Pacing a megadungeon

[Reversefigure4]

Also... I have to say that your tactical scale really needs to go up to 10 if balanced for a general gaming audience, because I have seen tactics, even at my table, that are a lot more complex than your seven.

It's guidance for your table. Do you think it needs to be smarter or more tactical, given the guidance is "don't do anything smarter than Level 5"? Do you need more information to extrapolate the what not to do?

If they aren't in the area, the ghasts have no motivation to break down the door and will go back into their "dormant" state. The first time they went into the room, they blocked off the sinkhole with a wall of tentacles, and could have easily shut the door and then fallen back, and then been long gone by the time the tentacles dissipated, leaving the ghasts without incentive to pursue

Are these "ghasts" actually some sort of ghast-like monster that is known to the players to work differently in your setting? Isn't there incentive to pursue "I'm hungry, meat went that way"? Wouldn't the sheer weight of infinite numbers of them eventually burst the door open from pressure, even assuming the hungry ghasts themselves were unable to beat the door down? Your standard zombie-horde-type-monsters get slowed by a door, not stopped - when they know you're inside, they beat on the door until it falls down.

You know there is a finite number of ghasts. You know they are unwilling or unable to open the door again. Your players don't know those facts. And between the fact that you use custom monsters and they openly expect you to trick them, they probably expect 'shut the door' to be a solution that will cause the ghasts to gather in numbers to hunt them down with their super tracking senses while they sleep. Or that the ghasts will break out and eat the townsfolk (not that your players would care about anything but the Magic Mart being closed as a result) because they didn't solve the problem. Solutions that are obvious to you are not obvious to them (and with your players, you can't vocalise solutions or information like "It seems clear the ghasts don't leave this room and must be dormant when they don't see meat, or they'd have already overwhelmed the dungeon" without being screamed at by them.)

[Pauly]

That really doesn't sound too different to me.

1:
Whether they are finite or infinite doesn't actually matter to the players if there are more than they can realistically kill. But yeah, if the players do manage to set up a kill box where they can handle huge numbers, then it doesn't really make sense to keep bringing in reinforcements.

2:
Yeah, normally that is what I do. But in this particular where it is a disorganized mob of corpses it was a lot easier (both for me to keep track of and for the players to formulate strategies around) to just have it be 1 every 1.

3:
Yes. Players should generally be informed, at least if their characters would be aware of the alarm. In this case, I told them right up that there were *a lot* of undead down there in the process of digging themselves out.

4:
This is also true. Although it runs pretty counter to GloatingSwine's point, and doesn't really apply to the undead.

5:
Agreed.

Since you posted this while I was adding some more information I will add it here:

In your scenario, what I would do.
1) Each ghast only responds to what it can sense. Having the default mode as responding to hunting calls strikes me as a very good way for an enemy to lure half your ghasts out of position just before a battle.
2) Map out how many ghasts can see the party at various points. And of those can potentially see the party only a portion will have their heads pointed in the right direction.
At point X1, N1 ghasts are activated, at point X2, an additional N2 ghasts are activated and so on.
3) ghasts outside of [smell range] will stop pursuing the party if the party retreat out of LOS.
4) I would describe the ghasts as clambering up a steep ramp, not climbing out of the mud.

For example lets set X1 as opening the door to the room, N1 as 10 ghasts in addition to the 6(?) already in the room.and [smell range as 30 feet].
The party open the door and engage the ghasts in the room and see the ghasts coming up the ramp. They adopt turtle tactics after 3 ghast reinforcements arrive and fall back 10 feet down the hallway. With smel, range of 30 feet that might mean an additional 2 ghasts on the ramp can smell the party.
After these 2 arrive no more additional ghasts arrive. After dealing with the first 9 ghasts and 2 reinforcements there are 5 ghasts who will come on as reinforcements at the rate if 1/turn when the party return to X1. If the party go back to town to restock there will be 5 ghasts in the storeroom, but no reinforcements will be activated until the party move to X2
X2 might be the edge of the ramp and N2 might be 20 ghasts

The only way for the party to face an endless stream of ghasts would be for the party to advance down into the middle of the ghasts with big glowing “here I am” signs above their heads, in which case they’ll get what they deserve.

Edit to add:
I think you are vastly overestimating how many ghasts could see the party and of those who would see the party.

[gbaji]

Now puzzles on the 'dungeon' scope, these I like. Figuring out that there is a secret part of the dungeon based on the layout, few scraps of information and the fact that some enemies just disappear in two of the rooms - is a puzzle for me. Figuring out that the horde of ghasts can be commanded around using the mask worn by the dungeon overlord (deceased long ago) from a manuscript, few wall drawings and some rumors... is a puzzle.

Ideally, a puzzle has a multiple possible solutions AND alternative solutions, internal logic, abundance of clues, does not bottleneck (if they fail to solve it, they can still move on), is be interesting to solve (OOC) and should be immersive and provide worldbuilding opportunities (IC).

Agree 100%. It's why I've been having difficult with the word "puzzle" because it can mean different things. I absolutely put things in my adventures with the expecation that the players will have to "figure things out", but the things themselves tend to be more functional. Things like "How do the bad guys minions get from place to place in here so quickly. Maybe there's a network of secret passages", or "We need to figure out a way to get into the throne room without having to fight an entire castle full of guards" sort of things. I may occasionally put things more "puzzle like" like "Ok. The inscription on the wall says that the Guardian can defeat the Beast, and we accidentally woke up the Beast, so what combination of do-dads do we need to find and use to activate this Guardian thing?".

But yeah. I always try to keep things with an eye towards why someone would have put that thing there in the first place and not just "this will make things interesting/difficult for the players".

Right, which is why it feels videogamey. Because the reinforcements are spawned procedurally out of thin air infinitely. If the players are at A and 4 extra guards show up from B then when the players go to B there should be 4 less guards there. Anyone who is in range to affect the current encounter should be reasonably known to the GM and there should be consequences if they do it. It sounds very much like your reinforcement mechanics are only ever bad for the players. If reinforcements appear now it's harder now but nothing else changes later.

Sorry. Have to be the pedant here. "fewer guards", not "less". Enumeratable units use "fewer". I know. I'm silly...

But yeah, totally agree with that statement. There should be a specific number of guards in the castle, or the fort, or the bbeg's lair. And if the players kill X in one location, then that's X fewer they have to kill elsewhere. This does not preclude dungeon layouts where you specify that some number are here, some other are there, etc. But if the players use tactics like "we'll pull these guys from this position to this other one", the GM should really take that into account.

They players should never be presented with "infinite reinforcements", or silly things result. I get that this can be tempting from a GM perspective to punish PCs for dawdling or whatnot, but if you're going to have reinforcements, they should come from somewhere, and there should actually be a specific number that can show up. If you're going to use this as a means to keep the PCs moving, then those reinforcements needs to either be overwhelming in numbers (meaning if you take too long, like 500 bad guys show up and curb stomp the party), or they need to be smaller and limited, but act intelligently and not like lemmings endlessly walking into the same room to get killed by the same group of PCs. They shoud show up, hear a fight, look in and see the party, make an assesment, and maybe some engage, and the others go back to warn central command or something. Which means that the punishment for taking too long isn't just wave after wave or more mooks to fight, but that now there's an entire organzation of opponents who know where you are and are on high alert.

Good luck storming the castle now.

But did they know that? Did they have any way of knowing that the ghasts would turn off again ever? You know that because you designed the encounter, but the players can't use knowledge that only exists in your head to guide them to the correct course of action!

(NB also it still means that the only way to actually "win" this encounter is to never have it in the first place because if you poke the hive you can only spend resources to get you back to the situation you were in before you ever went into that room).

You know there is a finite number of ghasts. You know they are unwilling or unable to open the door again. Your players don't know those facts. And between the fact that you use custom monsters and they openly expect you to trick them, they probably expect 'shut the door' to be a solution that will cause the ghasts to gather in numbers to hunt them down with their super tracking senses while they sleep. Or that the ghasts will break out and eat the townsfolk (not that your players would care about anything but the Magic Mart being closed as a result) because they didn't solve the problem. Solutions that are obvious to you are not obvious to them (and with your players, you can't vocalise solutions or information like "It seems clear the ghasts don't leave this room and must be dormant when they don't see meat, or they'd have already overwhelmed the dungeon" without being screamed at by them.)

Answering both, since they touch on the same subject. Yes. The fact that the ghasts in the room haven't knocked down the door and swarmed this entire level of the dungeon clearly indicates that they either can't do this, or that they don't normally roam up and out of the chamber below (which in turn suggests some limited range at which they can sense folks and clambor up to go eat them or whatever). It should be relatively apparent that if you back up outside of the room, then only those ghasts already chasing you should continue following (and even they may stop once they lose "sight" of you). It should also be relatively apparent, that if you kill those ghasts, you should just be able to close the door and leave it alone and not have a horde of ghasts coming after you.

That may not be apparent to the players though, so yeah, tell them this. I have no problem as a GM providing the players with "common sense" hints about how things in my game setting work. And yeah, there may be some GMs who would just run this as "well, once you get the ghasts attention below every single one will just keep trying to come up, and if they don't see anyone near by will swarm out into the level looking for something to eat". Maybe. Again, I fall to the "this is a place other creatures live in, so someone must have opened this door at some point in the past, yet there are not hordes of ghasts filling this level, so that's probably not how they operate".

But, if in doubt, provide your players with possible options. Let them attempt various lore rolls and inform them that maybe the ghasts can only sense them via <whatever method> and it's possible that once they get around the corner or behind a closed door, they'll stop pursuing them. And maybe the ghasts are tied to an area unless provoked in some way, so they just wont roam far from that area unless they see some yummy living flesh or something. Then have them run out, close the door and hang out behind it, beathlessly waiting to see if the ghasts come bashing through it. Maybe they can hear the ghasts shambling around on the other side, searching out for the living they sensed earlier. Maybe some bump against the door. Are they breaking through? Are we safe? Or are we about to be torn limb from limb?

Then have the sounds recede. Whew! Guess they decided to wander back down... <wipes brow>

Playing it out like this provides for some excitement for the players. Some drama as they are unsure what will happen. And some relief when things work out ok. And it also provides them a bit of information about the ghasts and their behavior which may be helpful later on, when they do explore further down into lower levels and maybe come into the area near where they are.

[Talakeal]

Well no because even videogames don't do random encouters any more :P

Overall though the point of "not feeling like a videogame" is making it feel like a living environment that reacts in ways a videogame couldn't have accounted for. Spitting up an infinite number of reinforcements or wandering monsters are things videogames can do very easily and often do.

So yeah, your dungeon should absolutely have a finite number of things in it because that's what a real environment would have, and the individual floors of the dungeon aren't so incomprehensibly vast that the players could never have accounted for everything in them (because "account for everything in the floor" is explicitly the progression they are expected to pursue).

Reinforcements showing up should have a consequence for the place they came from, and there should always be a place for them to have come from.

I don't think I agree unless the dungeon in question is a closed system (mine very much isn't).

The world is vast, the players can't possibly deal with it all.

The dark lord's legions aren't going to be depleted because the PCs killed 10, a 100, or even a 1,000 orcs. Nor will the ocean be drained of sharks or the forest of wolves. Bank robbers killing a few dozen cops on their getaway only means that they will have to deal with even larger concentrations of law enforcement in the future.

In this case, your average cemetery contains far more potential undead than your first level PCs can slay, and as the area these undead were stationed in is currently buried, they have no reason to go down there.

It never actually works in the zombie movies though. They always break through. It's a delay whilst you do something else, not a solution.

Depends on how well you do it.

But in this case, a delay was really all they needed.

GloatingSwine managed to sum it pretty well.

My usual aproach is:
1. call for reinforcements & announcement
2. delay
3. arrival
4. leadership

If reinforcements just appear, without reason, they feel spawny. Imagine a werewolf, howling. Once it howls, you may hear answers from the wolves. Or if you raise an alarm in military barracks, you may hear general commotion, orders being shouted and confirmations.

It takes some time for the reinforcements to arrive: they do not 'appear' or 'spawn' right away. In our case, you'll see shadows in the forest and hear howls, or notice that there is a group of soldiers slowly forming in front of the barracks.

Once the reinforcements arrive, they will join battle, but in some cases they will take a round to prepare - split apart, give orders to each other, or even just observe to be able to jump in. Some of them may charge immediately, but oftentimes there will be a moment of respite as the enemies reform.

Lastly, reinforcements usually require some form of leadership - or they won't be organized. If you have a clear leader, he will be seen/heard. If there is just the first guy who charges ahead and the rest follows, that's still good. But if there is no leadership, the reinforcements won't be organized at all - and need to act in line with it.

So for the example that gbaji set above (a steep ramp), I'd make the following considerations:
1. every ghast that sees the PCs will attempt to charge them, but if the players are seen and can't be attacked by the given ghast (e.g. they are turtling and there's no space), they will let out a scream, raising 'alarm'.
2. other ghasts, not seen (or seen just as lurking shadows beyond clear line of sight) will respond to the scream; there may be dozens of shadowy figures seen in distance and lots of movement,
3. it will take a ghast 2-4 rounds to climb up the ramp (eyeballed) to join his pals; if more than 3 are climbing, the rest will just slip/fall down and attempt it later
4. once a ghast is up there, he just attempts to attack, no consideration for any tactics.

Fourth point will change as soon as whatever power kept them dormant down there wakes up and decides to check who's at the door.

This is more or less how I do it as well. There is almost always a warning, and reinforcements don't act the turn they show up.

Likewise, ghasts don't use tactics besides mob the nearest living creature and avoid non-living sources of damage.

Why?

D&D implied that was the norm for D&D, but it's not really an universal guideline.

Depending on the system (can't really say I went and studied your system), this could be one of the issues.

This would be most probably its own thread, but I'd consider reviewing your expectations, the D&D norm of 80% spendings and the players' view. Because for a relatively lethal game, I'd most probably turtle like hell if I was expecting 80% of my HP to be spent by the end of adventuring day.

I don't know. Because its what I am used to? Because its what players (who are mostly brought up on D&D) expect?

Honestly, difficulty is kind of an illusion and its more art than science.

My systems guidelines are pretty vague, saying that the average mission should use up "most" of the party's resources with no real chance of failure or casualties.

I suppose in universe, its because missions often go to the equivalent of the lowest bidder, you hire the least powerful (and thus cheapest) adventurer's you can find who have a near 100% chance of success.

This would be most probably its own thread, but I'd consider reviewing your expectations, the D&D norm of 80% spendings and the players' view. Because for a relatively lethal game, I'd most probably turtle like hell if I was expecting 80% of my HP to be spent by the end of adventuring day.

That assumes turtleing minimizes damage.

The whole problem that we have been discussing the past few pages stems from the fact that in certain situations (reinforcements, enemies with area attacks, mobile enemies with ranged weapons, two objectives happening simultaneously, a buffer behind enemy lines, etc.) turtling significantly increases the amount of damage the PCs take.

One personal note, I'd avoid statements like these: it sounds like you are patronizing the poster. I assume you meant it in good will (stating your players' plans are usually on the more complex side), but take it as an advice.

So it does! My apologies! I will address this below.

There is a difference between having a labyrinth of corridors that you wander for 8 hours and meeting a 'wandering monster' and setting up a camp in a corridor, getting attacked from one side by a monster, finding out it came from a dead end and then getting attacked from the same side during rest because 'random encounter!'.

Absolutely. Unless, of course, there is a reason for it.

I remember one time I was a PC and we literally burned down a "haunted" castle because we thought monsters were literally disappearing into thin air only to discover a network of secret passages in the smoldering foundations with the true dungeon below.

Or it would be a four-guard group, and afterwards a whole squad with a lieutenant - because it makes no sense sending out 4 guys just because dice said it.

Generally, each patrol consists of a single group of however the enemy divines their troops; a squad, partners, individuals, etc.

