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Shinizak
2020-01-09, 02:16 AM
How do you generate difficulty?

In so many games there are DMs who say that they're going to run "hard" games, and usually (in my experience) that translates into 3 possible game experiences:

Dark souls: where every monster is out for blood and can/ will kill you in 2 hits or less.
Hard limits: where every check is arbitrarily harder than it needs to be, and there the world is FULL of these monstrous checks.
Douchebaggery: the world just hates you. You could play a philanthropic Disney princess who poops rainbows and kindness, but every NPC is low key hostile towards you, even if you JUST saved them and and their goat.

Usually it's some combination of the 3.

I know that we can do better than this. Is there a way to emphasize difficulty without being and ass about it? Could an ultra hard game ever be played in a Bright or Noble Bright setting?

King of Nowhere
2020-01-09, 05:32 AM
Of course it can. You only need the first two factors to have a hard game.
My campaign was full of helpful people and reasonable autority figures - including most of the villains.
Allies were showering the party with items, information, resurrections, support spells.
The campaign also featured a party of 20th level liches as main antagonists, with phylacteries well unavailable. A buffed elder dragon. And a couple of betraials among people close to the party. It was expected that some party members would die in any major fight (i used easy resurrection as part of the worldbuilding, for the villains too), and from some they had to escape to avoid a tpk.
So yes, it was bright but hard

Pleh
2020-01-09, 06:26 AM
Most of my experience is D&D post 2007, but in D&D like games, the intended difficulty is attrition. It's not supposed to be hard to survive a mob of goblins. The mob of goblins is supposed to make the party choose between dropping a casting of fireball or trusting the fighter's AC for a few rounds.

Attrition is commonly thought of as dour, but it doesn't have to be. All it means is that difficulty can be set by limiting the party's ability to rest between fights. That can maintain a bright and noble theme throughout an adventure.

Quertus
2020-01-09, 07:54 AM
What factors can contribute to difficulty? The OP lists NPC hostility monster hostility monster lethality ****ing up DCs

To that, I'll add oversized encounters - number of monsters per encounter plentiful encounters - number of encounters per… rest adjacent encounters - need for stealth/speed, as encounters trigger encounters intelligent monsters puzzle monsters time limits decreased information misinformation multiple goals conflicting goals rule of unintended consequences don't be a fan of the PCs constantly change the rules violate expectations - especially by removing expected resources ("low magic D&D", for example)

EDIT: tailored foes adaptive foes let the dice fall where they may cheat at dice for the monsters cheat at other layers

That should get us started.

Grod_The_Giant
2020-01-09, 08:09 AM
I know that we can do better than this. Is there a way to emphasize difficulty without being and ass about it? Could an ultra hard game ever be played in a Bright or Noble Bright setting?
Sure. To make a game difficult, you just set the goal-posts higher than what basic "roll a check, kick down the door" gameplay can achieve. A "hard" game shouldn't be one that becomes easy with more optimization; it should be one that makes you think.

Guizonde
2020-01-09, 09:11 AM
i play high lethality-high rewards game. whenever my players encounter a fight, they know there's a very real chance of getting maimed or killed. based on the characters they rolled up, they'll either fight defensively, fight with pure trickery, or just go gung-ho on the theory that chutzpah trumps danger (it's surprisingly effective).

as a dm, my quests are simple: tall-order objective, and you have to convince the world you are the hero. i'm interested in seeing the characters develop, and it seems to please my players that the emphasis is their characters evolving. it doesn't make my games hard, per se, but the bigger the challenges or the more prestigious the reward, the more they're willing to move earth and sky to succeed. as an example in my current campaign:

-the pc's are the elite of a mercenary guild: their life expectancy is measured in in-game weeks, if not days. that is hard to accept for players.
-they're facing horrors that never challenged the guild, and everyone is counting on them. it's rough on their psyche thanks to insanity checks and the weight of the responsibility.
-they're going in blind. they don't know what they're going up against, or where they're going, or how they're going to succeed.
-they've skipped the "kill five goblins", they're already punching out ogres as "beginner characters" and surviving thanks to trickery and a hold the line mentality, as they know the guild encourages.
-the quest is to save the village, with the prestigious npc's begging them to do it, knowing the prestigious npc's are scared silly.
-the combat is brutal, with very little chance of healing grievious wounds, like broken bones or amputation.
-ammo is scarce. food is scarce. information is scarce.
-language barriers, and the future npc's they'll meet don't know them, meaning they have to prove themselves. it's gonna be a grind.
-they're under the impression that they are on a time limit. granted, the time limit is advancing at the speed of plot most of the time, but that's another mental stressor.


not really difficult on their own, but taken all at the same time, it's a crushingly hard thing for a pc to take in: they're in the dark, the only thing they can hold on is the confidence in their character's ability and their ability to think quickly on their feet.

since my players are experienced in the system, and are starting to know the in's and out's of how to survive, i'm adding mental difficulty and throwing curve balls we didn't explore previously. in my long list of things to be explored are hit and run enemies, traps, poison attacks, and assassination attempts. they will be harried constantly, until one of two things happen: physical attrition happens (low ammo, low provisions, low health), or mental attrition (insanity points, fear of failure, paranoia...). my game reads like a tour guide of the world combined with how the big bad created monsters that have been a fixture in the game for the past 5 years. it's easy, it's no big challenge. but the characters don't know that, and the players don't know it. the difficulty comes from the psychological aspects and their fears of the unknown. oh, and dismemberment. nobody wants to get dismembered.

Koo Rehtorb
2020-01-09, 10:08 AM
There's nothing wrong with a game being mechanically difficult. The world being unrealistically hostile is irritating, though. But another option is to heavily punish player mistakes. You can do that in a "fair" way, if a player decides to sass the king, have the king try to have him executed on the spot instead of some lesser response. Or you can do it in an "unfair" way, Tomb of Horrors style.

kyoryu
2020-01-09, 11:42 AM
Sure. To make a game difficult, you just set the goal-posts higher than what basic "roll a check, kick down the door" gameplay can achieve. A "hard" game shouldn't be one that becomes easy with more optimization; it should be one that makes you think.

This.

Even kicking in a door is a decision - am I willing to make the noise it takes? Is that worth doing it quickly? What if it fails? What attention am I going to attract? Am i ready for that? Is getting through the door worth it? What's the danger of picking the lock instead, or trying to find another way?

Even in a scenario as simple as "kick down the door", there can be a lot of decision-making. The actual door-kicking check is the leasti interesting bit, if you're "doing it right".

There's a few quotes about games, I think both from Sid Meier:
"A game is a series of interesting decisions."
"Gameplay happens at the nexus of suboptimal choices"

IOW, it's your decisions that make the game, not the mechanics that come into play - the mechanics are there to create the decisions. And by suboptimal, it means that you cannot deduce a "correct" choice in most situations. In the case of the door, you're weighing speed vs noise vs the value of what's behind the door vs. probably a number of other things as well. None of the options (kick down the door, pick the lock, ignore the door) are obviously and inherently better, they all have advantages and disadvantages.

noob
2020-01-09, 12:19 PM
Most of my experience is D&D post 2007, but in D&D like games, the intended difficulty is attrition. It's not supposed to be hard to survive a mob of goblins. The mob of goblins is supposed to make the party choose between dropping a casting of fireball or trusting the fighter's AC for a few rounds.

