gets knocked out by the monster of the week, or trips into the sewers.
Someone turns up mid-session? His PC arrives out of breath with a cry of, “The Captain sent reinforcements!”
Character misses a session or three? He was on guard duty at the palace, peeling potatoes, on leave, recovering from injury or whatever else seems appropriate.

This worked remarkably well, and I’m looking at using it again soon.

jayem

2017-10-15, 10:12 AM

Concept is one to add too. And it is a very tricky one as everyone has different concepts in mind. One of my gaming classics is the A-team one. The players want to be an A-team, a special group that does special missions for someone. It's a fine concept, but soon after the game starts some players will complain that they ''don't want to do missions'' or ''follow orders'', but that breaks the game as the concept is the characters ''must'' follow orders and ''must'' do missions.

Practically in the A-team series 1, you don't actually have 3 standard 'hired missions' in a row (you could argue 10-13). Sometimes the problem comes to them and they volunteer*, sometimes it's a consequence of an unseen (presumably otherwise trivial mission)**.
1 Hired, 2 (continues 1), 3 Hired, 4 Volunteer, 5 Hired, 6 Aftermath, 7 Hired, 8 Hired, 9 Aftermath, 10 Hired, 11 Conscripted, 12 Hired 13 Hired 14 Volunteer

*Getting these to happen would require some down-time roleplaying (this could be tied in with prep for another mission, having some constraint making the downtime already interesting, having off-mission sidestories, or explicit ooc 'one day, when you are on Main St because? [player fills in gap with PC stuff] ... event begins'.)
**Having these short missions, means that you don't have to force the classic A-team fail/succeed narrative of the main stories, they'll just select themselves.

[ETA]
And again, absolutely, "I want to be like the A-team" could mean they want someone to come to them with a mission (of course that A-team don't follow orders, and make the mission givers jump through hoops), or it could mean they want to be constantly watching out for the authorities, or that they wanted to be like the preprison A-team (who do follow the greater orders), or Charlies Angels (who follow even more closely), or that they just want to be crazy awesome (movie A-team)

Darth Ultron

2017-10-15, 06:42 PM

So they go AWOL, become Mercs, get hunted be the B Team, and continue on. Doesn't really break the concept (A Team going rogue was the more recent movie plot, after all).

See your forgetting the players said ''we want the game to be where we are an A-Team''. So the DM says ''ok''.

I couple minutes into the game the players are suddenly like ''we want to change the concept radically''.

And the DM is like, um, ok, but why then you just not say ''we want the game to be where we once were a a-team, but now we are cool renegade rouges" ?

And again, absolutely, "I want to be like the A-team" could mean they want someone to come to them with a mission (of course that A-team don't follow orders, and make the mission givers jump through hoops), or it could mean they want to be constantly watching out for the authorities, or that they wanted to be like the preprison A-team (who do follow the greater orders), or Charlies Angels (who follow even more closely), or that they just want to be crazy awesome (movie A-team)

And this is the Concept problem: the players think one way, and the DM thinks another...and you have a basic lack of communication.

Er, and don't confuse ''a-team'' with The ''A-Team''. The idea is the players were asking for more ''Mission Impossible'', where they would be '' a team'' (the alpha/first team) sent on big missions.

In all, it shows a the big concept problem.

LordEntrails

2017-10-15, 11:45 PM

Is custom better?
Sometime yes, often time no. It depends upon how good the customization are. How well they fit with each player, how the group dynamics go together.

Is it worth homebrewing things? Sure, but go slow, use experience. Communicate with the other players. Don't be afraid to admit things don't work. Realize that one person's vision may not be everyone's vision.

Vitruviansquid

2017-10-16, 12:24 AM

Tailor-made is better than not-tailor made, because theming ends up being a pretty big deal in how enjoyable a campaign is overall, and theming tends to be far easier when tailor-making things.

However, this comes with the significant caveat that if you are bad at tailor-making things, then the things you tailor-make are going to be bad. So the right amount of tailoring largely depends on the competence of the tailor in question.

As for what order you should tailor things... I find that all RPG games start with a core idea, but this core idea can be different from game to game. You might have a game that starts because one of you discovered a new, interesting system. Now you're tailoring everything to the system. You might have a game because you just read/watched something mind-blowing and you want to work within the same genre. Now you're tailoring everything to the theme. You might have a game that's been going on awhile and it's developing an interesting campaign story. Now you're tailoring everything to the campaign. And so on.

Pleh

2017-10-16, 04:56 AM

See your forgetting the players said ''we want the game to be where we are an A-Team''. So the DM says ''ok''.

I couple minutes into the game the players are suddenly like ''we want to change the concept radically''.

And the DM is like, um, ok, but why then you just not say ''we want the game to be where we once were a a-team, but now we are cool renegade rouges" ?

And this is the Concept problem: the players think one way, and the DM thinks another...and you have a basic lack of communication.

Er, and don't confuse ''a-team'' with The ''A-Team''. The idea is the players were asking for more ''Mission Impossible'', where they would be '' a team'' (the alpha/first team) sent on big missions.

In all, it shows a the big concept problem.

Concept problem. Psh.

Put on your big DM pants and deal with it.

Oh, no. The players just want more crazy, nonsensical hijinks and fewer profound stories with deep themes?

However will a DM cope?

Darth Ultron

2017-10-16, 07:12 AM

Oh, no. The players just want more crazy, nonsensical hijinks and fewer profound stories with deep themes?

Few players are dumb enough to ask for crazy......I'm crazy up to 11!

Pleh

2017-10-16, 09:10 AM

Few players are dumb enough to ask for crazy......I'm crazy up to 11!

Or, instead of kicking the board over the moment someone makes a game changing move, you could humor the shift and not demand it either be rigidly set in stone or crazy level 11.

You know, just a moment of crazy spontenaity to throw your plans into shambles, then move on with the new story direction. Like a sensible gamer.

Cluedrew

2017-10-16, 05:37 PM

I have not been posting as frequently as I would like recently, but I hope people don't mind the delay.

I generally run Group->Genre->Concept->System->Setting->Party->Campaign.I completely skipped over group some how, but yes that could easily be its own group. Probably near the top of the chain, either at the very top or close to the top is a couple of people have an idea and then go around and fill out the numbers.

Genre and Concept on the other hand I actually just had folded into another group. Not campaign, but system, because my group tends to play a lot of very focused systems that cover the campaign premise as part of the system pitch (trading flexibility for focus and clarity) so those three tend to get decided together. Even without that, I see them actually kind of locked together, not because they have to be but for some reason campaign pitches always seem to include both, not sure why.

Party - Campaign

For my preferred drop-in game mindset, these should be independent.

In a sandbox, the party chooses what the campaign is all about.

In a module, and definitely in a railroad, the party has little to no say about the campaign.And this actually the one I wanted to talk about, because I definitely feel this should be either Party->Campaign or Party<->Campaign. Why should I care? If you just drop me into the adventure it is either because anyone would care (ex. end of world) or I really don't.

I remember one campaign where the reason we were on the first quest was because of some sort of criminal work program thing. This was not included in the campaign pitch, which had focused mostly on the setting we would be exploring. So I looked at my character and went: "How did my character end up, they are pretty much as not-criminal as one can get. It is more likely they spontaneously volunteered for extra community service hours than they got arrested. Hnnn... let's say they did something by accident." Which is to say, the decoupling really left me scratching my head.

NichG

2017-10-16, 06:42 PM

IMO, Campaign -> Party starts at least with the existence of a campaign pitch. I've found that if 6 players just make whatever character they feel like in a void, generally speaking what the characters want is going to be largely incompatible with each-other actually doing it together. Even when there is a campaign pitch this happens with alarming regularity. The 'one guy wants to play a paladin, one guy wants to play a necromancer' thing is a trope for a reason. A campaign pitch can help inform what kind of characters are going to be appropriate and suited to what will happen and to each-other, so that players are less likely to feel forced into a situation incompatible with their character idea.

At least that way if e.g. the pitch is 'you are in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where society has broken down' then the guy who wants to play the sheriff and representative of law and order can go into it knowing that they're choosing to play something that's going to be a bit hard mode.

RazorChain

2017-10-16, 10:33 PM

I usually pick a Genre, then I decide upon the World. Based on the Genre and World I pick a System. Then I decide upon a Theme, I mean Genre, World and System don't convey what I want to run, dungeon hack, mystery and political intrigue are three vastly different things but can all exist in the same Genre/World/System.

When this is decided I pitch my idea and me being a lucky bastard I get to run almost whatever I pitch. Then I use session zero and the players make their party with my input and help. The campaign kinda just makes itself. I just tailor to plots to the PC's backgrounds and once we start going it becomes a cascade of consequences.

Let's just put it this way, at the start of the most recent campaign I didn't have a clue where we would be 1.5 years later.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-17, 07:37 AM

Or, instead of kicking the board over the moment someone makes a game changing move, you could humor the shift and not demand it either be rigidly set in stone or crazy level 11.

You know, just a moment of crazy spontenaity to throw your plans into shambles, then move on with the new story direction. Like a sensible gamer.

It is just down right amazing no one is against the players for things like this: the DM is all ways wrong.

Well, I don't see it that way.

Like the players want to do a dragon rider war concept. So they make dragon rider characters and the DM makes a war. A couple hours into the game, the jerk players are whining and crying as their martial characters ''never get to do anything'' as they are ''always stuck riding a dragon''. And as DM, I'd say, ''well, yea, that is what ''dragon riders do: they ride dragons." And then I'd mention to the player that they have control over their character, and they could have the dragon land, have the character get off, and then have the character fight all the ground troops....but then they would not be a ''dragon rider'' and like 75% of their dragon rider abilities are not useless.

Quertus

2017-10-17, 08:37 AM

And this actually the one I wanted to talk about, because I definitely feel this should be either Party->Campaign or Party<->Campaign. Why should I care? If you just drop me into the adventure it is either because anyone would care (ex. end of world) or I really don't.

I remember one campaign where the reason we were on the first quest was because of some sort of criminal work program thing. This was not included in the campaign pitch, which had focused mostly on the setting we would be exploring. So I looked at my character and went: "How did my character end up, they are pretty much as not-criminal as one can get. It is more likely they spontaneously volunteered for extra community service hours than they got arrested. Hnnn... let's say they did something by accident." Which is to say, the decoupling really left me scratching my head.

Well, note that I separated "party" and "character".

In a sandbox, the PCs choose what the adventure is about, so Party -> Campaign.

In a module, the hooks inform which character you should bring, so Campaign -> Character.

If the GM is building the game around the PCs, he should make the hooks match the PCs, so Character -> Campaign.

But, imo, the hook of "wealth" or "fame" or "your brother went missing" or "the world is ending" or "you're suddenly X years in the future" or "you're all in some sort of criminal work program thing"... A) usually has little bearing on the campaign in general; b) usually should be part of the campaign pitch and/or should be a discussion with the players.

So, usually^2, unless you've got someone who lacks appropriate GM skills, this shouldn't be an issue. The only time this should come up is if the Campaign premise is supposed to be a surprise that comes up mid game, and the Party is supposed to not be custom-tailored to the specific Campaign.

For example, I played in a campaign whose (IIRC secret - we may have been told OOC, and I'm just being senile) premise was, "suddenly, Ravenloft". And that was fine.

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Let me not lose the forest for the trees. Let me say all that another way.

I have a basic premise under which I run "railroading" games (modules, one-shots, etc, where the plot is already determined): tell the players anything that the PCs will know "in the first 15 minutes of the game". If the king is going to hire you to slay a dragon, tell the players that that's the name of the game. And that goes double for background details - if everyone is required to be in some sort of criminal work program thing, bloody tell the players that up front!

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In case it isn't obvious, let me explicitly address "If you just drop me into the adventure it is either because anyone would care (ex. end of world) or I really don't." One word: hooks. You can drop almost any character into almost any adventure with the proper hook.

The king wants to hire us to slay a dragon? Quertus would go if the Dragon displayed unusual magical talents, or in exchange for access to the fabled royal library. Armus would go, either to protect the citizens, or, if the Dragon hasn't been rampaging, to protect the Dragon. Ikou would go, because he is a valiant hero.

We're all in some sort of criminal work program thing? Quertus is Lawful enough to consider not just leaving if he broke some stupid local laws about not flavoring your food with magic or something. Armus would definitely bribe a magistrate to put him into the program to investigate rumors of prisoner abuse. Ikou didn't know that, after Tamatoa attacked the town, it had become a crime to be so shiny, but will use this opportunity to recruit for his next big quest while working on getting the law repealed.

Note that the creation of proper hooks is a conversation between the player and the GM.

IMO, Campaign -> Party starts at least with the existence of a campaign pitch. I've found that if 6 players just make whatever character they feel like in a void, generally speaking what the characters want is going to be largely incompatible with each-other actually doing it together. Even when there is a campaign pitch this happens with alarming regularity. The 'one guy wants to play a paladin, one guy wants to play a necromancer' thing is a trope for a reason.

I played in that party! Made for great stories, wouldn't change a thing!

However, what you're suggesting isn't so much Campaign -> Party (as few campaigns are actually inappropriate for / actually disqualify either the paladin or the necromancer), so much as Character -> Character (which I find mildly dysfunctional), or Group -> Character.

Pleh

2017-10-17, 08:39 AM

It is just down right amazing no one is against the players for things like this: the DM is all ways wrong.

Well, I don't see it that way.

Like the players want to do a dragon rider war concept. So they make dragon rider characters and the DM makes a war. A couple hours into the game, the jerk players are whining and crying as their martial characters ''never get to do anything'' as they are ''always stuck riding a dragon''. And as DM, I'd say, ''well, yea, that is what ''dragon riders do: they ride dragons." And then I'd mention to the player that they have control over their character, and they could have the dragon land, have the character get off, and then have the character fight all the ground troops....but then they would not be a ''dragon rider'' and like 75% of their dragon rider abilities are not useless.

The DM is wrong if they can't allow the story and setting to shift tone as the characters move the story.

"My character isn't suited to this story and would likely move to cover a part of the war that their talents are more suited for" is a completely reasonable statement for a player to make. The DM doesn't have much right to whine and cry about the player giving valid game feedback that their character is out of place.

The player and DM need to talk about what needs to change to accommodate the gameplay. Does the martial dragon rider need to retire so the Player can make a new character that engages the story more effectively? Does the DM need to create a secondary story arc on the ground for the martial dragon rider to manage?

It's never JUST the DM who is wrong and it's never JUST the player who is wrong. But it IS the DM's responsibility to make the necessary changes to make the game fun. If the player is compelled to be the only one adjusting to fit the game, the game sucks.

NichG

2017-10-17, 07:33 PM

I played in that party! Made for great stories, wouldn't change a thing!

However, what you're suggesting isn't so much Campaign -> Party (as few campaigns are actually inappropriate for / actually disqualify either the paladin or the necromancer), so much as Character -> Character (which I find mildly dysfunctional), or Group -> Character.

Whereas for me, it has always been pretty negative. The issue is the situation of being under metagame pressure for sake of the game as a whole running smoothly (and worse yet, if different players have a different level of willingness to take into account that metagame pressure). For example, I was in a campaign where one of the players had a character that basically outright betrayed the group in a way that not only destroyed the group's home and almost got several PCs killed, but also on the whole made the world a significantly worse place. This was a character who basically voluntarily swore a magically binding oath to be obedient to what was essentially the BBEG, actively pursued that oath against the party's interests, lied to the party about things they knew in order to keep them from actually having a chance to stop it, etc - and all of that had just been outed.

Up to that point, okay, awesome story about a double-cross. But once it was done, the character said: 'but I didn't know, it was just a mistake, let me keep travelling with you!'. We discussed out of character and said 'look, our characters are basically going to hold council and execute your character for what they did; good show and all, but its time to make a new character'. However, the player said 'nope, I want to keep playing this character', argued the execution down to being exiled, but continued to have their character sit and poke and tried to do little social manipulation things in the wings while the rest of us actually played the game, caused a lot of unnecessary and ultimately uninteresting drama, and then eventually after 10 or so games the character got themselves killed and the player took up a new character. Same campaign, we had a player introduce a character mid-game whose sworn purpose was to eradicate all beings like the PCs from existence - but hey, lets travel together so that you're conveniently within my friendly fire radius!

The campaign as a whole was great, but the great moments were the ones when we weren't trying to mesh together obviously incompatible characters who should just be killing each-other on sight. The actual conflicts within the party were, well, let me put it this way - after that campaign I definitely had a lot less patience for those two players in real life.

Quertus

2017-10-18, 06:03 AM

Let me hit the main topic from a different angle. I've said that you can custom tailor the Hooks, and that the Hooks usually aren't actually a major part of the Campaign. Those two statements are related.

Custom tailoring is like using Magick in WoD: handy at times, but likely to blow up big time when you use too much.

When people try to custom tailor too much, you lose the integrity of one or more aspects of the game. Thus complaints about people trying to warp the campaign world around their character, for example.

The game is best when every component is allowed to retain its integrity, and cement is correctly applied to bond the components together. When adventure hooks are crafted with the same care as the rest of the campaign, with the characters in mind, through a conversation with the players. Or when the hooks are laid out ahead of time, and the characters are created / selected with those hooks in mind.

So, yes, you can make a wall of questionable stability by just piling up stones. And, in theory, you could carefully carve all of the stones so that they fit together perfectly to make a very nice wall (ala single author fiction). But most good walls, like most good RPGs, involve the application of a layer of cement.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-18, 06:34 AM

When people try to custom tailor too much, you lose the integrity of one or more aspects of the game. Thus complaints about people trying to warp the campaign world around their character, for example.

While the DM/one player thing is common, even more so when they are like brothers or a married couple, what about tailoring things to a group?

The game is best when every component is allowed to retain its integrity, and cement is correctly applied to bond the components together. When adventure hooks are crafted with the same care as the rest of the campaign, with the characters in mind, through a conversation with the players. Or when the hooks are laid out ahead of time, and the characters are created / selected with those hooks in mind.

I find a lot of players don't care, or maybe more to the point don't want to be involved. While sure some players want to nit pick and make stuff for their characters to jump through and do, I find a lot more just want to ''play the game and see what happens''. And a lot of the same players only want to do things ''in game play'', so they might have their character do something during the game, but they don't want to alter the game reality OOC (or even co-DM).

So, yes, you can make a wall of questionable stability by just piling up stones. And, in theory, you could carefully carve all of the stones so that they fit together perfectly to make a very nice wall (ala single author fiction). But most good walls, like most good RPGs, involve the application of a layer of cement.

This is the odd, ''if a DM makes anything they are wrong'', but ''the players are all ways right''.

Cluedrew

2017-10-18, 06:45 AM

When people try to custom tailor too much, you lose the integrity of one or more aspects of the game. Thus complaints about people trying to warp the campaign world around their character, for example.I don't know, I think if it is well done perhaps that upper limit doesn't really exist. Although maybe that is a Party->Setting thing as opposed to Setting->Party?

I'd say more but I'm in a bit of a rush.

Lorsa

2017-10-18, 08:36 AM

To simply answer the topic question:

Yes, tailor made is always better. Doesn't matter if it's clothes or roleplaying campaigns.

Making the game for the players you have is always going to generate the highest satisfaction rate.

Quertus

2017-10-18, 09:46 AM

I don't know, I think if it is well done perhaps that upper limit doesn't really exist. Although maybe that is a Party->Setting thing as opposed to Setting->Party?

I'd say more but I'm in a bit of a rush.

Therein lies the path to the dark side. People like to believe that they are doing things well, and are rarely good judges of their performance in that regard. How can they be? They don't understand the components that they didn't build well enough to know whether what they are doing is detrimental to their integrity. Thus, my belief that the minimalist couplings are the ones that are the signatures of a healthy game environment.

Hmmm... perhaps it's "minimalist couplings, created through conversation, between components with different authors" that is actually the sign of a healthy game?

This also feeds into my ideas about things that are done by the Group. Group is Trump. You can't accidentally **** something up that way if you have a healthy conversation with everybody about it.

While the DM/one player thing is common, even more so when they are like brothers or a married couple, what about tailoring things to a group?

Group is Trump. When the Group tailors something, it is fine.

I find a lot of players don't care, or maybe more to the point don't want to be involved. While sure some players want to nit pick and make stuff for their characters to jump through and do, I find a lot more just want to ''play the game and see what happens''. And a lot of the same players only want to do things ''in game play'', so they might have their character do something during the game, but they don't want to alter the game reality OOC (or even co-DM).

Well, now, this is an interesting point. I'm assuming that hurting people is bad, but some people like that kind of thing - conventional BFSM or whatever is a thing.

Likewise, I'm assuming that one player dominating the game like the "Jerk Tyrant Player" you always complain about is a bad thing, but, honestly, last time I tried to call someone out for being a JTP, the rest of the group said that they were fine with it. Abnegation at its finest. If I had been GM, instead of just another player, the game could have proceeded smoothly.

So, yes, you are correct, there is more to the story than I am describing. But it is, IME, quite the edge case. Usually, when you have people create their characters independent of the adventure / plot hooks, and suddenly bring them together, you find that the majority of the players immediately balk that their characters are not motivated by the motivations presented. Most players, in my quite extensive experience, really do care about that kind of thing.

Normally, when you have someone locked up in your basement, covered with signs of abuse, it's not healthy. But, sometimes, that's what they wanted. Go figure.

This is the odd, ''if a DM makes anything they are wrong'', but ''the players are all ways right''.

If someone other than the object's author tries to change the object, they are wrong. If the authors of two objects work together to create an interface / connection between these two objects, they aren't. By definition, the Group contains all such authors; thus, by definition, the Group is incapable of being wrong in this fashion.

To simply answer the topic question:

Yes, tailor made is always better. Doesn't matter if it's clothes or roleplaying campaigns.

Making the game for the players you have is always going to generate the highest satisfaction rate.

You wouldn't find the thread, "Ways Cluedrew believes he can create an adventure where the GM has complete oversight on the PCs that Quertus wouldn't object to" to be just a bit damaging to your experience compared to a more general thread, like "Is tailor made better?"?

Darth Ultron

2017-10-18, 11:52 AM

Likewise, I'm assuming that one player dominating the game like the "Jerk Tyrant Player" you always complain about is a bad thing, but, honestly, last time I tried to call someone out for being a JTP, the rest of the group said that they were fine with it. Abnegation at its finest. If I had been GM, instead of just another player, the game could have proceeded smoothly.

It is possible to get a group mix of one ''alpha player/star'' and the rest ''just back-up''. I find it odd, myself, but if all the players are happy then it is just fine.

So, yes, you are correct, there is more to the story than I am describing. But it is, IME, quite the edge case. Usually, when you have people create their characters independent of the adventure / plot hooks, and suddenly bring them together, you find that the majority of the players immediately balk that their characters are not motivated by the motivations presented. Most players, in my quite extensive experience, really do care about that kind of thing..

Well, the more mini focused game is popular now a days. So many players like the game to ''have something'' to do with their character. I still find plenty of ''just make a character and lets play types'' though. Of course, I also encourage that type of play.