If I am putting a lot of effort into reinforcements there may well be multiple types. My system has degrees of success on dice rolls, so I generally save the officers and big-bads for a critical success on the reinforcement rolls.

But for the ghast encounter I wanted to keep it nice, simple, and predictable.

I usually add 'clue' and 'forewarning' to the random encounter table. I usually reroll those two to see what the clue/forewarning is about (another entry on the table). If they get a clue about local goblin group, they can find their former victims, a dungeon grafitti, broken weapons or just some markings. Beasts leave carcasses, feathers, fur, processed food... and forewarnings are usually sounds or visuals of the enemy from afar (sounds of combat, a orcish drums, wolf howl).

Good advice. I try and have some forewarning for each of the possibilities on the table, but my players aren't great at picking up on my hints.

You are technically correct, but this is irrelevant to the topic.

Maybe I am misreading the room, but I feel like the main reason it feels "video-gamey" is because the reinforcements are kept in hammer-space until being placed on the board. I was merely pointing out that all of the monsters are, presumably, having lives and doing stuff, but they don't actually have any defined existence until the map / dice say that they are standing face to face with the players at that particular point in time and space.

It's guidance for your table. Do you think it needs to be smarter or more tactical, given the guidance is "don't do anything smarter than Level 5"? Do you need more information to extrapolate the what not to do?

Apologies!

When I read that my group shouldn't go above 5, I inferred that meant no group should go above 7; which I felt would be insufficient for people who enjoy playing "5D wizard chess" or even the old school AD&D modules that recommend playing super-humanly intelligent foes by having them be retroactively prepared for whatever plans the PCs come up with. It didn't occur to me at the time that these were just examples of things I should avoid.

Are these "ghasts" actually some sort of ghast-like monster that is known to the players to work differently in your setting? Isn't there incentive to pursue "I'm hungry, meat went that way"? Wouldn't the sheer weight of infinite numbers of them eventually burst the door open from pressure, even assuming the hungry ghasts themselves were unable to beat the door down? Your standard zombie-horde-type-monsters get slowed by a door, not stopped - when they know you're inside, they beat on the door until it falls down.

In my system ghasts are essentially "fast zombies". They have the stats of regular humans, the undead type, with claws, the ability to spread their disease with a bite, enhanced senses of smell, and the ability to detect whether or not something they see is living. They are more or less unintelligent, living only to spread their disease to living creatures who draw to close and remaining inactive and corpse like at other times unless compelled by a necromancer.

The players have encountered ghasts before. In the other campaign Bob's necromancer even commands them. They are also written up in my MM.

You know there is a finite number of ghasts. You know they are unwilling or unable to open the door again. Your players don't know those facts. And between the fact that you use custom monsters and they openly expect you to trick them, they probably expect 'shut the door' to be a solution that will cause the ghasts to gather in numbers to hunt them down with their super tracking senses while they sleep. Or that the ghasts will break out and eat the townsfolk (not that your players would care about anything but the Magic Mart being closed as a result) because they didn't solve the problem. Solutions that are obvious to you are not obvious to them (and with your players, you can't vocalise solutions or information like "It seems clear the ghasts don't leave this room and must be dormant when they don't see meat, or they'd have already overwhelmed the dungeon" without being screamed at by them.)

Here's the thing about this though; the players don't talk to one another. I could absolutely see them coming to this conclusion, but I doubt all four of them came to it independently and understood one another so well that they didn't need to state it. If they had, I could have tried pointing them in the right direction.

Since you posted this while I was adding some more information I will add it here:

In your scenario, what I would do.
1) Each ghast only responds to what it can sense. Having the default mode as responding to hunting calls strikes me as a very good way for an enemy to lure half your ghasts out of position just before a battle.
2) Map out how many ghasts can see the party at various points. And of those can potentially see the party only a portion will have their heads pointed in the right direction.
At point X1, N1 ghasts are activated, at point X2, an additional N2 ghasts are activated and so on.
3) ghasts outside of [smell range] will stop pursuing the party if the party retreat out of LOS.
4) I would describe the ghasts as clambering up a steep ramp, not climbing out of the mud.

For example lets set X1 as opening the door to the room, N1 as 10 ghasts in addition to the 6(?) already in the room.and [smell range as 30 feet].
The party open the door and engage the ghasts in the room and see the ghasts coming up the ramp. They adopt turtle tactics after 3 ghast reinforcements arrive and fall back 10 feet down the hallway. With smel, range of 30 feet that might mean an additional 2 ghasts on the ramp can smell the party.
After these 2 arrive no more additional ghasts arrive. After dealing with the first 9 ghasts and 2 reinforcements there are 5 ghasts who will come on as reinforcements at the rate if 1/turn when the party return to X1. If the party go back to town to restock there will be 5 ghasts in the storeroom, but no reinforcements will be activated until the party move to X2
X2 might be the edge of the ramp and N2 might be 20 ghasts

The only way for the party to face an endless stream of ghasts would be for the party to advance down into the middle of the ghasts with big glowing “here I am” signs above their heads, in which case they’ll get what they deserve.

Edit to add:
I think you are vastly overestimating how many ghasts could see the party and of those who would see the party.

To be frank, you are putting a lot more thought into this than I did.

This wasn't supposed to be some big set-piece battle. It was just one of fifty rooms in the dungeon.

It wasn't a particularly tough or notable encounter, and only bears special mention because the PCs were down on HP going into the olog fight afterwards because they used their standard turtle tactics against an enemy that greatly outnumbered them and were thus surrounded and overwhelmed. Which is, honestly, a recurring problem for my group whenever they are in a situation where an old fashioned greek phalanx (minus the spears!) isn't the optimal solution.

Agree 100%. It's why I've been having difficult with the word "puzzle" because it can mean different things. I absolutely put things in my adventures with the expecation that the players will have to "figure things out", but the things themselves tend to be more functional. Things like "How do the bad guys minions get from place to place in here so quickly. Maybe there's a network of secret passages", or "We need to figure out a way to get into the throne room without having to fight an entire castle full of guards" sort of things. I may occasionally put things more "puzzle like" like "Ok. The inscription on the wall says that the Guardian can defeat the Beast, and we accidentally woke up the Beast, so what combination of do-dads do we need to find and use to activate this Guardian thing?".

But yeah. I always try to keep things with an eye towards why someone would have put that thing there in the first place and not just "this will make things interesting/difficult for the players".

In my experience people refer to anything where the most direct approach (usually beating it to death) doesn't work as a puzzle.

They players should never be presented with "infinite reinforcements", or silly things result. I get that this can be tempting from a GM perspective to punish PCs for dawdling or whatnot, but if you're going to have reinforcements, they should come from somewhere, and there should actually be a specific number that can show up. If you're going to use this as a means to keep the PCs moving, then those reinforcements needs to either be overwhelming in numbers (meaning if you take too long, like 500 bad guys show up and curb stomp the party), or they need to be smaller and limited, but act intelligently and not like lemmings endlessly walking into the same room to get killed by the same group of PCs. They shoud show up, hear a fight, look in and see the party, make an assesment, and maybe some engage, and the others go back to warn central command or something. Which means that the punishment for taking too long isn't just wave after wave or more mooks to fight, but that now there's an entire organzation of opponents who know where you are and are on high alert.

Good luck storming the castle now.

Ok, but what if (as in this case) the army is composed of (near) mindless undead?

Maybe this is just the disconnect from looking behind the screen, but from my perspective there is no real difference between "infinite" and "more than the PCs can realistically handle". I could have said there were forty ghasts down there and it would have played out in exactly the same manner, just as The Hobbit wouldn't have played out any differently if Tolkien had said that there were exactly 370,212 goblins in the Misty Mountains.

Answering both, since they touch on the same subject. Yes. The fact that the ghasts in the room haven't knocked down the door and swarmed this entire level of the dungeon clearly indicates that they either can't do this, or that they don't normally roam up and out of the chamber below (which in turn suggests some limited range at which they can sense folks and clambor up to go eat them or whatever). It should be relatively apparent that if you back up outside of the room, then only those ghasts already chasing you should continue following (and even they may stop once they lose "sight" of you). It should also be relatively apparent, that if you kill those ghasts, you should just be able to close the door and leave it alone and not have a horde of ghasts coming after you.

That may not be apparent to the players though, so yeah, tell them this. I have no problem as a GM providing the players with "common sense" hints about how things in my game setting work. And yeah, there may be some GMs who would just run this as "well, once you get the ghasts attention below every single one will just keep trying to come up, and if they don't see anyone near by will swarm out into the level looking for something to eat". Maybe. Again, I fall to the "this is a place other creatures live in, so someone must have opened this door at some point in the past, yet there are not hordes of ghasts filling this level, so that's probably not how they operate".

But, if in doubt, provide your players with possible options. Let them attempt various lore rolls and inform them that maybe the ghasts can only sense them via <whatever method> and it's possible that once they get around the corner or behind a closed door, they'll stop pursuing them. And maybe the ghasts are tied to an area unless provoked in some way, so they just wont roam far from that area unless they see some yummy living flesh or something. Then have them run out, close the door and hang out behind it, beathlessly waiting to see if the ghasts come bashing through it. Maybe they can hear the ghasts shambling around on the other side, searching out for the living they sensed earlier. Maybe some bump against the door. Are they breaking through? Are we safe? Or are we about to be torn limb from limb?

Then have the sounds recede. Whew! Guess they decided to wander back down... <wipes brow>

Playing it out like this provides for some excitement for the players. Some drama as they are unsure what will happen. And some relief when things work out ok. And it also provides them a bit of information about the ghasts and their behavior which may be helpful later on, when they do explore further down into lower levels and maybe come into the area near where they are.

My table is a tight-rope walk. The first time, I hoped they would figure it out on their own, they did not.

The second time, I did tell them, and they got mad at me, as they usually do, assuming that I am either calling them stupid or trying to trick them into a trap.

[Lacco]

Agree 100%. It's why I've been having difficult with the word "puzzle" because it can mean different things. I absolutely put things in my adventures with the expecation that the players will have to "figure things out", but the things themselves tend to be more functional. Things like "How do the bad guys minions get from place to place in here so quickly. Maybe there's a network of secret passages", or "We need to figure out a way to get into the throne room without having to fight an entire castle full of guards" sort of things. I may occasionally put things more "puzzle like" like "Ok. The inscription on the wall says that the Guardian can defeat the Beast, and we accidentally woke up the Beast, so what combination of do-dads do we need to find and use to activate this Guardian thing?".

But yeah. I always try to keep things with an eye towards why someone would have put that thing there in the first place and not just "this will make things interesting/difficult for the players".

'Functional puzzle' is a great term for the 'figure it out' features of dungeons. I'll be using it from now on.

I also tend to build things too straightforward if I don't focus on that, so my process usually contains additional steps (such as 'add functional puzzles' or 'make illogical decision for historically logic reason' - e.g. 'build a new dungeon section and move the faction there instead of maintaining the old one because of the deadly fungus on walls there'); otherwise I'll not put any secret paths (why would they build additional paths?).

Fortunately, the experience from dealing with project management and Dwarf Fortress taught me that historically logical reasons may seem completely illogical in the end, so it's kinda realistic .

Sorry. Have to be the pedant here. "fewer guards", not "less". Enumeratable units use "fewer". I know. I'm silly...

For me, this is a benefit of posting here - as a non-native speaker, I can appreciate that.

That may not be apparent to the players though, so yeah, tell them this. I have no problem as a GM providing the players with "common sense" hints about how things in my game setting work.

I have a strong preference for systems that actually have this hardwired through skill/knowledge rolls. For example, a PC with Tactics skill could try to estimate the fighting chances for the group vs. the ghasts few rounds into the combat ('you count the combatants during a short breather and notice some more crawling up; there is a lot of movement below - you are quite sure this is an overwhelming force and your current surroundings put you at disadvantage') and a PC with Occultism could definitely remember some facts on ghasts ('they can smell you from some distance and will follow you if they see you, but if you put a barrier and some distance between you, they'll just wander back).

It's up to the players to use the information - but if PCs know it, it's GM's task to deliver the knowledge.

I don't know. Because its what I am used to? Because its what players (who are mostly brought up on D&D) expect?

Honestly, difficulty is kind of an illusion and its more art than science.

My systems guidelines are pretty vague, saying that the average mission should use up "most" of the party's resources with no real chance of failure or casualties.

I suppose in universe, its because missions often go to the equivalent of the lowest bidder, you hire the least powerful (and thus cheapest) adventurer's you can find who have a near 100% chance of success.

Do the players actually expect this? I'm not asking if you think they do, but some of the things you stated before lead me to this intrusive thought that they don't actually expect to spend so many resources during one adventuring day.

Also: how is the statement "average mission should use 'most' of the party's resources" different - in your eyes - from D&D's 80% of resources per adventuring day?

My preferred systems have almost no guidelines in this way; and I tend to play high-lethality systems with built-in mechanic with protection against death due to single failed roll. There is no level-appropriate encounter, and once weapons are drawn, death or debilitating injuries are on the line: players know and accept this. There are systematic measures that allow the players to improve the odds and even be safe in combat (fighting defensively, using terrain, using smart tactics), but if you decide to attack a room full of undead, you'd better have some aces up your sleeve or you'll end up dead.

When I last gave them an overwhelming enemy force (something like a zerg rush of goblinoids, 400+ in numbers, crude weapons, weak, but a lot of them), they saw them coming and decided to just turn away and flee as fast as possible. They went as far as to attemp to break ice on a frozen lake and destroy the only bridge they knew lead to the dungeon just to make sure the enemy did not catch up.

They still consider it a victory.

In-universe, how does a quest giver know how powerful the heroes are in relation to the quest at hand?

That assumes turtleing minimizes damage.

The whole problem that we have been discussing the past few pages stems from the fact that in certain situations (reinforcements, enemies with area attacks, mobile enemies with ranged weapons, two objectives happening simultaneously, a buffer behind enemy lines, etc.) turtling significantly increases the amount of damage the PCs take.

System-related assumptions strike again! For a system where wounds are to be avoided (strong death spiral), but armor is quite good at minimising damage and players are able to fight defensively and are able to assist the other players (e.g. shielding them, protecting, or just focusing on defence fully so the other player can strike from safety) agains mindless enemies, turtling can be very effective. Of course, for D&D, which is an attrition-based combat system (and I am assuming - maybe falsely - that your system works similar), fully supports your statement.

Assumptions, assumptions.

Absolutely. Unless, of course, there is a reason for it.

I remember one time I was a PC and we literally burned down a "haunted" castle because we thought monsters were literally disappearing into thin air only to discover a network of secret passages in the smoldering foundations with the true dungeon below.

And here you can see a clear demonstration of 'videogamey' expectation on your side ('monsters are disappearing into thin air'). I'd normally chalk it up to 'not enough clues': were there any clues that there are secret passages save for the 'monsters keep disappearing'?

Generally, each patrol consists of a single group of however the enemy divines their troops; a squad, partners, individuals, etc.

If I am putting a lot of effort into reinforcements there may well be multiple types. My system has degrees of success on dice rolls, so I generally save the officers and big-bads for a critical success on the reinforcement rolls.

But for the ghast encounter I wanted to keep it nice, simple, and predictable.

I tend not to delegate these things to dice - I mean, I will roll for the amount of soldiers that are battle-ready when the alarm sounds, and the amount of soldiers that are able to just pick their weapons and run out in their pyjamas, but the officers will get roleplayed (I'll base their decisions on specific mindset I have for them). So if there is an alarm, I'll know that captain Whatshisname will grab his weapon and grab first group of soldiers, because he is usually the first one to run ahead and lead by example, while sargeant Noideawhosthat will grudgingly try to get as many soldiers as possible battle-ready to be able to jump into the fray in few rounds.