Attrition is commonly thought of as dour, but it doesn't have to be. All it means is that difficulty can be set by limiting the party's ability to rest between fights. That can maintain a bright and noble theme throughout an adventure.

The problem is setting inconsistency.
"I am going to be 100% sure to die if I fight but like all those 200 other goblins that died while barely inflicting a scratch on those people I am going to fight to the death"
Afterwards somehow goblins are not considered as the ultimate honour bound martyrs of their causes while they are ready to fight to the death in masses in the hope of one day killing an adventurer that went too fast through the dungeons instead of regrouping all their forces or surrendering as if the two latter were forbidden things.

Attrition dungeon delving is among the least realistic dungeon delving systems possible unless you work for making a setting that explains it. (Maybe dying from a cause other than being killed in a fight by an adventurer is the ultimate dishonour any living creature can go through)

King of Nowhere
2020-01-09, 02:10 PM
The problem is setting inconsistency.
"I am going to be 100% sure to die if I fight but like all those 200 other goblins that died while barely inflicting a scratch on those people I am going to fight to the death"
Afterwards somehow goblins are not considered as the ultimate honour bound martyrs of their causes while they are ready to fight to the death in masses in the hope of one day killing an adventurer that went too fast through the dungeons instead of regrouping all their forces or surrendering as if the two latter were forbidden things.

Attrition dungeon delving is among the least realistic dungeon delving systems possible unless you work for making a setting that explains it. (Maybe dying from cause other than being killed in a fight by an adventurer is the ultimate dishonour any living creature can go through)

+1.
while the game would be designed for attrition, i very rarely use it, because it's hard to justify it plausibly from the other side

Pleh
2020-01-09, 05:28 PM
The problem is setting inconsistency.
"I am going to be 100% sure to die if I fight but like all those 200 other goblins that died while barely inflicting a scratch on those people I am going to fight to the death"
Afterwards somehow goblins are not considered as the ultimate honour bound martyrs of their causes while they are ready to fight to the death in masses in the hope of one day killing an adventurer that went too fast through the dungeons instead of regrouping all their forces or surrendering as if the two latter were forbidden things.

Attrition dungeon delving is among the least realistic dungeon delving systems possible unless you work for making a setting that explains it. (Maybe dying from a cause other than being killed in a fight by an adventurer is the ultimate dishonour any living creature can go through)

I've never had a problem with inconsistency.

For one thing, you probably aren't fighting 200 goblins in an open field where they all see how hard it is to win. You are crawling through a dungeon, where you fight goblins in gradually increasing increments.

"You may have killed the watchmen, but the security forces will not be so easy!"

"You may have killed our security, but our elite guard can't be beaten!"

"They may have killed the elite guard, but they can't kill me if I drop boiling oil on them from cover!"

"They may have breached our defenses, but no one can defeat our Champion(TM)!"

You kill 200 goblins gradually over several encounters.

And recall that sometimes, enemies WILL see the battle is hopeless and run away. You still get XP as if you killed them (though not the loot unless they drop it).

Now all you have to do to add attrition is make it so you can't rest between taking out the watch, the security, the elite guard, the defenses, then the boss. Some enemies may retreat, but each has a reason to think THIS encounter will go differently than the last.

kyoryu
2020-01-09, 07:24 PM
So have outclassed forces flee.

Don't you do that? I do that all the time.

Telok
2020-01-09, 08:08 PM
So have outclassed forces flee.

Don't you do that? I do that all the time.

Morale hasn't been a thing in D&D for going on 20 years now. All the fresh/new D&D DMs I've played with in the last decade+ have had everything fight to the death.

GrayDeath
2020-01-09, 08:13 PM
Take 50ccm hard Math problems, add 25cl hard Liquor, add ground Granite, stir, bake for 123 minutes, done.


Fewer jokes: A lot of good hints have already been given, but let me concentrate on the 3 most important for actual TTRPG use I use when Iw ant to make it "hard" (mind, thats not what you seem to understand nder the same idiom^^).


1.: They know exactly as much about the world as their characters. THis they get either in text form (if they are relatively new) or I tell them and they have to take notes.
If they want more info, they have to work for every scrap of it.
And if they find out they dont know enough? Well, their fault.

2.: The world is very much NOT "level graded and color coded for your convenience". Consequences and power structures are very much real and DO WORK against anyone not respecting them.
if they do not try tog et info about an area before going in, the Dragon there WILL hunt (and likely kill) their Level 3 Party.

If they think they can just walk to the High priest of the continent spanning LN church and be a disrespectful douchebag, well, ahve fun sitting in prsion for the next 10 years.

3.: There will be both a hard time limit and clear set, "big" goals for them to reach within it.
If they are too slow, or too afraid, dont think enough, or simply not good enough, then the WILL LOSE.




What I will however NEVER do is pulling arbitrarily high DC`s out of my ass (just because they are now level 12 does not mean climbing the hill is suddenly DC 20 instead of DC 10) or use lots of Gotcha encounters or let the world react "stupid mean" "just because".

JoeJ
2020-01-09, 08:31 PM
Morale hasn't been a thing in D&D for going on 20 years now. All the fresh/new D&D DMs I've played with in the last decade+ have had everything fight to the death.

This thread is in the general roleplay forum, so I wouldn't assume it's referring specifically to D&D.

However, morale is certainly a thing in modern D&D; it's on p. 273 of the DMG. And leafing through Tales from the Yawning Portal, I see a number of places where it says that monsters will try to escape if they're losing. I'm pretty sure I recall seeing similar description in other published adventures as well.

Guizonde
2020-01-09, 08:38 PM
Take 50ccm hard Math problems, add 25cl hard Liquor, add ground Granite, stir, bake for 123 minutes, done.


Fewer jokes: A lot of good hints have already been given, but let me concentrate on the 3 most important for actual TTRPG use I use when Iw ant to make it "hard" (mind, thats not what you seem to understand nder the same idiom^^).


1.: They know exactly as much about the world as their characters. THis they get either in text form (if they are relatively new) or I tell them and they have to take notes.
If they want more info, they have to work for every scrap of it.
And if they find out they dont know enough? Well, their fault.

2.: The world is very much NOT "level graded and color coded for your convenience". Consequences and power structures are very much real and DO WORK against anyone not respecting them.
if they do not try tog et info about an area before going in, the Dragon there WILL hunt (and likely kill) their Level 3 Party.

If they think they can just walk to the High priest of the continent spanning LN church and be a disrespectful douchebag, well, ahve fun sitting in prsion for the next 10 years.

3.: There will be both a hard time limit and clear set, "big" goals for them to reach within it.
If they are too slow, or too afraid, dont think enough, or simply not good enough, then the WILL LOSE.