I'm not a fan, even in real life, of everything must be because of ''a big reason''. Character A only hates orcs as they kill her parents, or character Y only likes elves as they were raised by an elf family. It's a bit of real life as normal real people don't have some wacky history of why they ''don't like X'', they just don't.

And I find more open ended character things, not attached to the immediate game to be better. Take Character A that just wants to explore the world and maybe discover something unique vs Character Z that ''only wants to find the orc guy who killed his family''(sigh). And most of the time, when the character does ''the thing'' they become ''useless'' to the player: ''Yes, Kozon got revenge for his family and killed the orc guy....um, ok, so he like is done now. I'll make another character."

Quertus

2017-10-18, 01:05 PM

Well, the more mini focused game is popular now a days. So many players like the game to ''have something'' to do with their character. I still find plenty of ''just make a character and lets play types'' though. Of course, I also encourage that type of play.

I'm not a fan, even in real life, of everything must be because of ''a big reason''. Character A only hates orcs as they kill her parents, or character Y only likes elves as they were raised by an elf family. It's a bit of real life as normal real people don't have some wacky history of why they ''don't like X'', they just don't.

And I find more open ended character things, not attached to the immediate game to be better. Take Character A that just wants to explore the world and maybe discover something unique vs Character Z that ''only wants to find the orc guy who killed his family''(sigh). And most of the time, when the character does ''the thing'' they become ''useless'' to the player: ''Yes, Kozon got revenge for his family and killed the orc guy....um, ok, so he like is done now. I'll make another character."

I heartily agree that some motivations are easier to work with than others. Ikou is a valiant hero, motivated by fame and glory. He's really easy. Armus is motivated by his own unique moral compass. He'll fit in most adventures fine, but it's difficult for most GMs to craft a hook specifically for him on their own. Quertus cares little for the world at large, and tries to focus on magical research. Although he doesn't fit in many adventures out-of-the-box, it's really easy to craft a custom hook for him.

Characters with much more focused drives, like your example of "I only care about the orcs that murdered my family", can make for great stories, but they tend to require warping the campaign around their character. Not exactly a sign of a healthy game / stance in general, but great when in a group where that works.

I know I'm a bit senile, but the only time I remember making such a limited drive was with Crystal. See, I had run her father in a campaign in a paradise full of rich forests, beautiful streams, plentiful food, and legalized murder of sentient beings that looked different. While this describes most any D&D world, the campaign happened to be set in Ravenloft. But nothing the place threw at Vinnie could convince him that the place was anything short of paradise.

The backstory for Crystal was, that the only thing Ravenloft could do to make Vinnie sad was the one thing that was normally impossible: it could kick him out. So Crystal found a way out of Ravenloft, and was hunting for her father, to bring him back home to paradise.

Despite her singular focus, she was well suited to adventures, so long as they involved travel. She was also well designed for drop-in games, where she's "not from around here", asking questions, and helps out with whatever local problems are brewing while waiting on the results of her inquiries.

OldTrees1

2017-10-18, 02:19 PM

Tailor made and the opposite (called Status Quo IIRC) are both tools in the DM's arsenal.

Tailoring something to a character/player/party/group/... makes it fit better with that entity BUT comes at the cost of being made to fit that entity.

Take the following 2 encounters from a Prince's Bride*
The Rodents of Unusual Size found in the Fire Swamp
vs
The Six Fingered Man

If the Prince's Bride was a D&D campaign, the DM would expect the PCs to eventually face and defeat the Six Fingered Man. Therefore the DM tailored the Six Fingered Man to be an appropriate challenge and tie into some of the motivations/backstories of the PCs. On the other hand the DM did not know if the PCs would go through the Fire Swamp, go around it, or some other plan. So rather than tailoring the Rodents of Unusual Size to the PCs, the DM created them independently and then let the PCs make a meaningful choice based upon their limited knowledge of their various options.

Tailoring the world to the PCs is like using a cookie cutter when baking. Both have the two-faced consequence of creating a better fit at the cost of some of the differentiation. Now I realize I only talked about Tailoring at the scale of encounters tailored to the PCs, however I expect we can both abstract/generalize this example to see the other cases on other scales. So tailor when you want a better (albeit artificial) fit and don't tailor when you want it more real (albeit less fitting). Both are important tools in your toolbox.

*literature makes a good source for widely known examples of encounters in stories even if it is not an RPG

Cluedrew

2017-10-18, 06:37 PM

Therein lies the path to the dark side. People like to believe that they are doing things well, and are rarely good judges of their performance in that regard. How can they be? They don't understand the components that they didn't build well enough to know whether what they are doing is detrimental to their integrity. Thus, my belief that the minimalist couplings are the ones that are the signatures of a healthy game environment.Someone else did it, I was just playing and it was a lot of fun.

And really the key seemed to be in that "Setting->Party->Campaign" section. We figured out where we were going to play, spend a bit of time figuring out (learning and sometimes deciding) details about the setting. Then we all sat down and created some characters. It is sometimes/mostly individual for the first part as everyone works out the core concepts out. Then we start messing them together, why and how to they meet? Why might they work together? And so on. Out of that comes the starting point for the campaign. Then we start playing from there.

So their is a massive Party->Campaign link there. You could mimic some of the larger motions of the campaign other ways, but really the whole thing spins out of the party (they are their own quest givers) and having played that and the "external quest giver" I find this style so much more fun. Even one short campaign that boiled down to "we traveled out for two days, got hurt and then came home" was tons of fun because, besides the low level mechanics and flavouring of it, it was still significant on a character level.

I think the issue you were talking about "the warping of the campaign setting" would be party->setting or campaign->setting. Which probably can be used effectively, especially at a campaign's start, but if overused can could lead to that warp. I guess some of that happens with this style, or with our GM I suppose it wouldn't have to, but it mostly seems to be an exercise in avoiding "nothing happens". You might prefer a time skip until something happens sort of thing.

You wouldn't find the thread, "Ways Cluedrew believes he can create an adventure where the GM has complete oversight on the PCs that Quertus wouldn't object to" to be just a bit damaging to your experience compared to a more general thread, like "Is tailor made better?"?First, what exactly do you mean "the GM has complete oversight on the PCs".

Second, even if you are actually talking about the thing I am arguing for (which don't think I have made clear yet/before now) I haven't been able to do it really well yet myself, but I'm trying to build my skills to that point.

Third, I also generalized the topic because I thought it would bring in other interesting ideas in. And it did, I just don't have the energy to discuss them all right now.

Quertus

2017-10-18, 08:37 PM

Someone else did it, I was just playing and it was a lot of fun.

And really the key seemed to be in that "Setting->Party->Campaign" section. We figured out where we were going to play, spend a bit of time figuring out (learning and sometimes deciding) details about the setting. Then we all sat down and created some characters. It is sometimes/mostly individual for the first part as everyone works out the core concepts out. Then we start messing them together, why and how to they meet? Why might they work together? And so on. Out of that comes the starting point for the campaign. Then we start playing from there.

So their is a massive Party->Campaign link there. You could mimic some of the larger motions of the campaign other ways, but really the whole thing spins out of the party (they are their own quest givers) and having played that and the "external quest giver" I find this style so much more fun. Even one short campaign that boiled down to "we traveled out for two days, got hurt and then came home" was tons of fun because, besides the low level mechanics and flavouring of it, it was still significant on a character level.

I think the issue you were talking about "the warping of the campaign setting" would be party->setting or campaign->setting. Which probably can be used effectively, especially at a campaign's start, but if overused can could lead to that warp. I guess some of that happens with this style, or with our GM I suppose it wouldn't have to, but it mostly seems to be an exercise in avoiding "nothing happens". You might prefer a time skip until something happens sort of thing.

I'm confused. Let me backtrack a bit.

At the highest level, this thread is about the value of custom tailoring some portion of the RPG experience.

Beyond that, I for one am not using my words consistently, as I am still evolving a vocabulary.

I said "path to the dark side" in response to your contention of the possibility of no upper limit to how much one could custom tailor things along the lines of Party -> Setting warping the campaign to match the character. I may have been confused.

So, first off, I believe that what you are discussing is Character -> Setting, not actually Party -> Setting.

There are Systems where, "I am actually the Prince of the royal house of Vanderhausen, the rulers of the flying island of Godshaddow, home to the most advanced technology known to man." "OK, I'll play an extradimensional explorer, marooned on your island due to a 'freak accident' that was actually the will of the god of mischief, and subsequently assigned as your tutor and bodyguard" is a valid exchange. There are Systems which are designed for the Players to build the Setting in the process of creating their Characters / the Party. Arguably, one could do this in any system.

Beyond that, I actually have rather limited ability to comment on Character/Party -> Setting. Outside of games of make believe, I have never even seen, let alone played in anything that ran this way. I can't even imagine trying to make a consistent background for a character on such an unstable foundation. I agree that this works best when done at the beginning. Clearly, this doesn't lend itself to the drop in game mentality!

Now, as to Party -> Campaign... I think I already covered this... Yup:

Well, note that I separated "party" and "character".

In a sandbox, the PCs choose what the adventure is about, so Party -> Campaign.

In a module, the hooks inform which character you should bring, so Campaign -> Character.

So, yeah, that seems integral to the definition of a sandbox to me.

Third, I also generalized the topic because I thought it would bring in other interesting ideas in. And it did, I just don't have the energy to discuss them all right now.

I full well agree with generalization the topic - that was pretty much the thrust of my point. :smalltongue:

Cluedrew

2017-10-18, 09:13 PM

I said "path to the dark side" in response to your contention of the possibility of no upper limit to how much one could custom tailor things along the lines of Party -> Setting warping the campaign to match the character. I may have been confused.Woops, re-reading that I understand how you got that. However, what I meant to say is I didn't see that problem (the setting warping around the problem) coming from setting->party, which is what I thought you were talking about at the time.

I have not experienced any setting warping from setting->party. Actually definitely I don't think it can, only from X->Setting actively during the game itself should that be able to happen. Anyways, although this doesn't address your post directly I hope it puts some things into context.

So, yeah, that seems integral to the definition of a sandbox to me.... I wouldn't have described it as a sandbox but in these terms it might be. I will have to reflect on that.

One other interaction I enjoy is setting->system. I'm not entirely sure why, but in all the exploring of mystical lands the idea of having rules tailored to that particular variety of mystical seems like fun. I've played very few good examples of it, but the few I did were... interesting and sometimes fun.

Jay R

2017-10-18, 09:57 PM

A. If the DM is good, then any method works. If the DM is not good, then no method works.

B. Putting campaign, world, and party in any order assumes that one of them is completely finished before the next one is begun. In fact, while I usually have a campaign idea and a world in mind, both of them change over time as the play progresses. If one of the players has a wyvern-slaying sword, then some wyverns will be invented in their path. If they are too good at defeating undead, then the necromancer will develop other armies besides undead.

Meanwhile, the party are going up in rank, and what feats they take are often determined by what they've encountered. My Ranger has been dominated too often lately, so my last feat was iron will, and the next will be indomitable soul.

Knaight

2017-10-18, 10:17 PM

B. Putting campaign, world, and party in any order assumes that one of them is completely finished before the next one is begun. In fact, while I usually have a campaign idea and a world in mind, both of them change over time as the play progresses. If one of the players has a wyvern-slaying sword, then some wyverns will be invented in their path. If they are too good at defeating undead, then the necromancer will develop other armies besides undead.

Or you're just labeling it according to the dominant development stream and not any countercurrent side streams.

Lorsa

2017-10-19, 09:18 AM

You wouldn't find the thread, "Ways Cluedrew believes he can create an adventure where the GM has complete oversight on the PCs that Quertus wouldn't object to" to be just a bit damaging to your experience compared to a more general thread, like "Is tailor made better?"?

I am honestly not sure I follow you here.

Are you saying that since a general thread like "Is tailor made better?" is better than a more tailor made thread "Ways Cluedrew believes he can create an adventure where the GM has complete oversight on the PCs that Quertus wouldn't object to", tailor made isn't always better?

Did I understand that right?

The issue then, of course, is what it is tailor made for. If the goal is discuss ways Cluedrew believes he can create... etc..., then a thread with that title is obviously more tailor made for the desired discussion than this one.

To put it in a different way; designing a hole to fit a specific block is always going to be more successful than just designing a random hole and then trying to fit blocks in. Sure, one block might fit, but you may have to try a couple before it works.

Quertus

2017-10-19, 10:14 AM

One other interaction I enjoy is setting->system. I'm not entirely sure why, but in all the exploring of mystical lands the idea of having rules tailored to that particular variety of mystical seems like fun. I've played very few good examples of it, but the few I did were... interesting and sometimes fun.

I've tried something like that, and, even crazier, a "the system changes out from under you every session" game. I concur with your assignment of "interesting and sometimes fun".

B. Putting campaign, world, and party in any order assumes that one of them is completely finished before the next one is begun. In fact, while I usually have a campaign idea and a world in mind, both of them change over time as the play progresses. If one of the players has a wyvern-slaying sword, then some wyverns will be invented in their path. If they are too good at defeating undead, then the necromancer will develop other armies besides undead.

Personally, I prefer for Character and Campaign (and World?) to all be completed before they see each other. I prefer to pick which existing character I will run through the published module, based on the module's pitch. And the equivalent for the things a GM created themselves.

Now, yes, I prefer if both sides (Character and Campaign) respond to each other to the extent their knowledge and capabilities allow (like your example of defending against mental attacks).

And, in the (imo even better) case of a sandbox, when I'm itching to use my Wyvern slaying sword, I try to get the Party to go out Wyvern hunting, and Party -> Campaign.

I am honestly not sure I follow you here.

Are you saying that since a general thread like "Is tailor made better?" is better than a more tailor made thread "Ways Cluedrew believes he can create an adventure where the GM has complete oversight on the PCs that Quertus wouldn't object to, tailor made isn't always better?

Did I understand that right?

The issue then, of course, is what it is tailor made for. If the goal is discuss ways Cluedrew believes he can create... etc..., then a thread with that title is obviously more tailor made for the desired discussion than this one.

To put it in a different way; designing a hole to fit a specific block is always going to be more successful than just designing a random hole and then trying to fit blocks in. Sure, one block might fit, but you may have to try a couple before it works.

Yeah, you got it. That's been my running gag since this thread was first mentioned. You're the first to spell it out.

In a way, this is just a broader arena for Combat as War vs Combat as Sport, imo. I am firmly on the side of Combat as War, as it is 'custom tailored' to the world / to internal consistency, rather than unrealistically feeling custom tailored to the party.

Similarly, if your pitch is, "a sandbox set in the floating "islands" left after the world blew up due to epic magic abuse", that pitch should inform what you place in the sandbox. The sandbox, the Setting, should be "custom tailored" to the Pitch (or vice versa). And, as a sandbox, it should follow that Party -> Campaign.

Knaight

2017-10-19, 07:08 PM

In a way, this is just a broader arena for Combat as War vs Combat as Sport, imo. I am firmly on the side of Combat as War, as it is 'custom tailored' to the world / to internal consistency, rather than unrealistically feeling custom tailored to the party.

I'd argue that it's largely unrelated - making a setting to fit a particular style doesn't mean that entities within the setting don't fight viciously. To use one example, I set up a game designed around the concept of the players in fighter ships in space. There's a lot of setting side stuff that justifies the use of that particular technology instead of just a realistic forward projection of technology, which suggests that either space was a dead end we'll never actually go to or that it's going to be basically all drones and the like.

Quertus

2017-10-19, 07:58 PM

I'd argue that it's largely unrelated - making a setting to fit a particular style doesn't mean that entities within the setting don't fight viciously. To use one example, I set up a game designed around the concept of the players in fighter ships in space. There's a lot of setting side stuff that justifies the use of that particular technology instead of just a realistic forward projection of technology, which suggests that either space was a dead end we'll never actually go to or that it's going to be basically all drones and the like.

Sorry, that wasn't very clear of me. Let me try again.

I'm not contending that they are identical discussions, and that everyone must line up according to their previous opinions or they are WRONG. Although I can see how it sounds that way.

It would be more accurate to characterize my stance as believing that the two discussions share both underlying logic and data points. That things relevant to one discussion are likely relevant to the other. That, because of this overlap, it feels that this discussion is a superset of that discussion. And that, from a thorough discussion of this topic, one could likely make an informed choice on that topic as well.

Does that make more sense?

Tanarii

2017-10-19, 09:05 PM

So how should these things inform each other? I think the classic pattern is System>World>Campaign>Party. Where each is decided in turn, effected by the previous
decisions but with little feedback to the previous ones. In my experience, this generally results in customized PCs to the campaign, making them the "heroes of the story".

The version my group uses is System>World>Party>Campaign. This is the classic sandbox campaign, where a bunch of heroes meet at a tavern, have an initial bar brawl, then go find adventure together. The campaign flows from the party's choices. It is not tailored to them, but their earlier actions may have logical later consequences that affect the flow of the campaign. Ie as they gain levels and get more powerful and have done more stuff, the campaign focuses on more specific-to-the-party stuff.

NichG

2017-10-19, 11:59 PM

Combat-as-war vs combat-as-sport seems to me to be more about System->Setting vs Setting->System though...

Some systems communicate that combat is generally fairly predictable in its outcomes, meaning that for the most part conflict should actually take place outside of combat (with the combat being essentially the 'checkmate' moment for large, sprawling schemes). Since in those systems you can pretty much tell that you're going to win/lose before you fight, the party will tend to only fight when they're going to win, which makes combat feel more like combat-as-sport IMO, with the party fighting to show off rather than because they have no other choice.

On the other hand, when combat is very unpredictable and when the stakes are intrinsically high, I think it feels more like war (at least, at the level at which the PCs are likely to experience it). Maybe the generals and so on still have a good idea of what the result of exchanges are going to be, but for the individual soldier even if they're quite skilled there's still a chance they die, and similarly if a PC can force a powerful enemy to roll those dice then even the chance of death might be enough to make it worthwhile to try to force that situation.

Tanarii

2017-10-20, 01:53 AM

Combat as war is all about avoiding combat as long as possible until you can set up the turkey shoot where you're garunteed a win, precisely because combat is unpredictable.

Combat as sport assumes the players will win unless they really mess up. It's about the combat being fun and interesting, not generally a question as to if you will win. So instead of avoiding combat until you have everything set up precisely, you engage in it whenever possible, for the sport of it.

Lorsa

2017-10-20, 06:37 AM

Yeah, you got it. That's been my running gag since this thread was first mentioned. You're the first to spell it out.

In a way, this is just a broader arena for Combat as War vs Combat as Sport, imo. I am firmly on the side of Combat as War, as it is 'custom tailored' to the world / to internal consistency, rather than unrealistically feeling custom tailored to the party.

Similarly, if your pitch is, "a sandbox set in the floating "islands" left after the world blew up due to epic magic abuse", that pitch should inform what you place in the sandbox. The sandbox, the Setting, should be "custom tailored" to the Pitch (or vice versa). And, as a sandbox, it should follow that Party -> Campaign.

Yay, I got it! I feel clever now!

As for CaW vs CaS, again that depends on your players right? So if I want to tailor make a game for you, I have to use CaW, but if I tailor make for some other players I've had in the past, I have to go with CaS (as that is what they like).

Basically, I can't think of anything in a roleplaying game that isn't better when it's tailor made for the specific players in question. Whenever I get new players, it usually takes a couple of sessions for me to get a grasp on what they need to enjoy the game the most (even if we've discussed things ahead of time). Well, honestly, that process never ends, as even with players I've played with for over 20 years I still learn and adapt.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-10-20, 10:48 AM

Well, honestly, that process never ends, as even with players I've played with for over 20 years I still learn and adapt.

I haven't been playing that long, but I find myself adapting on a session-by-session basis. What works well one week might work poorly another week, depending on mood, what's happened before, who exactly is there, etc.

More generally, I do the following:

System: Fixed. I run 5e D&D. I'd like to do others, but no time.
Setting: Fixed-ish. I run in a custom setting that grows and evolves with the group. The starting region is fixed-ish, but which part of that they start in changes from group to group.
Campaign: I usually have a fixed starting point (if running multiple campaigns simultaneously). This is not tailored to the groups--it's a tutorial mostly. When I restart my adult group, they'll have a tailored campaign entirely. From there, each group does different things and the world adapts to them.
Group: I run 3 groups simultaneously--two school groups (all newbies) and an ongoing adult group. They sort-of plan their characters together.
Characters: I try to include backstories, but they're rather fragmentary and I end up evolving the backstories as the game goes on (in collaboration with the player).

The two school groups are time-limited and generally non-repeating (some come back but the group as a whole has changed). They get less tailoring since I'm under larger constraints. The adult group is more tailored--certainly between each arc they get to choose the main goal/theme of the next arc. They're good about finding rails to stay on (even if I didn't set those rails), but tend to switch tracks when I least expect them to (sequence breaking, mostly). If there are 4 things they have to do to get their goal, they'll choose the order I least expected, but still do the individual things mostly on obvious rails. They're not the most subtle group :smallsmile:

Tanarii

2017-10-20, 12:05 PM

Basically, I can't think of anything in a roleplaying game that isn't better when it's tailor made for the specific players in question. Tailor made for the players is not the same thing as tailor made for the PCs.

Tinkerer

2017-10-20, 12:43 PM

Basically, I can't think of anything in a roleplaying game that isn't better when it's tailor made for the specific players in question.

The feeling of an impartial challenge. It's an itch that I get from time to time when I'm a player and it's like "You're a great GM, but sometimes I just want a published adventure. Definitely not all the time, but maybe once every couple of years." Your group blows right past somethings which normally give you issues and gets hung up on other things which never normally come up. There's something liberating about playing in a scenario where the designer has absolutely no clue what the party is like. Where, when rolling skills for instance, a 5 isn't necessarily a failure and a 15 isn't necessarily a success.

Is tailor made almost always better? Definitely yes. Is there an itch it can't quite scratch? I'd say so.

Quertus

2017-10-20, 07:46 PM

As for CaW vs CaS, again that depends on your players right? So if I want to tailor make a game for you, I have to use CaW, but if I tailor make for some other players I've had in the past, I have to go with CaS (as that is what they like).

Basically, I can't think of anything in a roleplaying game that isn't better when it's tailor made for the specific players in question. Whenever I get new players, it usually takes a couple of sessions for me to get a grasp on what they need to enjoy the game the most (even if we've discussed things ahead of time). Well, honestly, that process never ends, as even with players I've played with for over 20 years I still learn and adapt.

Group is Trump. Group informs everything, including where to customize.

Way to hit the meta level in your description. Your explanation is better than mine.

Tailor made for the players is not the same thing as tailor made for the PCs.

Yup, they're different, alright. :smallsmile:

The feeling of an impartial challenge. It's an itch that I get from time to time when I'm a player and it's like "You're a great GM, but sometimes I just want a published adventure. Definitely not all the time, but maybe once every couple of years." Your group blows right past somethings which normally give you issues and gets hung up on other things which never normally come up. There's something liberating about playing in a scenario where the designer has absolutely no clue what the party is like. Where, when rolling skills for instance, a 5 isn't necessarily a failure and a 15 isn't necessarily a success.