Makes it clear to the players that while I'm playing with numbers regarding the actual state of the units (because I don't have a fixed scenario of 'how many are ready and how many will just jump out of bed'), the officers will behave as living NPCs. Makes them stick in their minds a bit longer than just mooks.

Good advice. I try and have some forewarning for each of the possibilities on the table, but my players aren't great at picking up on my hints.

Okay, let's find out what could be the issue. Let's assume you are reworking the ghast room encounter for wide player base. What forewarning would you prepare for the players? What rumors would they hear from NPCs? What would you leave in the surroundings?

If you can give me an IC example, I'd be glad.

Maybe I am misreading the room, but I feel like the main reason it feels "video-gamey" is because the reinforcements are kept in hammer-space until being placed on the board. I was merely pointing out that all of the monsters are, presumably, having lives and doing stuff, but they don't actually have any defined existence until the map / dice say that they are standing face to face with the players at that particular point in time and space.

From the viewpoint of players, monsters are in hammer-space until shown otherwise.

So if they open the door and see ghasts standing there, ready to attack, it will feel video-gamey. If they open the door and see ghasts randomly milling around, just walking in circles and sometimes hitting walls or stuff, until one of them notices players and starts running... it will feel different.

And in case of reinforcements: if they can see into the depths, and see hundreds of red eyes slowly turning towards them, shadows moving around, hissing, screaming, and starting to run towards them... yeah, that hits different.

Consider the following:

Your character (you are a player) enters a room with your group of adventurers. The room is long, very long, and you see a shimmering portal at the end. Once you enter the room, figures start to appear in the portal - around 20 enemies.

Mechanically, the portal will bring up to 50 enemies to the room - not more - but 50 is overwhelming amount. You can fight them, and even survive without significant wounds, but once you destroy more than 3 enemies, there will be a steady stream of 1-3 enemies per round up to 50. If you get too close, a group of 10 enemies will exit the portal, pushing you back. You can't get to the portal close enough, and magical attempts (like teleport) will fizzle and fail.

Your only option is to close the portal somehow (e.g. collapsing the ceiling) or leave and block the door, as the enemy will not follow you.

How would you enjoy this encounter?

===

Now do the same exercise, but with unseen portal and a steady stream of 1 enemy per round. Which feels more pressing? More manageable? More dangerous?

Here's the thing about this though; the players don't talk to one another. I could absolutely see them coming to this conclusion, but I doubt all four of them came to it independently and understood one another so well that they didn't need to state it. If they had, I could have tried pointing them in the right direction.

There's no IC banter during combat? No tactical chat?

[Talakeal]

So, something nobody has mentioned so far:

Flossie is a cleric of Dionysus. She could have, at any time, simply used her 'turn undead' power to drive the ghasts back. Still can.

Its kind of weird that this fight was much of a challenge in the first place.

Do the players actually expect this? I'm not asking if you think they do, but some of the things you stated before lead me to this intrusive thought that they don't actually expect to spend so many resources during one adventuring day.

At this point, I have no idea.

I run for cuckoo players and I am very bad at reading people.

But back when I ran D&D it was a convenient shield to player bitching when I could just say "I am just doing what the rule book tells me to do!" and would get salty players if I diverged from it.

Also: how is the statement "average mission should use 'most' of the party's resources" different - in your eyes - from D&D's 80% of resources per adventuring day?

It's not terribly, its just less specific.

My system is a bit more defined when it comes to resources though; you replenish them by mission rather than by day, and leftover resources can be converted into wealth or saved for next time (albeit at reduced efficiency) so that players are encouraged to play smart but will also build up a buffer against bad things.

As long as actual PC deaths and wholly failed missions are rare, the system works fine as is, although you can theoretically get into a death spiral or a monty haul spiral if you deviate too far from the norm, but, as in any system, the GM can fix this by tweaking the difficulty slightly on the off chance it occurs.

In-universe, how does a quest giver know how powerful the heroes are in relation to the quest at hand?

Reputation? Pay scale? Dumb luck?

Not great answers, but honestly the whole idea of "Balanced" adventures is kind of meta.

There's no IC banter during combat? No tactical chat?

Not really, no.

It feels like my players are in a constant battle of egos, and don't like to ask for advice or help, and often get very angry and defensive about suggestions.

They are very much in the mindset that they are the hero of their own story and know better than everyone else.

This isn't an absolute mind you, but it is how things usually go, and I can't recall any discussions like this during the ghast encounters.

So if they open the door and see ghasts standing there, ready to attack, it will feel video-gamey. If they open the door and see ghasts randomly milling around, just walking in circles and sometimes hitting walls or stuff, until one of them notices players and starts running... it will feel different.

And in case of reinforcements: if they can see into the depths, and see hundreds of red eyes slowly turning towards them, shadows moving around, hissing, screaming, and starting to run towards them... yeah, that hits different.

Oh, I thought it was the reinforcement mechanics that made this feel like a video game, not the monsters standing idly in a room ready to attack.

Normally, I do describe what the monsters were doing when the PCs interrupted them. Save for a few that are actively guarding areas, they do tend to be having something non-PC related going on.

The ghasts though, are one of the few exceptions, as they literally do lie dormant when there is nobody around to infect and spring to attack the moment they detect someone; they are near mindless predators who need to conserve the integrity of their body as they can't heal naturally.

And when the players looked into the sinkhole I absolutely described how there were *lots* more ghasts down there all in the process of clawing their way up and out to get at the PCs.

Okay, let's find out what could be the issue. Let's assume you are reworking the ghast room encounter for wide player base. What forewarning would you prepare for the players? What rumors would they hear from NPCs? What would you leave in the surroundings?

If you can give me an IC example, I'd be glad.

Am I rewriting the whole thing?

Because I don't really think it needs it. The encounter went fine, it was just slightly harder than the PCs anticipated because they made a few poor tactical decisions. Most parties won't.

So, as is:

Divinations, ESP, summoning spirits, a very skilled rogue, X-ray vision, etc. can obviously scout out the area and answer any questions.
A search check will tell the players the room outside has been picked clean or loot, so the back rooms were probably in the same condition.
A stone-working check will allow them to learn that there is a room here which is structurally unstable.
A listen check will tell them they can hear low moaning and slow ragged breathing from inside the room. Depending on the roll / character they might also smell diseased and rotting human flesh.
A lore check will allow the players to know what ghasts are and how they operate.
A reason check or the Wisdom merit will allow the players to know they won't pursue far and that they will simply wander around their immediate area before going dormant without nearby prey.
Talking with the kobolds or other dungeon denizens will reveal that the lower floor is home to a dangerous area of undead and that an earthquake has collapsed some areas and opened up others recently. They might be able to track down someone who has scouted the ghast room for more information.
Talking to the right people in town and a very good history or gather information check might reveal that there was once a necromantic cult based in the region and that their headquarters was never found.
Of course, I am also down for any out of the box ideas for information gathering.

Consider the following:

Your character (you are a player) enters a room with your group of adventurers. The room is long, very long, and you see a shimmering portal at the end. Once you enter the room, figures start to appear in the portal - around 20 enemies.

Mechanically, the portal will bring up to 50 enemies to the room - not more - but 50 is overwhelming amount. You can fight them, and even survive without significant wounds, but once you destroy more than 3 enemies, there will be a steady stream of 1-3 enemies per round up to 50. If you get too close, a group of 10 enemies will exit the portal, pushing you back. You can't get to the portal close enough, and magical attempts (like teleport) will fizzle and fail.

Your only option is to close the portal somehow (e.g. collapsing the ceiling) or leave and block the door, as the enemy will not follow you.

How would you enjoy this encounter?

This encounter is frustrating because it has lots of unknowable and inconsistent rules that don't spring naturally from the environment.

Now do the same exercise, but with unseen portal and a steady stream of 1 enemy per round. Which feels more pressing? More manageable? More dangerous?

As in the monster is just appearing from nowhere? Not climbing out of a sinkhole or the like?

This scenario is more mysterious, but a lot less dangerous, more manageable, and less frustrating.

[Pauly]

Oh, I thought it was the reinforcement mechanics that made this feel like a video game, not the monsters standing idly in a room ready to attack.

Normally, I do describe what the monsters were doing when the PCs interrupted them. Save for a few that are actively guarding areas, they do tend to be having something non-PC related going on.

The ghasts though, are one of the few exceptions, as they literally do lie dormant when there is nobody around to infect and spring to attack the moment they detect someone; they are near mindless predators who need to conserve the integrity of their body as they can't heal naturally.

And when the players looked into the sinkhole I absolutely described how there were *lots* more ghasts down there all in the process of clawing their way up and out to get at the PCs.



Am I rewriting the whole thing?

Because I don't really think it needs it. The encounter went fine, it was just slightly harder than the PCs anticipated because they made a few poor tactical decisions. Most parties won't.

So, as is:

Divinations, ESP, summoning spirits, a very skilled rogue, X-ray vision, etc. can obviously scout out the area and answer any questions.
A search check will tell the players the room outside has been picked clean or loot, so the back rooms were probably in the same condition.
A stone-working check will allow them to learn that there is a room here which is structurally unstable.
A listen check will tell them they can hear low moaning and slow ragged breathing from inside the room. Depending on the roll / character they might also smell diseased and rotting human flesh.
A lore check will allow the players to know what ghasts are and how they operate.
A reason check or the Wisdom merit will allow the players to know they won't pursue far and that they will simply wander around their immediate area before going dormant without nearby prey.
Talking with the kobolds or other dungeon denizens will reveal that the lower floor is home to a dangerous area of undead and that an earthquake has collapsed some areas and opened up others recently. They might be able to track down someone who has scouted the ghast room for more information.
Talking to the right people in town and a very good history or gather information check might reveal that there was once a necromantic cult based in the region and that their headquarters was never found.
Of course, I am also down for any out of the box ideas for information gathering.
.

The monsters sitting in a room ready to attack is part of the assumptions you have to make to get the video game endless stream of enemies to work.

Telling the players that there are a lot of ghasts is telling the players what the situation is.
It is not an alarm because alarms go on and off to tell the players when the defenses are active and when they’re passive.
If you tell the players you see a lot of ghasts, and you see the ghasts within 30 feet of the entrance turn to face you and start coming that gives the players a lot more usable information. It tells the players if they go forwards they’ll activate more ghasts. It tells them if they retreat and turtle that they’ll only have to deal with a small number initially. It tells them that the ghasts chase prey based on proximity.

For the checks to get information. Divination spells have the problems of taking up spell slots that could be used for offensive spells, the risk of getting used on non-important areas, the risk of being needed for later on. Scouting carries the risk of splitting the party and also slows down play. A lot of groups don’t use divination or scouting unless they have information that says it will be useful for the next encounter.

As for all the skill checks. Do you expect your players to tell you all the checks they have to think of when entering each room?
How I handle it, details change on system.
Fast movement\running. Perception check needed to see obvious things, like a monster in the side corridor.
Normal movement. Walking around town. Players see obvious things. Since they’re not looking for hidden things they can’t detect well hidden things. A successful perception check will reveal poorly hidden things. They might spot the muggers lurking in the dark alley, but not the carefully camouflaged sniper in the 4th story window. They get other checks such as listen only for easily detectable things such as do they hear a light plane circling overhead.
Patrolling. Half normal speed, will spot obvious and poorly hidden things. Successful perception check will reveal well hidden things or an indication a further specific check is required.
Searching. One quarter of normal speed. They get all the checks. To prevent players spamming search mode I will make the players roll every dice and tell them the outcome of every check in detail. Players soon find this mode tedious except in appropriate places.

I then have the players tell me which travel mode the characters are in. The players might forget to tell me that they’re doing a listening check or a stonework check, but I assume the characters will do it.
Normally my characters will tell me something like we move at patrol speed in corridors and search before entering a room or we’ll move wt patrol speed through the base until we reach the restricted area where we will engage Searching.
I tell the players the default setting is Normal movement, unless they are in hostile territory in which case Patrolling is used.

[gbaji]

I remember one time I was a PC and we literally burned down a "haunted" castle because we thought monsters were literally disappearing into thin air only to discover a network of secret passages in the smoldering foundations with the true dungeon below.

Lol! And "burn the whole thing down" was the go-to solution instead of "search for secret doors"?

Don't get me wrong, I've both run and played in games where similarly odd/hillarious decisions were made. But that's pretty darn extreme.

My table is a tight-rope walk. The first time, I hoped they would figure it out on their own, they did not.

The second time, I did tell them, and they got mad at me, as they usually do, assuming that I am either calling them stupid or trying to trick them into a trap.

Maybe try telling them the first time then. It sounds like the way you are doing it (or at least how your players are taking it), is you rubbing in their poor decision making the first time by telling them how easy it would hve been if they'd just done <insert action you assumed they'd make initially>. Sometimes, the players just don't see the environment the same was the GM does. Happens all the time, actually. The moment you as the GM realize your players aren't "getting it", you need to tell them. Right then. Don't make them wait. Don't let them make dumb mistakes. Tell them.

If it should have been readily apparent than the ghasts were sensing living beings up above, and coming to investigate, then tell the players this. Make it clear that "as long as you are in this room, more ghasts will keep climbing up and attacking". And if they are still fumbling around trying to figure out what to do, suggest some courses of actions: Well, you could just stand here and fight them, but it looks like there's a really massive horde of them down there, so they will probably eventually wear you down. You could alternatively move away from the entrance so those down below maybe cant sense you, and just deal with the ones already up top. Or you can exit the room and close the door and hope that once they lose line of sight to you, they'll stop chasing you. Or, you guys can come up with other solutions using your various spells/abilities/items as well, but there are the basics. You aren't absolutely certain how they can sense you, but you do know that they didn't detect you until you entered the room because they were just standing around when you first opened the door. How do you want to proceed?".

This method is merely pointing out observations they should have already made about the environment and clarifying things for them. As I mentioned earlier, it's quite common for players to not really get the same view of the world around them that the GM has, and/or may forget some key details or observations that their characters reasonably should have (like the fact that the ghasts in the room maybe didn't seem to notice them until they opened the door. Or that the ghasts down below didn't seem to notice them until they went into the room and were more line of sight detectable from where they were. Or other things maybe relevant to their decision making process). Allow them to make the final decision, but make absolutely certain that they have all the information they should have to make that decision.

It sounds like your players think you are hiding things from them initially, and then making them feel dumb for not "figuring it out" later. That could be all in their heads, of course, but that doesn't really matter. There is an easy solution and that is to clearly communicate to them in this manner.

I have a strong preference for systems that actually have this hardwired through skill/knowledge rolls. For example, a PC with Tactics skill could try to estimate the fighting chances for the group vs. the ghasts few rounds into the combat ('you count the combatants during a short breather and notice some more crawling up; there is a lot of movement below - you are quite sure this is an overwhelming force and your current surroundings put you at disadvantage') and a PC with Occultism could definitely remember some facts on ghasts ('they can smell you from some distance and will follow you if they see you, but if you put a barrier and some distance between you, they'll just wander back).

It's up to the players to use the information - but if PCs know it, it's GM's task to deliver the knowledge.

Times 10 yes! I do the same thing. There are a set of lore/knowledge skills in the game. Use them. Heck. Make them easy rolls. I sometimes will just give people stat roll chances (roll under your stat on D20 type things). I'll give them ridiculous positive modifiers to these rolls. I use this technique where I have players make skill rolls, and then tell me how much they made or missed it by. The mechanic is that the GM then applies the modifiers after the roll, so the players don't necessarily know ahead of time how easy/difficult something is (they can, of course noodle this out based on the roll and whether I tell them they succeeded for failed). The point is that when I see that the players are about to make some really dumb monumental mistake that I think they should not even remotely be thinking of doing if they were actually their characters instead of just running those characters, I'll call for some sort of roll, and then I'll "modify" it such that they are told the key bit of information that should make this mistake obvious to them, and do something else instead.