What I will however NEVER do is pulling arbitrarily high DC`s out of my ass (just because they are now level 12 does not mean climbing the hill is suddenly DC 20 instead of DC 10) or use lots of Gotcha encounters or let the world react "stupid mean" "just because".

this is my outlook as well, but for the first point, let's just say that my players are more than familiar with the setting, only the flavor changes, so they already have the basics, not the nuances.

for the second, that's a given. a jailbreak is always a possibility, but then enjoy being hunted down ruthlessly. we've done it in the past when i was a player. let me tell you, having your character tortured for a week before the party breaks you out is no fun. it also created a major difficulty spike, since now everyone wanted to kill us, not just the evil factions we were going up against. the third point was done by one of the players dm'ing, and he told us afterwards it was nerve-wracking to track time, do you have any tips? i'm trying to implement it more precisely beyond counting weeks. oh, and for dc's and gotcha moments, oddly enough, either the system doesn't care for them, or my players always luck out at just the right time.

Droid Tony
2020-01-09, 11:12 PM
Sure. To make a game difficult, you just set the goal-posts higher than what basic "roll a check, kick down the door" gameplay can achieve. A "hard" game shouldn't be one that becomes easy with more optimization; it should be one that makes you think.

Agreed.

A basic role playing game is HARD. And as a role playing game simulates real life, it's as hard as real life. Simply put, most players don't stand a chance as they don't have the real life skills to role play an ''adventurer". So most game play makes it easy or super easy, for the players.

The two big ways to make a RPG Easy are for the DM to lead the players: Railroading or for the DM to change the world to the players whims: Sandbox.

Want a game that is difficult, hard or even impossible: Run one that is NOT a Railroad or a Sandbox.

Jay R
2020-01-09, 11:41 PM
A “difficult” game is one in which the powers and abilities of the PCs are not sufficient to defeat many of the encounters in a straight-up fight.

Players should have to come up with something clever to win.

That’s what makes good stories.
Frodo is not a strong as Sauron or his minions.
The rebellion are not as strong as the empire.
Harry has less magic than Voldemort.
Zorro could never defeat all the Alcalde’s soldiers.

PCs should start avalanches, sneak past the guards, outwit minions, etc. — because they cannot simply out- fight them.

What the players want today is is a CR-appropriate encounter that they easily defeat with the abilities on their character sheet. But what they will want tomorrow is to have survived overwhelming odds with a brilliant move that they believe other players would never have come up with.

“Only those who attempt the absurd will ever achieve the impossible.”

Pugwampy
2020-01-10, 03:40 AM
I know that we can do better than this. Is there a way to emphasize difficulty without being and ass about it? Could an ultra hard game ever be played in a Bright or Noble Bright setting?


I am not sure what you want ?


If players can escape from the fight anytime they like , you can go as nutz as you want . DND is about unpredictability and randomness , you should mix around super hard and stupid easy and somewhat balance all the time . Dont stick to one difficulty .

Why do you want an ultra hard game only ? What if you have a mix of players from noob to veteren ?

Guizonde
2020-01-10, 04:49 AM
A “difficult” game is one in which the powers and abilities of the PCs are not sufficient to defeat many of the encounters in a straight-up fight.

Players should have to come up with something clever to win.

That’s what makes good stories.
Frodo is not a strong as Sauron or his minions.
The rebellion are not as strong as the empire.
Harry has less magic than Voldemort.
Zorro could never defeat all the Alcalde’s soldiers.

PCs should start avalanches, sneak past the guards, outwit minions, etc. — because they cannot simply out- fight them.

What the players want today is is a CR-appropriate encounter that they easily defeat with the abilities on their character sheet. But what they will want tomorrow is to have survived overwhelming odds with a brilliant move that they believe other players would never have come up with.

“Only those who attempt the absurd will ever achieve the impossible.”

i've got a great story about that. we were meant to sneak into a town where the guards were out for blood. they outnumbered us about 20 to 1 and had gear on par with us. so we threw the dm a curve ball. we sneaked in as planned, but not using the sewer systems. we dressed up as courtesans, got painted up really heavily, stored most our loot underground before the city checkpoint, and waltzed up to the guard house. my friend's impression of an over the top madam was so good and cringy that we were escorted to the red light district. all of that in under 5 skill checks.

for honesty's sake, my plan was to vaporize lsd into the guardhouse and let them slaughter each other. the way my friend roleplayed, though, i'm glad we went for his plan. we call it "outsmarting the dm", but it's really thinking up left field solutions. as dm's and players, we love it when we pull it off. sure, fighting a big boss and barely surviving is awesome, and we've all got tales about that. but actually doing something off the beaten path makes for funnier and/ or better stories.

another one, and the most memorable to me, was the fourth session i dm'd in my post-apocalyptic rpg. there are these big tanks that are used to move junk into neat and ordered piles in the world's junkyard. all automated. they look just like the tinier versions used to clean the corridors, except they're about 3 meters tall and 4 wide. big roomba, i know. i spooked the players with the giant rumbling, the junk piles collapsing, and my players were on edge. they meet the darn thing, and instead of generating a chase sequence like i'd hoped, they jumped on the thing! they managed to pry it open, and stop it cold, just like they did on many roombas before. ok, i can roll with that. the team engineer outfitting it with human controls? yeah, not planned, but i rolled with it. little did i know how i'd just broken my own game. i loved it, but that's the day i lost control of that very memorable campaign.

Pleh
2020-01-10, 10:22 AM
Agreed.

A basic role playing game is HARD. And as a role playing game simulates real life, it's as hard as real life. Simply put, most players don't stand a chance as they don't have the real life skills to role play an ''adventurer". So most game play makes it easy or super easy, for the players.

The two big ways to make a RPG Easy are for the DM to lead the players: Railroading or for the DM to change the world to the players whims: Sandbox.

Want a game that is difficult, hard or even impossible: Run one that is NOT a Railroad or a Sandbox.

A railroad and a sandbox can still be very difficult. A difficult Railroad tends to be frustrating as you basically become the DM's punching bag, but some people like CoC.

A difficult Sandbox may just mean danger everywhere and you stay underleveled. You have to stay smart to stay alive.

Quertus
2020-01-10, 10:47 AM
change the world to the players whims: Sandbox.

Citation needed on that definition of "sandbox".

IMO, a sandbox is exactly the opposite: where the world (starting condition) is set in stone, but the players are allowed to interact with the world however they want. See the classic "hex crawl" as a simple example of a sandbox.

King of Nowhere
2020-01-10, 11:42 AM
Morale hasn't been a thing in D&D for going on 20 years now. All the fresh/new D&D DMs I've played with in the last decade+ have had everything fight to the death.
do we actually need a game mechanic to decide that the npc are having enough and run? the players certainly can escape whenever they choose

kyoryu
2020-01-10, 12:14 PM
do we actually need a game mechanic to decide that the npc are having enough and run? the players certainly can escape whenever they choose

Exactly this. The GM should do "what the NPCs would do". People do not just throw their lives away for no reason.

Droid Tony
2020-01-10, 03:30 PM
Citation needed on that definition of "sandbox".

IMO, a sandbox is exactly the opposite: where the world (starting condition) is set in stone, but the players are allowed to interact with the world however they want. See the classic "hex crawl" as a simple example of a sandbox.

Wait, do I have the wrong word? What is the game called where the DM makes up very little game world facts, and lets the players fill in the blanks by altering the game reality to whatever the players wish.

I'm talking about difficulty as in the role playing side of the game. My thinking was:

Railroad: The DM makes hard unchangable facts, Item Y is located in place X. But the players can just sit back and relax as the DM will lead them right there.