Is tailor made almost always better? Definitely yes. Is there an itch it can't quite scratch? I'd say so.

Personally, I pretty much always have that itch. The world / adventure (Setting / Campaign, if I'm recalling my terms correctly) feeling custom tailored to the PCs is one of the surest ways to make me lose interest. I want my characters to succeed or fail according to their own merits, not because, after the GM balanced everything out perfectly, Arangee smiled upon the Party.

Knaight

2017-10-20, 07:56 PM

The feeling of an impartial challenge. It's an itch that I get from time to time when I'm a player and it's like "You're a great GM, but sometimes I just want a published adventure. Definitely not all the time, but maybe once every couple of years." Your group blows right past somethings which normally give you issues and gets hung up on other things which never normally come up. There's something liberating about playing in a scenario where the designer has absolutely no clue what the party is like. Where, when rolling skills for instance, a 5 isn't necessarily a failure and a 15 isn't necessarily a success.

There's still some tailoring to the group happening here in terms of picking them though. At the very least you're picking a published adventure within a particular system and a particular genre, and that's group dependant - a group that would pick a Call of Cthulhu adventure wouldn't necessarily pick a D&D adventure.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-21, 01:58 AM

Tailor made for the players is not the same thing as tailor made for the PCs.

I'm a big believer that everything should always be tailored to the players.

Lorsa

2017-10-21, 03:46 AM

Tailor made for the players is not the same thing as tailor made for the PCs.

Absolutely. Tailor making for the PCs should only be done if it that is the kind of game your players want.

The feeling of an impartial challenge. It's an itch that I get from time to time when I'm a player and it's like "You're a great GM, but sometimes I just want a published adventure. Definitely not all the time, but maybe once every couple of years." Your group blows right past somethings which normally give you issues and gets hung up on other things which never normally come up. There's something liberating about playing in a scenario where the designer has absolutely no clue what the party is like. Where, when rolling skills for instance, a 5 isn't necessarily a failure and a 15 isn't necessarily a success.

Is tailor made almost always better? Definitely yes. Is there an itch it can't quite scratch? I'd say so.

Doesn't that mean that tailor making something for you involves running published adventures? Tailor making the game for the players isn't the same as tailor making the adventure for the players. It's about running the kind of game your players want.

Group is Trump. Group informs everything, including where to customize.

Way to hit the meta level in your description. Your explanation is better than mine.

Thanks! I know I missed a bit of the discussion in this thread due to time constraints. I did read the first post though but saw an obvious simple answer to the topic question which I believe holds true always. It will help you answer all the other questions such as:

Is tailor making the campaign for the PCs good or bad? Depends on your players.

Is tailor making an adventure for the players good or bad? Depends on your players.

Is tailor making encounters for the PCs good or bad? Depends on your players.

So, ultimately you should always tailor make the game for your players.

Lorsa

2017-10-21, 03:47 AM

I'm a big believer that everything should always be tailored to the players.

Unless the players want to waste your time by random bar fights?

Tanarii

2017-10-21, 04:21 AM

Absolutely. Tailor making for the PCs should only be done if it that is the kind of game your players want.Sure. But the reason I pointed it out is I was under the impression that the OP was specifically talking about campaigns tailor made for the Pcs vs not tailor made for the Pcs.

Of course, thread discussions go wherever they go, if that's the topic now. :smallwink: For some reason it looked like topic mixup/confusion to me when I responded.

Socratov

2017-10-21, 05:04 AM

IMO there exists a rule of thumb which should more or less go like this when dealing with tailoring campaigns to players or PC's:

If we understand quantity as the number of choices/items/plotleads and quality as how tailor made they are to a player's wishes/PC's then following relation for any aspect of the game (specific rewards, (side)plots and environments) can be established:

Quality should be inversely related to quantity.

or example: in a sandbox world with thousands of plots it does not matter if 80% of the plots don't involve specific background elements of every partymember. With many choices for plots the players already get rewarded with the opportunity to make a meaningful choice.

counterexample: if the players have only 1 plotline to investigate, you best damn well hope there is something in it for them, be it a special item, redemption of a certain regret in their backstory or vengeance.

Another example: if the players get one magic item per tier of play, you'd do very well to give the player what he damn well desires.

Another counter: if every session all players get a new toy, or even more, who cares that it's not exactly what they wished for. Certainly not the players. they will start trying to combine items and effects, just to see what happens.

1 caveat: never mix the two: don't item starve one player and rewarding them with exactly what they ask for, while showing the others with whatever you can roll for on the table: this will invariably create jealousy.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-21, 11:51 AM

Unless the players want to waste your time by random bar fights?

Yes, as DM, I do reserve the right to say NO, unlike many other DMs. So should a group of players come to me and say ''wez want to play an RPGz wherez wez ''bar fight'' a lotz and endlesslyz'', I would tell such players ''sorry, I'm not the DM your looking for, move along." Simple enough.

And in the bigger picture I don't let anyone waste game time. For example, after your third ''emergency'' phone call you will simply be told to leave the game(''Best of luck Edgar, hope you can deal with that big emergency you have. And as soon as you have that taken care of, you will be welcomed back to the game...maybe")

Cluedrew

2017-10-21, 12:16 PM

I've tried something like that, and, even crazier, a "the system changes out from under you every session" game. I concur with your assignment of "interesting and sometimes fun".To be fair the one that made me say "sometimes fun" was actually still well done, just not for me. Which gets back to one of the main issues with tailor made that I kind of skipped over before which is the whole "tailor made for you" part. Something tailor made for someone else is more likely to just not fit. Which is why the not tailor made versions exist anyways, they fit more people. In my view they don't fit those people as well as something tailor made for them.

Although I don't think World->System is a crazy idea. At least Genre->System shouldn't be because that is how most systems are designed. Beside generic systems almost all systems have a genre and information about the world baked into the system. Point is, following that idea even further seems appropriate. Now this is different from the choosing of a system and genre for play, but I feel like there is a kind of symmetry there.

The version my group uses is System>World>Party>Campaign.This is the classic sandbox campaign, where a bunch of heroes meet at a tavern, have an initial bar brawl, then go find adventure together. The campaign flows from the party's choices. It is not tailored to them, but their earlier actions may have logical later consequences that affect the flow of the campaign. Ie as they gain levels and get more powerful and have done more stuff, the campaign focuses on more specific-to-the-party stuff.I agree that that logic chain describes sandboxes as well very well but at the same time I wouldn't describe that game as a sandbox.

There are a couple of reasons for that. One, I usually associate the idea of a sandbox as a world focused game, but in our games it very much feels secondary to what we are doing. Similarly it is often very minimal, with just enough to get started defined at the start. Details do get filled in as needed, which does introduce some campaign->world dependency although "what would be there" is still a part of it as well, instead of there being a large map to explore.

The feeling of an impartial challenge.One of the better agreements for less tailored I have seen. Because custom made and impartial do cut across each other strongly.

Role-playing games as war games (D&D is definitely part war game) might benefit from standardization in a way role-playing games as storytelling don't.

Tanarii

2017-10-21, 02:10 PM

I agree that that logic chain describes sandboxes as well very well but at the same time I wouldn't describe that game as a sandbox.

There are a couple of reasons for that. One, I usually associate the idea of a sandbox as a world focused game, but in our games it very much feels secondary to what we are doing. Similarly it is often very minimal, with just enough to get started defined at the start. Details do get filled in as needed, which does introduce some campaign->world dependency although "what would be there" is still a part of it as well, instead of there being a large map to explore.
A sandbox campaign flows from the players interacting with the world. So the flow is DM creates world, players create characters, characters interact with world, campaign results. Especially true in a persistent world multi-party campaign sandbox with a small number of DMs (or one DM willing to put in an insane amount of time).

However, what I described, players meeting in a bar, or even unspecified way they meet, and them going on adventures together, can certainly apply to other kinds of play-styles. Adventure-of-the-week especially, especially WotC's official play. It's also fine for kicking off the first adventure of unrelated-adventures-in-series (common for modules) or even adventure-arc/path campaigns. Although the latter really lend themselves easily to system --> (optional world) --> campaign --> PCs, where you create PCs specifically tailored for the adventure path campaign.

Knaight

2017-10-21, 03:12 PM

Although I don't think World->System is a crazy idea. At least Genre->System shouldn't be because that is how most systems are designed. Beside generic systems almost all systems have a genre and information about the world baked into the system. Point is, following that idea even further seems appropriate. Now this is different from the choosing of a system and genre for play, but I feel like there is a kind of symmetry there.

Generic systems still generally have some amount of a genre - it's just one that merges with others well, and is generally more a prefix or suffix than a well established genre. Savage Worlds for instance is pulp. It can do pulp action, pulp fantasy, pulp sci-fi, even pulp horror, but it's pulp. GURPS is grounded, and can do grounded action, grounded fantasy, grounded sci-fi, and even grounded super heroes (poorly), but if you want a pulpy game GURPS is a mistake.

This is why World->System and Genre->System both work, assuming you've got a decent collection. If you've got something specific to either use or hack slightly then use, you can use that. Otherwise, there's a fallback generic system to cover most everything. This does rely on having a bit of a collection, but it doesn't need one that large - I can personally state that my collection of books of different games (which is more than adequate) has fewer books in it than the D&D collections of a lot of people here.

Without the collection this has a tendency to lead to broken games where people try to make one game stretch where it really doesn't fit. Maybe that's down to earth Savage Worlds, maybe it's science fiction D&D.

Quertus

2017-10-28, 06:16 AM

There's another aspect to this that I'd like to touch on, and that is the value one places on problem-solving skills.

Personally, I love the old-school rolled stats "so what can I make with this?" minigame. I love old-school drop in games with random parties and the "how do we play with this group of characters?" minigame. And I love the "standardized testing" of running through a module, and seeing how our strategy for using our random collection of random characters with random stats turns out.

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.

Tanarii

2017-10-28, 01:12 PM

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.A campaign tailor-made to the PCs doesn't necessarily mean tailor-made challenges either.

If we come to the no-campaign-yet table, with these three groups, and design or pick a campaign theme, adventure path or even initial adventure for them, it's likely to be different for each:
- Rogue, Bard, Illusionist / Enchanter Wizard, and Noble Fighter
- Barbarian, Druid, Ranger, and Outlander Fighter
- Monk, Cleric, Paladin, and Acolyte Fighter

I'm not a fan of adventures tailor made to a single party either, like to the point I'd not participate in a game if I thought the DM was dong that. That's why when I run one-party campaigns, I always try to use modules, adapt older edition modules (for D&D), or adapt third party material (for any any system).

There's always a degree of not wanting to overwhelm the party or make it a cake walk. That's fine. It's specifically tailoring the challenges with the knowledge the group decided no one wanted to play a character with healing or social skills or sneaking skills that I don't like. Sure, find adventures that don't require that so much. But don't modify any and all encounters that requires a missing skill set remove that, or hand out workarounds (potions, scrolls, etc) like candy.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-28, 02:26 PM

Personally, I love the old-school rolled stats "so what can I make with this?" minigame. I love old-school drop in games with random parties and the "how do we play with this group of characters?" minigame. And I love the "standardized testing" of running through a module, and seeing how our strategy for using our random collection of random characters with random stats turns out.

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.

I agree. I like this style of play too.

I'm not overly fond of the thing where the players knowing they will go fight a red dragon load up on anti fire and anti dragon stuff and then go fight the dragon. Of course, this does not work 100% in my games as dragons, having high intelligence, are smart enough to prepare for this...and take something like a breath weapon feat.

And the thing where the players make special one trick pony dragon slaying characters that can do utterly nothing else is the worst. Though it is funny to have like a group of 15th level one trick pony characters killed by a single ghost.

Cluedrew

2017-10-29, 07:27 AM

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.
I'm not a fan of adventures tailor made to a single party either, like to the point I'd not participate in a game if I thought the DM was dong that.And this is why I started this thread, because my best games have come from the GM making off-the-cuff content for the party.

A mercenary, a naive mystic and a reality TV show host, with camera crew, walk into a bar. There is no punch line to this joke, other than that is how our campaign actually started. And it lead to one of the best campaigns I've ever had. And it ended with the characters giving up and going home. Could it have worked in a standard module? Maybe, we didn't try to. And what "standard" challenges do you run the party through when you have a single combatant, a financer, a survivalist, an airplane pilot and a guy with a camera and a phone. (The last two joined at the second town.)

But more than that I don't care how the party measures against objective standards. Because we are not playing against an objective standard or some tournament ranking, we are playing for us and the story we will be creating.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-29, 08:46 AM

And this is why I started this thread, because my best games have come from the GM making off-the-cuff content for the party.

I find most players find they don't like tailor made adventures or characters as such as they thought they might.

The tailor made character, say the divine undead obliteration character, might be fun for a couple hours of mostly pointless, mostly challenge less pure combat roll playing fun. Then it just gets a bit hollow and boring.

The tailor made game, like the limited pirate mini game, can be fun for a couple hours or even game sessions, but it can quickly loose it appeal after you run through the common scenes.

In general, it is not as much fun to just cast knock on a locked door as it is to just figure out some way to open the door, get around it, or do something else.

Quertus

2017-10-29, 10:02 AM

A campaign tailor-made to the PCs doesn't necessarily mean tailor-made challenges either.

If we come to the no-campaign-yet table, with these three groups, and design or pick a campaign theme, adventure path or even initial adventure for them, it's likely to be different for each:
- Rogue, Bard, Illusionist / Enchanter Wizard, and Noble Fighter
- Barbarian, Druid, Ranger, and Outlander Fighter
- Monk, Cleric, Paladin, and Acolyte Fighter

There's always a degree of not wanting to overwhelm the party or make it a cake walk. That's fine. It's specifically tailoring the challenges with the knowledge the group decided no one wanted to play a character with healing or social skills or sneaking skills that I don't like. Sure, find adventures that don't require that so much. But don't modify any and all encounters that requires a missing skill set remove that, or hand out workarounds (potions, scrolls, etc) like candy.

Hmmm... Actually, I would absolutely send them all on the same adventure path, conditionally. If the path was mostly (2e) undead, I might warn the (DPS) Rogue and Illusionist/Enchanter that their shtick might not work, and they might want to run different characters. That way, they are at least walking in forewarned if they choose to keep their characters. Similarly, I have warned a group that their planned course of action (attack a group of ninjas at their home base) was going to be trivially easy, and, while I'd run it, I didn't think that they'd enjoy it. They agreed, and did something else instead.

Though it is funny to have like a group of 15th level one trick pony characters killed by a single ghost.

Agreed. Although, usually, it's "run away from a challenge that they realize that they cannot overcome" rather than just TPK.

And this is why I started this thread, because my best games have come from the GM making off-the-cuff content for the party.

A mercenary, a naive mystic and a reality TV show host, with camera crew, walk into a bar. There is no punch line to this joke, other than that is how our campaign actually started. And it lead to one of the best campaigns I've ever had. And it ended with the characters giving up and going home. Could it have worked in a standard module? Maybe, we didn't try to. And what "standard" challenges do you run the party through when you have a single combatant, a financer, a survivalist, an airplane pilot and a guy with a camera and a phone. (The last two joined at the second town.)

But more than that I don't care how the party measures against objective standards. Because we are not playing against an objective standard or some tournament ranking, we are playing for us and the story we will be creating.

Now, let's not conflate ideas here. I prefer to run a sandbox, and I'm all about the party choosing what the adventure is. But the question is, is the content created with a simulationist mindset to be true to the reality of the game world, or is it unrealistically custom tailored to the party?

In my ninja stronghold example, the ninjas were an "established" part of the world - they had a certain "strength", and the party was well beyond the point where that strength was an interesting challenge.

I find most players find they don't like tailor made adventures or characters as such as they thought they might.

The tailor made character, say the divine undead obliteration character, might be fun for a couple hours of mostly pointless, mostly challenge less pure combat roll playing fun. Then it just gets a bit hollow and boring.

The tailor made game, like the limited pirate mini game, can be fun for a couple hours or even game sessions, but it can quickly loose it appeal after you run through the common scenes.

In general, it is not as much fun to just cast knock on a locked door as it is to just figure out some way to open the door, get around it, or do something else.

Sorry, I don't quite follow. You don't think the players getting what they explicitly ask for is likely to be long-term fun. I think I understand your position thus far.

But what, exactly, are you putting forth as a counter proposal for producing fun games?

Tanarii

2017-10-29, 10:23 AM

Hmmm... Actually, I would absolutely send them all on the same adventure path, conditionally.
That sounds like you're picking the campaign before looking at the characters then. Because IMO it's kinda hard to look at a party full of nature guys vs a party of crusaders vs a party of city slickers and think "these guys are perfect for campaign theme X".

I do note you focused on adventure path. Usually adventure paths are picked before characters are made, because the DM or group wants to run a specific one. Not picking the adventure path after everyone has made the characters.

Honestly, the idea of sitting down and making characters, then thinking "what campaign theme are these guys suited for" second is just bizarre to me. I'm used to either:
- DM picks campaign theme / adventure path, players make characters either with that knowledge in mind.
- DM picks campaign theme / adventure path, players make characters with no foreknowledge of what's coming.

I don't think I've ever played with a group that made characters first, then sat down to figure out what campaign they wanted to play. That's why my are comments are based on logical separation of terms / concepts, ie:
- tailor made for players vs tailor made for PCs Built
- tailor made campaign / adventure path theme vs tailor made encounters / challenges faced

Darth Ultron

2017-10-29, 11:17 AM

Sorry, I don't quite follow. You don't think the players getting what they explicitly ask for is likely to be long-term fun. I think I understand your position thus far.

But what, exactly, are you putting forth as a counter proposal for producing fun games?

Yes, a lot of players and people in general, don't know what they want. And just as many can't say what they want. The players want a pirate game, but after an hour of just attacking merchant ships and getting trade goods, they are not having much fun. So the game gets changed up to ''plundering the Spanish Main'', so the characters get tons of gold, and they still don't have much fun.

Well, it gets tricky. It is not so much ''not giving the players what they want'', it is more simply ''not being so tailor made''.

At the most basic, a DM would need to talk to the players and get them to really explain what they want, and not just stop at the surface. The players need to get more deep into what they want: not just a pirate game: but what they really want and like. Not just the cover of the book: the pages in between.

A bit more advanced, and not all people or DMs can do it, is to figure out what the players want...without having the players directly tell them.

Pleh

2017-10-29, 12:12 PM

I find this to depend greatly on the *kind* of game being pursued.

Are they more into the Roleplaying or the Rollplaying?

My games and my group tend to be more interested in the story, using the mechanics as a prop for creating narrative.

Tomb of Horrors uses a story as a prop to create a challenging puzzle. It largely doesn't matter WHO your character is, but whether they have the tools and you as a player have the wits to really take on the Tomb's hazards.

Rollplaying challenges like the ToH seem to be generally more fun when they aren't "tailor made" at all and rather stand alone as their own entity, offering players to use some amount of "trial and error" with disposable characters to uncover the puzzle's secrets.

In that style of game, "Guess what the GM wants" is EXACTLY what the players want to do (overcoming an unknown challenge). So all the GM has to do is make guessing their intentions both difficult and hazardous. The *less* they make it tailor to the characters, the less clues the players have about the solution and the better the puzzle.

Now in my own games, I GM with a heavy emphasis in exploring the heroic journeys of the characters my friends play. As nice as it seems to think I know them well enough to surprise them with "a perfect game," I've found it's actually presumptuous and arrogant of me to think that I can construct a great game by myself better than I can with their help. These games are not about a contest between the Players and the GM, but the GM rather is yet another Cooperative player with the rest of the party. While there may be secrets and surprises, they are not the goal my friends are pursuing. We're looking to see these heroes overcome adversity and attain greatness. In these instances, not only is tailor making the game good, but is better when done with the consultation of the player. In these cases, I like to ask for their ideal goals, what kinds of encounters they would like to play through, and what they need to be able to pick up along the way. I explain if anything they request seems unreasonable or outside the setting, but I do some work to try to fit things in as best I can.

Essentially, the more "cooperative" the game, the more Tailor Made works better. The more "competitive" the game, the less Tailor Made works better.

Tanarii

2017-10-29, 06:57 PM

We're looking to see these heroes overcome adversity and attain greatness.
I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

NichG

2017-10-29, 07:11 PM

I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

In the context of the post in comparing with things like ToH that are player skill based, the implication is that they want to see the characters overcome adversity, not to see the players overcome adversity. So it's not necessarily beneficial to what they want for failure to actually be possible.

Pleh

2017-10-29, 07:14 PM

I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

That has not been my experience.

My tailor made games have had better success controlling the challenge level than my random, standard stock encounters. The latter often turns out accidentally easier or more difficult based on some combatant being unexpectedly trivialized.

The ones I make specifically taking party strengths and weaknesses into account have more consistently produced engaging and nontrivial encounters.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-10-29, 07:18 PM

I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

Strictly speaking this does not follow.

Consider three types of DMs:
- challenge server: this DM tailors challenges to the weaknesses of the characters but ensures doability with decent tactics. Both number and relative difficulty of challenges overcome are large.

- referee: no tailoring. Party picks and chooses and reasonably chooses the easier challenges. Number overcome is high, but relative difficulty is low.

- easy-mode: tailors challenges to the party's strengths. Low difficulty but high number.

Note that there are other types, but these are the best case for your statement. The weighted score of the first group is much higher than the other two, and the neutral and easy are similar with the neutral having higher variance since that's the only one that can (by construction) commonly TPK.

I'm of the school that rejects the idea that impartiality is possible, let alone inherently desirable. The only truly impartial DM is a computerized one. DMs should be fans of the players and their characters. Since their primary job IMO is to facilitate fun, they should learn what the players think it's fun and do more of that and less of what's not fun. That's inherently tailoring.

I'll expand on this tomorrow when I'm not on mobile and multitasking.

Tanarii

2017-10-29, 09:28 PM

- referee: no tailoring. Party picks and chooses and reasonably chooses the easier challenges. Number overcome is high, but relative difficulty is low.
IMX this is rarely the case. Players almost always pick a harder challenge for themselves that if a DM "fairly" tailors the encounter. Because the rewards are commensurately higher. Of course, that takes a certain competitive mindset.

But yes, that does mean they are more likely to overextend themselves and fail to overcome the challenge. In that regard, they're hardly overcoming adversity. Unless you count dealing with failure as overcoming adversity.

Of course, if the failure was a TPK, it's hard to effectively deal with that unless there is ressurection magic available and the bodies can be recovered by other PCs or henchmen.

Even re rolling and learning from your experience is the player learning to overcome adversity. But that doesn't do the first batch of heroes much good.

Edit: I do like the AW rule of "be a fan of the characters", so I take your point there. It's not a bad rule for the right group. Especiall for that set of rules. But other other campaign styles, such as multi-party open table pseudo west-marches, a neutral DM arbiter works very well.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-10-30, 07:01 AM

Preface: This is all my perception. Play-styles vary and none of this is intended as an attack, merely as an explanation of what I have experienced.