Again, this is predicated on the assumption that just because it's obvious to me what the characters should know to do, doesn't mean it's obvious to the players. So make sure they know this. Obviously, this is not to be used when there really is supposed to be a challenging "figure it out" situation. But stuff like noticing how opponents are behaving when they encounter them? This is stuff the PCs should notice, and the players should be acting based on that information. If it's obvious that they've missed something that I think is obvious or self evident, I'll make sure to tell them *before* they do something really dumb.

This method avoids "gotcha" stuff in the game, avoids making the players feel dumb (seriously. no one ever enjoys that). But also gives them an "out" for it, by making them feel like they caught this key bit of information due to some skill/knowledge. Everyone feels good about the process, and the game moves on without hurt feelings or conflict over game decisions and results.

My preferred systems have almost no guidelines in this way; and I tend to play high-lethality systems with built-in mechanic with protection against death due to single failed roll. There is no level-appropriate encounter, and once weapons are drawn, death or debilitating injuries are on the line: players know and accept this. There are systematic measures that allow the players to improve the odds and even be safe in combat (fighting defensively, using terrain, using smart tactics), but if you decide to attack a room full of undead, you'd better have some aces up your sleeve or you'll end up dead.

I'm a bit more of a softie here, but still pretty similar. Death is rare in my game, but still very much a possibilty if you do something really foolish (like actually "I warned you directly this woud be really dangerous and you did it anyway" foolish) or a really really bad series of die rolls. I will do everything I can to avoid PC death based on me rolling lucky and base it on them rolling poorly (which can absolutely just happen in a combat, but there's a ton of methods to avoid it if you take reasonable precautions). Then again, the game system I use doesn't have a "perfectly fine until out of HPs" damage mechanism, so a single massive damaging attack literally can't kill someone. Like ever. And healing magic is common enough that most PCs can handle getting hit once or twice, then heal and get back up, if things go poorly for them. So yeah, takes quite a bit to actually die with this system.

But if they do things like charge out into the middle of a room full of massive numbers of enemies, then there's not a whole lot of ways to avoid death there. Too many hits, coming in too fast for evern the most skilled PC to manage. Again though, this falls very very squarely into the "what the heck were you thinking would happen?" category.

EDIT: Let me add something else, since Talakael didn't provide much of a reasponse:

Consider the following:

Your character (you are a player) enters a room with your group of adventurers. The room is long, very long, and you see a shimmering portal at the end. Once you enter the room, figures start to appear in the portal - around 20 enemies.

Mechanically, the portal will bring up to 50 enemies to the room - not more - but 50 is overwhelming amount. You can fight them, and even survive without significant wounds, but once you destroy more than 3 enemies, there will be a steady stream of 1-3 enemies per round up to 50. If you get too close, a group of 10 enemies will exit the portal, pushing you back. You can't get to the portal close enough, and magical attempts (like teleport) will fizzle and fail.

Your only option is to close the portal somehow (e.g. collapsing the ceiling) or leave and block the door, as the enemy will not follow you.

How would you enjoy this encounter?

This encounter as described? In a vacuum? No. If the intention was to make an analogy to the ghast room though, it's not a great match. With the ghast room, they party is in a dungeon and are aware that there are lower levels. The collasped floor through which they can see a horde of ghasts is clearly not a constructed entry to where the ghasts are. This provides them a look into something that is clearly on a lower level, and which most likely they will have some alternative means to approach and deal with in another way. Therefore, it's informational and thus provides value, and also ensures that the players should not be upset at a solution like "close this approach off" because they know that this is likely not something they are supposed to just fight their way through.


Change your description slightly:

The party is exploring some long dead wizard's dungeon complex. At some point along the way, they find a room with a 20' diameter stone ring, standing vertically, with a set of odd looking equipment nearby off to one side. Examining this equipment they find a series of 6 slots in front off an odd metal box with strange writing on it. There are a number of broken crystals of various colors in front of this box and examining them, they discover that the crystals looked like they were of the right size and shape to fit into the slots, but have been smashed and broken. Further examination finds a cabinet off to one side of this room with some additional crystals that also look to be of the same size and shape, but have also been smashed.

Later, they encounter the room you described, with the addition that the shimmering portal is contained within an identical 20' diameter ring, with an identical metal box, with 6 crystals sticking out of it. This encounter is now completely different. The party now knows that this is a portal goes somewhere. Possibly the same somewhere they can get via the other ring. The cabinet in the first room suggests that there may be more crystals stored elsewhere which may open the first (unguarded) portal they found. So fighting though the enemies here is not necessary, but there's still things they could do:

Look across the room and study the sequence of crystals. Perhaps there is a color/shape pattern that can inform them how to activate the first one they found. Hey. Is there a cabinet in this room? Maybe we can get to that even if we can't get to the portal itself, grab some of these crystals and see if we can use the other ring thingie to gain access to wherever these portals go.

Keep an eye out for these crystals in other parts of the dungeon. And perhaps look for an instruction manual somewhere. Or go back and spend more time studying that strange writing.

The point is that by tying this one room into other things previously known (or which can be reasonably speculated), you make an enncounter that seems pointless into one that is more or less the case cracker for something bigger present in the dungeon as a whole. Not every encounter is about defeating the enemies within.

[Lacco]

But back when I ran D&D it was a convenient shield to player bitching when I could just say "I am just doing what the rule book tells me to do!" and would get salty players if I diverged from it.

So, they were unsatisfied even then, but you had a better argument. Why then continue with the assumption which did not work even then?

It's not terribly, its just less specific.

My system is a bit more defined when it comes to resources though; you replenish them by mission rather than by day, and leftover resources can be converted into wealth or saved for next time (albeit at reduced efficiency) so that players are encouraged to play smart but will also build up a buffer against bad things.

As long as actual PC deaths and wholly failed missions are rare, the system works fine as is, although you can theoretically get into a death spiral or a monty haul spiral if you deviate too far from the norm, but, as in any system, the GM can fix this by tweaking the difficulty slightly on the off chance it occurs.

That makes it even more complicated for the players: if I have clearly set baseline of resources (e.g. I have 3 potions that heal me completely regardless of what horrific injuries I get), I can easily judge the risk of continuing vs. retreating (e.g. won't start thinking about retreating before using the first one and will be 100% sure to retreat after the second one).

Do your players have some kind of clear indication how long the mission will be?

Reputation? Pay scale? Dumb luck?

Not great answers, but honestly the whole idea of "Balanced" adventures is kind of meta.

I agree.

Normally (save for some specific ocassions), a questgiver would definitely want 'the best the money can buy': I know I can sell the magic ruby to the king for 400gp, so I won't hire anyone for more than 300 to make a profit. Or I have 100gp in my purse and that's what I can pay the adventurers who will go and save my daughter. I can promise them more later, but... if I can get Elminster to do the same for the same 100gp and some randos, I'll choose Elminster.

So, why then have a balanced quests and guidelines for spent resources?

It feels like my players are in a constant battle of egos, and don't like to ask for advice or help, and often get very angry and defensive about suggestions.

They are very much in the mindset that they are the hero of their own story and know better than everyone else.

This isn't an absolute mind you, but it is how things usually go, and I can't recall any discussions like this during the ghast encounters.

No IC banter during combat is - for me - usually a sign that something's wrong. If my RL group does not throw insults at the enemy, shout orders/suggestions at each other, or just banter at all, it usually means the combat is too hard and they go into the 'hardcore' mode (where they try to go all out just to survive because they feel like they are in over their head) or they are too tired.

However, I noticed that most people that come to my table from other tables need to learn to banter and just use the 'speech' action during combat. Luckily, my RL group tends to be good at teaching it to newbies, but they also had to learn it.

How is your system set-up action-wise? Is talking a free action? Do you encourage IC talking during combat? If yes, how?

Oh, I thought it was the reinforcement mechanics that made this feel like a video game, not the monsters standing idly in a room ready to attack.

It's a combination of several factors, not only the reinforcements & monsters standing idly. The strongest part was the '+1 ghast per round' for me.

Am I rewriting the whole thing?

Because I don't really think it needs it. The encounter went fine, it was just slightly harder than the PCs anticipated because they made a few poor tactical decisions. Most parties won't.

It was just a suggestion as GM exercise, to see what could you improve based on the information you got. Also, wanted to see how you provide information.

So, as is:

Divinations, ESP, summoning spirits, a very skilled rogue, X-ray vision, etc. can obviously scout out the area and answer any questions.
A search check will tell the players the room outside has been picked clean or loot, so the back rooms were probably in the same condition.
A stone-working check will allow them to learn that there is a room here which is structurally unstable.
A listen check will tell them they can hear low moaning and slow ragged breathing from inside the room. Depending on the roll / character they might also smell diseased and rotting human flesh.
A lore check will allow the players to know what ghasts are and how they operate.
A reason check or the Wisdom merit will allow the players to know they won't pursue far and that they will simply wander around their immediate area before going dormant without nearby prey.
Talking with the kobolds or other dungeon denizens will reveal that the lower floor is home to a dangerous area of undead and that an earthquake has collapsed some areas and opened up others recently. They might be able to track down someone who has scouted the ghast room for more information.
Talking to the right people in town and a very good history or gather information check might reveal that there was once a necromantic cult based in the region and that their headquarters was never found.
Of course, I am also down for any out of the box ideas for information gathering.

What if players decide to not have any of these skills? Are some of them enforced?

Additional suggestions for clues:
- they see a figure sitting in front of a door, on the ground. It's a ghast that chased an adventurer and is now sitting in front of the door - the door is lightly damaged, but was barricaded from the other side (they will find a dead adventurer or a kobold on the other side). Even though the ghast attempted to break down the door, it failed. This will show them, that barricades work and ghasts can't work doors.
- they find trail of ghast bodies, ending in a room that contains a dead group of adventurers and a group of ghasts. This will show them ghasts can follow you, but it won't be the whole overwhelming force.
- a single page of parchment describing the ghast room and a group of adventurers that lost 3/4 of their members because they decided to stay and fight
- a writing on a wall "went this way; ghasts too close; follow"

I normally prefer clues that are generally available, with additional/more detailed info locked behind skills.

This encounter is frustrating because it has lots of unknowable and inconsistent rules that don't spring naturally from the environment.

As in the monster is just appearing from nowhere? Not climbing out of a sinkhole or the like?

This scenario is more mysterious, but a lot less dangerous, more manageable, and less frustrating.

Assume they are entering through some one-way portal.

Why? Why is it more mysterious/less frustrating?

Lol! And "burn the whole thing down" was the go-to solution instead of "search for secret doors"?

Don't get me wrong, I've both run and played in games where similarly odd/hillarious decisions were made. But that's pretty darn extreme.

I don't think you'll find one group that never went for the 'nuke it from the orbit' solution .

Been there, done that.

Maybe try telling them the first time then. It sounds like the way you are doing it (or at least how your players are taking it), is you rubbing in their poor decision making the first time by telling them how easy it would hve been if they'd just done <insert action you assumed they'd make initially>. Sometimes, the players just don't see the environment the same was the GM does. Happens all the time, actually. The moment you as the GM realize your players aren't "getting it", you need to tell them. Right then. Don't make them wait. Don't let them make dumb mistakes. Tell them.

I agree. Telling them directly is a good way of both ensuring that there is no discrepancy between what players and characters see... and it also builds trust between players and GM. Players may not see it correctly, but their characters would: meaning a GM has to ensure that the information gets to them.

After all, GM represents all PC senses.

Times 10 yes! I do the same thing. There are a set of lore/knowledge skills in the game. Use them. Heck. Make them easy rolls. I sometimes will just give people stat roll chances (roll under your stat on D20 type things). I'll give them ridiculous positive modifiers to these rolls. I use this technique where I have players make skill rolls, and then tell me how much they made or missed it by. The mechanic is that the GM then applies the modifiers after the roll, so the players don't necessarily know ahead of time how easy/difficult something is (they can, of course noodle this out based on the roll and whether I tell them they succeeded for failed). The point is that when I see that the players are about to make some really dumb monumental mistake that I think they should not even remotely be thinking of doing if they were actually their characters instead of just running those characters, I'll call for some sort of roll, and then I'll "modify" it such that they are told the key bit of information that should make this mistake obvious to them, and do something else instead.

I often just ask if they have the skill (and at what level) and provide basic information without rolling. They want more details? Okay, let's roll: but I make sure their investment into knowledge/lore skills is returned to them.

The systems I play make it easy, as lore/knowledge skills are somewhat hardwired into skill system and there is almost no way of building a character without any of them.

Again, this is predicated on the assumption that just because it's obvious to me what the characters should know to do, doesn't mean it's obvious to the players. So make sure they know this. Obviously, this is not to be used when there really is supposed to be a challenging "figure it out" situation. But stuff like noticing how opponents are behaving when they encounter them? This is stuff the PCs should notice, and the players should be acting based on that information. If it's obvious that they've missed something that I think is obvious or self evident, I'll make sure to tell them *before* they do something really dumb.

Again, complete agreement from my side. I make sure to feed them information, it's their choice what they do with it. I just have to make sure they don't do something stupid because they misunderstood.

It happened, and that was usually when we went for a retcon or some kind of reparations (or just had a lot of fun with it...).

That reminds me of the one time I asked the players to actually stand up from the table and exactly roleplay their actions (including moving around the room) because I wanted them to see what I saw from my GM seat. As the last one entered the room, the rest were already laughing like crazy because the scene was really dumb when they saw it.

I'm a bit more of a softie here, but still pretty similar. Death is rare in my game, but still very much a possibilty if you do something really foolish (like actually "I warned you directly this woud be really dangerous and you did it anyway" foolish) or a really really bad series of die rolls. I will do everything I can to avoid PC death based on me rolling lucky and base it on them rolling poorly (which can absolutely just happen in a combat, but there's a ton of methods to avoid it if you take reasonable precautions). Then again, the game system I use doesn't have a "perfectly fine until out of HPs" damage mechanism, so a single massive damaging attack literally can't kill someone. Like ever. And healing magic is common enough that most PCs can handle getting hit once or twice, then heal and get back up, if things go poorly for them. So yeah, takes quite a bit to actually die with this system.

But if they do things like charge out into the middle of a room full of massive numbers of enemies, then there's not a whole lot of ways to avoid death there. Too many hits, coming in too fast for evern the most skilled PC to manage. Again though, this falls very very squarely into the "what the heck were you thinking would happen?" category.

The game system I use actually has reroll mechanics built in to somewhat alleviate the results of randomness, but healing is relatively rare. Fighting against three skilled fencers is a stuff of legends, but I had a player pull it off and it felt legendary. Still, very few deaths (only some severe wounds) occured at my table, because the players go in with clear expectation of the difficulty level and they know I won't pull my punches (there is a brief aura of newbie protection, but that usually means I teach them the mechanics during combat and give them some space to experiment, while they learn, but as soon as that passes... there is only one rule: first arrow always misses).

The one player that lost a character was a *skilled* player that had their overconfident fencer draw her weapon lazily when in ambush and then went for an attack against a charging bandit. They both hit the other into a head - the fencer got hit with a cudgel, and the bandit with a rapier. However, she swung the rapier and hit a pot helmet... and the PC wore only a nice hat. One knockout roll later, the fencer was asleep. The player decided to scratch an overconfident fencer and made an archer.

EDIT: Let me add something else, since Talakael didn't provide much of a reasponse:

This encounter as described? In a vacuum? No. If the intention was to make an analogy to the ghast room though, it's not a great match. With the ghast room, they party is in a dungeon and are aware that there are lower levels. The collasped floor through which they can see a horde of ghasts is clearly not a constructed entry to where the ghasts are. This provides them a look into something that is clearly on a lower level, and which most likely they will have some alternative means to approach and deal with in another way. Therefore, it's informational and thus provides value, and also ensures that the players should not be upset at a solution like "close this approach off" because they know that this is likely not something they are supposed to just fight their way through.