Sandbox: The DM makes few facts, and they can be changed on a whim. Specificaly, whatever the players pick to do is the 'right' one to continue the adventure.

So if you have a game where the DM does not lead the players and the players can't just 'pick' the right path, you will have a very difficult game.

Koo Rehtorb
2020-01-10, 04:00 PM
Railroad: The DM makes hard unchangable facts, Item Y is located in place X. But the players can just sit back and relax as the DM will lead them right there.

Sandbox: The DM makes few facts, and they can be changed on a whim. Specificaly, whatever the players pick to do is the 'right' one to continue the adventure.

No. A railroad is a game in which the GM has a predefined plot and will aggressively force the players back onto the plot against their will.

A sandbox is a game where you establish the setting beforehand and the players can do whatever they want within that setting.

malloc
2020-01-10, 05:04 PM
Lots of talk about crunch with respect to encounter design for difficulty. I think there's a better way--multi-objective encounters.

Basically, you want to divide the party's attention between two sub-goals and force them to split their actions between the two, or sacrifice one objective to ensure the other. This builds naturally from yes-and/yes-but systems of check resolution, where partial success or partial failure exist to drive dramatic tension.

Consider this simple example: you have gone into the cult's base to stop them. Some of the cultists attack you. Some of them keep doing the ritual. This creates agency, which is the best way to drive difficulty without getting into punitive math and a crunch arms-race. Do the players ignore the attacks and focus on the ritual? Do they ignore the ritual and focus on the attacks? Do they split attention?

Difficulty can be healthily driven by increasing the number of objectives the party wants to accomplish while maintaining a fixed resource limit (namely, actions, but gold, spells, or any other limited resource works just as well). All of these tasks are very doable on their own, but when stacked together, they become difficult (or impossible) to all complete.

The downside is that building encounters like this is more taxing on the DM. Use it when it needs to count!

Jay R
2020-01-10, 07:20 PM
do we actually need a game mechanic to decide that the npc are having enough and run? the players certainly can escape whenever they choose

My mechanic for that is included in my "Rules for DMs":

26. When the party’s victory is assured, the encounter is over. End it.

a. Most NPCs won’t fight to the death; they would usually rather flee, negotiate, or surrender.
b. This is your opportunity to force-feed them that obvious fact they’ve been missing, and let them believe they earned it.
c. One round earlier, when you know the PCs have won and they don’t yet, is a great time for the NPCs to offer to negotiate.

King of Nowhere
2020-01-10, 07:46 PM
No. A railroad is a game in which the GM has a predefined plot and will aggressively force the players back onto the plot against their will.

A sandbox is a game where you establish the setting beforehand and the players can do whatever they want within that setting.

on the other hand, in most sandboxes the party will still find level-appropriate encounters. Some DM will probably have the sandbox say "and there is a dungeon here", but only fill it with appropriateely leveled denizens when needed. or they will find a way to telegraph which adventures are appropriate and which are not.

It is also worth noting that a sandbox is generally filled with a few plot hooks, and the players are expected to latch onto one of them. if they don't, and just keep doing random stuff, the dm is likely to get bored and quit, or to start railroading them.

and that, unless the dm is highly disfunctional, even a railroad will give plenty of freedom to the players; not much in what is their goal, but in how to accomplish it.

so, the distinction between a sandbox and a railroad is often more blurred that what is often assumed. And a sandbox is often not as well established as it's supposed to be.

Pelle
2020-01-10, 08:23 PM
What is the game called where the DM makes up very little game world facts, and lets the players fill in the blanks by altering the game reality to whatever the players wish.


An improvised game. Could be either GM- or player-led, and I guess the former can feel more railroady and the latter can feel more sandboxy.

Droid Tony
2020-01-10, 09:44 PM
Ok, some I'm saying the way to make a RPG more difficult is to make the players think. Most games are set up so the players don't have to think all that much in one of two ways:

DM Lead: The DM makes things simple, straigtforward and obvious. The players really don't need to do anything much to play the game other then follow the DMs lead.

Player Imporv: The DM simply makes the game world whatever the players think it is. The players don't really need to think much, as whatever they happen to think is right.

But a game without the above two thingsthe game is diffucult, hard or impossible for many players.

Telok
2020-01-11, 12:45 AM
do we actually need a game mechanic to decide that the npc are having enough and run? the players certainly can escape whenever they choose

From a decade of experiencing new DMs having every last rat, wolf, goblin, mercenary, and random encounter fight to the death? I'd say not only "yes" but also that having it be a couple sentences marked as optional in the wrong place and/or book isn't doing anyone any good.

Personally for figuring and setting difficulty I tend to use statistics and write simplistic computer simulations. Set them up around what the ststem does, put in the expected pc/npc values, and see the range of what cones out. Then I can work on adjusting things to give the desired outcomes most of the time. That plus some decades of experience let me set the difficulty.

Obviously that doesn't work very well with the base mechanic of most of the current d20 systems. Since they're a flat distribution in a bonus vs. target range with binary success/fail states they can only go three ways. Either the bonuses are so low that the die roll is more important than the player and the character, the bonuses and targets both advance at about the same rate so nothing really ever changes, or the bonus/target numbers outpace the d20 so you stop needing to roll the die because character build controls success and failure.

My preference these days is for a multi-die resolution system (bell curve consistency in results without completely removing extreme results) combined with degrees of success and multi-roll resolution.

JoeJ
2020-01-11, 01:04 AM
so, the distinction between a sandbox and a railroad is often more blurred that what is often assumed. And a sandbox is often not as well established as it's supposed to be.

A lot of people use railroad & sandbox as a binary distinction, but I think they're more usefully thought of as ends of a continuum. Very few, if any, campaigns are purely one or the other.

Quertus
2020-01-11, 07:51 AM
on the other hand, in most sandboxes the party will still find level-appropriate encounters. Some DM will probably have the sandbox say "and there is a dungeon here", but only fill it with appropriateely leveled denizens when needed. or they will find a way to telegraph which adventures are appropriate and which are not.

Most? That may be true, but does not match my personal style of sandboxes, nor my experiences with the sandboxes of others (where "ancient red dragon" was on the random encounter table, and was rolled with 1st level PCs).

Telegraph? I'll agree that, in the modern age, doing so is considered good form; personally, I'm not a fan, and prefer "discoverable".


It is also worth noting that a sandbox is generally filled with a few plot hooks, and the players are expected to latch onto one of them.

Well, there's a lot of nuiance missing here. Let me try to massage this a bit.

One of my sandboxes might contain, say, a dozen plots. Of which, by the end of session 1, the players might be aware of about 3. But the plots aren't designed with the explicit concept of "plot hooks" - it's up to the players to decide whether they want to get involved, and what they want to do about a given plot. Rumors of goblins in the East evolving, and seeking further improvements? The party is welcome to go (try to) investigate, wipe them out, aid them, con them into buying new false upgrades, steal the source of their power for themselves… or just ignore the situation entirely.

All in all, I would say that my sandboxes, at least, are filled with many plots, and the players are expected to latch onto one or more (preferably more) and/or develop one or more (preferably more) of their own.