IMX this is rarely the case. Players almost always pick a harder challenge for themselves that if a DM "fairly" tailors the encounter. Because the rewards are commensurately higher. Of course, that takes a certain competitive mindset.

Doesn't this go against the whole combat as war thing? I've always heard that the whole point was to avoid (combat) challenges until you can steamroll them due to preparation and tactics. That makes basically all fights either cakewalks or near-TPKs.

But yes, that does mean they are more likely to overextend themselves and fail to overcome the challenge. In that regard, they're hardly overcoming adversity. Unless you count dealing with failure as overcoming adversity.

Of course, if the failure was a TPK, it's hard to effectively deal with that unless there is ressurection magic available and the bodies can be recovered by other PCs or henchmen.

Even re rolling and learning from your experience is the player learning to overcome adversity. But that doesn't do the first batch of heroes much good.

And thus the variation in expected weighted challenge (the sum of challenges overcome before TPK/other ending) is huge. And learning isn't really all that possible unless the TPK was due to identifiable mistakes, since the new party isn't going to be facing those exact challenges (unlike a game like Dark Souls, for example). And in an open-table game, that means those characters are lost along with all of their accomplishments.

Edit: I do like the AW rule of "be a fan of the characters", so I take your point there. It's not a bad rule for the right group. Especiall for that set of rules. But other other campaign styles, such as multi-party open table pseudo west-marches, a neutral DM arbiter works very well.

Neutrality is an illusion for TTRPGs. It can work for wargames, because they're a) competitive, b) have 2 sides other than the referee, and c) have fixed, externally imposed criteria (maps and objectives) and d) have comprehensive rules. None of those are true in TTRPGs (outside of very unique situations like tournament module runs).

a) Each party is atomic--even in a west-marches style you can't run multiple groups through the same scenario once one succeeds--once it's cleared, it's cleared (until something else moves in). Especially since the same player (not character) may be in multiple groups because they're ad hoc parties. This makes them cooperative, not competitive.

b) The "referee" is playing one side of the game. That's inherently partial. The judge is a party to the case.

c) The objectives and maps are not fixed (unless you're railroading hard-core). Throwing this one away (rigidly running modules without adaptation to the group) seems to throw away the best part of TTRPGs in favor of a more-limited CRPG style. CRPGs have better writing, better mechanics (because they can do the hard numerical lifting), and better graphics. TTRPGs have freedom. That's abandoned if you only use modules and stick strictly to them.

d) Board games (including wargames) can have comprehensive, closed rules. If it's not expressly allowed, it's forbidden. TTRPGs can't. Especially in 5e D&D, which I know you play. As soon as the DM has to make a ruling, neutrality is suspect. The DM should make the ruling that's best for the fun of those particular players (which doesn't mean giving them what they want--enabling cheat codes isn't fun for very long). But as soon as you do that, you're no longer impartial or neutral. You've weighed in on the side of the players.

That's why I believe that the notion of impartiality is not inherently a good thing. The DM should be partial. Should favor the players, by knowing what they like and tailoring/modifying the game to fit them. This happens most at the micro level. Adjusting how a particular enemy acts so you're not constantly picking on the same character. Allowing things that are a little bit of a stretch, but still plausible. Interpreting proposed actions generously (as opposed to "gotcha DMing"). These are all partial actions.

Being a referee is part of a DMs job. But only part. And not the biggest part. The biggest part, for me, is being a facilitator of fun. This requires knowing who you're playing with well enough to make adjustments to the Holy Module (or whatever) in an attempt to maximize fun. If you're playing in an open-table setting, this requires more on-the-spot judgement, and probably more strict rules to allow other groups to continue to have fun (call this impartiality between groups). This is different from being impartial between the setting and the individual groups.

As an example of this (at an open-table, multi-DM environment) gone wrong--I played at one where I started a few weeks after the "old-timers." For the first few sessions (before I got there), there had been a tendency to let the items/gold flow like water. Once they realized this was a problem, they (the DMs) clamped down institutionally. But that meant that the old characters started out ahead and no one could catch up. Trying to be impartial and "fair" bred resentment. A better way would have been to ret-con those too-powerful toys (with the players' cooperation) and get everyone back on the same footing. That would have been very non-neutral, but better for the game as a whole.

Darth Ultron

2017-10-30, 07:02 AM

That has not been my experience.

My tailor made games have had better success controlling the challenge level than my random, standard stock encounters. The latter often turns out accidentally easier or more difficult based on some combatant being unexpectedly trivialized.

The ones I make specifically taking party strengths and weaknesses into account have more consistently produced engaging and nontrivial encounters.

Mine too. I very much like to tailor things to both the players and the characters. Though it does depend on the type of players. New or inexperienced players will just about automatically have a better fun time in a Tailor Made encounter. And the ''B'' type less aggressive player will often have much more fun in an encounter made for them.

And this is overly true of anything not combat: The DM does really need to make such things for a player or character and put them in the game. There needs to be a hook or thread for the player to see and take; otherwise they often won't even try to do anything.

This also touches on the tier problem for games like D&D 3X and beyond: If the DM just does standard events, then the tier problem thrives and is in full effect: The DM has a standard event, the spellcasters dominate/control/do everything and every other character just watches. This does not happen in tailor made events.

Tanarii

2017-10-30, 10:06 AM

Preface: This is all my perception. Play-styles vary and none of this is intended as an attack, merely as an explanation of what I have experienced.Absolutely. I have a current preference for old-style DM as neutral arbiter, but that's because of the campaign I'm running. My comment was definitely triggered by that current preference, but also by the seeming mismatch between the comment and what he was trying to say.

Doesn't this go against the whole combat as war thing? I've always heard that the whole point was to avoid (combat) challenges until you can steamroll them due to preparation and tactics. That makes basically all fights either cakewalks or near-TPKs.Absolutely not! You've completely misunderstood Combat as War. The goal is to FACE insanely powerful challenges ... after you've figure out a way to make them beat-able. You use your smarts to figure out how to take a seemingly unbeatable challenge, and instead steam-roll it. In theory, it's the ultimate in challenging yourself as a player. If you can't figure out a way to beat it, yeah you're going to be forced to avoid combat. Because otherwise you're dead.

And thus the variation in expected weighted challenge (the sum of challenges overcome before TPK/other ending) is huge. And learning isn't really all that possible unless the TPK was due to identifiable mistakes, since the new party isn't going to be facing those exact challenges (unlike a game like Dark Souls, for example). And in an open-table game, that means those characters are lost along with all of their accomplishments.Sure. If you can't learn from failed strategies and tactics, you definitely shouldn't be playing a game play-style that requires choosing to competitively challenging yourself, with a serious likelyhood of failure unless you're very good.

(Edit: Sometimes the lesson learned is: the system doesn't allow you to live to second level without making a bunch of characters at once and hoping one survives ... and it never tells you that. And we don't want to play that way.)

Neutrality is an illusion for TTRPGs.Perfect neutrality is impossible. But you can strive for it an introduce tools to get closer to it.

b) The "referee" is playing one side of the game. That's inherently partial. The judge is a party to the case.This is why you introduce tools to counter that. For starters, this is why there are almost always complex combat rules. Plus other rules for resolution. It's also why many games include random tables for various things, instead of purely putting it in the DM's hands.

c) The objectives and maps are not fixed (unless you're railroading hard-core). Throwing this one away (rigidly running modules without adaptation to the group) seems to throw away the best part of TTRPGs in favor of a more-limited CRPG style. CRPGs have better writing, better mechanics (because they can do the hard numerical lifting), and better graphics. TTRPGs have freedom. That's abandoned if you only use modules and stick strictly to them.Tish Tosh and Nonsense. The party is free to interact with the objectives and maps how they like, and the referee is expected to have things react naturally (living world). But that doesn't mean there's any problem with adapting a module to the world, and to the system, without any regard to the particular group involved. I do this all the time, and it works very, very well. It's something I highly recommend to any DM.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-10-30, 01:35 PM

Absolutely not! You've completely misunderstood Combat as War. The goal is to FACE insanely powerful challenges ... after you've figure out a way to make them beat-able. You use your smarts to figure out how to take a seemingly unbeatable challenge, and instead steam-roll it. In theory, it's the ultimate in challenging yourself as a player. If you can't figure out a way to beat it, yeah you're going to be forced to avoid combat. Because otherwise you're dead.

Sure. If you can't learn from failed strategies and tactics, you definitely shouldn't be playing a game play-style that requires choosing to competitively challenging yourself, with a serious likelyhood of failure unless you're very good.

(Edit: Sometimes the lesson learned is: the system doesn't allow you to live to second level without making a bunch of characters at once and hoping one survives ... and it never tells you that. And we don't want to play that way.)

But in practice, everything is either a steam-roll or a TPK/failure. And since you only have one shot at things, your career ends with the first mistake. That leads to high variance. Some parties get lucky, others get squished right off. It's a style that demands that you don't get attached to characters (and thus don't invest in role-playing). It's a very meta-gaming style (using information the character isn't privy to). Neither of those is bad, just very alien to most modern players.

Tish Tosh and Nonsense. The party is free to interact with the objectives and maps how they like, and the referee is expected to have things react naturally (living world). But that doesn't mean there's any problem with adapting a module to the world, and to the system, without any regard to the particular group involved. I do this all the time, and it works very, very well. It's something I highly recommend to any DM.

But as soon as you have anything react outside of the printed module, you're breaking neutrality and impartiality. It's binary--either you railroad (and thus are impartial) or you adapt to the actions of the players (and you're either not impartial or you're lying to yourself). "Living worlds" AREN'T. They're a fiction--no human can keep track of enough items to even come close to a simulation of what should be there. Not enough is specified, either. That means that as soon as you consider anything like fun, you're acting partially. And that's good. Impartiality is a false goal. A DM should be partial. Should care about the fun of the party enough to throw out prepared material and make stuff up when needed. Otherwise, you're playing a CRPG without any of the advantages of having a computer to crunch numbers.

I've had DMs that used modules as the core (maps + encounters). It sucked as soon as you went off script at all. They spent minutes looking up facts and trying to assemble things at the table, wasting everyone's time. Things felt patched together, because they were. Players' actions didn't fundamentally matter, because the modules were too easily broken. Clever ways of sequence breaking were disallowed, because otherwise things fell apart.

Modules are best if run straight, with knowing acceptance that you're on rails. That, or heavily modified (take the map but rewrite all context). That's as much work as rebuilding the module, so the savings are minimal.

Tanarii

2017-10-30, 02:16 PM

But in practice, everything is either a steam-roll or a TPK/failure.Nah. In practice it's either "run away using one of our carefully planned evasion and escape methods" or "we can probably get this by the skin of our teeth, due to careful and clever planning."

And since you only have one shot at things, your career ends with the first mistake.You're far less likely to get one shot at something in a single party campaign. In a multi-party (and multiple character's per player) campaign, other players or other character's of the player can recover the bodies to be raised. Henchmen, which are more typical in such campaigns but also might be in single party campaigns, also can do that.

If you're playing a single party campaign or in a world with no way to raise the dead, fatal mistakes are a problem. The player might learn, but the character can't.

It's a style that demands that you don't get attached to characters (and thus don't invest in role-playing).Roleplaying is making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment, so there's usually MORE roleplaying in such games. Not always of course, but if your decisions being made are more important to life and death, that's a lot more important roleplaying than when they aren't.

But as soon as you have anything react outside of the printed module, you're breaking neutrality and impartiality. It's binary--either you railroad (and thus are impartial) or you adapt to the actions of the players (and you're either not impartial or you're lying to yourself).Black and white, binary thinking indicates a problem with the thinking, not the thing it's being applied to. "If it can't be done fully, it can't be attempted at all." That's nonsense.

"Living worlds" AREN'T. They're a fiction--no human can keep track of enough items to even come close to a simulation of what should be there. Not enough is specified, either.What's that got to do with the price of milk? Again, this is an attempt to make a binary statement. Again it's "If it can't be done fully, it can't be attempted at all." That's still nonsense.

That means that as soon as you consider anything like fun, you're acting partially.Fun is different for different people. For some people it's the challenge of defeating a challenging world, with the DM attempting to be as neutral as possible, and not acting in their favor (or disfavor) as much as possible. So ... more nonsense. :smalltongue:

And that's good. Impartiality is a false goal. A DM should be partial. Should care about the fun of the party enough to throw out prepared material and make stuff up when needed. otherwise, you're playing a CRPG without any of the advantages of having a computer to crunch numbers.It's good if that's what the players and DM want. But it's not a false goal, and it's definitely NOT playing a CRPG. Because otherwise the players don't have agency. That fact that you try to conflate a neutral arbiter DM and lack of player agency is disturbing, and I'm not sure where it ...

I've had DMs that used modules as the core (maps + encounters). It sucked as soon as you went off script at all. They spent minutes looking up facts and trying to assemble things at the table, wasting everyone's time. Things felt patched together, because they were. Players' actions didn't fundamentally matter, because the modules were too easily broken. Clever ways of sequence breaking were disallowed, because otherwise things fell apart.

Modules are best if run straight, with knowing acceptance that you're on rails. That, or heavily modified (take the map but rewrite all context). That's as much work as rebuilding the module, so the savings are minimal.
... ah. I'm sorry you've had DMs that sucked at handling player agency and decision making and adapting on the fly. Because that's got nothing to do with being a neutral arbiter/referee DM. Or not being one, for that matter.

Cluedrew

2017-10-30, 06:16 PM

c) The objectives and maps are not fixed (unless you're railroading hard-core). Throwing this one away (rigidly running modules without adaptation to the group) seems to throw away the best part of TTRPGs in favor of a more-limited CRPG style. CRPGs have better writing, better mechanics (because they can do the hard numerical lifting), and better graphics. TTRPGs have freedom. That's abandoned if you only use modules and stick strictly to them.And this is why I feel that (in the general case) that tailor made is better. There are a lot of things that that people try to get out of table-top/pen-&-paper systems that I don't really understand. I like deep complex strategy games where you spend ages pondering your strategy, figuring out how to adapt and making the best use of your strategies. I like stories that have strange bits of fate linking them together (but not too much), with twists, surprizes and symbolic moments.

And sure I like when we get a bit of that in a TT/PP game, but that is hardly the point for me. If it was I would be playing a war game or reading a book. What role-playing games have beyond any other medium (barring improv. theater and the like) is adaptability. What is best for the people around this table? What is best considering all the things that have taken us to this point?

Most games have to decide that far in advance, role-playing games don't and I think lends them a that is only improved by tailoring the various aspects of the game for each other.

Jay R

2017-10-30, 06:18 PM

Tailor-made or modules? Sandbox or railroad? Neutral or player-friendly?

My experience is that the best game a DM can create is usually the kind that that particular DM enjoys and understands and relates to.

And the measures of how good it is will be are none of the above categories. There can be excellent and poor neutral DMs. There can be exellent and poor player-friendly DMs, Excellent and poor railroad quests, excellent and poor sandboxes, etc.

The true measures of how good the game will be are how good the DM is, how well she communicates with the players, and how well the players can enter into her approach.

Tanarii

2017-10-30, 06:33 PM

What is best for the people around this table?Which is why my very first comment was that tailor made for players is not the same thing as tailor made for PCs.

What's best for highly competitive players that want a serious challenge is often (but not always) knowing the DM won't be adapting any challenges specially to their PCs. In other words, knowing he won't be doing them any special favors. And it's largely on their personal ability as a player to overcome the challenges. Of course, there are other 'whats best' that go hand in hand with those kinds of players, some of which I don't personally like. For example, high levels of mechanical optimization within whatever parameters are being set as limits for the challenges being faced.

Meanwhile what's best for others players is often something else completely. As demonstrated by PhoenixPhyre and my back and forth. Clearly what's best for him is nothing like that.

Meanwhile, what's the best campaign theme, or the best kind of encounters to be facing, for of a party with 3 Wizards + Healbot vs one with 3 Fighters + Healbot, is a totally different matter.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-10-30, 07:23 PM

Which is why my very first comment was that tailor made for players is not the same thing as tailor made for PCs.

What's best for highly competitive players that want a serious challenge is often (but not always) knowing the DM won't be adapting any challenges specially to their PCs. In other words, knowing he won't be doing them any special favors. And it's largely on their personal ability as a player to overcome the challenges. Of course, there are other 'whats best' that go hand in hand with those kinds of players, some of which I don't personally like. For example, high levels of mechanical optimization within whatever parameters are being set as limits for the challenges being faced.

Meanwhile what's best for others players is often something else completely. As demonstrated by PhoenixPhyre and my back and forth. Clearly what's best for him is nothing like that.

Meanwhile, what's the best campaign theme, or the best kind of encounters to be facing, for of a party with 3 Wizards + Healbot vs one with 3 Fighters + Healbot, is a totally different matter.

The bold sentences include a huge assumption. They assume that "adapting any challenges specially to their PCs" == "doing them a special favor." As I tried to show, that's not necessarily true. A DM could just as well be actively trying to kill them by creating difficult challenges adapted to counter their strengths and exploit their weaknesses. That, I contend, will just as readily (or more so!) create difficult challenges that require skill and competitive spirit to overcome compared to a neutral/non-tailoring DM.

An example of this is the original Tomb of Horrors--it was designed specifically to test those PCs. It was designed, as I understand it, to show up specific players that thought they could beat anything the DM could throw at them. It's current idea (a hard meat-grinder) comes secondarily. It was a challenge designed to show them that they live and die at the DM's sufferance. That is, it was tailored against the party.

If I were the competitive type, I'd want to face the worst that the DM can throw, not the result of modules designed for story-centric play or for dungeon-delving or for other purposes. Video games include "hard modes" where the system actively cheats against you and people, for whatever reason, find that fun. Yes, there are some players who find non-tailored things funner than "tailored" things, but that's not due to the tailoring or lack there of. They don't like the softening type of tailoring. There's a huge difference there.

Another way of thinking about this is that not tailoring produces a range of difficulties that depend on the party and how/where/when they encounter the challenge in question: d in [0...1]. A properly-tailored campaign results in a consistent value for the difficulty: d in [D-x ... D ... D+x]. What D is (where the median difficulty is) is a DM-set parameter. One DM may set D ~ 1 (maximum difficulty), another may set D ~ 0 ("I don't wanna die mode"). Both of those will be more consistently hard/easy than a non-tailored one because they adjust for what is a free parameter in the non-tailored scenario--the party. x (the width of the distribution) is dependent on DM skill, with a perfectly-tailoring DM getting x ~ 0. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the individual.

But yes, tailoring to the players may or may not equal tailoring things to the players. And there is a place for non-tailored, you-get-what-you-find play. I doubt it's the norm, though. I personally find such play annoying. It requires specific personalities to work in my experience, where the other type can adapt to a range of groups more easily. YYMV, tastes differ, and all that.

Tanarii

2017-10-30, 08:22 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2017-10-30, 08:51 PM

WoTC official play is almost never tailored to the PCs. It can't be, since it's open table. It has a huge audience. I don't know the numbers, since I don't work for them, but it must be a significant chunk of the D&D player base.

And yes it's a huge assumption. "Tailor made" implicitly = DM in your favor. You even argued that directly! DM is a fan of the players (or PCs). If a DM is against you, that's not tailoring for the party, that's an antagonistic DM.

Antagonistic is impossible to play a game long term. (From everything I've heard, that's exactly what ToH is.) Neutral is the most challenging playable way to play, that's the equivalent of a games 'Hard mode', the game doesn't cheat against you but it doesn't cut you any breaks. And tailor made / customized for your party is the easiest, because the DM is in your favor.

Exit: Please note "easiest" does not mean "bad". I like any game that provides fun and/or a feeling of accomplishment. Hard play is just one way to do that. There are many more ways. I also recognize that others find fun on ways I don't find fun.

Also it's also not binary for difficulty, despite what I said above. it's a sliding scale from truly neutral (which I believe we both agreed isn't possible, but that'd be the end point of playable but hardest challenge) to completely jiggering things in favor of players (which we'd probably both find boring).

Antagonistic != tailor-made for maximum challenge. Not in principle at least. Antagonistic (toward players) is bad and breaks down quickly. Antagonistic (toward PCs) isn't. It's just where the DM sets the difficulty at maximum but allows success (a DM can always make success impossible, but that's not fun for anyone except a jerk). Neutral means that some parties will find a given challenge super easy and others will find it nearly impossible. Thus, the variance is high. It's also trivially easy to make an easy "neutral" setting. Set a cap on CR--nothing above CR 1. Of course, that gets boring quickly, but is easy enough to do. Neutral hard (but without constant TPKs) is much much harder because the margin for error nearly vanishes unless you have the perfect party setup and tactics. Since you only get XP for overcoming a challenge...neutral hard means you're stonewalled. Can't improve easily, because you have to run from most challenges. Can't beat the challenges without improving. Tailoring can remove (at least mostly) that variance. That's the only objective point I'm trying to make. The rest is taste.

I think that part of the disconnect is that we're motivated by completely different things. Challenge doesn't motivate me much, if at all. I don't play games on hard mode. Grinding turns me off a game quicker than just about anything. I need exploration (new experiences, wondrous sights/descriptions, new situations), narrative (emergent story more than anything), and, as DM, I need to see the party enjoying the situations. This means that I have to constantly adjust to the party. If they're getting bored, I'm gonna change things up based on what they like. Giving out items that are useless for anyone (a suit of plate in a party of a warlock, druid, monk, and rogue, for example) is pointless. This plays very poorly with the neutral/pre-made-campaign/module idea. I don't tend to plan things much more than a session ahead and tend to throw out specifics when something more fun/interesting/better fitting occurs to me or to one of the players.

The 4e DMG had a great description of 8 different motivations. Don't have time to post it now, but I posted a quick run-down of them in the 5e forums (in my murderhobo thread). I think that understanding that goes a long way to understanding when and how to tailor things to players (and possibly to their PCs).

Tanarii

2017-10-30, 09:43 PM

I think that part of the disconnect is that we're motivated by completely different things.pretty sure that's the wisest thing either of us has posted so far. :smallbiggrin:

The 4e DMG had a great description of 8 different motivations.I'm aware of it. It's not bad. The concept that different players (and DMs) are looking for different things is good. The 5e DMg has something similar IIRC.

I think tailoring the campaign style to your players, or getting players who will be motivated by your campaign style, is pretty critical to having an enjoyable game.

I was saying that's a very different thing from tailoring for Pcs. But it's obvious to me after this back and forth, doing that or not doing that (and the degree to which it is done) is one component of tailoring the game style to the players / DM involved.

Quertus

2017-10-30, 11:41 PM

Doesn't this go against the whole combat as war thing? I've always heard that the whole point was to avoid (combat) challenges until you can steamroll them due to preparation and tactics. That makes basically all fights either cakewalks or near-TPKs.

Combat as War is about 1) composition of encounters being based on simulationist realism (as opposed to being based on game balance as it is in the opposed school of thought, Combat as Sport); 2) not fudging the dice. Although I could be mistaken about #2.