Oh, he did respond, and quite honestly, I wanted to see how he responds to a room clearly working on 'video-game' logic.

I'd personally hate both of my examples if I were a player.

Change your description slightly:

The party is exploring some long dead wizard's dungeon complex. At some point along the way, they find a room with a 20' diameter stone ring, standing vertically, with a set of odd looking equipment nearby off to one side. Examining this equipment they find a series of 6 slots in front off an odd metal box with strange writing on it. There are a number of broken crystals of various colors in front of this box and examining them, they discover that the crystals looked like they were of the right size and shape to fit into the slots, but have been smashed and broken. Further examination finds a cabinet off to one side of this room with some additional crystals that also look to be of the same size and shape, but have also been smashed.

Later, they encounter the room you described, with the addition that the shimmering portal is contained within an identical 20' diameter ring, with an identical metal box, with 6 crystals sticking out of it. This encounter is now completely different. The party now knows that this is a portal goes somewhere. Possibly the same somewhere they can get via the other ring. The cabinet in the first room suggests that there may be more crystals stored elsewhere which may open the first (unguarded) portal they found. So fighting though the enemies here is not necessary, but there's still things they could do:

Look across the room and study the sequence of crystals. Perhaps there is a color/shape pattern that can inform them how to activate the first one they found. Hey. Is there a cabinet in this room? Maybe we can get to that even if we can't get to the portal itself, grab some of these crystals and see if we can use the other ring thingie to gain access to wherever these portals go.

Keep an eye out for these crystals in other parts of the dungeon. And perhaps look for an instruction manual somewhere. Or go back and spend more time studying that strange writing.

The point is that by trying this one room into other things previously known (or which can be reasonably speculated), you make an enncounter that seems pointless into one that is more or less the case cracker for something bigger present in the dungeon as a whole. Not every encounter is about defeating the enemies within.

I'll be shamelessly stealing this for one of my future games...

[Talakeal]

The whole concept of tons of dead / dying / fleeing adventurers everywhere to telegraph the monsters has been suggested before, but man does it feel like it would kill the tone of the game, making both the dungeon and the players feel very common, more like a crowded theme-park than a mysterious place of danger and exploration of the unknown.

Especially in this case where it is just for one encounter that isn't particularly challenging, subversive, or important to the storyline.

The monsters sitting in a room ready to attack is part of the assumptions you have to make to get the video game endless stream of enemies to work.

How do you figure?

If I am, say, sneaking onto a military base and am spotted by a patrol and start shooting, I can expect a lot more soldiers to start showing up regardless of whether I am playing a tabletop game, a video game, in a movie, or IRL. Honestly, a video game is probably the *least* likely scenario as enemies in video games are often programmed to ignore they allies calls for help unless they are within a certain proximity (see any WoW dungeon).

And wandering monsters and creatures standing in small rooms ready to attack are very much a staple of "old school" RPG play that was common in the days before video games even existed outside of table tennis.

For the checks to get information. Divination spells have the problems of taking up spell slots that could be used for offensive spells, the risk of getting used on non-important areas, the risk of being needed for later on. Scouting carries the risk of splitting the party and also slows down play. A lot of groups don’t use divination or scouting unless they have information that says it will be useful for the next encounter.

That's my player's feelings exactly.

As for all the skill checks. Do you expect your players to tell you all the checks they have to think of when entering each room?
How I handle it, details change on system.
Fast movement\running. Perception check needed to see obvious things, like a monster in the side corridor.
Normal movement. Walking around town. Players see obvious things. Since they’re not looking for hidden things they can’t detect well hidden things. A successful perception check will reveal poorly hidden things. They might spot the muggers lurking in the dark alley, but not the carefully camouflaged sniper in the 4th story window. They get other checks such as listen only for easily detectable things such as do they hear a light plane circling overhead.
Patrolling. Half normal speed, will spot obvious and poorly hidden things. Successful perception check will reveal well hidden things or an indication a further specific check is required.
Searching. One quarter of normal speed. They get all the checks. To prevent players spamming search mode I will make the players roll every dice and tell them the outcome of every check in detail. Players soon find this mode tedious except in appropriate places.

I then have the players tell me which travel mode the characters are in. The players might forget to tell me that they’re doing a listening check or a stonework check, but I assume the characters will do it.
Normally my characters will tell me something like we move at patrol speed in corridors and search before entering a room or we’ll move wt patrol speed through the base until we reach the restricted area where we will engage Searching.
I tell the players the default setting is Normal movement, unless they are in hostile territory in which case Patrolling is used.

Depends on what it is.

If its something like noticing weak stone-work, a hidden monster, a secret door, or hearing a loud noise, its generally a passive roll.

Something like searching through drawers, listening at the keyhole, or knocking on the wall to find weak-points is generally an active roll.

Maybe try telling them the first time then. It sounds like the way you are doing it (or at least how your players are taking it), is you rubbing in their poor decision making the first time by telling them how easy it would hve been if they'd just done <insert action you assumed they'd make initially>. Sometimes, the players just don't see the environment the same was the GM does. Happens all the time, actually. The moment you as the GM realize your players aren't "getting it", you need to tell them. Right then. Don't make them wait. Don't let them make dumb mistakes. Tell them.

If it should have been readily apparent than the ghasts were sensing living beings up above, and coming to investigate, then tell the players this. Make it clear that "as long as you are in this room, more ghasts will keep climbing up and attacking". And if they are still fumbling around trying to figure out what to do, suggest some courses of actions: Well, you could just stand here and fight them, but it looks like there's a really massive horde of them down there, so they will probably eventually wear you down. You could alternatively move away from the entrance so those down below maybe cant sense you, and just deal with the ones already up top. Or you can exit the room and close the door and hope that once they lose line of sight to you, they'll stop chasing you. Or, you guys can come up with other solutions using your various spells/abilities/items as well, but there are the basics. You aren't absolutely certain how they can sense you, but you do know that they didn't detect you until you entered the room because they were just standing around when you first opened the door. How do you want to proceed?".

This method is merely pointing out observations they should have already made about the environment and clarifying things for them. As I mentioned earlier, it's quite common for players to not really get the same view of the world around them that the GM has, and/or may forget some key details or observations that their characters reasonably should have (like the fact that the ghasts in the room maybe didn't seem to notice them until they opened the door. Or that the ghasts down below didn't seem to notice them until they went into the room and were more line of sight detectable from where they were. Or other things maybe relevant to their decision making process). Allow them to make the final decision, but make absolutely certain that they have all the information they should have to make that decision.

It sounds like your players think you are hiding things from them initially, and then making them feel dumb for not "figuring it out" later. That could be all in their heads, of course, but that doesn't really matter. There is an easy solution and that is to clearly communicate to them in this manner.

My players are also super quick to jumping to accusations of railroading.

And telling the players what the optimal strategy is according to the GM is, imo, actually railroading rather than just slang for anything the GM does I don't like.

I also feel like they need to learn some tactics and teamwork, but they are so obsessed with blaming the GM / each other for their failures that I don't know how to ever motivate them to learn. I feel kind of like Soon; the first step to redemption is admitting you did something wrong in the first place.

The other players suspect Bob actively uses bitching as a tool for min-maxxing; they posit that the reason he always makes "glass-cannon" characters is because he knows I will be hesitant to attack him because I know I will have to deal with a tantrum if I do.


The players are also claim they are convinced any time I use reinforcements that there is some hidden "kill counter" where if they turtle long enough eventually the enemies will give up and they will win. I don't know why they have this in their heads. I guess I lack the capability to accurately express to them that while their are not literally an infinite number of them existing in hammer-space, their might as well be because there are for more than you can kill in a straight fight.

So, they were unsatisfied even then, but you had a better argument. Why then continue with the assumption which did not work even then?

As I said, because I got used to it.

Nothing really does seem to work; the players will complain that the game is too hard no matter what actually happens, so I have no reason to change out from something that I know works correctly under the hood chasing nebulous, inconsistent, and unrealistic player perceptions.

Although if someone does present me with a better solution, I am more than willing to give it a try.

The "difficulty" thread running concurrent to this one has a lot of discussion about trying to find an objective standard or define terms, and it isn't having any more luck than I did.

That makes it even more complicated for the players: if I have clearly set baseline of resources (e.g. I have 3 potions that heal me completely regardless of what horrific injuries I get), I can easily judge the risk of continuing vs. retreating (e.g. won't start thinking about retreating before using the first one and will be 100% sure to retreat after the second one).

Do your players have some kind of clear indication how long the mission will be?

Could you explain why this makes it even more complication?

My players hate information gathering in all of its forms, so they rarely have any specific idea what they are heading into; but usually they have a vague in character goal and the knowledge that I am going to balance the adventure to be completed in 4-8 hours of real time and use ~80% of their resources given average luck, tactics, and character builds.

Of course, in a mega-dungeon environment or hex-crawl that goes out the window. My advice remains to go as far as you can, but I still am unsure about when exactly it is smart for them to turn back as they never know what is coming up next.

As a general rule, smart gameplay is always using the minimum number of resources to bypass each encounter, to press on unless something catastrophic happens, and save "optional" stuff that you can come back to for later after the main mission is completed for a better gauge of risk analysys.

So, why then have a balanced quests and guidelines for spent resources?

On a narrative level, it absolutely makes sense that quest-givers seek out people capable of the job; I am not going to hire the local general practitioner to brain surgery on the president, and I am not going to go to a world renowned neurosurgeon because I have a cold. It just isn't too specific.

On a game level, because games where defeat / success are a forgone conclusion are boring. My players absolutely demand "balance" and will throw a temper tantrum and storm out of the house if they don't get it.

No IC banter during combat is - for me - usually a sign that something's wrong. If my RL group does not throw insults at the enemy, shout orders/suggestions at each other, or just banter at all, it usually means the combat is too hard and they go into the 'hardcore' mode (where they try to go all out just to survive because they feel like they are in over their head) or they are too tired.

However, I noticed that most people that come to my table from other tables need to learn to banter and just use the 'speech' action during combat. Luckily, my RL group tends to be good at teaching it to newbies, but they also had to learn it.

How is your system set-up action-wise? Is talking a free action? Do you encourage IC talking during combat? If yes, how?

Talking is a free action and encouraged.

My players hate it though.

Bob in particular has gone on record saying that while one person is talking during combat, they are literally the only person having fun. He also says his least favorite rule in any RPG is the bard kit in 2E that allows them to always say last words before dying, and they go out of their way to decapitate downed foes to ensure they can't impart dying wisdom.

I remember one time when I had a lycanthrope deliver literally 9 seconds of dialogue before shifting as a sort of phase transition and the players damn near rioted that I "paused the fight to give the villain a monologue".

When Dave (one of my former players) DMed, he had a hard rule about no RPing during combat; either dialogue OR adjusting your tactics based on your characters personality / motivation; it was to be a purely tactical wargame.

It's a combination of several factors, not only the reinforcements & monsters standing idly. The strongest part was the '+1 ghast per round' for me.

That's mostly just laziness.

Its a lot easier to keep track of, and its a lot harder for RNG to screw over one side or the other.

I agree its less realistic, but RPGs are full of such abstractions to make the game easier (see HP or stat arrays), I don't really see how it falls into video game logic.

Assume they are entering through some one-way portal.

Why? Why is it more mysterious/less frustrating?

It is less frustrating because its simpler and more predictable. It is more mysterious because there is no apparent cause for the summoning.

Unlike my players, I tend to get into my character's head when RPing and examine things from her perspective rather than my own; I will tend to look for an in universe explanation for weird occurrences rather than just assume its the sign of a malicious / incompetent GM doing poor world-building.

Oh, he did respond, and quite honestly, I wanted to see how he responds to a room clearly working on 'video-game' logic.

I'd personally hate both of my examples if I were a player.

Still trying to wrap my head around what "video game logic" means.

Best guess in this context is railroading without explanation? Like, no teleporting because I said so?


I don't see any reason to hate on the second encounter; its a perfectly fine, if magical and mysterious, element to the dungeon that can be easily dealt with or used to one's own ends.

[Pauly]

The whole concept of tons of dead / dying / fleeing adventurers everywhere to telegraph the monsters has been suggested before, but man does it feel like it would kill the tone of the game, making both the dungeon and the players feel very common, more like a crowded theme-park than a mysterious place of danger and exploration of the unknown.

Especially in this case where it is just for one encounter that isn't particularly challenging, subversive, or important to the storyline.



How do you figure?

If I am, say, sneaking onto a military base and am spotted by a patrol and start shooting, I can expect a lot more soldiers to start showing up regardless of whether I am playing a tabletop game, a video game, in a movie, or IRL. Honestly, a video game is probably the *least* likely scenario as enemies in video games are often programmed to ignore they allies calls for help unless they are within a certain proximity (see any WoW dungeon).

And wandering monsters and creatures standing in small rooms ready to attack are very much a staple of "old school" RPG play that was common in the days before video games even existed outside of table tennis.



That's my player's feelings exactly.



Depends on what it is.

If its something like noticing weak stone-work, a hidden monster, a secret door, or hearing a loud noise, its generally a passive roll.

Something like searching through drawers, listening at the keyhole, or knocking on the wall to find weak-points is generally an active roll.

.

Re Military base. The short version as explained earlier in the thread is that soldiers aren’t mindless, are organized, can be dealt with through non-combat options and aren’t all coming through the one choke point. The players know, or should know, where the high security areas which can trip the alarms are before they go in. It is a fundamentally different situation.

Re Wandering monster/random monster tables. In the old old old days, so long ago that I can’t say “I was there Gandalf”, GMs used to track the position of every monster in a dungeon and have them move around the dungeon based on time of day, patrolling needs, getting food and water and so on. This quickly became burdensome. If you had a group of orcs that had a 40% chance of being on duty in the throne room, 40% chance of being in the barracks and 20% chance of traveling between the 2 places it is more efficient for the GM to roll randomly for their location than to track their specific location right now. Then multiply that by another 30 groups of possible encounters and the random encounter table is created.

Re passive/active checks. I’ve had bad experiences with GMs playing gotcha with the players not explicitly starting they are searching for [specific thing] in [specific place].
Using your terminology I would assume the characters would be doing active checks going into new places n a mega dungeon, even if the players find RPing this tedious. Since time is an issue you might offer the party the option to move at ‘normal speed’ or ‘search mode’ where they suffer time penalties for moving in search mode, but get the active checks done as a standard procedure.

Re: Turtling until the enemies run out. Firstly my players come up with weird and wonderful ways to slay the enemy, so I never assume there are more enemies than they can kill. Secondly the way you have set up the encounter with ghasts having a keen sense of smell, responding to hunting calls and endless reinforcements is specifically designed to punish players for turtling. As I sad earlier in the threaf I would set up the encounter so that at each successive trigger point they unleash larger and larger numbers of ghasts so that turtling might help them get through the first 1 or 2 encounters but the players should realize that pushing forward deeper and deeper into the ghasts is eventually going to trigger more ghasts than they can handle.

[Talakeal]

Re: Turtling until the enemies run out. Firstly my players come up with weird and wonderful ways to slay the enemy, so I never assume there are more enemies than they can kill. Secondly the way you have set up the encounter with ghasts having a keen sense of smell, responding to hunting calls and endless reinforcements is specifically designed to punish players for turtling. As I sad earlier in the thread I would set up the encounter so that at each successive trigger point they unleash larger and larger numbers of ghasts so that turtling might help them get through the first 1 or 2 encounters but the players should realize that pushing forward deeper and deeper into the ghasts is eventually going to trigger more ghasts than they can handle.

Here's the thing; the terminology implies intent.

When I designed the encounter, nobody had created a character yet, let alone established tactics.