What makes it a sandbox is that a) all content is optional, and b) there is no "prescribed method" of engaging any given content.


if they don't, and just keep doing random stuff, the dm is likely to get bored and quit, or to start railroading them.

… I guess it depends on what you describe as "random stuff". If the PCs decide that they want to set up a taco stand in "goblin evolution central", then that's them both engaging in one of the existing plots, and creating their own plot, not them doing "random stuff".

If, OTOH, they have a table of responses, and choose to <roll> ignore <roll> ignore <roll> ignore <roll> play a game with the fourth NPC <roll> ignore <roll> ignore <roll> slaughter the seventh NPC? Yeah, I'd probably get bored/quit.


and that, unless the dm is highly disfunctional, even a railroad will give plenty of freedom to the players; not much in what is their goal, but in how to accomplish it.

This is clearly a difference in definition of terms. To me, the act of "railroading" involves exactly that dysfunction you speak of - the GM negating/perverting the logical consequences of an action in order to force/preserve their script.


And a sandbox is often not as well established as it's supposed to be.

What do you mean by this sentence?


so, the distinction between a sandbox and a railroad is often more blurred that what is often assumed.


A lot of people use railroad & sandbox as a binary distinction, but I think they're more usefully thought of as ends of a continuum. Very few, if any, campaigns are purely one or the other.

I am glad that the Playground developed the "sandboxy" nomenclature to describe the somewhat continuum/spectrum nature of reality in this regard.

I probably have a false trichotomy in my head of "railroad", "sandbox", and "normal" games.

In a normal game, there is a plot, and plot hooks, which may have been sunken into the PCs in session 0. If the players somehow miss the plot, it represents a fail state.

In a sandbox game, there is no single plot, and "plot hooks" are incidental. If the players fail to engage any of the content, and do not create a plot of their own, it represents a fail state.

In a railroad, the GM has a defined script, of not just "what" but "how" (and "when"). Any deviation from that script represents a fail state (which will likely invoke the response of "railroading").

So, that's the false trichotomy that lives in my head, and what I'm usually thinking when I hear or use those words.

King of Nowhere
2020-01-11, 09:10 AM
From a decade of experiencing new DMs having every last rat, wolf, goblin, mercenary, and random encounter fight to the death? I'd say not only "yes" but also that having it be a couple sentences marked as optional in the wrong place and/or book isn't doing anyone any good.


if it's not exaggeration, it must be a kind of local culture phenomenon, where a certain place develops a certain way of doing things that is spread by a few elder gamers.
because it completely does not match my experience. in general, in any topic there's someone swearing that every group he ever had does X, and someone else vowing that he's never seen X done.

anyway, i am against putting something like npc combat behavior as a rule, because i am in favor of npcs behaving as makes sense for them. and because the more you put stuff into the rules, the more you encourage people to mindlessly abide by them.
just like we already have people protesting that when you look at an art object you are "using" it and therefore you should lose your vow of poverty, if we introduced a morale mechanics there would be people complaining that npcs still have morale and should not be retreating, despite it making sense for them.


[stuff about sandbox]
yes, i know you are very touchy on the subject of sandboxes against railroading.
i also know you appear to have a very experienced and skilled group, capable of avoiding all the pitfalls of bad, mediocre, and even decent gaming. and you also seem to share the same tastes in how you prefer your games done.

but i am sure you are aware that yours is not the only way the game is played. and that many groups either don't like a pure sandbox (sure, it looks fun on paper, but some people change their mind after being dropped inthe dragon encounter at level 1), or don't have the skill to pull it off

ultimately, it's like the metaphorical distinction between white and black blurring through grey. and you stand on your end of the continuum protesting "but look, this is white! and spotless! and on that other side there is pure black!". well, sure, but it's not often that way.

GrayDeath
2020-01-11, 10:20 AM
Wait, do I have the wrong word? What is the game called where the DM makes up very little game world facts, and lets the players fill in the blanks by altering the game reality to whatever the players wish.

I'm talking about difficulty as in the role playing side of the game. My thinking was:

Railroad: The DM makes hard unchangable facts, Item Y is located in place X. But the players can just sit back and relax as the DM will lead them right there.

Sandbox: The DM makes few facts, and they can be changed on a whim. Specificaly, whatever the players pick to do is the 'right' one to continue the adventure.

So if you have a game where the DM does not lead the players and the players can't just 'pick' the right path, you will have a very difficult game.


Nope, thats an Improvisation Game, though a full on Improv Game I ahve never encountered on any table (although I myself tend to run quite improv heavy games especially for short sessions, mind!).

I`d say there are 3 base Game Concepts:

Improv (ergo the Players and the DM kind of make up the story and other stuff as they go).

Sandbox (the setting/world is very definite, everything else is up to the players

and lastly

Plot: There is at least one "big important unavoidable" Plot, any most of the time many smaller ones.

THe last one often but not always attracts Railroads. ^^




A lot of people use railroad & sandbox as a binary distinction, but I think they're more usefully thought of as ends of a continuum. Very few, if any, campaigns are purely one or the other.

Absolutely agree.

Koo Rehtorb
2020-01-11, 10:34 AM
I wish people would stop confusing "linear plot" with "railroad". A linear plot is not a railroad. If everyone agrees to participate in your linear plot and follow along with it then it's not a railroad. A railroad is when the players want to do something else and the GM keeps forcing them back into his predefined plot. It's an inherently negative thing.

Pleh
2020-01-11, 11:18 AM
I wish people would stop confusing "linear plot" with "railroad". A linear plot is not a railroad. If everyone agrees to participate in your linear plot and follow along with it then it's not a railroad. A railroad is when the players want to do something else and the GM keeps forcing them back into his predefined plot. It's an inherently negative thing.

That a personal definition you've adopted. Not like there's a council of gaming terminology who decides canonical definitions.

It shouldn't be upsetting or wrong to meet internet forum strangers who use words differently than you do.

Koo Rehtorb
2020-01-11, 11:33 AM
That a personal definition you've adopted. Not like there's a council of gaming terminology who decides canonical definitions.

It shouldn't be upsetting or wrong to meet internet forum strangers who use words differently than you do.

People certainly have the ability to use terms wrong if they want to. I will still encourage people to use terms correctly instead. Railroading the gaming terminology grew out of the general usage term railroading.


to force someone to do something before they have had enough time to decide whether or not they want to do it

to make a group of people accept a decision, law, etc. quickly by putting pressure on them

One of the core concept of railroading is some form of unwanted pressure or coercion.

Telok
2020-01-11, 02:30 PM
in general, in any topic there's someone swearing that every group he ever had does X, and someone else vowing that he's never seen X done.

anyway, i am against putting something like npc combat behavior as a rule, because i am in favor of npcs behaving as makes sense for them. and because the more you put stuff into the rules, the more you encourage people to mindlessly abide by them.
just like we already have people protesting that when you look at an art object you are "using" it and therefore you should lose your vow of poverty, if we introduced a morale mechanics there would be people complaining that npcs still have morale and should not be retreating, despite it making sense for them.

Where as I've never seen the VoP ****ery or a DM setting up paladins to fall, but apparently that's common for others. So does that mean that Vow of Poverty shouldn't exist or have restrictions? Should the paladin oaths, orders, and rules not exist? Without any oaths or limits what's the difference between a fighter and paladin? Should 'paladin' just stand for 'fighter++' and have the fighter class be a noob trap?