While people avoiding things that they can't steamroll is one logical response to that scenario, it certainly is neither a) inherent to it, nor b) the only possible outcome.

In Combat as Sport, you are very limited to a very narrow range of acceptable encounter difficulty. In Combat as War, you have absolutely no such limitation, and encounters organically span the entire spectrum of difficulties, with a correspondingly broad range of outcomes. Claiming that CaW encounter difficulty levels / outcomes are somehow confined to certain narrow range(s) is hilariously missing the mark.

Neutrality is an illusion for TTRPGs. It can work for wargames, because they're a) competitive, b) have 2 sides other than the referee, and c) have fixed, externally imposed criteria (maps and objectives) and d) have comprehensive rules. None of those are true in TTRPGs (outside of very unique situations like tournament module runs).

b) The "referee" is playing one side of the game. That's inherently partial. The judge is a party to the case.

I've had GMs in tournament run modules that were not neutral. They clearly wanted someone to win / someone to lose. Otoh, I've known plenty of people who could deliver a neutral interpretation of the rules as one of the players. So, in practice, the line for accuracy and neutrality isn't where you are describing it to be.

That having been said, one would hope that anyone empowered to make a ruling was someone who cares about the game being fun. Thus, I claim that the only people worth empowering to make rulings are those who are not impartial.

Which seems to largely match much of your ideas about the GM being a fan of the PCs.

That having been said, I personally still prefer impartial rulings.

c) The objectives and maps are not fixed (unless you're railroading hard-core). Throwing this one away (rigidly running modules without adaptation to the group) seems to throw away the best part of TTRPGs in favor of a more-limited CRPG style. CRPGs have better writing, better mechanics (because they can do the hard numerical lifting), and better graphics. TTRPGs have freedom. That's abandoned if you only use modules and stick strictly to them.

Um, no. The best part of the difference between TTRPGs and CRPG is the ability of the human GM to go off script in a TTRPGs. Having a nice, static start condition can be of benefit to both. If the party wants to take Tomb of Horrors and have their skeleton army strip mine the hill, they can do so in a TTRPG. Same static map, same objective, different approach.

Or, the group can change the objective, and recruit the locals, and/or get rich looting the corpses of dead adventurers who fail the test. All without changing the start conditions.

And, yes, the GM could change the start conditions if for some reason the module didn't fit their world. Say, for example, it's been established that the PCs have already made the entire world flat, so there can't possibly be an ancient hill left. But having to make square pegs fit in round holes is hardly the best part of TTRPGs.

That's why I believe that the notion of impartiality is not inherently a good thing. The DM should be partial. Should favor the players, by knowing what they like and tailoring/modifying the game to fit them. This happens most at the micro level. Adjusting how a particular enemy acts so you're not constantly picking on the same character. Allowing things that are a little bit of a stretch, but still plausible. Interpreting proposed actions generously (as opposed to "gotcha DMing"). These are all partial actions.

Being a referee is part of a DMs job. But only part. And not the biggest part. The biggest part, for me, is being a facilitator of fun. This requires knowing who you're playing with well enough to make adjustments to the Holy Module (or whatever) in an attempt to maximize fun. If you're playing in an open-table setting, this requires more on-the-spot judgement, and probably more strict rules to allow other groups to continue to have fun (call this impartiality between groups). This is different from being impartial between the setting and the individual groups.

You've gotta look at the big picture.

I was just talking to friends about our haunted house experience. They said that, while, this year, they were less scared and therefore got to enjoy the haunted house more in the moment, looking back on it, it was a better overall experience last year, when they were more scared and having less fun in the moment.

Changing the holy module, you lose out on the experience that is the module. I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to talk to people about their experience with a module, only to discover that we lack common ground, because the GMs had changed things for one or both of us. Or run through a module, only to read it later and discover that the GM changed it in a way that made it worse.

As an example of this (at an open-table, multi-DM environment) gone wrong--I played at one where I started a few weeks after the "old-timers." For the first few sessions (before I got there), there had been a tendency to let the items/gold flow like water. Once they realized this was a problem, they (the DMs) clamped down institutionally. But that meant that the old characters started out ahead and no one could catch up. Trying to be impartial and "fair" bred resentment. A better way would have been to ret-con those too-powerful toys (with the players' cooperation) and get everyone back on the same footing. That would have been very non-neutral, but better for the game as a whole.

I've played at tables where all new characters start at first level, with no catchup mechanics. And it worked fine. You don't have to have the ability to catch up to have fun. Balance is not a synonym for fun.

And I've even seen exactly the scenario you describe, but in an online game. In this scenario, what the old timers had that was taken away was the only thing I cared about in the game, so both that solution or your solution would represent a total failure, to me.

There are lots of possible solutions to the "problem" you describe. That the GMs failed to select one that worked for you does not logically mean that that entire class of implementations is devoid of merit.

Mine too. I very much like to tailor things to both the players and the characters. Though it does depend on the type of players. New or inexperienced players will just about automatically have a better fun time in a Tailor Made encounter. And the ''B'' type less aggressive player will often have much more fun in an encounter made for them.

And this is overly true of anything not combat: The DM does really need to make such things for a player or character and put them in the game. There needs to be a hook or thread for the player to see and take; otherwise they often won't even try to do anything.

This also touches on the tier problem for games like D&D 3X and beyond: If the DM just does standard events, then the tier problem thrives and is in full effect: The DM has a standard event, the spellcasters dominate/control/do everything and every other character just watches. This does not happen in tailor made events.

Ok, I agree with tailor making hooks for characters (or, alternately, tailor making / choosing characters for pre-made hooks). And, while not my preference, I can agree with tailoring an encounter for someone who isn't getting enough time in the spotlight.

But I believe you've conflated tier and spotlight time, or tier and power. My signature tier 1 wizard, Quertus, for whom this account is named, generally plays second fiddle to characters like the party Fighter and Monk.

So, out of morbid curiosity, what would you do to custom tailor a game to Quertus' party, or one like it, where the tier 1 Wizard is most likely to get voted off the island?

It's a style that demands that you don't get attached to characters (and thus don't invest in role-playing). It's a very meta-gaming style (using information the character isn't privy to). Neither of those is bad, just very alien to most modern players.

Well, I might say that they're bad. But I won't say that they're indemic to Combat as War. They certainly are one version of CaW, sure. But I'd personally label that a CaW fail state. And acting on OOC knowledge is much more common in - and the body backbone of - Combat as Sport. "The GM wouldn't throw anything at us that we couldn't handle". Need I say more?

I've had DMs that used modules as the core (maps + encounters). It sucked as soon as you went off script at all. They spent minutes looking up facts and trying to assemble things at the table, wasting everyone's time. Things felt patched together, because they were. Players' actions didn't fundamentally matter, because the modules were too easily broken. Clever ways of sequence breaking were disallowed, because otherwise things fell apart.

Modules are best if run straight, with knowing acceptance that you're on rails. That, or heavily modified (take the map but rewrite all context). That's as much work as rebuilding the module, so the savings are minimal.

I'm sorry that your modules and GMs were bad. While neither will ever be perfect, both can be much better than you have described.

IMO, modules are best if run straight as a starting state of the world, by a good GM who knows how to handle things going off-script in a way that custom tailors the level between "impartial rules arbiter" and "for fun" at the correct level for the group. And, for me, that's pretty much "impartial rules arbiter".

Darth Ultron

2017-10-31, 08:22 AM

Ok, I agree with tailor making hooks for characters (or, alternately, tailor making / choosing characters for pre-made hooks). And, while not my preference, I can agree with tailoring an encounter for someone who isn't getting enough time in the spotlight.

But I believe you've conflated tier and spotlight time, or tier and power. My signature tier 1 wizard, Quertus, for whom this account is named, generally plays second fiddle to characters like the party Fighter and Monk.

So, out of morbid curiosity, what would you do to custom tailor a game to Quertus' party, or one like it, where the tier 1 Wizard is most likely to get voted off the island?

It is not my preference, but like I said, it depends a lot more on the players. Some players really respond only when they DM rolls out a carpet for them. Some player just need a more general nudge, like where the DM mentions three times the rough cliff side, and then on time three the player will finally get the idea of ''wait, can I climb up that cliff?"

Some things that work vs a wizard

1)Reducing sight. Darkness, fog, smoke, and my favorite of bright light. Anything that limits line of sight. Martial classes have the skills and feats to handle this, plus in melee they don't have the problem seeing a foe within five feet. But the wizard has the huge problem of not being able to target things at a distance. And while something like darkness are easy to 'beat', things like bright light have no such 'easy button'.

2)Reducing line of effect. Trees, pillars, bounders, and tunnels. Anything that limits and blocks spell effects. This works best vs directed things like rays, but does have some effect on many other spells. Again this does not effect melee all that much, but the wizard can't hit foes with things in the way.

3)Large battle fields. Not only puts spells out of range, but lets foes spread out.

4)More foes. Have more groups and more support.

5)Enhance foes. Even making the 25 goblins 1st level warlocks, and not 1st level warriors. Potions, magic items, class levels, and most of all templates. Even sight changes can have a big impact. This also is foes using tactics.

6)Different Foes. With D&D 3.5 for example there are six monster books, plus monsters in other books, and more. Plus custom made things.

7)Less foe knowledge. Limit or eliminate the ''one roll to read the monster text'' idea.

8)Exotic magical locations. Of all types, but the Planes are the obvious ones. Any place where magic is effected.

9)Limiting preparation time or giving none.

10)Three dimensions. One of the best ways. 360 degree battles are a huge challenge.

Each by it self can have a huge impact....and when you mix them together, you get: The villain jumps into a portal to the Shadow Sea on the Abyss. The characters quickly follow(no prep time). This puts them deep underwater, in water that is both murky and dark. Fighting dozens and dozens of aquatic foes of different types..plus the support foes of the giant animals(to block both vision and lines of effect) , in three dimensions within the limits of both being underwater and in the Abyss.

Jay R

2017-10-31, 07:42 PM

Quertus

2017-10-31, 10:14 PM

I'm not sure we're agreed on what it means to tailor encounters to the player-characters.

I come down firmly on both sides of this issue. If your character has a hot, impressive new ability, then I will do my best to arrange three different things:
1. An encounter that is blown away by the new ability, and
2. An encounter that is immune to the new ability, and
3. An encounter in which the ability is helpful but not devastating.

Your special ability should be extremely useful at times. But it should not replace the need for tactics and clever play.

This is brilliant, but unnecessary. What do I mean by that?

Well, if a character gets a "hot new ability", look at the upcoming encounters, and ask yourself if there are encounters which match those 3 criteria (awesome, good, and useless). If so, you're good. If not, look at the entirety of possible encounter space, and ask yourself if those three are possible. If so, work to improve your GM skills such that you automatically include a variety of encounters. If not, evaluate whether the ability is broken (good or bad).

So, yes, that's brilliant - but you shouldn't need to custom tailor things for that to be true. You should just get good enough that that happens automatically.

NichG

2017-11-01, 12:51 AM

Quertus

2017-11-01, 03:13 AM

Just to throw this out there, but how about constructing the incentives of the world such that players will actually tailor the game to themselves?

Like, if I take the discussion about those three encounter types, I'd say that you can tailor it but that Quertus' idea of just making it so the encounters span that already isn't going to work when the abilities people have become very diverse. If we're talking about dealing fire damage, sure. But what if we're talking about the ability to see the connections between events and the people who caused them, the ability to impose a new natural law upon reality within a 1km radius of a ritual site, or the ability to change the taste of food to anything (including things that aren't tastes).

It seems clear to me that a random sampling from pretty much any kind of distribution of encounters isn't going to really span all those bases. But at the same time, it seems clear to me that this is often not actually a problem in play because (experienced) players with very open-ended powers will seek out opportunities to make them relevant.

However, that only really covers the first of Jay R's types of encounters. So shouldn't the question then be, how could one incentivize players to actively seek out situations in which their particular powers would not necessarily provide easy solutions, while at the same time making those incentives make sense in an overall world structure?

The natural result of this is of course going to be tailor-making things for the players, because when the players seek out particular opportunities to explore in greater depth they force you to spend correspondingly more time generating that type of thing. But its in contrast to tailor-making things from an external perspective of 'I'd better make sure you can solve this quest' since its directly connected with the players' activities within the game.

I mean, fire damage is kinda almost too generic, as, if you can't solve your problems with violence fire, clearly, you just aren't using enough of it.

I was thinking more that flight was great for an avalanche, ok for a moat, and useless on the astral. Or invisibility was great for combat, ok for stealth, and useless to go unnoticed vs creatures with scent (or when being tracked). But for your specific examples, here's what I see:

the ability to see the connections between events and the people who caused them - great for solving murder mysteries, good for noticing a doppelganger or invisible foes, useless for natural disasters.

the ability to impose a new natural law upon reality within a 1km radius of a ritual site - not sure what that means, but I'm guessing great and horrible monkey's paw for things that happen near your home base (but useless for things not covered), and ok to useless for things at a distant site / on the road.

the ability to change the taste of food to anything (including things that aren't tastes) - I change the taste of Spaghetti-o's into Atropos weight loss? Well, I guess that's good for creating tasteless jokes? And good to great for things that care about food, and useless for things that don't?

Looking over the last couple of adventures I've run... The ability to replace the taste of grass with a polymorphing effect would have been brokenly good (replacing your own taste with being poisonous would also have been pretty strong by itself). The other two (as I interpret them, at least) would have been fun - useful tools at times, but not broken in either direction.

-----

While I generally agree with the notion of players seeking out their own quests, I, too, am at a bit of a loss regarding seeking uselessness. Quertus doesn't exactly intentionally seek out antimagic zones, and neither he nor Armus exactly seek out mindless quests. Although, sometimes, they get roped into such by their friends and allies...

Cluedrew

2017-11-01, 06:39 AM

So, yes, that's brilliant - but you shouldn't need to custom tailor things for that to be true. You should just get good enough that that happens automatically.This isn't really actionable though, "just become so good it just happens" is... well how do you do that. And if you are that good, are you just going through Jay R's steps so fast you don't realize it anymore?

Quertus

2017-11-01, 09:40 AM

This isn't really actionable though, "just become so good it just happens" is... well how do you do that. And if you are that good, are you just going through Jay R's steps so fast you don't realize it anymore?

Kind of. IMO, the difference between the two is the classic version of seeing the elephant. You tell the soldiers that you are training to keep their heads down, etc, until eventually they get it, and not only don't need to be told any more, but can apply that wisdom and insight to new problems that you hadn't specifically trained them for.

Yes, you can explicitly follow those steps, and custom tailor content to the specific capabilities of the PCs. And, while a good plan, it should feel just as stilted as railroading, or the way I write in this account. If you are intentionally trying to get better at GMing, eventually, this variation of content should happen organically, even if you wrote an entire module without ever having laid eyes on the specific PCs, and these steps would just be a test of a) where you still need to grow your skills, or b) when certain abilities are "broken" compared to your expectations.

Airk

2017-11-01, 12:15 PM

WoTC official play is almost never tailored to the PCs. It can't be, since it's open table. It has a huge audience. I don't know the numbers, since I don't work for them, but it must be a significant chunk of the D&D player base.

And a lot of people consider organized play to be basically the worst way to experience the game, so there's that. I really wouldn't speculate too wildly about how huge the audience is for something that is basically a marketing scheme.

Tanarii

2017-11-01, 12:48 PM

And a lot of people consider organized play to be basically the worst way to experience the game, so there's that.I know. I don't agree with those people. At all. I like it for multiple reasons. Most of which are related to being able to interact effectively with a variety of people other than a small group of personal friends, even people I sometimes don't like very much. Not becoming (more) insular. Avoiding echo-chamber thinking. And when I first started, trying something new, trying to break out of my comfort zone in regards to playstyles. etc etc.

Edit: It also taught me not to be such a rules lawyer martinet at the actual table.

Knaight

2017-11-01, 04:33 PM

And a lot of people consider organized play to be basically the worst way to experience the game, so there's that. I really wouldn't speculate too wildly about how huge the audience is for something that is basically a marketing scheme.

I also suspect that a fairly large part of the audience is people who would prefer a home game but can't actually arrange one for whatever reason (not least it being vastly easier to coordinate one schedule than five).

Cluedrew

2017-11-01, 06:56 PM

If you are intentionally trying to get better at GMing, eventually, this variation of content should happen organically, even if you wrote an entire module without ever having laid eyes on the specific PCsWhat I'm getting from this is you are saying it that it is completely necessary, even if it happen automatically or based off the abilities they might have if you don't know what abilities they do have. Which seems like a stark variation when you said those kinds of encounters where unnecessary a few posts ago. Could I get some clarification? I have this weird feeling I might be missing something.

I still think "without ever seeing the PCs" is a weird goal, what is the point of sending characters through an adventure that has nothing to do with them?

Tanarii

2017-11-01, 07:00 PM

I still think "without ever seeing the PCs" is a weird goal, what is the point of sending characters through an adventure that has nothing to do with them?This is such an alien way of thinking to me, that I can't see how you've come by it. That's not to say it's wrong, if it's an honestly held question. I just don't understand how you could have possible gotten to that point. Have you really, honestly, never, ever played any published module or adventure? Only people's customized home written adventures?

Cluedrew

2017-11-01, 07:32 PM

I appreciate that modules exist, but I didn't mention them from a few reasons:
I am focusing on running games. So I am ignoring any cases where you just make a module for others to use.
The idea of creating a module for your own use before character creation, and then not adapting it is also weird. You aren't going to make any changes?
The published module wasn't nearly as fun. And I found myself repeatedly asking myself "why am I (is my character) here?"

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-01, 08:07 PM

Tanarii, you keep equating module with non tailored, especially AL. That's not true. In fact, there's specific guidance in the AL DM guide on how to tailor an AL session to the players. Yes, there are limits to keep it legal, but you're allowed to adjust encounters, or in fact make any changes that "stay within the original spirit" of the module. The big restrictions are on things that transfer between chapters--XP, treasure, and renown. Even maps can be adjusted if desired.

I see no indication that "no tailoring" is the default for modules or organized play, and I do see much evidence to the contrary. Modules are designed to serve as aids to the DM, not holy writ. The whole first chapter of the PHB says that it's your world, even if you're playing in Faerun and following a module.

This whole thread is based on a mistake--the only job of a DM is to facilitate fun. For some groups, that means not tailoring anything. For others, it means a custom experience. Good DMs give the group the experience they want. Bad DMs don't, for one reason or another. Tailoring or not tailoring is orthogonal to being a good DM.

Cluedrew

2017-11-01, 09:04 PM

Your right, it is not as simple as "do this to become a better GM", which is why I made a thread for it. If it was that simple, would it be worth talking about?

How much and when? What kind? When is Campaign->World more useful than World->Campaign?

Tanarii

2017-11-01, 10:19 PM

Tanarii, you keep equating module with non tailored, especially AL. That's not true. In fact, there's specific guidance in the AL DM guide on how to tailor an AL session to the players. Yes, there are limits to keep it legal, but you're allowed to adjust encounters, or in fact make any changes that "stay within the original spirit" of the module. The big restrictions are on things that transfer between chapters--XP, treasure, and renown. Even maps can be adjusted if desired.
A DM certainly can adapt adventures. And official play ones encourage you to adapt them for the number of players, because they're based on CaS principles. But that's a modern approach. Someone thinking that modules should routinely be tailored to the specifics of your party, or even the numbers of them, can't have been playing for more than a decade. (No disparagement intended, I'm trying to get to the root of where the thinking comes from on my part vs others.)

But reading the question more carefully, it was an adventure "that has nothing to do with them". Cluedrew, that sounds more like a statement of failure to plot hook than a statement of lack of (for example) tailoring the adventure to the fact that the party has no solid melee warriors or healers. So maybe I misunderstood what you meant by "tailored to" in this case? Are you talking about plot hooks to draw in and involved the PCs?

NichG

2017-11-01, 10:36 PM

A DM certainly can adapt adventures. And official play ones encourage you to adapt them for the number of players, because they're based on CaS principles. But that's a modern approach. Someone thinking that modules should routinely be tailored to the specifics of your party, or even the numbers of them, can't have been playing for more than a decade. (No disparagement intended, I'm trying to get to the root of where the thinking comes from on my part vs others.)

But reading the question more carefully, it was an adventure "that has nothing to do with them". Cluedrew, that sounds more like a statement of failure to plot hook than a statement of lack of (for example) tailoring the adventure to the fact that the party has no solid melee warriors or healers. So maybe I misunderstood what you meant by "tailored to" in this case? Are you talking about plot hooks to draw in and involved the PCs?

The modules I have played (mostly Dungeon Crawl Classics) also use pregens. And its pretty obvious from a DM point of view that those modules would fail to have the same impact if players brought their own characters. Part of the fun of those modules was for everyone to look through the pregens and find traps in how the characters were geared - for example, you'd find that the rogue was statted up with an item that would actually make the barbarian a lot more effective, and so on.

That said, those were very good for modules but fairly mediocre on the scale of overall tabletop gaming experiences I've had. The upper ends of the scale have been strictly 'tailored' stuff, but not tailored so much in the sense of 'I'd better use a fire immune white dragon because these guys have a fancy fire magic amplifier schtick' but rather tailored in the sense that the system and setting were constructed and modified on the basis of the known tastes of the players in a persistent group that gamed together for a period of years - and then from that starting point, were left in an explicitly extensible form where both GM and players could (and did) add new mechanics or new details or even new setting elements on the basis of what the campaign as a whole felt like at that point. If we decided to all become merchants and struggle over control of trade, within a few weeks we'd have cobbled together a plausible ruleset for doing so even if up to that point we had been playing a system geared towards being pirates looting stuff on the high seas. Having 20 pages of trade control rules would have been pointless - up until the point where someone decided that this was going to be the thing their character was really interested in and got some buy-in to the idea from the party.

Even for the best modules I've played, I never really escaped the board game feel that the boundaries of the scenario were well-defined and I could see them from where I was.

Cluedrew

2017-11-02, 07:12 AM

But reading the question more carefully, it was an adventure "that has nothing to do with them". Cluedrew, [...] Are you talking about plot hooks to draw in and involved the PCs?Yes, the plot side of it. I've yet to have any major issues with mechanical disconnect, where the party overwhelmed a challenge that was supposed to be difficult or could not pass because they were missing some standard ability.

So, the modules seem to have two types of hooks. The ones we took because plot, and those that just swept everyone along. Our particularly characters had very little to do with what was going on. You could replace them with a different set of characters and the general plot would be exactly the same.

Quertus

2017-11-02, 11:20 AM

What I'm getting from this is you are saying it that it is completely necessary, even if it happen automatically or based off the abilities they might have if you don't know what abilities they do have. Which seems like a stark variation when you said those kinds of encounters where unnecessary a few posts ago. Could I get some clarification? I have this weird feeling I might be missing something.