I did not design it to be a big set-piece encounter or a teachable lesson or anything like that, and certainly not as a "punishment". I just looked at the standard encounters for a starting party, saw ghasts, felt that would be appropriate, then wondered how I could make the room stand out, and decided it would be kind of neat to have ghasts digging their way out of a sinkhole one by one.

Later, still before the PCs had been made, when I was working on the random encounter tables I thought it would be appropriate if the ghasts only showed up if this particular room had been left open.


But the specifics really don't matter, because my PCs always turtle in every game regardless of party composition, and as a result they always suffer in an encounter with reinforcements (or AOE, or multiple objectives at once, or horse archers, or behind the lines buffers / conjurers, etc.). Because turtling is never the right approach to facing a vastly larger force unless you are simply trying to buy time like you were 300 Spartans.

[gbaji]

No IC banter during combat is - for me - usually a sign that something's wrong. If my RL group does not throw insults at the enemy, shout orders/suggestions at each other, or just banter at all, it usually means the combat is too hard and they go into the 'hardcore' mode (where they try to go all out just to survive because they feel like they are in over their head) or they are too tired.

Eh. I've had this go both ways to be honest. It's very table specific though. Some players love to IC banter. Some players aren't comfortable doing so.

I don't care one way or the other. If banter is kept to a fun reasonable level, it's great. I have had situations, however, where one player dominates most of the table conversation (because they love it and the rest are just kinda "so-so" on it). This can lead to players feeling left out. Or uncomfortable. At the point where you are standing on the table, striking a dramatic pose, and pontificating on the <whatever> you have probably gone a bit too far.

I'm perfectly happy with players simply stating "My character will talk to the Innkeeper and ask about <plot stuff>". So the absence of IC banter is by no means a warning sign of anything. Heck. Doubly so in combat. That's usually the last place my players will do IC conversation stuff. They'll roleplay out social interactions if they feel like it, but combat is usually kept to clear declarative statements about what their character is doing and not a whole lot else.

The one player that lost a character was a *skilled* player that had their overconfident fencer draw her weapon lazily when in ambush and then went for an attack against a charging bandit. They both hit the other into a head - the fencer got hit with a cudgel, and the bandit with a rapier. However, she swung the rapier and hit a pot helmet... and the PC wore only a nice hat. One knockout roll later, the fencer was asleep. The player decided to scratch an overconfident fencer and made an archer.

Yeah. I've had similar happen. Again though, in a game system where said headshot would just result in unconsciousness and steady blood loss that will kill you in a minute or so, but unless you also did this while standing alone off over there and way away from your friends, someone will probably save you (healing magic kinda changes the rules in terms of what is or isn't a "terminal wound"). But yeah. I've had overconfident players say "Yeah. I'll take that simultaneous hit. I've got decent armor, I can probably take it...".

I'll be shamelessly stealing this for one of my future games...

Go for it. I like mixing in ancient magic and ancient tech in games. And yeah, often totally ripping off ideas from a number of sources.

My players are also super quick to jumping to accusations of railroading.

And telling the players what the optimal strategy is according to the GM is, imo, actually railroading rather than just slang for anything the GM does I don't like.

There's a difference between making sure they fully understand the environment their characters are operating in, and making decisions about, and "telling <them> the optial strategy". Telling them things their characters should know wont work is not the same as telling them the best way that will.

I also feel like they need to learn some tactics and teamwork, but they are so obsessed with blaming the GM / each other for their failures that I don't know how to ever motivate them to learn. I feel kind of like Soon; the first step to redemption is admitting you did something wrong in the first place.

Sure. But how much of their failure to use good tactics may arise from them not really having a good grasp on the world their characters are in? And I don't mean the game rules here. I mean, actually understanding where things are, how they are connected, what's likely to happen if they do X instead of Y. These are all things you need to communicate to the players. But I've noticed, just from a number of your posts about issues you've had with your players, that an alarming percentage of those stem directly from a miscommunication or misunderstanding of the specifcs of a given encounter. Either how a power or ability will or should work. Or where a bad guy is in relation to the party. What sequence of actions/choices are available to the characters at any given time. Tons of conflict. Almost all could be headed off by stopping the players at some point and making sure that they are on the same page you are.

This is something that happens to all GMs. It's reallly really easy to have a clear view in your own head as to exactly what's going on and how everything in the scenario or encounter fit together. But somewhere between what's in the GM's brain, and then what comes out the GM's mouth, and then what goes into the players ears, and then how that's interpreted by their brains, and then finally what comes out from them in the form of decisions made, something gets lost. Heck. A lot of stuff gets lost in that process. We all think in slightly different ways. We interpret language in slightly different ways. We have different assumptions or beliefs about how things work.

One of the GMs jobs is to detect when that telephone game is happening, and clarify things for the players. And one of the easiest ways to do this is when your players decide to do something really monumentally dumb, instead of just accepting it, or giving a vague "are you sure?", actually take the time to ask why they are doing this thing, and why they think it's a good idea. Then, if something they say just plain isn't true (ie: player says "I know that if I flip the switch, it'll close the outer doors and seal away the bad guys" when you know that flipping that switch will actually open up more bad guys, and you are certain you told them this). That's when you correct them. Or if they are sure that a spell or effect will work a certain way, but you as the GM know you will rule differently. Tell them this.

Don't tell them what to do, but do steer them away from obviously self destructive things unless you've had an actual clear back and forth where you detailed exactly what harmful thing will happen if they choose to do X, and they insist on doing X anyway.

[Pauly]

Here's the thing; the terminology implies intent.

When I designed the encounter, nobody had created a character yet, let alone established tactics.

I did not design it to be a big set-piece encounter or a teachable lesson or anything like that, and certainly not as a "punishment". I just looked at the standard encounters for a starting party, saw ghasts, felt that would be appropriate, then wondered how I could make the room stand out, and decided it would be kind of neat to have ghasts digging their way out of a sinkhole one by one.

Later, still before the PCs had been made, when I was working on the random encounter tables I thought it would be appropriate if the ghasts only showed up if this particular room had been left open.


But the specifics really don't matter, because my PCs always turtle in every game regardless of party composition, and as a result they always suffer in an encounter with reinforcements (or AOE, or multiple objectives at once, or horse archers, or behind the lines buffers / conjurers, etc.). Because turtling is never the right approach to facing a vastly larger force unless you are simply trying to buy time like you were 300 Spartans.

The reason I specifically use the phrase “punishing the players for turtling” is because if I wanted to design the encounter specifically to punish the players for turtling what you’ve designed is exactly what I would do. The only change I would make is if I wanted to be especially mean then I’d add an environmental hazard that slowly degrades the players in the nearby spaces suitable for turtling.

[Lacco]

The whole concept of tons of dead / dying / fleeing adventurers everywhere to telegraph the monsters has been suggested before, but man does it feel like it would kill the tone of the game, making both the dungeon and the players feel very common, more like a crowded theme-park than a mysterious place of danger and exploration of the unknown.

Especially in this case where it is just for one encounter that isn't particularly challenging, subversive, or important to the storyline.

What is the tone of the game if this would just kill it?

And yes, if you place dead adventurers at each corner, it will feel like there are lots of adventurers - however, I question the whole 'place of danger and mystery': your players, with their characters, were able to find it. I would find it strange if nobody else did. After all, the dungeon did not just 'occur' five minutes before they entered it.

Also, if your first instinct when given advice is to push it to the extreme to show that it does not work, I'd say it's pretty much 'arguing in bad faith' (to use your own words from another thread). Nobody suggested tons of dead. And if you are worried that using a dead adventurer's body as a clue or to provide additional mystery would make dungeon feel common, then we need to go over GMing 101.

And wandering monsters and creatures standing in small rooms ready to attack are very much a staple of "old school" RPG play that was common in the days before video games even existed outside of table tennis.

You are correct, but you miss one thing: old school RPG was the first to be transformed into computer games (my intro to RPGs was the wonderful 16-color EGA Eye of the Beholder; and I truly fell in love with the intro to EOB 2...). So you have the 'old school' megadungeon with random encounters, nonsensical puzzle rooms and monsters standing in small rooms waiting for adventurers... and that was transformed into video games. RPGs in the meantime slowly transition towards more narrative structures, but some video game tropes just remain (because people expect them, or the developers expect people to expect them). And when OSR movement decided to rediscover these old school mechanics, people returned to the idea of megadungeons and old school mechanics. However, some of them have the 'video game' feeling exactly because they were ingrained in some of us via video games as opposed to old school RPGs. Shortly: it's not a matter of 'who was first - chicken or egg?' but 'what did you eat first - chicken or egg?".

I also feel like they need to learn some tactics and teamwork, but they are so obsessed with blaming the GM / each other for their failures that I don't know how to ever motivate them to learn. I feel kind of like Soon; the first step to redemption is admitting you did something wrong in the first place.

This would be maybe worth another thread: how to teach tactics and teamwork to players.

And how to show them GM is not their enemy (even if acting as one).

As I said, because I got used to it.

Nothing really does seem to work; the players will complain that the game is too hard no matter what actually happens, so I have no reason to change out from something that I know works correctly under the hood chasing nebulous, inconsistent, and unrealistic player perceptions.

Although if someone does present me with a better solution, I am more than willing to give it a try.

The "difficulty" thread running concurrent to this one has a lot of discussion about trying to find an objective standard or define terms, and it isn't having any more luck than I did.

I'll try to check out the other thread, although I don't think there is an actual answer beyond 'what works at your table'.

If it works under the hood correctly, but players complain... I'd say it's like an old, rickety, smoking bus - the driver says it's fine and drives them to the destination, but the guys sitting at the back complain of discomfort.

Also: emphasis mine. There were several suggestions in the thread. If what you stated is true, I'd expect to hear what were the results.

Could you explain why this makes it even more complication?

I'll use Stardew Valley as an example: my elder kid is learning it. She went into the mines. First few levels she was spooked as hell, because she thought she had to push through it all in one sitting (her first attempt she returned after 3nd level and found out she had to go from the first one again) while on the clock (you don't want to fall asleep outside of your farmhouse). Now once she hit fifth level, she found the elevator and learned she can push 5 levels at a time without losing any 'progress'. So she now plans 5-level burst expeditions. If she notices it's already nighttime and there are more than 2 levels to get to a multiplier of 5, she just packs her stuff and leaves.

Estimating when it is best to return from a dungeon and when to push onwards is not only a skill, it's information-dependable skill. If all they have is the assumption that you are going to complete the adventure in 4-8h RL time (which is quite the span) and use ~80% of their resources... that makes it complicated to judge it.

More complicated than, let's say, 'you have spent most of your healing spells, next fight will leave a mark on you' or my favourite 'you have a deep cut on your leg, youre head is bleeding, you are out of breath and your sword-arm feels numb'.

HP are both blessing and a curse in this case, as they provide a numerical value, but given different healing magic, variable damage output of enemies and other factors, it can also be hard to judge. On the other hand, it gives no actual indication of how the character feels: which has been already mentioned.

Of course, in a mega-dungeon environment or hex-crawl that goes out the window. My advice remains to go as far as you can, but I still am unsure about when exactly it is smart for them to turn back as they never know what is coming up next.

As a general rule, smart gameplay is always using the minimum number of resources to bypass each encounter, to press on unless something catastrophic happens, and save "optional" stuff that you can come back to for later after the main mission is completed for a better gauge of risk analysys.

If you are unsure, their uncertainty can be easily off the charts.

On a game level, because games where defeat / success are a forgone conclusion are boring. My players absolutely demand "balance" and will throw a temper tantrum and storm out of the house if they don't get it.

There are different views to this one too: consider the old 'journey is the goal'. If you knew, how a book ends, would you be completely disinterested in the 'how does it happen' and 'why'?

Competitions where defeat/success are forgone conclusions can have less of an impact, but still can be a spectacle. And sometimes, people just want to watch a curb stomp match (or an underdog story; the only soccer match I remember ever watching was Korea vs Brazil at some olympic games; everybody knew Brazil would win, but the guys from Korea had nothing to lose and went all in... it was wonderful, and they put up a great 1st half - it was obvious they did not want to sell their skins cheap).

Talking is a free action and encouraged.

My players hate it though.

Bob in particular has gone on record saying that while one person is talking during combat, they are literally the only person having fun. He also says his least favorite rule in any RPG is the bard kit in 2E that allows them to always say last words before dying, and they go out of their way to decapitate downed foes to ensure they can't impart dying wisdom.

I remember one time when I had a lycanthrope deliver literally 9 seconds of dialogue before shifting as a sort of phase transition and the players damn near rioted that I "paused the fight to give the villain a monologue".

When Dave (one of my former players) DMed, he had a hard rule about no RPing during combat; either dialogue OR adjusting your tactics based on your characters personality / motivation; it was to be a purely tactical wargame.

No comment.

Still trying to wrap my head around what "video game logic" means.

Best guess in this context is railroading without explanation? Like, no teleporting because I said so?

That is one example. Like 'normally I can jump over fences, but I can't jump over this one because GM needs me to go through this gate where they prepared this wonderful and cinematic combat'.

Also 'the only way to make sure no other ghasts make trouble for you is to close this hole but you failed the roll so no safety for you'. In video games, I'd immediately go for reload.

Eh. I've had this go both ways to be honest. It's very table specific though. Some players love to IC banter. Some players aren't comfortable doing so.

I don't care one way or the other. If banter is kept to a fun reasonable level, it's great. I have had situations, however, where one player dominates most of the table conversation (because they love it and the rest are just kinda "so-so" on it). This can lead to players feeling left out. Or uncomfortable. At the point where you are standing on the table, striking a dramatic pose, and pontificating on the <whatever> you have probably gone a bit too far.

I'm perfectly happy with players simply stating "My character will talk to the Innkeeper and ask about <plot stuff>". So the absence of IC banter is by no means a warning sign of anything. Heck. Doubly so in combat. That's usually the last place my players will do IC conversation stuff. They'll roleplay out social interactions if they feel like it, but combat is usually kept to clear declarative statements about what their character is doing and not a whole lot else.

I agree, that's why I prefaced it by stating that for me, this is a sign of trouble at my table.

Had players range from practically mute (one of them tended to say only like 2-3 sentences per game; the rest was just body language and acting with his face/posture; he was quite good at it, so I did not mind; he was also the one who tended to join banter during combat and was pretty much the first one to cuss out an enemy) to ones for whom 'standing on the table (RIP table, we did not know how thin it was at that point), in a dramatic pose, pontificating' was bare minimum. Also: I tend to manage player time quite well, so if I saw everybody was having fun, I let the guy pontificate, otherwise I had ways to stop him prematurely.

And I'm a big fan of social combat systems exactly because some people are terrible at improv speeches, but are good with mechanics and want to play a guy who can fast-talk someone. So the 'I'll ask him about the weather and try to build rapport until he trusts me' is a normal action for me. I usually ask if they want to roleplay stuff or just go through rolls, or - if I already know their preference - will go through with it unless stopped.

However, I was talking about banter during combat. This is a pet peeve of mine, that roleplaying stops as soon as initiative is rolled: when combat offers exactly the same (if not more) opportunities for roleplay. So, with a lot of effort, my players started to shout insults at the enemy, threaten them, ridicule, joke amongst themselves, shout orders, shout for help, or just generally state their status IC.

But that is mostly due to the combat system: it has natural breaks, switches limelight fluidly, and allows for this. I have tried to do the same once with 3.5 and while it worked, it was much harder to achieve - let's say that I ran out of material much faster.

Yeah. I've had similar happen. Again though, in a game system where said headshot would just result in unconsciousness and steady blood loss that will kill you in a minute or so, but unless you also did this while standing alone off over there and way away from your friends, someone will probably save you (healing magic kinda changes the rules in terms of what is or isn't a "terminal wound"). But yeah. I've had overconfident players say "Yeah. I'll take that simultaneous hit. I've got decent armor, I can probably take it...".