Really "the more you put stuff into the rules, the more you encourage people to mindlessly abide by them" just sounds like advocating for a free form RPG without rules. At this point how is a morale check any different from a fear save? Should saves be optional for NPCs? Do you just decide when an NPC makes a save because "it makes sense for them to"?

As DM I can override the dice whenever I want to. Morale, attacks, saves, etc. Whether or not that's a good idea in any particular circumstance isn't my concern at this point. Having morale and a rule for it makes things easier for me if I'm undecided. It gives me a tool that I can use. It provides a hook in the game system to attach abilities and effects to. It gives the players an idea of how certain things might work, like suppressing fire from automatic weapons or blowing up half the bandits in a single spell.

I find morale rules useful if they're part of the creature stat block. it can be a line saying "Morale: Elite (15)" like in AD&D or just part of a fear test to roll the willpower or composure stat against. If I want I can override or ignore it, but having it gives me another tool and often another decision I don't have to make during the game. I also find that people who learn to play/DM on systems without such rules usually just have everything be a fight to the death. It also seems that systems without morale tend to not have mechanics or abilities for running away or surrendering, which again reinforces the death-match style of encounters.

KineticDiplomat
2020-01-11, 03:00 PM
On the matter of difficulty:

Play a system that is meant to be harder/more lethal/what-not.

Modern D&D is unabrogated power fantasy. The baseline social contract is that the players will ROFLSTOMP their way through level appropriate challenges, and then face a boss fight that is tense but probably won’t actually kill them. Whether they do that along a purely linear and pre-scripted plot or “it just so happens that the plot hook you chose turns out that way”, that’s the basic contract. This does two things:

1) It means the baseline mechanics are set to be a less-difficult, less lethal, game of attrition. And because it is attrition mechanic based, anything that can rapidly attrit (the OPs dark souls two shot) the players isn’t a challenging obstacle, it is a mathematical near certainty that the players can’t solve it.

2) Because the only way the GM can up the difficulty is to make it so the players can’t ROFLSTOMP through everything, upping the difficulty will look like the DM deciding to screw the players over - he’s breaking the social contract!

For a more difficult game, you should play a system that encourages difficulty with its mechanics, not one that is essentially an interactive novel/MMORPG that happen to use real dice.

Quertus
2020-01-11, 08:49 PM
stuff

You're maybe about half right in your assessment of me. I might try and correct those details, but they do not seem relevant to this thread, or my reply.

However, I am still curious what you meant by, "And a sandbox is often not as well established as it's supposed to be.".


I`d say there are 3 base Game Concepts:

Improv (ergo the Players and the DM kind of make up the story and other stuff as they go).

Sandbox (the setting/world is very definite, everything else is up to the players

and lastly

Plot: There is at least one "big important unavoidable" Plot, any most of the time many smaller ones.

THe last one often but not always attracts Railroads. ^^

I would expect railroading to be most common in the third, and technically existent in the first (in a "I'm making up stuff to force this conclusion") way, but certainly not mandatory for any of these three.


I wish people would stop confusing "linear plot" with "railroad". A linear plot is not a railroad. If everyone agrees to participate in your linear plot and follow along with it then it's not a railroad. A railroad is when the players want to do something else and the GM keeps forcing them back into his predefined plot. It's an inherently negative thing.

When I remember, I prefer to discuss the act of "railroading" rather than "railroads", which… I suppose I generally perceive as the subset of "linear" which does not include buy-in?


Really "the more you put stuff into the rules, the more you encourage people to mindlessly abide by them" just sounds like advocating for a free form RPG without rules. At this point how is a morale check any different from a fear save? Should saves be optional for NPCs? Do you just decide when an NPC makes a save because "it makes sense for them to"?

As DM I can override the dice whenever I want to. Morale, attacks, saves, etc. Whether or not that's a good idea in any particular circumstance isn't my concern at this point. Having morale and a rule for it makes things easier for me if I'm undecided. It gives me a tool that I can use. It provides a hook in the game system to attach abilities and effects to. It gives the players an idea of how certain things might work, like suppressing fire from automatic weapons or blowing up half the bandits in a single spell.

I find morale rules useful if they're part of the creature stat block. it can be a line saying "Morale: Elite (15)" like in AD&D or just part of a fear test to roll the willpower or composure stat against. If I want I can override or ignore it, but having it gives me another tool and often another decision I don't have to make during the game. I also find that people who learn to play/DM on systems without such rules usually just have everything be a fight to the death. It also seems that systems without morale tend to not have mechanics or abilities for running away or surrendering, which again reinforces the death-match style of encounters.

I guess I should play devil's advocate, and say that I believe in erring on the side of "mindlessly abiding by the rules".

Take WBL. How many horror stories have been posted, on the Playground and elsewhere, about GMs who have foolishly done away with WBL, and not considered the consequences of their actions? How many oldschool tables experienced "Monty Haul", that it's still in usage as a term for unbalanced wealth? Without guidance in this area, how does one know how much wealth a new 14th level character joining the party "should" have?

Now, once the GM knows the game well enough, sure, there are several rules - including morale and WBL - that they could override to improve the game. But, until then? I'll encourage everyone to mindlessly abide by the rules.

Telok
2020-01-11, 09:27 PM
Ooh, yeah. The wbl thing. Ever tried pazio's Starfinder? Wbl is baked into the assumptions. But nowhere in there does it say that the wbl guide is important. Costs basically double every two or three levels and maybe 1/2 to 1/3 of your damage and ac bonus is character based, the rest is gear based.

I played a few sessions with a new DM (yes, every fight was to the death and no escape or surrender) who didn't catch the implied assumptions about wbl. By the time we were level 9 we had less than half the money/gear we were supposed to. Since we were in a published adventure with milestone leveling the enemies were always "level appropriate". Mooks were hitting us on 6+ and we had to hit them 7 or 8 times. Solo 'boss' style encounters were hitting on anything but 1 and taking 10+ rounds of focused fire to take down. Boring and frustrating because nothing but just basic attacks worked and nothing we did stopped us from getting hammered into the ground every time. Plus you couldn't avoid any fights because the adventure said stuff attacked and never gave other options (at least not that we could learn of or roll high enough for).

King of Nowhere
2020-01-11, 09:42 PM
Really "the more you put stuff into the rules, the more you encourage people to mindlessly abide by them" just sounds like advocating for a free form RPG without rules. At this point how is a morale check any different from a fear save? Should saves be optional for NPCs? Do you just decide when an NPC makes a save because "it makes sense for them to"?

the big difference, from my point of view, is that a fear save is part of the combat mechanic. and that's a part i definitely want to keep, as removing that would be free-form, and it's not my thing. but deciding the escape of npcs? that's npc behavior. and that i would not want covered by the rules. now, a fear spell is something different, because it's a form of magical compulsion. just like giving orders to a player who failed a saving throw against domination is not taking away his agency (unless of course you do it every session, but that's another thing entirely)

In general, i want the rules to help me adjudicate success and failure of various actions one may try.
But I vehemently protest when the rules try to dictate me how i should run my world, my campaign, my npcs. those are things i want to control myself (though i accept rules on worldbuilding as loose guidelines that can be useful if i don't have anything more specific.

mind you, i am perfectly fine with a morale check stating that after many of your party members have fallen, you must save against fear or run.
what i actually dislike is the implication that the npcs won't run until they fail morale. It does not fix the issue of fight to the death; in fact, it implies that fighting to the death is what should happen, unless someone fails morale.
I play high level npcs smartly (they would not have survived to high level by being dumb), and if engaged by greater forces they try to escape immediately. I had whole encounters when the party managed to surprise lesser enemies and the whole encounter was "let's see how many you can catch before they bolt". and my fear is that one day someone will come in and say "you are doing it wrong, those npcs were not supposed to escape because they hadn't failed morale".