I don't play console games much. So I'm terrible at them. I have a mantra of "a is jump, b is throw, x is attack, triangle is block, purple is dodge, Cthulhu character is cartwheel" or whatever. When I need to do something, I look at the controller, go through my mantra, and usually push the right button. It's terrible.

Someone who knows what they're doing usually doesn't even know which button they're pushing - they just push it, because they've trained their reflexes to do so.

Someone who is good at designing modules with varied encounters doesn't have to consciously think about making varied encounters - they just do. But they still should think about it - especially when the module hits real PCs - to see where they can still grow their skills.

Is that any clearer than my first attempt?

I still think "without ever seeing the PCs" is a weird goal, what is the point of sending characters through an adventure that has nothing to do with them?

Others have already covered this, but I'm all for custom tailored plot hooks - the glue between the static character and the static module. Whereas the module or the character will loss integrity if customized to one another.

However, it is often better to detail the plot hooks first, and then have the players pick characters accordingly, than to attempt to fabricate plot hooks for arbitrary characters.

The idea of creating a module for your own use before character creation, and then not adapting it is also weird. You aren't going to make any changes?

Nope. Doing so negates Player Agency in character creation / selection. They can't see how character X will do on adventure Y if you pull the rug out from under them, and make it adventure Z instead.

Yes, the plot side of it. I've yet to have any major issues with mechanical disconnect, where the party overwhelmed a challenge that was supposed to be difficult or could not pass because they were missing some standard ability.

So, the modules seem to have two types of hooks. The ones we took because plot, and those that just swept everyone along. Our particularly characters had very little to do with what was going on. You could replace them with a different set of characters and the general plot would be exactly the same.

I'm not seeing the problem here. I'm Baron von Evil, and I'm adding chemicals to my chocolate that will cause a significant number of people to become lactose intolerant, in order to boost profits on my parent company's soy products. I'm doing this regardless of who the PCs are. So, what's the problem?

Modules are great as "this is how the world is at T+0. This is what people will do / what would happen if the pc's didn't exist." Now, add in PCs, and roleplay the major players as they adapt their strategies (or not), and you've got a realistic-feeling game.

What am I missing that you are objecting to?

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-02, 11:50 AM

I'm not seeing the problem here. I'm Baron von Evil, and I'm adding chemicals to my chocolate that will cause a significant number of people to become lactose intolerant, in order to boost profits on my parent company's soy products. I'm doing this regardless of who the PCs are. So, what's the problem?

Modules are great as "this is how the world is at T+0. This is what people will do / what would happen if the pc's didn't exist." Now, add in PCs, and roleplay the major players as they adapt their strategies (or not), and you've got a realistic-feeling game.

What am I missing that you are objecting to?

Because modules don't do that (in my experience). They give the state at time T=0 (call it W(0)) and W(T1) and W(T2) and ...

That is, it's got pretty tight rails. They may have branching rails, but only a fixed set of ending to each scenario. Sequence breaking or other outside-module play breaks the module.

The other issue (with plot hooks) is not the initial ones. Those can be compensated for by building characters for those hooks. It's the intermediate hooks, going from chapter 1 to chapter 2, etc. Those assume that you finished exactly how the module says, and happen the same regardless of the characters beliefs, motivations, actions, etc. And that's a problem. It's a big denial of agency, since the whole world resets to one of a few fixed states when you move between chapters. Now, if you all agreed to ride the rails then it's an acceptable loss of agency (you gave it up willingly, after all). But it does diminish the character-centric play style that many people love. The characters are secondary to the fixed story-line which would progress the same way with any reasonable set of characters.

Tanarii

2017-11-02, 12:03 PM

Because modules don't do that (in my experience). They give the state at time T=0 (call it W(0)) and W(T1) and W(T2) and ...

That is, it's got pretty tight rails. They may have branching rails, but only a fixed set of ending to each scenario. Sequence breaking or other outside-module play breaks the module.
This sounds like you've been exposed exclusively to official play single-session adventures and DMs that don't have any contingencies to adapt when they have a problem. Because most longer modules either have w(0), or they cover a bunch of possible things players might have done by w(T1).

I mean, that's a living world right there. It reacts to what the PCs do. The opposite of a quantum ogre. But that's a totally different issue from tailor-made.

Meanwhile "tailor made" has nothing to do with that. It's either:
- customizing play style for the players
- customizing campaign / adventure-arc theme to the PC (ie nature adventures or pirate adventures etc)
- customizing plot hooks to the PC
- customizing encounters to the PCs numbers & levels (CaS)
- customizing encounters to the PCs abilities (CaS on steroids)

I think the first three are great!

I don't like the last two very much, especially not the very last one. I'll do it though. I used to regularly customize official play single-session adventures to the number of players, because that's exactly what you're instructed to do. But any customizing of levels within expected range or specific PC abilities is done by the players self-selecting, knowing what adventure is going to be run.

None of those have anything to do with a living world with real consequences for player actions and real player agency, vs quantum ogres and railroading.

Knaight

2017-11-02, 04:46 PM

Meanwhile "tailor made" has nothing to do with that. It's either:
- customizing play style for the players
- customizing campaign / adventure-arc theme to the PC (ie nature adventures or pirate adventures etc)
- customizing plot hooks to the PC
- customizing encounters to the PCs numbers & levels (CaS)
- customizing encounters to the PCs abilities (CaS on steroids)

There's also content customization (both in terms of setting elements and encounters) to the players separate from the PCs. A good example here is phobias - one of the people I've had as players has a really deep, really entrenched fear of needles. She doesn't particularly like the idea of IVs, puts up with vaccination only because she also has a really strong sense of social responsibility, etc. If I, as a GM, in a game she was in repeatedly put cactus everywhere as a hazard in a desert and graphically described the effects every time someone fell in it or similar it would be a total jerk move.

A similar thing can apply to setting level content, both in terms of phobias and (in my experience more often) in terms of tailoring to varying degrees of player expertise, and in avoiding areas near certain real world hot button issues. Personally, this tends to mean computer science and religion. It's not uncommon for me to be GMing for a group that's mostly professional programmers - and while this doesn't matter for fantasy games, I run a lot of science fiction and space opera. This means that as a stylistic choice I'm basically locked into very cinematic hacking, because there's no way I can research the subject enough for a campaign to appear realistic to actual programmers, particularly when they include actual security specialists. Religion is more a matter of avoiding acrimonious out of game argument; there are groups where I absolutely could run a game about sectarian conflict between real world religious groups in a near-modern setting and other groups where that's a terrible idea.

Jay R

2017-11-02, 09:19 PM

This is brilliant, but unnecessary. What do I mean by that?

Well, if a character gets a "hot new ability", look at the upcoming encounters, and ask yourself if there are encounters which match those 3 criteria (awesome, good, and useless). If so, you're good. If not, look at the entirety of possible encounter space, and ask yourself if those three are possible. If so, work to improve your GM skills such that you automatically include a variety of encounters. If not, evaluate whether the ability is broken (good or bad).

So, yes, that's brilliant - but you shouldn't need to custom tailor things for that to be true. You should just get good enough that that happens automatically.

Insult received.

In fact, many plots and stories have similar encounters for awhile. I was once exploring an Egyptian pyramid, and all encounters were undead. If a character had developed a hot new illusion-based power, it would be reasonable for the DM to add some grave robbers or others who could be affected by the illusions.

I once had a plot that involved all the animals being forced out of the great forest, and then the druid developed a big animal-affecting power. If I hadn't changed things, his power would have been worthless for several sessions.

It is simply untrue that every set of adventures will have the exact same "variety of encounters", and your suggestion that a theme-based plot indicates GM skills that need to be improved is simply false-to-fact.

Darth Ultron

2017-11-03, 07:10 AM

- customizing encounters to the PCs numbers & levels (CaS)
- customizing encounters to the PCs abilities (CaS on steroids)

I think the first three are great!

I don't like the last two very much, especially not the very last one.

The above two are, in fact, in most game rules. A GM makes and customizes encounters to the PCs. I'm not a fan of this, even more so D&D's way.

There's also content customization (both in terms of setting elements and encounters) to the players separate from the PCs. A good example here is phobias - one of the people I've had as players has a really deep, really entrenched fear of needles. She doesn't particularly like the idea of IVs, puts up with vaccination only because she also has a really strong sense of social responsibility, etc. If I, as a GM, in a game she was in repeatedly put cactus everywhere as a hazard in a desert and graphically described the effects every time someone fell in it or similar it would be a total jerk move.

Does a fear of needles translate into a fear of cacti?

I'm in big favor of this one: Taylor Things to the Players. Though my whole game is for the Players, not the Characters too. I also don't avoid hot button issues.

Quertus

2017-11-03, 10:19 AM

Insult received.

In fact, many plots and stories have similar encounters for awhile. I was once exploring an Egyptian pyramid, and all encounters were undead. If a character had developed a hot new illusion-based power, it would be reasonable for the DM to add some grave robbers or others who could be affected by the illusions.

I once had a plot that involved all the animals being forced out of the great forest, and then the druid developed a big animal-affecting power. If I hadn't changed things, his power would have been worthless for several sessions.

It is simply untrue that every set of adventures will have the exact same "variety of encounters", and your suggestion that a theme-based plot indicates GM skills that need to be improved is simply false-to-fact.

What? No. That wasn't meant as an insult.

What I'm saying is, a GM who is good at / utilizes this skill will notice the "all undead all the time" nature, and add the grave robbers (plus scarabs, traps, puzzles, etc) regardless of the composition of - or even the existence of - the party.

Much like keeping pages of notes on which button does what on a console game, manually running through these steps is not a bad plan - far* from it - it's just not usually the best way, or the end goal.

Just as a sandbox (irl) isn't just a random collection of items, so, too, the GM gets to pick what he places in his sandbox, or in his adventure. A GM with the appropriate skills can choose to sacrifice variety for the integrity of their module, sure, but a GM without those skills has no choice but to employ an epimethian, post-production modification to their plans.

Just like how people comment on just how obvious GM railroading is, these changes to reality can detract from the experience. "gee, as soon as I got a fire-based power, we encounters our first ever creature that was vulnerable / immune to fire". It's so much cleaner to learn to vary encounters in the first place, than to risk detracting from the game by doing so after the fact.

* I mean, I wouldn't have called it "brilliant" if I thought it was a bad idea. :smalltongue:

Knaight

2017-11-03, 03:50 PM

Does a fear of needles translate into a fear of cacti?

A fear of being stabbed by needle like objects (which is what this boils down to) includes cactus needles often enough that I'm willing to make that assumption in the general case. In the specific case, it's either a definite fear or two unrelated phobias about needles and cactus needles.

Pleh

2017-11-04, 05:22 AM

Reading a bit more of this to catch up (not fully caught up yet), I feel like I'm starting to get Tanarii's point a bit better.

If I were asked (and agreed) to write a module for organized play, I would know ahead of time that I would be writing for a potentially large group of individuals in separate groups who will, in all likelihood, have a wide array of different types of characters and encounter solving abilities. As such, I would work very hard to tailor my encounters to EVERY possible character to the best of my ability. In my mind, that mostly means starting with some fundamental plot to narrow my field, reasoning out the encounters that develop that plot, and then tailoring my encounters such that, by whatever means, ANY standard group of adventurers would have both a reasonable chance for success and failure in each encounter.

In this way, it's actually MORE work to tailor it to every conceivable group. Not like I have to take account for every possible Wizard spell that they might happen to have in the party, but I should expect every major and commonly used spell, surely. I should take into account Martial/Caster disparity and make the adventure fun (as best I can) for a party of full casters as well as a party of full martials.

But my point is that writing irrespective of the players while still making a solid, functional game, actually involves MORE tailoring as you have to account for every PC reasonably conceivable (and thus, every conceivable permutation of party composition).

If I were writing for a Star Wars Saga module, this wouldn't be too bad as there are only 5 base classes and a known quantity of prestige classes (and I could just set the module level low enough to not even be high enough for PrCs to come into play).

But if I were writing for D&D 3.5, I'd probably have to leave a note at the beginning for the DM as to what Splatbooks I was specifically trying to accommodate and recommend they disallow other resources or else do their own work of balancing those materials into the game.

Now, from this point, I'd like to offer a counterargument to this idea.

Yes, a really good DM can sit down and tailor a module to every conceivable party permutation within some bounds of reason.

But couldn't that same DM do more with a known party composition? To have all that knowledge, experience, skill, and work ethic to build a broadly tailored adventure and put it all to the same measure of use in building it for an adventure where the encounters can be custom fit to the exact heroes in question; wouldn't that same DM, with the higher pedigree and capacity be able to then do more if given more information to work with from the start?

Wouldn't such a DM be simply able to do more and better, given the same starting resources, planning a campaign where they are given the known party composition rather than expending resources to accommodate unknown variables?

Quertus

2017-11-04, 08:53 AM

tailor my encounters to EVERY possible character to the best of my ability.

tailoring my encounters such that, by whatever means, ANY standard group of adventurers would have both a reasonable chance for success and failure in each encounter.

I should take into account Martial/Caster disparity and make the adventure fun (as best I can) for a party of full casters as well as a party of full martials.

But if I were writing for D&D 3.5, I'd probably have to leave a note at the beginning for the DM as to what Splatbooks I was specifically trying to accommodate and recommend they disallow other resources or else do their own work of balancing those materials into the game.

That is a Combat as Sport mindset of trying to balance the module and invalidate player choices. In a Combat as War mindset of trying to validate player choices, you still include variety, but for the purpose of the experience, not out of an explicit sense of balancing the module.

EDIT: that probably wasn't terribly clear; let me try again. If someone has a cool fire based ability, it would be nice for them to encounter something that is especially vulnerable to fire, and something that is especially resistant to fire, in addition to all the normal, run of the mill things. That's different than saying, "hmmm... the Fighter's Flaming Sword is too overpowered - I know, I'll make every monster immune to fire! That will fix the game balance!"

One of these can be done without even looking at the party, and makes the game richer. The other, IMO, it's just being a ****, and sacrificing variety for balance.

As you can tell, I'm biased towards maximum Player Agency & Combat as War.

Pleh

2017-11-04, 09:11 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-04, 09:17 AM

That is a Combat as Sport mindset of trying to balance the module and invalidate player choices. In a Combat as War mindset of trying to validate player choices, you still include variety, but for the purpose of the experience, not out of any sense of balancing the module.

*TWEEET* Flag on the play. False assertion. Balancing the module != invalidating player choices. Bad Quertus.

You're stuck in a "Combat as War=good, Combat as Sport=bad" mentality that is a) not well defined, b) absolutely arbitrary, and c) ignores the vast majority of all motivations to play. It also feeds a player vs DM antagonism that can severely damage fun. It also feeds a need to optimize mechanically without regard to characters--if you don't, you die.

A counter question. You're playing a particular game with a particular set of people. One of them mentions that he plans to take an option that, while flavorful and totally in character, will have absolutely no use in this module/campaign. As a DM, what do you do?

a) Say nothing and allow the player to waste a build resource since it will never be triggered.
b) Warn the player that that option is worthless in this campaign.
c) Find a way to incorporate that option into the campaign, even in small ways.

In my opinion, option a) is antagonistic and anti-fun and invalidates the player's choice. It's also the CaW/neutral DM default. Option b) gives away important information (risking meta-gaming). Option c) involves tailoring and so is non-neutral, but validates the choices of the players.

I know which one I'd pick--option c) all the way. It's most likely to preserve fun without damaging anything. In this specific case, it's a real situation. A player of mine took Witch Sight, a 5e warlock ability that grants the user certain perception abilities that were unlikely to come up in play as I had planned. So I'm making sure to include such situations. Not tons, and not as requirements for progress, but as elements that let him feel special and let him feel that the choice wasn't a trap. Same with my other players. I place opportunities for them to use their abilities so they feel cool. Places where choosing option 1 over option 2 will make a difference. I hate trap options. Every option should have value. Every choice should have interesting consequences both for success and for failure. Since I'm building the campaign as they go, I can do this.

I can't if I'm following a module. There are too many options to keep track of for a module writer. That means that there will be trap options and "best" options. This gives incentives to meta-game and to plan characters to the module instead of letting them grow organically. If in act 1 there are tons of undead, giving away a turn undead option would be suicide, even if it fits the character better to have an ACF instead. Now, sure, modules can give branching choices, but there will always be more restrictions than on a tailored campaign. That's inevitable, part and parcel of writing a module for mass distribution. You can't think of everything. That means that some groups will be unable to complete it due to choices they made at session 0 and others will breeze through it, again due to choices at session 0. This is un-fun to me.

I trust the DM on the ground much more than I trust a commercial writer. Because the DM (or any DM I'm willing to play with) is much more invested in the success of the game (having fun). The writer has gotten paid when you bought the module. They're not there to see the module in play. It's the DM that will be blamed if the module is unfair or restrictive or otherwise unfun.

Quertus

2017-11-04, 10:06 AM

*TWEEET* Flag on the play. False assertion. Balancing the module != invalidating player choices.

... Um, yes it does. Heck, even the most common form, balancing for number of players, invalidates the choice to try the module with additional or fewer bodies.

Bad Quertus.

You're stuck in a "Combat as War=good, Combat as Sport=bad" mentality

Guilty as charged. That is my personal bias.

that is a) not well defined, b) absolutely arbitrary, and c) ignores the vast majority of all motivations to play. It also feeds a player vs DM antagonism that can severely damage fun. It also feeds a need to optimize mechanically without regard to characters--if you don't, you die.

Well, now, there's some problems here in both of our assumptions.

You're assuming that the goal is to "win". That's wrong thinking. Bad PP. My goal is to experience - and, yes, that includes a fair amount of dieing in D&D. I want to come by my deaths honest. That does not require mechanical optimization, and would be more accurately characterized as "character is the only thing that is important". Something something tweet flag false assertion something something. :smallwink:

EDIT: and something something ignore majority motivations something something.

A counter question. You're playing a particular game with a particular set of people. One of them mentions that he plans to take an option that, while flavorful and totally in character, will have absolutely no use in this module/campaign. As a DM, what do you do?

a) Say nothing and allow the player to waste a build resource since it will never be triggered.
b) Warn the player that that option is worthless in this campaign.
c) Find a way to incorporate that option into the campaign, even in small ways.

In my opinion, option a) is antagonistic and anti-fun and invalidates the player's choice. It's also the CaW/neutral DM default. Option b) gives away important information (risking meta-gaming). Option c) involves tailoring and so is non-neutral, but validates the choices of the players.

Strongly disagree. Changing the module invalidates the player's choice. Just like saving someone from suicide invalidates their choice. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that you're wrong to pretend otherwise. (EDIT: wrong to pretend it isn't invalidating their choice, in case that wasn't clear)

On a good day, I'd notice, and choose option b.

However, this goes back to the "GM skills" bit. If I failed my skill check, and accidentally created a module unfairly biased for or (especially) against an ability, yes, I would be willing to fix the module.

But a published module? No, I'd just use option b. "I don't think 'Necrophilia on Bone Hill' is a good module for a diplomancer or sneak attack rogue build..."

Places where choosing option 1 over option 2 will make a difference. I hate trap options. Every option should have value. Every choice should have interesting consequences both for success and for failure. Since I'm building the campaign as they go, I can do this.

Having choices make a difference seems opposed to hating trap options. I know how I resolve this, but I'm curious how you do so.

I can't if I'm following a module. There are too many options to keep track of for a module writer. That means that there will be trap options and "best" options. This gives incentives to meta-game and to plan characters to the module instead of letting them grow organically. If in act 1 there are tons of undead, giving away a turn undead option would be suicide, even if it fits the character better to have an ACF instead. Now, sure, modules can give branching choices, but there will always be more restrictions than on a tailored campaign. That's inevitable, part and parcel of writing a module for mass distribution. You can't think of everything. That means that some groups will be unable to complete it due to choices they made at session 0 and others will breeze through it, again due to choices at session 0. This is un-fun to me.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I find that a fun source of variety, and validation of my choices. If success and failure aren't on the table, what's the point?

That having been said, outside the worst railroading "you must have demolitions to blow up this wall to continue", I've rarely lost at session 0; rather, party composition has made the module much more interesting as we scramble to figure out ways to complete our objectives using what resources we have available.

Perhaps I enjoy creativity more than you do? (EDIT: before someone takes that the wrong way, I enjoy creativity more than most people. I even love the unplanned party / drop-in game minigame of "how do we work with this group of characters" that is anathema to people who have dogmatic requirements for party composition.)

I trust the DM on the ground much more than I trust a commercial writer. Because the DM (or any DM I'm willing to play with) is much more invested in the success of the game (having fun). The writer has gotten paid when you bought the module. They're not there to see the module in play. It's the DM that will be blamed if the module is unfair or restrictive or otherwise unfun.

Well, given that a) I don't trust the GM on the ground, and b) I've seen the GM on the ground ruin modules by changing them many times (and, IIRC, never* seen the experience improved by a GM changing the module), my experience differs greatly from your implied assertion.

* I have had GMs modify modules to make them fit the campaign world without completely ruining the module.

I don't see how that follows. How does Combat as Sport limit player choices? You mean the limits of what I can plan for? It's the DM's job to adapt to a live scenario. It's nice when a module creator makes that as easy as possible.

But games are not simultaneously Sandbox and Scripted Module.

Does the above, plus my edit to the original post, answer your questions?

Cluedrew

2017-11-04, 10:20 AM

In this way, it's actually MORE work to tailor it to every conceivable group.Is it even tailored at that point? Lets say for instance that I come up with a back story for my World of Warcraft character (I could even use the pre-existing lore as a base to make sure my character fits into the world). How much of the story is going to fit that character? Probably none. Why because to have something fit everyone, it will never fit any one character very well. Although MMORPGs do have different goals, do you think you could write a modal for an unknown party, no matter how much work you put in could you make it as good as "here are the character sheets and this is the campaign log of how they got to level 5" (modal starts at level 6)? I don't think I could.

On Combat As: Really I think it comes down to a matter of what do you think is important: the set up for the battle or the battle itself.

Combat as Sport is interested in each and every fight. So they make every fight interesting, like a match in a game. This does cut off some design space, as fights that are obviously won or obviously lost from the very beginning aren't very interesting in isolation. There is often an assumption that the fight will go to completion as well, which forces the difficulty down as not to lose PCs all the time.

Combat as War is interested about the decisions around the fight. The fight itself exists in part to justify those choices. Enemies of different strengths exists to create easy or hard fights to avoid or accept and differing types of strength demand different preparation. Which does mean that "unwinnable battles" become an option because getting into the fight was the mistake, as opposed to anything during the fight.

That is my summery that I have pieced together. I also wrote it before Quertus's latest post.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-04, 11:03 AM

I'll start by again stating that all of this is a question of taste, not objective truth. There is an implied "in my opinion" in front of all my sentences.

... Um, yes it does. Heck, even the most common form, balancing for number of players, invalidates the choice to try the module with additional or fewer bodies.

No more than not balancing anything does. A not-balanced game either hasn't been checked against possible combinations (it's untested) or it's been checked and balance has been intentionally discarded (which is a form of tailoring in and of itself). As soon as you play-test (which all commercial modules do) and adjust based on the play test, you're engaged in balancing.