Yeah, there is actually a trait called 'Overconfident' in RoS that requires you to roleplay a character like this. And since armor and good stats help, it's a valid tactic to go for simultaneous attacks, even if it's reckless - but it can win you the combat. Had a player do it several times, to great results, but then his PC got hit with a thrust to a neck with a rapier. His PC survived, but next few combats he was very cautious.

Go for it. I like mixing in ancient magic and ancient tech in games. And yeah, often totally ripping off ideas from a number of sources.

I once placed a set of magitech teleporters with various symbols, Eye of the Beholder style, but without the stone items to activate them. A mage could just activate them using his powers, decide on the combination of symbols and fire it up. Depending on the symbols he uses, he could then be sent to another teleporter, or to a void. They found the first one in a ruined tower (former personal home of imperial battlemage) on their way to a dungeon (former imperial fortress). The party mage checks it out, finds out what it is, and experiments with the symbols a bit. He feels that there is a buildup in power, but no 'pull' from the teleport. So they venture on. They find the dungeon, and in one of the rooms they find another teleporter and different set of symbols; he again just triest to put in the least effort and remembers the symbols from the previous one, and this time there is a pull.

In the end, they used it to get out of the dungeon while being chased by something nasty.

[Talakeal]

The reason I specifically use the phrase “punishing the players for turtling” is because if I wanted to design the encounter specifically to punish the players for turtling what you’ve designed is exactly what I would do. The only change I would make is if I wanted to be especially mean then I’d add an environmental hazard that slowly degrades the players in the nearby spaces suitable for turtling.

Giving the monsters area of effects attacks / auras or even ranged weapons would have made it much, much, worse.

As would using intelligent monsters who actually form up a formation of their own to flank the phalanx roman legion style would also have been better instead of feral undead who just charge the closest person piecemeal.

What is the tone of the game if this would just kill it?

And yes, if you place dead adventurers at each corner, it will feel like there are lots of adventurers - however, I question the whole 'place of danger and mystery': your players, with their characters, were able to find it. I would find it strange if nobody else did. After all, the dungeon did not just 'occur' five minutes before they entered it.

Also, if your first instinct when given advice is to push it to the extreme to show that it does not work, I'd say it's pretty much 'arguing in bad faith' (to use your own words from another thread). Nobody suggested tons of dead. And if you are worried that using a dead adventurer's body as a clue or to provide additional mystery would make dungeon feel common, then we need to go over GMing 101.

It's not that I am pushing to the extreme, it's just that it is advice I get for virtually every encounter, and if followed for virtually every encounter would make the game ridiculous. I agree it might work on occasion, but trying to figure out when that occasion is going to be beforehand is not easy, especially for something which (imo) is so hard to justify ic and is so unlikely to actually pay off.

Also, I question how useful it actually is, as I don't know if the players would actually pick up on the clues I was trying to telegraph. Especially with my players who ignore advice that I flat out tell them OOC either because they weren't paying attention or because they thought I was trying to trick them, or in Bob and Dave's case because they don't like being told what to do and will do the opposite out of spite.

The advice often comes in the form of actually seeing another group of adventurers being killed at that moment so they can see the monsters in action, which is really contrived. But even in more reasonable numbers the corpses aren't going to just sit there for years on end, they are going to be eaten or cleaned by the dungeon's inhabitants.

In this particular dungeon no human has been inside for ~ a century. There are monsters down here, and I imagine I could use monster corpses if I really had something to telegraph, but it still has to make sense in universe.

As I said, this wasn't some big epic climax encounter or a cryptic "puzzle monster", it was just a normal room that happened to use the reinforcement mechanic and my players took more damage from it than normal as it is one of the (several) tactics that particularly "punishes" their normal MO of forming a small phalanx and sitting in an open room. I really don't think it would have played out any differently if there had been a sign on the door that said "This room contains a small group of ghasts, and a passage to another room with a verry large group of ghasts but only has the space to allow them to cross between one at a time."

You are correct, but you miss one thing: old school RPG was the first to be transformed into computer games (my intro to RPGs was the wonderful 16-color EGA Eye of the Beholder; and I truly fell in love with the intro to EOB 2...). So you have the 'old school' megadungeon with random encounters, nonsensical puzzle rooms and monsters standing in small rooms waiting for adventurers... and that was transformed into video games. RPGs in the meantime slowly transition towards more narrative structures, but some video game tropes just remain (because people expect them, or the developers expect people to expect them). And when OSR movement decided to rediscover these old school mechanics, people returned to the idea of megadungeons and old school mechanics. However, some of them have the 'video game' feeling exactly because they were ingrained in some of us via video games as opposed to old school RPGs. Shortly: it's not a matter of 'who was first - chicken or egg?' but 'what did you eat first - chicken or egg?".

This is correct; but it feels very different.

I am intentionally trying to run an old school dungeon crawl. Thus, saying it runs on video game logic feels like a criticism, saying it feels like an old school dungeon crawl feels like a compliment.

This would be maybe worth another thread: how to teach tactics and teamwork to players.

And how to show them GM is not their enemy (even if acting as one).

There have been many such threads.

Very little productive has come out of them, and a lot of people have told me it isn't the GM's place to be teaching the players lessons in the first place.

If you are unsure, their uncertainty can be easily off the charts.

Let me rephrase that.

I know what is in the next room and (generally) whether or not it is a good idea for them to press on or turn back.

I don't know how they are supposed to know that without devoting some of their resources to intelligence gathering, which they refuse to do.

That is one example. Like 'normally I can jump over fences, but I can't jump over this one because GM needs me to go through this gate where they prepared this wonderful and cinematic combat'.

Yeah. We are on the same page here then. I consider that railroading and try and avoid it at all costs.

Of course, the GM rarely actually needs to resort to such tricks as they are the one's who set up the environment and if they really don't want a jumpable fence there they can just build something a bit more challenging to climb.

Also 'the only way to make sure no other ghasts make trouble for you is to close this hole but you failed the roll so no safety for you'. In video games, I'd immediately go for reload.

You might really be on to something here.

Maybe that is my players problem; they aren't used to thinking up alternative strategies if their first attempt fails because in a video game they would just save-scum until the RNG went in their favor.

(Note that closing the hole was by far not the only way to deal with the problem in universe, but it's the one they went for first. Heck, they have a priest in the party, just consecrate the next room as holy ground, problem solved no roll needed!)

I'll try to check out the other thread, although I don't think there is an actual answer beyond 'what works at your table'.

If it works under the hood correctly, but players complain... I'd say it's like an old, rickety, smoking bus - the driver says it's fine and drives them to the destination, but the guys sitting at the back complain of discomfort.

Also: emphasis mine. There were several suggestions in the thread. If what you stated is true, I'd expect to hear what were the results.

Yeah. I agree. My players tend to bitch and blame someone else whenever they lose at any game, which kind of makes it hard for me to sift genuine feedback from the chaff, so mostly I just fall on what is comfortable / works for me from a mathematical level.

Might I ask which suggestions you are specifically referring to? This has been a long thread, some stuff I implemented, some stuff I decided against, and some stuff I am waiting on, but if you have any preference for specific suggestions I should try or want to hear about I would be all for that.

Smart reactive monsters was one suggestion I glommed on to from this thread that seemed to backfire horribly.

[Pauly]

Giving the monsters area of effects attacks / auras or even ranged weapons would have made it much, much, worse.

As would using intelligent monsters who actually form up a formation of their own to flank the phalanx roman legion style would also have been better instead of feral undead who just charge the closest person piecemeal.
.

The people I play with are also wargamers and boardgamers. One has won a national title in wargames and the other has been runner up in the nats a few times. Adding range, auras or AoE to an endless stream enemies wouldn’t cause them to sweat if they wanted to turtle. Nor do I think I have much chance if running an intelligent enemy more intelligently than the way the party would respond.

But that is a little beside the point. The feature that makes it a turtle hammer is ‘endless unless you close the gate’ not what particular equipment/tactics the foes being ported in have. My comments were system agnostic and party composition agnostic.

[Talakeal]

The people I play with are also wargamers and boardgamers. One has won a national title in wargames and the other has been runner up in the nats a few times. Adding range, auras or AoE to an endless stream enemies wouldn’t cause them to sweat if they wanted to turtle. Nor do I think I have much chance if running an intelligent enemy more intelligently than the way the party would respond.

But that is a little beside the point. The feature that makes it a turtle hammer is ‘endless unless you close the gate’ not what particular equipment/tactics the foes being ported in have. My comments were system agnostic and party composition agnostic.

Hmmm...

There are absolutely scenarios besides "infinite reinforcements" where a more proactive approach is more efficient. Time limits are a big one. Simply being outclassed is another. If you need to steal the Macguffin or kill the king, and the guards are simply stronger / smarter / more numerous than you, then getting in quickly, completing your objective, and getting out is absolutely the right call. Heck, simply having high ground or arrow slits or better night vision can also be really bad for people turtling.

But I think you are using turtle a bit differently than I am. You are talking about playing slowly and defensively and making the enemy come to you? Right?

What I am talking about is my players specifically clumping up in a tight ball in the middle of the room with the melee in the front and the ranged behind them and refusing to move until the monsters are dead. They always do this, and they always struggle against enemies with AOEs, reinforcements, ranged attacks, buffers behind the line, time limits, etc. as a result.

[Pauly]

Hmmm...

There are absolutely scenarios besides "infinite reinforcements" where a more proactive approach is more efficient. Time limits are a big one. Simply being outclassed is another. If you need to steal the Macguffin or kill the king, and the guards are simply stronger / smarter / more numerous than you, then getting in quickly, completing your objective, and getting out is absolutely the right call. Heck, simply having high ground or arrow slits or better night vision can also be really bad for people turtling.

But I think you are using turtle a bit differently than I am. You are talking about playing slowly and defensively and making the enemy come to you? Right?

What I am talking about is my players specifically clumping up in a tight ball in the middle of the room with the melee in the front and the ranged behind them and refusing to move until the monsters are dead. They always do this, and they always struggle against enemies with AOEs, reinforcements, ranged attacks, buffers behind the line, time limits, etc. as a result.

I’m using as turtle as playing slowly with maximum defense and making the enemy come to you.

Your players are turtling, but not very efficiently. Good turtles will use techniques like trading space for time, spreading out to force the enemy to split up, using fast moving characters as bait to lure the bad guys into the wrong place, using terrain to limit LOS, limited counterattacks to disrupt attacks, using stealth to set up ambushes and so on.

As to why do your players turtle in the manner they do?
Fundamentally it’s because it is a technique they have found that works.
Why don’t their tactics evolve?
Lack of trust in the other PCs to play actively or smartly.

[Talakeal]

I’m using as turtle as playing slowly with maximum defense and making the enemy come to you.

Your players are turtling, but not very efficiently. Good turtles will use techniques like trading space for time, spreading out to force the enemy to split up, using fast moving characters as bait to lure the bad guys into the wrong place, using terrain to limit LOS, limited counterattacks to disrupt attacks, using stealth to set up ambushes and so on.

As to why do your players turtle in the manner they do?
Fundamentally it’s because it is a technique they have found that works.
Why don’t their tactics evolve?
Lack of trust in the other PCs to play actively or smartly.

Yeah, my players don't (usually) turtle in that manner.

Playing slowly and methodically, fortifying your position, and making the enemy come to you are all usually great tactics, although there are exceptions as I listed above.

That's not how my players usually do it, they clump up in a tight ball and basically give the enemies free run of the board to engage the party on their terms.

Not only is it (usually) a tactically poor choice, but its kind of boring as it removes a lot of tactical movement, terrain, and deciding how to split forces from the equation.

Which is not to say that my players are dumb, I know I often give that impression, more often they are just kind of proud and paranoid. I honestly feel like the clumping up is a fear reaction more often than not as they are terrified of getting surrounded and picked off one at a time. I believe that is an IRL psychological principal that gets people killed in real warfare as well as artillery shells and machine guns just love big clumps of enemy soldiers.

[Telok]

The players are also claim they are convinced any time I use reinforcements that there is some hidden "kill counter" where if they turtle long enough eventually the enemies will give up and they will win. I don't know why they have this in their heads. I guess I lack the capability to accurately express to them that while their are not literally an infinite number of them existing in hammer-space, their might as well be because there are for more than you can kill in a straight fight

Haven't read/finished/kept up on all of this, but this bit I've solved for my group. No clue if it will help you but...

Long long ago I inherited half a coffee can of dice. Since then it's been upgraded. Every so often someone tosses in dice they were gifted and don't like, or have grown tired of. One time the lfgs had a "pound of dice" and one of us bought one to throw in.

When the party hits a huge number of enemies it say "it's a horde" and tell then to start pulling dice from the dice bucket. Usually d6s but sometimes I call for d8s or d12s or "all of it". I have them line/pile the dice up somewhere and I place some. This next bit I stole from the original Space Hulk board game, but it should be easily recognizable. The dice on the board and in the "reserve" represent what the characters can sense. They sense, by hearing, tech device pings, gut instinct, tactical experience, the voices of their ancestors, whatever... they sense that many groups. As they kill stuff off the table the reserves come in. Maybe 1:1 to killed, maybe more, maybe per round, maybe per signal of trigger. Usually I roll the dice to see how big a group is, although if I'm just doing a handful of d6s I'll set them to 6.

There are two signals that tell the players it ain't ever gonna be over anytime soon. 1) everything killed just goes back to the reserves, and 2) I tell them to get out the whole bucket. Every single die.

I don't know if it will help. My games have minion squads that I can easily use the dice for tracking and counting live bodies on a map, plus I don't have to track anything because the dice do that. We have the dice bucket, which is probably a gallon and a half (about 5-6 liters?). The players know I don't pull any punches for this but it's not unusually tactically challenging. They are almost always near mindless stuff like zombies, gibberlings, giant bees, xenomorphs, rogue housekeeping robots, etc. But likewise, if they really want to run through it, can manage it (fast minion rules or decent massed combatants & quick play are a must), and they win... well then they win. Obviously if the groups dice are just cycling through the reserves pool it's not a "fight to X dead & win" scenario.

Like I said, don't know it it will help. But at my table it works to get through the kill counter vs effectively unlimited mobs thing. I just guesstimate 5/die and say to pull that many d6s and bigger for the horde. Though I also admit to just sometimes grabbing a big fistfull and dropping them on the table too.

[Talakeal]

Haven't read/finished/kept up on all of this, but this bit I've solved for my group. No clue if it will help you but...

Long long ago I inherited half a coffee can of dice. Since then it's been upgraded. Every so often someone tosses in dice they were gifted and don't like, or have grown tired of. One time the lfgs had a "pound of dice" and one of us bought one to throw in.

When the party hits a huge number of enemies it say "it's a horde" and tell then to start pulling dice from the dice bucket. Usually d6s but sometimes I call for d8s or d12s or "all of it". I have them line/pile the dice up somewhere and I place some. This next bit I stole from the original Space Hulk board game, but it should be easily recognizable. The dice on the board and in the "reserve" represent what the characters can sense. They sense, by hearing, tech device pings, gut instinct, tactical experience, the voices of their ancestors, whatever... they sense that many groups. As they kill stuff off the table the reserves come in. Maybe 1:1 to killed, maybe more, maybe per round, maybe per signal of trigger. Usually I roll the dice to see how big a group is, although if I'm just doing a handful of d6s I'll set them to 6.

There are two signals that tell the players it ain't ever gonna be over anytime soon. 1) everything killed just goes back to the reserves, and 2) I tell them to get out the whole bucket. Every single die.

I don't know if it will help. My games have minion squads that I can easily use the dice for tracking and counting live bodies on a map, plus I don't have to track anything because the dice do that. We have the dice bucket, which is probably a gallon and a half (about 5-6 liters?). The players know I don't pull any punches for this but it's not unusually tactically challenging. They are almost always near mindless stuff like zombies, gibberlings, giant bees, xenomorphs, rogue housekeeping robots, etc. But likewise, if they really want to run through it, can manage it (fast minion rules or decent massed combatants & quick play are a must), and they win... well then they win. Obviously if the groups dice are just cycling through the reserves pool it's not a "fight to X dead & win" scenario.