You're maybe about half right in your assessment of me. I might try and correct those details, but they do not seem relevant to this thread, or my reply.

However, I am still curious what you meant by, "And a sandbox is often not as well established as it's supposed to be.".


I'm just meaning that while it is often said that in a sandbox "you establish the setting beforehand", but in practice for most of the world it will only be broad strokes: for many spots on the map you may have "and on the other side of the ocean there is an island kingdom ruled by a conspiracy of evil librarians", and little more. and the details will be filled in only when the players will interact with it. which will inevitably lead to parts of the world being at least somewhat tailored to the players.



I guess I should play devil's advocate, and say that I believe in erring on the side of "mindlessly abiding by the rules".

Take WBL. How many horror stories have been posted, on the Playground and elsewhere, about GMs who have foolishly done away with WBL, and not considered the consequences of their actions? How many oldschool tables experienced "Monty Haul", that it's still in usage as a term for unbalanced wealth? Without guidance in this area, how does one know how much wealth a new 14th level character joining the party "should" have?

Now, once the GM knows the game well enough, sure, there are several rules - including morale and WBL - that they could override to improve the game. But, until then? I'll encourage everyone to mindlessly abide by the rules.
I don't know. what's the worst thing that could happen by changing wbl? the balance between some classes will be skewed, i suppose. how is that any worse than the current (lack of) balance? it is already recognized that you need some kind of balance to the table or gentlemen agreement to keep any semblance of balance, so why not have the gentlemen agreement cover wealth and its effects? I would say that any horror story stems from that, not from wbl.

More important, you are putting your focus on the negative. you disregard a rule, the game may get worse. It's true. but it could also get better.
i threw wbl out of the window in my campaign, and it was my first experience dming, and it worked and it improved the campaign. i would have lost that if i had waited to be more experienced. if i had waited to be more experienced, i may have gotten too used to do things in the normal way to want to experiment.
Heck, i've been doing d&d for years continuously now, and I still feel like i only scratched the surface on most things. If I waited until I felt experienced enough to really understand what's going on before tweaking the game, I'd probably wait until I die of old age.
And the key attitude here is that we're not launching a space rocket. we're not doing some high technical feat that requires a lot of things working together seamlessly and that will kill people if anything goes wrong. we're here to play a game, and one that's quite robust to disruptions if you don't have the wrong company. most of the times, tweaking some rules won't have much impact on the table fun in any case. and if you do something really wrong, you can always come to a point where everyone agrees to drop it. I've made my fair share of messes with my attitude of "screw the rules, i like this better", but the advantage of this attitude is that you can always fix your messes later. the very worst case scenario is that you may have to ditch a campaign, but it's unlikely; more likely, you can fix the rules and perhaps tweak the characters that were made with the old rules in mind.

all the horror stories i know about someone making houserules were never caused by the rule itself. they were sometimes caused by the dm being too arrogant to recognize that he made a bad call and had to fix it, or by a player trying to abuse it, or by someone else not liking it for unrelated reasons and butting heads. they were people's problem first and foremost, not rules problems.

EDIT:
Ooh, yeah. The wbl thing. Ever tried pazio's Starfinder? Wbl is baked into the assumptions. But nowhere in there does it say that the wbl guide is important. Costs basically double every two or three levels and maybe 1/2 to 1/3 of your damage and ac bonus is character based, the rest is gear based.

I played a few sessions with a new DM (yes, every fight was to the death and no escape or surrender) who didn't catch the implied assumptions about wbl. By the time we were level 9 we had less than half the money/gear we were supposed to. Since we were in a published adventure with milestone leveling the enemies were always "level appropriate". Mooks were hitting us on 6+ and we had to hit them 7 or 8 times. Solo 'boss' style encounters were hitting on anything but 1 and taking 10+ rounds of focused fire to take down. Boring and frustrating because nothing but just basic attacks worked and nothing we did stopped us from getting hammered into the ground every time. Plus you couldn't avoid any fights because the adventure said stuff attacked and never gave other options (at least not that we could learn of or roll high enough for).
this further reinforces my point. that DM made a mistake and was unwilling to change stuff - because it's rules - so the game was bad.
when i decided to lavish loot over my players well above wbl, they were able to breeze through anything level-appropriate because they were so overly equipped. I simply used stronger opponents, and the problem was solved. they were the group that, by clever tactics and some lucky opportunities, managed to hit above their weight and score some high-end gear. which they used to keep consistently hitting above their weight.
it's worth noting that following all the rules can be very difficult for a green dm (in the example by telok, dude made a single mistake in not giving enough loot, without intending to), and a single mistake can threw out all balance. i have always found that adjusting stuff as you go along to compensate for your previous mistakes is much more easy for someone without much experience.

Telok
2020-01-12, 03:58 AM
this further reinforces my point. that DM made a mistake and was unwilling to change stuff - because it's rules - so the game was bad.
when i decided to lavish loot over my players well above wbl,...

Ok, I see miscommunications. I'll try to clear it up.

First, when I say something like 'NPC morale score' you're thinking of some sort of hard line decision tree that dictates exactly what and how NPCs act and doesn't allow the DM any choice . I'm talking about something more like the old AD&D morale which you used for groups of creatures when it made sense. You didn't use it for significant NPCs or generally individuals, but for the 20 goblin mooks or a wolf pack, especially if it was a random encounter. If a fight broke out you'd check when something major happened, generally and most often once half the group was dead. It also didn't dictate a mindless and chaotic rout, depending on the foe it could be surrender, parley, or a fighting retreat. Whatever made sense to the DM in the circumstances. It was also used for groups of PC hirelings. So there was a sort of parity, it was used for the groups of lesser combatants and not the main actors.

Second, with the WBL thing, the DM only sort of made a mistake. See Starfinder... well a 1st level gun may do 1d6 and cost $110, a 6th level gun does 2d6 and costs $4,500, a 12th level gun 5d6 costing 38,000, a 15th level gun for 8d6 and $110,000 and a 20th level gun doing 16d6 and costing $850,000. All the gear is like that and there have really constrained the PCs from exceeding the expected values and bonuses. All characters are essentially gear dependent in combat. But it only says this once, in the intro paragraph about loot per encounter after the part about awarding experience, and doesn't emphasize it or discuss alternatives. The DM missed this and because the adventure path had milestone levelling with assigned loot packets he probably assumed everything was OK. He was new to DMing and didn't understand how some systems get built around a core assumptions like WBL, rests per day, or monsters needing magic weapons and resistances to be fought.