Well, now, there's some problems here in both of our assumptions.

You're assuming that the goal is to "win". That's wrong thinking. Bad PP. My goal is to experience - and, yes, that includes a fair amount of dieing in D&D. I want to come by my deaths honest. That does not require mechanical optimization, and would be more accurately characterized as "character is the only thing that is important". Something something tweet flag false assertion something something. :smallwink:

No, I said that it often leads to trying to "win." What "win" means differs for different people. Your particular assumptions work for you, they don't work for the vast majority, as evidenced by the fact that CaW (still something whose definition seems to bend and twist as convenient) games are very very niche, even among the niche game styles. And characters counting is counter to the idea of testing yourself against a module--by dying you're cutting off that experience and that character, so the characters that successfully experience the most are those most tailored to that module.

Strongly disagree. Changing the module invalidates the player's choice. Just like saving someone from suicide invalidates their choice. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that you're wrong to pretend otherwise. (EDIT: wrong to pretend it isn't invalidating their choice, in case that wasn't clear)

How? You've stated this, but never actually justified it. I can see it in a case where there is a defined branching path--a choice of path A should be different than a choice of path B. But if you're not using modules, there isn't a predetermined path. There are merely a lot of possibilities. My basic rule is that nothing is real until it's come out at the table. Everything, including setting elements, is uncertain until a player observes it in play. Once observed, it's immutable. This allows me to decide that my initial notes were wrong, that this area really is like X, not like Y. As a result, I can adapt to player-induced changes seamlessly--I'm not pre-generating the entire state of the world at T=0. This also saves on up-front work for things that may or may not be ever met. It allows me to tell many stories in the same world because choices have scope--their effects are determined much later. It also saves brain space, something that I desperately need.

On a good day, I'd notice, and choose option b.

However, this goes back to the "GM skills" bit. If I failed my skill check, and accidentally created a module unfairly biased for or (especially) against an ability, yes, I would be willing to fix the module.

But a published module? No, I'd just use option b. "I don't think 'Necrophilia on Bone Hill' is a good module for a diplomancer or sneak attack rogue build..."

So you're opting for limiting player options by disallowing a whole spectrum of characters. You're also giving the player a lot of information that they can then use to meta-game (build a character to the specific challenges, not build a character to play a character). Thus, the "acceptable" character space is severely limited by the module. That, to me, is a weakness of a module. Your first option (creating a "balanced" module) runs counter to your initial statement that doing so invalidates player choice. I'd rather start a campaign with a theme, and a general idea of some of the major conflicts and build the components in a JIT fashion. It's much more flexible and allows adaptation to the particular players and their different desires. Same with smaller components--I'll start with a concept map and a few of the basic players/fixed setting elements. Everything else is built on-the-fly to maintain consistency with what I've already stated at the table.

Having choices make a difference seems opposed to hating trap options. I know how I resolve this, but I'm curious how you do so.

Trap options are, to one degree or another, options that are always sub-optimal. If there are no undead, turn undead is a trap if you can choose something that works. This is orthogonal to choices making a difference. I prefer all choices to be useful but have different consequences that shape the scenario. That is, it's a test with no right answer. Within reason, every approach will work. How they work, and whether the trade-off is worth it to those players, is the important thing. I've seen organized play devolve into "You should plan on always killing everything, because you can't rely on a DM or a table letting anything else work." That's annoying. It locks out all non-fighting-related options as traps, since they'll never be useful. It's what I see with optimization--things that don't have guaranteed mechanical effect are down-rated because you can't count on them working in a module or organized play (since they rely on having a DM). That removes much of the draw of TTRPGs.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I find that a fun source of variety, and validation of my choices. If success and failure aren't on the table, what's the point?

That having been said, outside the worst railroading "you must have demolitions to blow up this wall to continue", I've rarely lost at session 0; rather, party composition has made the module much more interesting as we scramble to figure out ways to complete our objectives using what resources we have available.

Perhaps I enjoy creativity more than you do? (EDIT: before someone takes that the wrong way, I enjoy creativity more than most people. I even love the unplanned party / drop-in game minigame of "how do we work with this group of characters" that is anathema to people who have dogmatic requirements for party composition.)

I enjoy creation, not creativity (in the abstract). I DM because I love coming up with reactions to things I never expected. If I had a fixed module to run, I'd be bored to tears. In addition, modules feel constraining to me as a DM. If I don't run it exactly, I'm doing it wrong. And that takes away my fun, which comes in adapting things, surprising the players, throwing plot twists, calibrating things on the fly to maintain fun, and incorporating their suggestions into the world. If I had to build that all myself, it'd come out really poor. Instead, I leave things loose enough that if a player mentions that "it's probably like X" and it fits better than what I had planned, I'll run with it. It's the idea of "Yes, and..." applied to scenario design.

I'm motivated mainly by wonder, narrative, and agency when playing TTRPGs. And inflexibility runs counter to that. I don't like scripted things--I can read the script way faster and more accurately than a DM can read it out loud. Published modules are the ultimate expression of scripted for me with the "when the party enters, read <text>" pattern. There's a fixed objective and nothing else matters. Nothing else you do can really change the game much.

As to railroading, in most pre-5e published modules the valley of "expected parties" is really really narrow. They presume you have access to XYZ abilities (usually condition removal), they assume you've got a heavy melee hitter (except those that assume everyone's a stealthy skill monkey), they presume you have access to other resources like certain magical items. Without those, your chances of success diminish quickly (or are zeroed out entirely). That's railroading in drag, unless you can find loopholes to "break" the scenario--this "breaking" requires a DM willing to go along with it. You can take the easy path, or you can die. Horribly. No middle ground.

In addition, following a module inevitably slows down play whenever things threaten to go off-track, because the DM either has to improvise from nothing (the descriptions are never sufficient or extensive enough, because they assume you're following one of the blessed paths) or has to cross-reference material. I've seen that--3-5 minutes of the DM looking for things in the module PDF. Repeatedly. That's boring.

Well, given that a) I don't trust the GM on the ground, and b) I've seen the GM on the ground ruin modules by changing them many times (and, IIRC, never* seen the experience improved by a GM changing the module), my experience differs greatly from your implied assertion.

* I have had GMs modify modules to make them fit the campaign world without completely ruining the module.

If you don't trust them why the heck are you playing with them? There's lots of DMs I won't play with because I can't trust them to play in a way I find fun. This doesn't make them bad, just unsuited for me personally. Also, if the modules aren't adaptable without ruining them, that's seriously fragile railroading, something I find unacceptable.

Pleh

2017-11-04, 12:23 PM

Does the above, plus my edit to the original post, answer your questions?

Yes. Your answer seemed to be saying my statements were wrong when your position more accurately states that my statements need to disclaim a limited application to a particular gamestyle.

I can happily accept this.

... Um, yes it does. Heck, even the most common form, balancing for number of players, invalidates the choice to try the module with additional or fewer bodies.

I disagree. The players made the choice of numbers of players and it impacted the game. No choice has been invalidated, it has been recognized and responded to.

See, the players can choose to play with fewer players specifically to increase their challenge. But the could make the same choice without wanting an increase in difficulty. They might just want the chance to play despite not having enough players to play it as it was written. At that point, the choice is not to increase the difficulty, but lower the entry requirements without disrupting the difficulty.

Neither is right or wrong and both choices compell different reactions from the DM.

Running out of time. Probably be back later with more.

Tanarii

2017-11-04, 01:49 PM

*TWEEET* Flag on the play. False assertion. Balancing the module != invalidating player choices. Bad Quertus.Agreed. I may currently be preferring Combat as War play overall. But Combat as sport, nor designing a module to be easier for CaS play than CaW play, doesn't mean "limit player options" or "invalidate player choices".

At its most basic, it simply means balancing encounters for a specific level range and length of adventuring day, but also assuming the party will be that level and have available that length of adventuring day (but not overextend it) when encountering them. As opposed to not assuming the party will be that level or spend that length of adventuring day (and not overextend it).

That also means it's more about the way an adventure or module is played than designed.

Obviously, in the spectrum of DMs designing adventures there's actually a continuum between CaW friendly and CaS friendly. There's a world of difference between (for example) Keep on the Borderlands and any 4e single session official play module.

Quertus

2017-11-04, 11:11 PM

I disagree. The players made the choice of numbers of players and it impacted the game. No choice has been invalidated, it has been recognized and responded to.

See, the players can choose to play with fewer players specifically to increase their challenge. But the could make the same choice without wanting an increase in difficulty. They might just want the chance to play despite not having enough players to play it as it was written. At that point, the choice is not to increase the difficulty, but lower the entry requirements without disrupting the difficulty.

Neither is right or wrong and both choices compell different reactions from the DM.

Running out of time. Probably be back later with more.

Agreed. It's a difference between if they choose to play with a different number of PCs vs if they are forced to. Actually, I suppose it's more complicated than that - whether the players or characters explicitly choose to alter the party composition in order to affect the experience of the module. That is when it is denying them Agency to deny them the logical consequences of their choice.

No more than not balancing anything does. A not-balanced game either hasn't been checked against possible combinations (it's untested) or it's been checked and balance has been intentionally discarded (which is a form of tailoring in and of itself). As soon as you play-test (which all commercial modules do) and adjust based on the play test, you're engaged in balancing.

Clearly, we need to go back to defining tailoring if you're attempting to contend that not tailoring is a form of tailoring.

Under definitions of tailoring that don't include not tailoring, rebalancing the game is a form of tailoring that, as I explained better above, removes Player Agency if the imbalance was intentional on the players' part.

I'm not really sure where to go with definitions of tailoring that include not tailoring.

No, I said that it often leads to trying to "win."

Well, you actually said, "It also feeds a need to optimize mechanically without regard to characters--if you don't, you die."

I simply responded with, "yup, you die - Agency at work". Do you prefer games with lower Agency? Most people do, I don't.

What "win" means differs for different people. Your particular assumptions work for you, they don't work for the vast majority, as evidenced by the fact that CaW (still something whose definition seems to bend and twist as convenient) games are very very niche, even among the niche game styles.

Can I get a neutral reading on this? It sounds like I'm being accused of moving goal posts, and I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone agrees with this, and can point out any inconsistencies in my definition of CaW.

I feel like I'm defining it consistently, albeit piecemeal, but I admit I could be blinded by my own biases here.

And characters counting is counter to the idea of testing yourself against a module--by dying you're cutting off that experience and that character, so the characters that successfully experience the most are those most tailored to that module.

... What? You've lost me here.

How? You've stated this, but never actually justified it.

If the players or the PCs make the conscious decision to approach the problem differently (with a different number or composition of PCs, for example), then changing the module undies their actions and denies them agency. This is, IMO, railroading 101. It's so basic, I can't imagine anyone not seeing it. So, apparently, I'm really failing to express my idea... as evidenced by all the text I cut out that doesn't seem relevant to this discussion.

The GM wants the module to turn out / feel a certain way. The PCs make choices that would change that outcome / feeling. So the GM changes reality to force things back to their way. That's railroading. That's removing Player Agency. Any "custom tailoring" that removes explicit player / character intent is railroading.

So you're opting for limiting player options by disallowing a whole spectrum of characters.

Nope. Not disallowing. Allowing players to choose whether or not they want to run a character who will not perform as expected. Enabling the Agency to make that choice.

You're also giving the player a lot of information that they can then use to meta-game (build a character to the specific challenges, not build a character to play a character).

True. But the module title, "Necrophilia on Bone Hill" probably already did that for most players.

I won't deny that there's a choice here. And I'm all about, "it's easier to roleplay ignorance if you are, yourself, ignorant", so I totally agree that it's a cost. And I'm sad to have to pay it. But, a) IME, there's usually a lot worse metagaming going on than just knowing the module title, or that a sneak attack rogue or diplomancer might not be an optional choice for this module / that this module might not be the best time to run that character, and B) IMO it's a lot better than letting them go in blind.

Thus, the "acceptable" character space is severely limited by the module. That, to me, is a weakness of a module.

Agreed. Sometimes, it's worth it for the integrity of the module. Sometimes, a module built for hearts just isn't appropriate for four clubs and a spade. But, in general, a module where you have to say, "sorry, your character will not perform according to your expectations" is a failure of module design.

Your first option (creating a "balanced" module) runs counter to your initial statement that doing so invalidates player choice.

Interesting point. But, IMO, wrong word - "varied", not "balanced" (especially since that word is being used to describe changing the module after the fact. Wouldn't want to commit the fallacy of four parts here). Does creating a varied experience invalidate Player Agency? Heck, does creating an "all undead" or otherwise same-y experience invalidate Player Agency?

I'm on the side of "no" here - the Players have the option and ability to do whatever in either case. But I could be wrong.

Trap options are, to one degree or another, options that are always sub-optimal. If there are no undead, turn undead is a trap if you can choose something that works. This is orthogonal to choices making a difference. I prefer all choices to be useful but have different consequences that shape the scenario. That is, it's a test with no right answer. Within reason, every approach will work. How they work, and whether the trade-off is worth it to those players, is the important thing. I've seen organized play devolve into "You should plan on always killing everything, because you can't rely on a DM or a table letting anything else work." That's annoying. It locks out all non-fighting-related options as traps, since they'll never be useful. It's what I see with optimization--things that don't have guaranteed mechanical effect are down-rated because you can't count on them working in a module or organized play (since they rely on having a DM). That removes much of the draw of TTRPGs.

This deserves a better response, but, in short, I generally agree with most of this.

I enjoy creation, not creativity (in the abstract). I DM because I love coming up with reactions to things I never expected.

The only thing I enjoy about being a GM is the players coming up with the unexpected. But you don't enjoy that side of it, only your side of creating things once they do so?

If I had a fixed module to run, I'd be bored to tears.

And here is where we must define "module" differently. Set starting conditions is what defines a module, to me. So (have the scripts in the module) react all you want to the PCs unexpected actions, and it's still a module, IMO.

In addition, modules feel constraining to me as a DM. If I don't run it exactly, I'm doing it wrong.

Yup. And if I don't roleplay my PC 100% correctly, I'm doing it wrong. Hint: I never hit my 100% accuracy mark, even when I got the opportunity to roleplay myself in an RPG.

Still, I think I have hit the much easier benchmark of accuracy in running a module.

And that takes away my fun, which comes in adapting things, surprising the players, throwing plot twists, calibrating things on the fly to maintain fun, and incorporating their suggestions into the world.

Oh, you find a more Calvin ball approach fun? Never mind, then.

If I had to build that all myself, it'd come out really poor.

And thus my comment about it being a skill that one can build.

Instead, I leave things loose enough that if a player mentions that "it's probably like X" and it fits better than what I had planned, I'll run with it. It's the idea of "Yes, and..." applied to scenario design.

It might be interesting to have a GM who could do that well.

I'm motivated mainly by wonder, narrative, and agency when playing TTRPGs. And inflexibility runs counter to that.

Having set rules of reality is the only thing that makes Exploration worthwhile. Not quite the same as Wonder, but I'll argue they're related.

Having logical consequences and a nice, firm, static reality is, IMO, a prerequisite for meaningful Agency. But, sure, I suppose Calvin ball could be considered the ultimate in Agency.

I don't like scripted things--I can read the script way faster and more accurately than a DM can read it out loud. Published modules are the ultimate expression of scripted for me with the "when the party enters, read <text>" pattern. There's a fixed objective and nothing else matters. Nothing else you do can really change the game much.

How, exactly, does having your starting conditions set in stone affect how much Agency you have to affect the mutable future?

As to railroading, in most pre-5e published modules the valley of "expected parties" is really really narrow. They presume you have access to XYZ abilities (usually condition removal), they assume you've got a heavy melee hitter (except those that assume everyone's a stealthy skill monkey), they presume you have access to other resources like certain magical items. Without those, your chances of success diminish quickly (or are zeroed out entirely). That's railroading in drag, unless you can find loopholes to "break" the scenario--this "breaking" requires a DM willing to go along with it. You can take the easy path, or you can die. Horribly. No middle ground.

Not my experience, either running or playing in modules, published or of my own design.

Now, I won't deny that it's much harder if the GM is a ****, but most systems have enough rules that the fault is obviously with the GM railroading if they don't let you climb over or go around the wall that the module expects you to employ explosives upon.

And, if the GM is a ****, well, IMO you're better off with a module than with their ****, as their **** may well be custom tailored to their railroading skills. No thank you. :smallyuk:

In addition, following a module inevitably slows down play whenever things threaten to go off-track, because the DM either has to improvise from nothing (the descriptions are never sufficient or extensive enough, because they assume you're following one of the blessed paths) or has to cross-reference material. I've seen that--3-5 minutes of the DM looking for things in the module PDF. Repeatedly. That's boring.

Me writing out static reality beforehand does not, IME, make me run the game more slowly than me lying about reality. Not seeing where a static module is worse here.

If you don't trust them why the heck are you playing with them? There's lots of DMs I won't play with because I can't trust them to play in a way I find fun. This doesn't make them bad, just unsuited for me personally.

I don't have a good answer for you here.

Also, if the modules aren't adaptable without ruining them, that's seriously fragile railroading, something I find unacceptable.

Um, no, you missed the point: some idiots just like to take a **** all over an otherwise just fine module. How Shakespeare looks after I've eaten it and **** it out had nothing to do with the quality of Shakespeare.

Agreed. I may currently be preferring Combat as War play overall. But Combat as sport, nor designing a module to be easier for CaS play than CaW play, doesn't mean "limit player options" or "invalidate player choices".

At its most basic, it simply means balancing encounters for a specific level range and length of adventuring day, but also assuming the party will be that level and have available that length of adventuring day (but not overextend it) when encountering them. As opposed to not assuming the party will be that level or spend that length of adventuring day (and not overextend it).

That also means it's more about the way an adventure or module is played than designed.

Obviously, in the spectrum of DMs designing adventures there's actually a continuum between CaW friendly and CaS friendly. There's a world of difference between (for example) Keep on the Borderlands and any 4e single session official play module.

So, just to check: if you limit the players' ability to intentionally affect the difficulty of the module, you don't consider that to be a violation of their Agency?

Tanarii

2017-11-05, 12:09 AM

Neither CaS nor a custom tailored adventure to the players PCs limits player agency. So your question doesn't seem relevant to anything.

Edit: now if you have more than one party in your campaign, and you customize the location for each separate party, then your doing some serious fantasy-environment reality bending. :smallyuk: But for a single party, customizing the start conditions of any given section of a module to the party is just deciding on the start conditions for that section.

Pleh

2017-11-05, 05:55 AM

Agreed. It's a difference between if they choose to play with a different number of PCs vs if they are forced to. Actually, I suppose it's more complicated than that - whether the players or characters explicitly choose to alter the party composition in order to affect the experience of the module. That is when it is denying them Agency to deny them the logical consequences of their choice.

Ok, but in my example, "not having the recommended number of players," it's not any person limiting their agency. It's just that fewer people can't do as much as having more people.

They still chose to simply do what they could with their given resources and are only constrained by their circumstances. This can't be bad as it's as neutral as anything can be. It's just a byproduct of imperfect games and groups which can be readily compensated for.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-05, 07:21 AM

Quertus, I do think we have divergent definitions of modules. The ones I've seen have had way more than a set of starting conditions. They've had detailed NPC reactions "if the party says X, reply with Y", details about the steps needed to solve situations Z, etc.

Oh, and about changing things in the fly--that's not Calvin ball. Only planned things get changed. Nothing that they've seen (that is the players) changes. I may have planned encounters A,B, and C along their predicted route. But because they took an action that fit the world's (and their characters) logic better than my projections did, I have to reconfigure the encounters to adjust to this new shared understanding of the world. I don't presume to know the world perfectly, even though I built it. They often show that there's a better, funner way of perceiving those facts that puts everything in context. Thus, the unseen state must change to fit that new, better understanding.

Quertus

2017-11-05, 07:22 AM

Neither CaS nor a custom tailored adventure to the players PCs limits player agency. So your question doesn't seem relevant to anything.

Your character hires extra muscle to make an upcoming fight easier. In response, the GM, wanting the fight to be a certain difficulty, increases the number / power of the opposition proportionally. Has the GM violated your Agency in invalidating your choice? I say yes.

NichG

2017-11-05, 09:28 AM

Your character hires extra muscle to make an upcoming fight easier. In response, the GM, wanting the fight to be a certain difficulty, increases the number / power of the opposition proportionally. Has the GM violated your Agency in invalidating your choice? I say yes.

A very standard, and IMO essential DM technique is to say for example 'this kind of encounter/fight/etc is so easy for you given your power level, that we're not going to use table time to play it out anymore'. When you're peasants, three bandits laying in ambush on the road might be a life or death situation. When you're archmagi and demigods, those bandits might ostensibly still be there, but they are incapable of (mechanically) actually mattering. It doesn't impact your character's agency at all - you can still go and kill ten thousand bandits using your archmage powers - but at the same time it doesn't need to be played out and detail anymore because there's no question about whether or not you could possibly succeed.

So if there's a fight which would have been played out in detail, and you hire an army of mercenaries to help you fight it to the extent where basically you can't possibly lose or even suffer significant risk, I think its entirely appropriate to zoom out and say 'okay, you and your mercenary team clear out the enemies, now what?'.

Tanarii

2017-11-05, 10:49 AM

Your character hires extra muscle to make an upcoming fight easier. In response, the GM, wanting the fight to be a certain difficulty, increases the number / power of the opposition proportionally. Has the GM violated your Agency in invalidating your choice? I say yes.
Yes of course. So would making a planned fight easier because the party lost a PC in the previous battle in the session, or worse because they expended more resources than expected. But who does that? That's ridiculous.

-------

The one standard thing for CaS that's kinda iffy is if the DM adjusts all encounters for the number of players who chose to show up that day. If 3 show up instead of 5 reducing difficulty, if 5 show up increasing it. But that's not outside help, nor adjusting based on what's already happened that day. It's adjusting for stuff that happens outside the game, not in it. So it's not really affecting player agency within the game to do things like hire a bunch of goons, or have the PCs face consequences for their choices within the session.

Quertus

2017-11-05, 10:52 AM

A very standard, and IMO essential DM technique is to say for example 'this kind of encounter/fight/etc is so easy for you given your power level, that we're not going to use table time to play it out anymore'. When you're peasants, three bandits laying in ambush on the road might be a life or death situation. When you're archmagi and demigods, those bandits might ostensibly still be there, but they are incapable of (mechanically) actually mattering. It doesn't impact your character's agency at all - you can still go and kill ten thousand bandits using your archmage powers - but at the same time it doesn't need to be played out and detail anymore because there's no question about whether or not you could possibly succeed.

So if there's a fight which would have been played out in detail, and you hire an army of mercenaries to help you fight it to the extent where basically you can't possibly lose or even suffer significant risk, I think its entirely appropriate to zoom out and say 'okay, you and your mercenary team clear out the enemies, now what?'.

Well, that's certainly changing the game when you go to such extremes. Personally, I think even spotting someone a pawn, or adding a few minions to one side still impacts the game.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-05, 11:13 AM

Well, that's certainly changing the game when you go to such extremes. Personally, I think even spotting someone a pawn, or adding a few minions to one side still impacts the game.

Some people enjoy epic combat. For them, adding mercenaries is good if it allows them to fight bigger, fiercer things. So for them, increasing the fight difficulty is exactly what they want out of the game. That's not invalidating their choices, it's exactly why they made that choice.

In my opinion, this works best if it's explicitly stated as a consequence or presented as an option. "If you bring more forces, you may fight bigger fights. The scaling is such that it will be easier on net, but not linearly so. Is that what you want?" (Directed at the players).

NichG

2017-11-05, 12:55 PM

Well, that's certainly changing the game when you go to such extremes. Personally, I think even spotting someone a pawn, or adding a few minions to one side still impacts the game.

My point was more, it's changing things for the players but it's exactly because it doesn't change things for the characters that it's a fairly uncontroversial DM move (compared to, say, powering up the bandits).

You might reduce OOC player agency (in the sense that they can't choose to play out easy fights in detail), but the decisions and outcomes they can make IC are the same - you're just moving things offscreen.

Since OOC, players generally want to play rather than narrate, you do end up influencing them to metagame reasons for their characters to get into trouble. So you end up with a tailored game anyhow.

Darth Ultron

2017-11-05, 07:42 PM

If the players or the PCs make the conscious decision to approach the problem differently (with a different number or composition of PCs, for example), then changing the module undies their actions and denies them agency. This is, IMO, railroading 101. It's so basic, I can't imagine anyone not seeing it. So, apparently, I'm really failing to express my idea... as evidenced by all the text I cut out that doesn't seem relevant to this discussion.

I don't see it.

Your saying the odd statement here of once a DM creates anything and writes it down it is absolutely static and can never, ever be changed. And this just makes no sense.

Like to use your own example: the module is made for four 1st level characters. So playing the game will be six 5th level characters, and you'd say the DM must leave everything as is? So the game must be an utter waste of time? Or like say the composition of the characters is different, so they are all say sneaky and don't do head on fights....you'd say the foes must literally walk into walls like a dumb video game and can't change tactics.

And then, what your saying really goes off the deep end. Like if the DM writes down on January 1st ''NPC Zoc has a potion of healing'' then that can never ever be changed? NPC Zoc is ''stuck'' with that one potion of healing forever?

And then what about the Improv Exploit? If the DM has the vague idea of NPC Zoc, but no official written down permanent write up....then the DM can, on a whim, simply give/make/create NPC Zoc to have absolutely anything they want on a whim. Right?

The GM wants the module to turn out / feel a certain way. The PCs make choices that would change that outcome / feeling. So the GM changes reality to force things back to their way. That's railroading. That's removing Player Agency. Any "custom tailoring" that removes explicit player / character intent is railroading.

Well, as you pointed out yourself....Player Agency is the DM doing things...so if the DM wanted things a set way, why would they even do things the other way in the first place? The answer is: they would not.

But then maybe your not being clear, because it sounds like your just being beyond crazy.

Like say the DM has a nice queen murder mystery set in a castle adventure, and the players all sit down to play, and they agree to play through the adventure. Now the module is set to turn out as a murder mystery for the characters to solve and have a murder mystery feel. One minute into the game the PC's slaughter the king and take over the kingdom and go to war! So the players want a bloody murderhobo insane war game. So your saying the DM ''must'' just sit back and be like ''yes, players whatever you want."?

Your character hires extra muscle to make an upcoming fight easier. In response, the GM, wanting the fight to be a certain difficulty, increases the number / power of the opposition proportionally. Has the GM violated your Agency in invalidating your choice? I say yes.

I'd say no. This is really a basic DM function and one that will forever separate table top RPGs from computer ones. It is amazing that some people it is wrong for a DM to apparently ''think'' anything. After all the DM is not ''thinking'' things just to be a jerk monster, the DM is thinking things as that is the role (''job'') they have taken in the game. And part of that role(''job'') is making interesting, challenging, engaging events for the players to encounter and over come.

To suddenly say ''oh, the DM should do nothing and just let the players control the game, do the goal and win'' really does not make any sense. Why even play the game then? The DM could just pack up and leave and say ''oh, your character took over the world" or whatever.

And such things are not altering the game world. Even if the Hobgoblin Guards ''suddenly'' had battle axes +3 of sharpness...does not really ''mean'' anything. The Pc's might do some sort of wacky plan of attack and kill all the hobgoblins before they even get to attack...for example.

And, in game, if the player can have a character hire help.....why can't all the NPC's in the world do that? Or why can't the NPC foes do things like call for reinforcements?

And in the above example...assuming the DM just rolls over and says ''yes players, whatever you want", do the players agree to getting less XP/rewards, per the game rules, for having an easy non challenging fight?

Tanarii

2017-11-05, 07:57 PM

But then maybe your not being clear, because it sounds like your just being beyond crazy.

Like say the DM has a nice queen murder mystery set in a castle adventure, and the players all sit down to play, and they agree to play through the adventure. Now the module is set to turn out as a murder mystery for the characters to solve and have a murder mystery feel. One minute into the game the PC's slaughter the king and take over the kingdom and go to war! So the players want a bloody murderhobo insane war game. So your saying the DM ''must'' just sit back and be like ''yes, players whatever you want."?
No. But just 'cause they mustn't doesn't mean they shouldn't. Clearly these players know how to turn a boring game into hella fun. :smalltongue: :smallbiggrin:

I'd say no. This is really a basic DM function and one that will forever separate table top RPGs from computer ones. Now who's talking beyond crazy? That was a pretty clear cut example of removing player agency with a quantum ogre.

As I said earlier: "But who does that? It's ridiculous."

Now I know.

Cluedrew

2017-11-05, 08:30 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-05, 08:42 PM

To Quertus: I'm going to rewind a bit, to address the question "how is not tailoring a kind of tailoring?". Remember those decision chains early in the thread? Group->System->World->Party->Campaign and many variants? Well there is actually one link on that chain we forgot to mention.

Decision Chain

That is, how the decisions are made can change depending on what you are aiming for. So (assuming I'm a good enough GM to pull all this off) lets say you ask me to run a game for you and some people of a similar play style. So my usual System->World<->Party->Campaign decision chain isn't going to work. Instead I might do System(which might already be decided for me)->World->Campaign-Party. Party almost occurring independently off to the side by the players. And that is because the start of both of those decision chains is actually: Group->Decision Chain.

So tailoring how you make decisions might mean you end up not tailoring certain things for certain other things. And that is how not tailoring is a kind of tailoring. Unless they were talking about something else completely different.

Sorta-kinda, but not really. Although this is a good point about the whole range of possible tailoring methods that I think most home-game DMs use naturally.

I was trying (and obviously failing) to express the following:

1) It seemed as though Quertus was claiming that balancing modules based on anything PC related (assumed party levels, assumed party numbers, assumed skill sets, etc) was tailoring (and thus detrimental to player agency, another claim I dispute).
2) But modules are play-tested and balanced based on the feedback. This includes making adjustments if the initial assumptions (which I believe are inevitable and necessary) were unlike what people actually did when playing it.
3) Thus, the claim in step 1 is one of
3a) true but meaningless in practice (since all modules are balanced this way, all modules are therefore, by his definition, tailored).
3b) false (balancing based on these factors isn't a useful sign of tailoring).
3c) moot (because that wasn't what he was claiming at all, and I misread something).

That is, I wasn't saying that "not tailoring == tailoring", I was saying that this particular example doesn't work. That is, it was an attempt at a disproof by contradiction. :shrug: Not important now, really.

I still think that CaS and CaW aren't good terms with solid definitions. They seem to be more "Term for style I like" and "Term for style I don't like." No two persons use the same definitions it seems, and people aren't consistent from post to post as to what exactly is meant by either.

Darth Ultron

2017-11-05, 10:47 PM

Now who's talking beyond crazy? That was a pretty clear cut example of removing player agency with a quantum ogre.

So if I understand you right....a DM can never change anything once it is written down somewhere? If the guards are 3rd level warrior humans with full stat blocks, they must always be that, no matter what?

But on the other hand, if the DM has nothing, or just a tiny note that says human guards, then the DM can improv/make/create the guards into anything on a whim? So they could be anything, as nothing is set?

So the Dm can sit there with a empty sheet of paper, and when the player attacks with their character and hired thugs the DM can just improv/create do anything at any challenge level they want to on a whim.

But the DM that planned ahead and wrote the stat blocks down for X is absolutely stuck with X forever and can never change anything?

Knaight

2017-11-05, 11:21 PM

I still think that CaS and CaW aren't good terms with solid definitions. They seem to be more "Term for style I like" and "Term for style I don't like." No two persons use the same definitions it seems, and people aren't consistent from post to post as to what exactly is meant by either.

You're not the only one. These are terrible jargon, and they've been extremely widely adopted to the point where it seems like GNS theory was a tiny thing nobody ever talked about.

Psyren

2017-11-09, 11:24 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-09, 11:34 AM

Also, this Extra Credits video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs

Every GM is at heart a game designer, so learning more about game design (even games in other media) will make you a better GM.

I'm probably the wrong one to talk (since I'm not motivated by challenge much at all), but I think there's a large difference between "fair" and "unfair" difficulty. Difficult because it requires coordination, thought, and memory (good platformers)? Fine. Difficult because the game engine is buggy or cheats? Not fine (for the majority, I believe).

For TTRPGs, that's one reason I'm not fond of leaving things up to a random table. The odds of getting a string of insurmountable challenges in a row (unless the table is tightly tuned) is too high for me to find it fun. As is the chance of getting a bunch of cake-walks in a row. Random odds are random, after all.

Pleh

2017-11-09, 11:34 AM

Pathfinder says it explicitly. Core Rulebook pg. 9:

While a 1st-level character might be up to saving a farmer’s daughter from rampaging goblins, defeating a terrifying red dragon might require the powers of a 20th-level hero. It is the Game Master’s duty to provide challenges for your character that are engaging, but not so deadly as to leave you with no hope of success.

Every GM is at heart a game designer, so learning more about game design (even games in other media) will make you a better GM.

I completely agree, but with one caveat.

Sometimes I do throw a monster that is *clearly* beyond the group's abilities, but not as a combat encounter as much as a "deal with the devil" scenario or a "horror" trope or even just a simple chase scene.

They seem to work pretty well when I can communicate clearly enough to the players that initiating combat is a bad choice that I was trying rather particularly to prevent them from making. Once the players understand that, while the monster has stats and can bleed, they weren't meant to make an attempt on its life, they usually appreciate the opportunity to make out of level interactions with being greater than themselves.

It can help feel the universe is bigger than they are and that there's always a bigger fish out there (without feeling like the DM wants to drop them in the shark tank to watch them get shred to pieces).

PhoenixPhyre

2017-11-09, 11:47 AM

I completely agree, but with one caveat.

Sometimes I do throw a monster that is *clearly* beyond the group's abilities, but not as a combat encounter as much as a "deal with the devil" scenario or a "horror" trope or even just a simple chase scene.

They seem to work pretty well when I can communicate clearly enough to the players that initiating combat is a bad choice that I was trying rather particularly to prevent them from making. Once the players understand that, while the monster has stats and can bleed, they weren't meant to make an attempt on its life, they usually appreciate the opportunity to make out of level interactions with being greater than themselves.

It can help feel the universe is bigger than they are and that there's always a bigger fish out there (without feeling like the DM wants to drop them in the shark tank to watch them get shred to pieces).

This works well when heavily telegraphed (hmmm, most things do now that I think about it--surprise twists don't sit well a lot of the time in TTRPGs). You do occasionally have the player who doesn't take the hint--

One of the only characters that have died at my table was a paladin (level 2) who ran up to a sleeping Dire Yeti (CR 9) in a cave (that they didn't have to enter at all), repeatedly yelled "Chewbacca" at it until it woke up, and then spent 3 turns taunting it while I described its huge, scary appearance and hungry look. This, sprinkled with many "are you sure"s, led to it attacking and one-shotting him. And crunching on his bones noisily. All of this was after I made a clear point in session 0 that not everything is there to be fought--running away is a viable action, as is stealth, as is calm discourse.

Psyren

2017-11-09, 11:48 AM

I'm probably the wrong one to talk (since I'm not motivated by challenge much at all), but I think there's a large difference between "fair" and "unfair" difficulty. Difficult because it requires coordination, thought, and memory (good platformers)? Fine. Difficult because the game engine is buggy or cheats? Not fine (for the majority, I believe).

For TTRPGs, that's one reason I'm not fond of leaving things up to a random table. The odds of getting a string of insurmountable challenges in a row (unless the table is tightly tuned) is too high for me to find it fun. As is the chance of getting a bunch of cake-walks in a row. Random odds are random, after all.

Indeed, and they explain exactly what they mean by "fair difficulty" in that video, and ways you can achieve it. Even though the video focuses on video game design, a lot of it is applicable to tabletop. Ensuring consistency of rules applies both to houserules, and to allowed sources/errata as well; proper telegraphing so players can make informed choices is important too. If the players forget something basic that their characters would easily pick up on, that would make an upcoming encounter engaging rather than punishing - give them that hint, or at the very least let them roll a check of some kind to see if they remember it. For giving them the proper tools, don't be afraid to buff PCs that are low-tier or otherwise weak, or allow better alternatives.

"As a designer, you're not trying to defeat your player. You want them to overcome the challenges you're setting before them. Your goal as a designer is to get your player so invested, so engaged, that they want to beat this game, even though it's difficult.
...
It's very easy to make a punishing game. The real challenge is getting your player through a difficult one."

Replace "game" with "campaign", "designer" with "game master" and "player" with "players" and you'have what I feel is the correct philosophy.

I completely agree, but with one caveat.

Sometimes I do throw a monster that is *clearly* beyond the group's abilities, but not as a combat encounter as much as a "deal with the devil" scenario or a "horror" trope or even just a simple chase scene.

They seem to work pretty well when I can communicate clearly enough to the players that initiating combat is a bad choice that I was trying rather particularly to prevent them from making. Once the players understand that, while the monster has stats and can bleed, they weren't meant to make an attempt on its life, they usually appreciate the opportunity to make out of level interactions with being greater than themselves.

It can help feel the universe is bigger than they are and that there's always a bigger fish out there (without feeling like the DM wants to drop them in the shark tank to watch them get shred to pieces).

Indeed and in that case, success is still possible, just not by fighting.

But here again, you need to telegraph that this is not actually a combat encounter appropriately. And if every other monster in your world is one, that leads to the same inconsistency of rules they mentioned.

Quertus

2017-11-09, 02:22 PM

I'm probably the wrong one to talk (since I'm not motivated by challenge much at all), but I think there's a large difference between "fair" and "unfair" difficulty. Difficult because it requires coordination, thought, and memory (good platformers)? Fine. Difficult because the game engine is buggy or cheats? Not fine (for the majority, I believe).

For TTRPGs, that's one reason I'm not fond of leaving things up to a random table. The odds of getting a string of insurmountable challenges in a row (unless the table is tightly tuned) is too high for me to find it fun. As is the chance of getting a bunch of cake-walks in a row. Random odds are random, after all.

Sorry, I don't follow. If you had said, "buggy or cheats, not fine", and followed it with, "and that's why I don't accept GMs fudging rolls", I'd follow your logic. But what does that have to do with random tables?

I completely agree, but with one caveat.

Sometimes I do throw a monster that is *clearly* beyond the group's abilities, but not as a combat encounter as much as a "deal with the devil" scenario or a "horror" trope or even just a simple chase scene.

They seem to work pretty well when I can communicate clearly enough to the players that initiating combat is a bad choice that I was trying rather particularly to prevent them from making. Once the players understand that, while the monster has stats and can bleed, they weren't meant to make an attempt on its life, they usually appreciate the opportunity to make out of level interactions with being greater than themselves.

It can help feel the universe is bigger than they are and that there's always a bigger fish out there (without feeling like the DM wants to drop them in the shark tank to watch them get shred to pieces).

This works well when heavily telegraphed (hmmm, most things do now that I think about it--surprise twists don't sit well a lot of the time in TTRPGs). You do occasionally have the player who doesn't take the hint--

One of the only characters that have died at my table was a paladin (level 2) who ran up to a sleeping Dire Yeti (CR 9) in a cave (that they didn't have to enter at all), repeatedly yelled "Chewbacca" at it until it woke up, and then spent 3 turns taunting it while I described its huge, scary appearance and hungry look. This, sprinkled with many "are you sure"s, led to it attacking and one-shotting him. And crunching on his bones noisily. All of this was after I made a clear point in session 0 that not everything is there to be fought--running away is a viable action, as is stealth, as is calm discourse.

There's also a difference between running a world/sandbox and running an adventure/module. With a world, you kinda expect that not everything will be "on your level" (especially in D&D, unless you seriously expect 1st level clerics to be punching out their gods). Whereas most modules have the equivalent of "for level X characters" - which carries an implicit expectation that X power level will be sufficient to successfully complete the module. I've played adventures where the GM wouldn't budge on level (I had a character of level Y I'd have preferred to play), then 1st encounter -> TPK. Invariably, I'd poke the GM with a nice gentle "WTF dude", and receive back a "sorry, I'm an idiot who neither understands game balance nor tests their modules", albeit rarely in so many words. Most GMs IME have a very poor sense of balance; such stories are just among the more extreme examples of how that manifests.

I've run into similar 1st encounter TPK situations in video games, too. Here, however, it was the result of the fact that the first encounter sequence was designed to require lateral thinking. Sorry, I'm all for lateral thinking, but if I can configure my character / build the party, I require the 1st sequence to let me test this configuration., so that I can go back to the drawing board if I don't like what I've built. Opening with a test of Player skills doesn't let me test my character creation skills.

I personally prefer the old-school mindset that the burden of determining what they want to take on is on the players, not the GM. The GM runs the world, the players bite off however much they believe that they can chew.

Darth Ultron

2017-11-10, 09:29 AM

I personally prefer the old-school mindset that the burden of determining what they want to take on is on the players, not the GM. The GM runs the world, the players bite off however much they believe that they can chew.

Me too.

Not only is the whole idea of encounter levels broken, but they are also meaningless. While sure a single hill giant is way too much for a group of 1st level characters.....things get very fuzzy after that. The ''numbers'' are really no help beyond a low level game.

And even if you follow the rules for a set encounter...the DM doing things like clever tactics and make a huge difference. Suddenly that encounter has all the characters defeated in like three rounds. And, of course, players doing clever tactics can work the other way too.

Pleh

2017-11-10, 09:46 AM

Me too.

Not only is the whole idea of encounter levels broken, but they are also meaningless. While sure a single hill giant is way too much for a group of 1st level characters.....things get very fuzzy after that. The ''numbers'' are really no help beyond a low level game.

And even if you follow the rules for a set encounter...the DM doing things like clever tactics and make a huge difference. Suddenly that encounter has all the characters defeated in like three rounds. And, of course, players doing clever tactics can work the other way too.

Nah, they're not meaningless. They're context-specific.

"If used as intended, you can expect this average result."

That is to say, if the party is the standard Beat Stick, Healbot, Skill Monkey, and Blaster and they use their skills to kill monsters through direct combat, you can use the encounter numbers to fairly accurately predict how much resources an encounter of a specified level will cost the party of a specified level (assuming these two indicated levels are within the associated tolerance for their relative distance from each other).

Just because its meaning is ultra specific doesn't mean that it doesn't have any meaning at all. Quite the opposite. Like JaronK's Tiers, it's more of a guideline that expects you to start from, "the standard" and adjust the approximate average result piece by piece, not to try to apply its math to a totally different scenario. It makes no claims about what happens when you jump way off the rails into Tippyverse or just plain start Teleporting past encounters (which by RAW gives the same XP as a fight to the death).

After all, when you start allowing the sheer number of alternatives skew the results of Encounter Level, I could counter argue that a Single Hill Giant can easily be one shot by level 1 characters... if the Hill Giant is asleep, doesn't notice the level 1 characters sneak up, and the group simultaneously Coup De Grace's the Giant, the Giant could easily fail one of its Fortitude Saves and die instantly.

See? By this logic, Encounter Level doesn't matter even at low level.

Encounter Level is only speaking to a very specific context and was intended to be a baseline from which DMs could make incremental steps away from, but it was never intended to work for scenarios that bear no resemblance to the fundamental baseline.

Psyren

2017-11-10, 11:16 AM

Me too.

Not only is the whole idea of encounter levels broken, but they are also meaningless. While sure a single hill giant is way too much for a group of 1st level characters.....things get very fuzzy after that. The ''numbers'' are really no help beyond a low level game.

And even if you follow the rules for a set encounter...the DM doing things like clever tactics and make a huge difference. Suddenly that encounter has all the characters defeated in like three rounds. And, of course, players doing clever tactics can work the other way too.

1) Disagree, the numbers are quite helpful - particularly in newer systems like PF and 5e with a bit more balance and playtesting.

2) Most monster entries give general or even specific tactics used by the monster that contribute to its printed CR. If you as the GM deviate from those and get more or less clever, the CR should be adjusted accordingly. Using your Hill Giant example, Pathfinder says this:

"Hill giants prefer to fight from high, rocky outcroppings, where they can pelt opponents with rocks and boulders while limiting the risk to themselves. Hill giants love to make overrun attacks against smaller creatures when they first join battle. Thereafter, they stand fast and swing away with their massive clubs."
...
"They are, as a whole, incredibly selfish creatures and rarely engage in battles they don’t automatically know they’ll win. Hill giants are known for shoving one another at terrifying foes and won’t hesitate to sacrifice a clan-mate to save their own skins. Roving bands of hill giants are common in temperate hills, and their constant aggression makes them one of the more feared dangers in this climate."

So their listed CR assumes they start by chucking rocks, then when enemies close the distance (or they run out of ammo to toss) they try to overrun their targets, followed by standing their ground and swinging - and if one of them starts to get beat up, he will turn on his comrades quickly to save his own skin. A level 7 PF party can deal with and even exploit all of these tactics reasonably well, and the PCs who do particularly well on their knowledge checks will even be aware of said tactics. If you have the giants get fancy though - say, triggering an avalanche they've set up ahead of time, or using teamwork to have their wounded members fall back in favor of fresh ones - the CR should be increased accordingly. Moreover, given that they are CE, such tactical coordination will probably require the presence of a chieftan or other controlling intelligence of some kind - further raising the encounter's CR, and providing the PCs with a priority target. If that individual is then neutralized, the remaining giants would fall back into bad habits or even flee.

And incidentally, on the tactical front - if a given PC invests enough in knowledge, part of your job is to actually clue them in to tactics like this. In addition to keeping encounters fair, it makes the PC who invested in those skills feel rewarded for doing so, and valued by the party. It also encourages the whole party to cover a wide variety of knowledge skills. You don't have to read passages like the one I included above word for word, but just paraphrase the kind of behavior the monster will typically engage in.