Experienced players/GMs, and those actively looking to become better players/GMs, can get these sorts of things without explicitly being told. Especially if you've played a number of different systems and can compare and analyze how the systems work differently. In the Starfinder game we were bored and frustrated because the only things we could do in combat were basic attacks and take damage until everything was dead. The DM couldn't control the difficulty of the game because he missed the importance of two sentences in the core book that the adventure was showing him (incorrectly it turns out) he didn't need to check.

That's sort of how I view morale rules. In AD&D 1e they were two words and a number in the monster stat blocks. Every DM looked at the monster stat blocks and saw morale (and treasure, there was a line for that too, treasure is important in AD&D 1e). They could use it if they wanted or needed to, and ignore it if they didn't. But it wasn't stuck in as a paragraph at the back of the optional rules or a line of fluff text in the monster book. So the new DMs I've encountered may easily never have heard of morale rules and when the adventures say "monster X attacks", well it's just another fight to the death. With morale in the monster stat blocks the experienced DMs can use or ignore it and the new DMs are less likely to make encounters more dangerous than the system designers assumed.

Droid Tony
2020-01-12, 10:59 AM
Nope, thats an Improvisation Game, though a full on Improv Game I ahve never encountered on any table (although I myself tend to run quite improv heavy games especially for short sessions, mind!).

I`d say there are 3 base Game Concepts:
.

Right I'm not trying to start one of them word wars where everyone says a word means something diffrent in every post.

I'm talking about how you make the game more difficult by making the players Think.

Most games do the three classic ways:

*Mecnaincal- The dice tell the players where to go and what to do: they just need to sit back and roll.

*DM's Path- The DM makes a path and forces the players to follow it: the players just need to sit back and follow.

*Player Path- The DM makes the path the player suggest: The players can say any random thing as it is and will be the path.

All of the above let people play the game with minimal, or even no thoughts by the players. And, by design, all the above make the game easy and simple.

King of Nowhere
2020-01-12, 01:25 PM
Ok, I see miscommunications. I'll try to clear it up.

First, when I say something like 'NPC morale score' you're thinking of some sort of hard line decision tree that dictates exactly what and how NPCs act and doesn't allow the DM any choice . I'm talking about something more like the old AD&D morale which you used for groups of creatures when it made sense. You didn't use it for significant NPCs or generally individuals, but for the 20 goblin mooks or a wolf pack, especially if it was a random encounter. If a fight broke out you'd check when something major happened, generally and most often once half the group was dead. It also didn't dictate a mindless and chaotic rout, depending on the foe it could be surrender, parley, or a fighting retreat. Whatever made sense to the DM in the circumstances. It was also used for groups of PC hirelings. So there was a sort of parity, it was used for the groups of lesser combatants and not the main actors.


in that case it's more of a loose guideline than a hard rule, and i support it. just like i support any houseruled loose guideline made to sort a specific situation.

I guess my beef is more with a certain kind of attitude from some players (those that think that if something is written in the rules, then it is akin to gospel and has to be respected to the letter, and if something is not in the rules, it doesn't exhist) than with rules in general.

Quertus
2020-01-12, 06:40 PM
With regards to rules for rolling morale / knowing if something will retreat… I'm the kind of GM who will make a point to ask, "what page are the morale rules on?", and explicitly roll for morale. Then, later, when I ignore the morale rules, my players will ask, "shouldn't they have checked for morale?", and I'll respond, "you know, you'd think so, but they seem completely unphased by <event>”. Then my players will know that the game is afoot.

How do you let your players know that something is off/odd, if you do not properly set up the expectation of "normal" first?

This kind of thing is exactly the type of thing I do keep my players on their toes, make them think.


Right I'm not trying to start one of them word wars where everyone says a word means something diffrent in every post.

I'm talking about how you make the game more difficult by making the players Think.

Most games do the three classic ways:

*Mecnaincal- The dice tell the players where to go and what to do: they just need to sit back and roll.

*DM's Path- The DM makes a path and forces the players to follow it: the players just need to sit back and follow.

*Player Path- The DM makes the path the player suggest: The players can say any random thing as it is and will be the path.

All of the above let people play the game with minimal, or even no thoughts by the players. And, by design, all the above make the game easy and simple.

I think I'm with you at the high level "make them think", and I'm curious what others think of your trichotomy of "easy mode", but I'm not sure that I would in any way describe those as constituting the whole of "classic" or "normal" or "common", especially when compared with other "non-easy-mode" forms of play.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-01-13, 02:07 AM
What factors can contribute to difficulty? The OP lists NPC hostility monster hostility monster lethality ****ing up DCs

To that, I'll add oversized encounters - number of monsters per encounter plentiful encounters - number of encounters per… rest adjacent encounters - need for stealth/speed, as encounters trigger encounters intelligent monsters puzzle monsters time limits decreased information misinformation multiple goals conflicting goals rule of unintended consequences don't be a fan of the PCs constantly change the rules violate expectations - especially by removing expected resources ("low magic D&D", for example)

EDIT: tailored foes adaptive foes let the dice fall where they may cheat at dice for the monsters cheat at other layers

That should get us started.

I would say I have pretty overall difficult games, and I use a bunch of these.

I have pretty lethal & tough enemies, and they come in fairly sizable encounters and support each other. They're also pretty much always intelligent. A normal tough encounter might be on the order of 10-30 infantry, 1-3 vehicles, and a couple of specialists like heavy weapons or snipers. I make fairly liberal use of dangerous weapons like flamethrowers and sniper rifles. A lot of times, the enemy will also be fought in battlefields that are either prepared or at least be assuming positions that are advantageous to them.

If the party isn't taking effort to move stealthily or gets stalled up, reinforcements start to arrive or enemies fall back and prepare defenses. If the enemies are on the attack, it's almost always bad news because they'll bring both greater numbers and have equipment and tactics prepared to defeat tactics and equipment the party is known to use.

With regards to morale, units typically test morale if they suffer a significant number of casualties in a short timeframe, or have suffered a lot of casualties without inflicting any serious damage in return. They don't usually run if there's no escape unless it's really bad.


Out of combat, there's also a lot of moments where the players do something, consequences ensue, and afterwords they're like "Well, I'm not sure why we didn't think of that. That's exactly what they would do." I do try to suggest to the players how the enemy might react though and if there's capabilities that I took as obvious if it's not as obvious to them from their planning though, to keep them from being too blindsided.

kieza
2020-01-15, 02:26 AM
I make it easy to do things well, but hard to do things perfectly. The villain gets away even though their plot is thwarted, the princess is rescued but subject to a curse, or the village is saved but not all of the villagers...unless the players pay attention and solve all of the problems.

Bohandas
2020-01-15, 03:31 AM
How about a ticking clock where if they rest they botch the quest

Or tailoring the bad guy's spell selection on the fly instead of having it properly pre-set

Or puzzles with unexpected twists. Like they meet three guards and are told that one of them always tells the truth, one of them always lies, and one of them tries to fool you with accurate yet misleading statistics. This last one is the one who explains things, but what he DOESN'T explain is that the truth telling one doesn/t know jack so most of the stuff he says will be wrong anyway, not does he divulge that he himself is going to be selectively lying from that point on because at no point did he say that he always had accurate statistics.