Like I said, don't know it it will help. But at my table it works to get through the kill counter vs effectively unlimited mobs thing. I just guesstimate 5/die and say to pull that many d6s and bigger for the horde. Though I also admit to just sometimes grabbing a big fistfull and dropping them on the table too.

I don't know, I feel like seeing a mountain of dice might put the idea that they need to kill that many in their head!

It's really hard to communicate that there are an effectively infinite number but not a literally infinite number, its weird. Any number I give them they feel like that is a challenge to meet, but if I don't give a number they complain about how unrealistic it is.

[Reversefigure4]

I don't know, I feel like seeing a mountain of dice might put the idea that they need to kill that many in their head!

It's really hard to communicate that there are an effectively infinite number but not a literally infinite number, its weird. Any number I give them they feel like that is a challenge to meet, but if I don't give a number they complain about how unrealistic it is.

Yeah, you can't use infinite enemies, or effectively infinite, or even reinforcements with your players, since they're too proud to accept anything other than "kill everything" as a success marker.

[Talakeal]

Yeah, you can't use infinite enemies, or effectively infinite, or even reinforcements with your players, since they're too proud to accept anything other than "kill everything" as a success marker.

This is more or less true.

But, on the other hand, I don't want to give the impression they are always absolutely terrible either.

Last campaign I had a mission where they were holding a bridge against an enemy army and made it very clear from the outset that their goal was to hold it as long as possible, not to kill the enemy army, and they performed admirably.

Its really about framing the situation correctly; its just a very hard balancing act between breaking immersion and resorting to "video game logic" and making them feel encouraged to turtle up and make a last stand until the mobs are all dead.

[Azures_Finest]

First things first: Let your players play the game however they want to. Part of the point of a megadungeon is that the players can approach it however they want, it doesn’t inherently have arbitrary time pressures. Like, “world’s largest dungeon”, kinda a case study in doing things wrong, has a whopping 2 “must do” encounters, one of which has (iirc) a 100-day timer. That’s right, the PCs have 100 long rests as one of two timers on the whole dungeon. (Of course, failure means the world ends. No pressure.)

Funny. Our group was planning on doing WLD but, after reading it in its entirety ... its pretty terrible overall. There are some nice hooks and the maps are fantastic but overall, its so bloody sloppy and nonsensical.

So, using some hooks from the original WLD, some stuff I've read online, stuff from muh own brain, and some common DnD/fantasy tropes .. I'm basically writing my own megadungeon. It's been fun so far. Challenging to say the least but fun. Having some issues with 'independent yet interconnected' story arcs but c'est la vie.

[Talakeal]

Funny. Our group was planning on doing WLD but, after reading it in its entirety ... its pretty terrible overall. There are some nice hooks and the maps are fantastic but overall, its so bloody sloppy and nonsensical.

So, using some hooks from the original WLD, some stuff I've read online, stuff from muh own brain, and some common DnD/fantasy tropes .. I'm basically writing my own megadungeon. It's been fun so far. Challenging to say the least but fun. Having some issues with 'independent yet interconnected' story arcs but c'est la vie.

World's largest dungeon is trash overall, although I agree it has a couple of good ideas in it. The last encounter animating the corpse of every monster in the dungeon is a new idea, but I can't imagine actually trying to run it in the game (see the above debate about reinforcements and multiply it by a hundred!).

As for the idea of a timer, that is a fatal flaw in D&D and D&D like games; all resource recovery is dependent on time, so if you don't have any sort of time pressure, well, the wizard just snaps his or her fingers and solves every problem without challenge or opposition. There is no real gameplay, and no real need for a party, outside of the occasional "boss fight" that can't be soloed by a wizard going nova, and even those could be avoided for the most part.

[Azures_Finest]

World's largest dungeon is trash overall, although I agree it has a couple of good ideas in it. The last encounter animating the corpse of every monster in the dungeon is a new idea, but I can't imagine actually trying to run it in the game (see the above debate about reinforcements and multiply it by a hundred!).

As for the idea of a timer, that is a fatal flaw in D&D and D&D like games; all resource recovery is dependent on time, so if you don't have any sort of time pressure, well, the wizard just snaps his or her fingers and solves every problem without challenge or opposition. There is no real gameplay, and no real need for a party, outside of the occasional "boss fight" that can't be soloed by a wizard going nova, and even those could be avoided for the most part.

Yeah, I remember finding the dungeon and thinking it would be awesome. The overall story isnt perfect but it has a nice fantasy trope to it. Then after reading the first 3 sections, I realized the writers were drunk. There are SO many inconsistencies. So, as I say, Im taking bits and pieces, and making it my own. I should start a thread on it for advice n such, now that I think about it :P

So for our group, we handle time as a non-linear item. We play 2E ... at the first couple of levels, Mages and Priests/Clericsare essentially dog vomit. As such, I allow more frequent breaks to heal and study spells n such. As character levels advance and they are more powerful, the inverse happens. But, there are even variables to that. Eg. the dungeon im 'writing.' Each level of the dungeon is almost 100 rooms. In terms of 'in game rounds,' it would take several days to get through one level. Our group generally plays for 6 hours in a session. We call the end of session 'y'all found a place to camp.' We dont overthink it. We just make the decision to stop play for the day = players set camp, traps, fire, standing guard. Otherwise, its just too much to manage, think about, and take care of. It takes away from the 'fun' for our group (of course, realizing that all groups are different). We are also lifelong friends who played 2E when we were 13, up until our early 20's .. only picking it back up in the last year. So, we know what we like, we arent out to make life difficult for the DM (we take turns). We are having fun.

I saw a meme earlier today. It was a picture of the Dungeon Master from the 80's DnD cartoon with the caption: DnD is basically 10% food, 10% quoting TV and movies, 35% BSing with your group, 10% doing really stupid stuff, 35% playing the game. That pretty much sums up our group lol

[gbaji]

As for the idea of a timer, that is a fatal flaw in D&D and D&D like games; all resource recovery is dependent on time, so if you don't have any sort of time pressure, well, the wizard just snaps his or her fingers and solves every problem without challenge or opposition. There is no real gameplay, and no real need for a party, outside of the occasional "boss fight" that can't be soloed by a wizard going nova, and even those could be avoided for the most part.

Well. I think there are ways around this (and I've written about them). If you change your encounter methodolgy from "encounters per day" to "encounters required to complete this section", and then have real penalties for failing to complete a "section" in one go (real penalties that make sense, not arbitrary ones), then you can manage this in a quite realistic manner.

I presented an example earlier (in this thread I believe). A tower where the bad guy is holding prisoners you need to rescue. You can't just stop halfway through and say "Ok. We've had our list of encounters for the day. We'll stop and rest now", right? So resource management is about "we have to deal with this entire set of things, one way or another, and achieve our objective, using what we have available with no ability to recover". Poor management means that the group gets 3/4ths of the way through and can't fight their way any further.

The problem is that this actually requires a lot more planning and thought and a really good sense of actual game balance than just rattling of X number of encounters per day does (the GM can always just stop hitting them with more encounters that day if they come up a bit short). So many GMs don't try to do this. Or when they do, their players fail horribly at it, either because they are just poor at planning out how to manage this sort of thing or the GM did a terrible job planning/balancing it. But I've found that if you do this often enough, you become really wickedly good at it, and you can create very satisfying and "realistic" encounter scenarios for your players that will make the game feel a lot less like just a grind.

I can't actually imagine running encounters any other way now. The very thought of intentionally hitting the PCs with a specific number of things, of a specific difficulty level, is just alien to my GMing thought process. I always think in terms of "there's this group of things here", and "another set of things there", and the PCs have to figure out how to interact with those whole things. Whether via negotiation or combat or whatever is up to them, but nothing is ever scaled in a standard D&D way. Everything in my games is a part of a larger whole. You poke one part with a stick, and other parts will react in some way. Always. Truely random encounters do happen, but are just that: random (well, not really, but from the PCs pov they are). And rarely even remotely designed to be a resource drain issue (barring very low level characters, random stuff you're likely to encounter in a world where anyone can like walk to the next town without dying horribly should not be common nor much of a threat). I use those mostly as time filler during game sessions. I don't have enough time to get them into the next section of the scenario without rushing things, but it's still too early to end game night kind of situations. Eh. And sometimes to fill in a "flavor" of the area. So traveling through a swamp, maybe swamp things attack them. Through a desert? Desert things. Also allows the sense that time/distance is actually going by rather than just declaring "ok. It takes you X days to get to Y". I mean, if they are on a ship, traveling somewhere, it would be a shame not to have some sort of nautical based encounter, right?

[Talakeal]

So we played again. After a marathon session, they cleared the entire first floor.

There were more than a few issues though.


Bob still plays a glass cannon and then whines and plays the victim when he takes damage. At this point, I am almost tuning him out. But I do wonder if he has a point, as intelligent enemies do tend to target him first as he is super vulnerable but also super dangerous to ignore, this means that he takes more damage than his low defenses alone can account for.


The new girl continues to dog pile into arguments whether or not she knows what she is talking about and needs her dice watched. But her new character is still kind of non-functional. She basically took flaws that cancel out all of her abilities, meaning that she has a discordant and significantly under-powered character. I don't know if she is trolling or just doesn't understand my system and is too proud to admit it, but when I went through her new character sheet and offered her suggestions for rebuilding it she ignored me and said "People do irrational things." I am not sure if she meant she thought it was good RP to make a discordant build or she was being irrational OOC and didn't want to change. Either way, it makes it hard on the rest of the party, and by extension me.

She also made the mistake of watering down her character by thinking medic = priest = healing magic. I don't know if this is something D&D and its imitators have drilled into people, but it doesn't work great in my system unless you actually build your character around it. I have seen more than one person make this mistake, and even if I deliberately warn them, they can't imagine a healer who is not also a spell-caster, priest, and warrior all at once.


There are still massive communication issues at my table. The party is having problems communicating their tactics both to one another and to me, and I am still sometimes unintentionally leaving out vital details of a scene. We also have players doing stuff without telling me. In my system you need to make acquisition rolls to find rare items, and the players have just been doing it on trips to town; this is very bad because I am trying to witness all rolls to stomp out cheating, and also because I am trying to organically flesh out the setting and the RP by introducing merchants and craftsmen in character as the PCs seek them out.


The players aren't thinking strategically. It still hasn't occurred to them to try actually changing the layout of the dungeon; digging new passages, breaking down walls, sealing doors, collapsing passages, building fortifications, etc. The fact that two of the party members effectively have zero skills doesn't really help. They have also made alliances with four NPCs in the dungeon, but haven't really had in depth conversations with said NPCs to find out what they know despite my hints. Likewise, they aren't trying to find new routes in or out of the dungeon, so they keep clearing the same few areas over and over again rather than taking shortcuts, which is whittling down their resources.


Overall though; they are doing precisely average. Their kick in the door and kill the monsters approach is working exactly as well as it should.


And, what everyone is waiting for, round three against the ghasts.


First, we had a squabble about the doors. Bob insists that he closed the door in the very first encounter. I told him that he didn't, I was expecting him to and listening very carefully, but he never did. He said he did (and the new girl of course jumps in and backs him up, as she does for every argument). So either he meant to say it but didn't, is misremembering it, or I just missed it, none of which say great things about our ability to communicate.

Brian then asked why it mattered, are the ghasts too stupid to open a door. I started to explain that while yes, they are dumb, its mostly about motivation. They won't seek out new prey, and instead act re-actively to the presence of the living, but instead, trying to keep the game moving, I just said "Yes." This would turn out to be a *huge* mistake on my part.


So, the party comes up with a brilliant plan. They will have Flossie conjure tentacles to block off the door to the room with the sinkhole, and then cast a holy word to drive the ghasts milling about the front room back. Holy word is sort of like a priest's turn undead; any undead who spend too long near the priest while it is active take damage, and they will instinctively free from it. Then Kumiko will stand on one side of the doorway and lob grenades in, while Feurlina will stand on the opposite side and ready an action to whack any ghasts that exit with her hammer. Miles (The new girl's new gunslinger character) stands one pace in front of the doorway with a clear line of fire.

This should have worked brilliantly with little to no damage to the party. Unfortunately, someone either misunderstood the plan, decided not to follow it, or wasn't paying attention when the plan was discussed. Soon, everyone is INSIDE the room with the ghasts, and Flossie is so close that the holy word damaged that no matter where they are, giving the ghasts no place to free, so they rush her through the gap between the front line and take her and miles down, and cause a lot of damage to Kumiko and Feurlina before being defeated.

So, the small change of tactics, being in the room instead of outside the doorway, caused them to once again be swarmed and overwhelmed.

THEN they close the door, but decide that it is *impossible* to permanently block it as it swings inward. We get into a long discussion of how it could be done, but they decide against it, and instead sit in the room bandaging their wounds. When I tell them that the ghasts are going to open the door and come at them, Brian calls me a liar and tells me that I told him they were too stupid to open the door earlier. I try and explain that they aren't smart enough to open the door and pursue, but when there are four people talking and bleeding right outside the doorway they are going to be driven to figure it out, and will be able to open it by random chance given a few moments, as even a dog can often open a latch if they try hard enough.

Then they decide to move Feurlina in front of the door, and I tell them that she doesn't have enough movement. Now, rather than raising the, very reasonable, objection that they wouldn't stay in battle formation while treating their wounds, Bob instead decides to keep his mouth shut and get mad.

At this point Feurlina holds the door shut while the new girl decides to go grab some furniture from the next room and create a barricade, and thus they sold the impossible ghast puzzle once and for all.

But, it still creates trouble, as for the rest of the night whenever Bob is out of range to cast a spell, he makes a nasty comment about how I have *decided* to become very pedantic about movement tonight so why even bother.


Does anyone else have this problem? Where a player will object to a DM ruling made on the spot, but rather than argue at the moment, they just get salty about it and bring it up later, often well after the initial context the ruling was made in has been forgotten?

Well. I think there are ways around this (and I've written about them). If you change your encounter methodolgy from "encounters per day" to "encounters required to complete this section", and then have real penalties for failing to complete a "section" in one go (real penalties that make sense, not arbitrary ones), then you can manage this in a quite realistic manner.

I presented an example earlier (in this thread I believe). A tower where the bad guy is holding prisoners you need to rescue. You can't just stop halfway through and say "Ok. We've had our list of encounters for the day. We'll stop and rest now", right? So resource management is about "we have to deal with this entire set of things, one way or another, and achieve our objective, using what we have available with no ability to recover". Poor management means that the group gets 3/4ths of the way through and can't fight their way any further.

The problem is that this actually requires a lot more planning and thought and a really good sense of actual game balance than just rattling of X number of encounters per day does (the GM can always just stop hitting them with more encounters that day if they come up a bit short). So many GMs don't try to do this. Or when they do, their players fail horribly at it, either because they are just poor at planning out how to manage this sort of thing or the GM did a terrible job planning/balancing it. But I've found that if you do this often enough, you become really wickedly good at it, and you can create very satisfying and "realistic" encounter scenarios for your players that will make the game feel a lot less like just a grind.

This sounds more or less like normal adventure design, which I don't typically have a problem with. Its only when I try and run a hex-crawl or dungeon-crawl that I have issues with pacing.

I can't actually imagine running encounters any other way now. The very thought of intentionally hitting the PCs with a specific number of things, of a specific difficulty level, is just alien to my GMing thought process. I always think in terms of "there's this group of things here", and "another set of things there", and the PCs have to figure out how to interact with those whole things. Whether via negotiation or combat or whatever is up to them, but nothing is ever scaled in a standard D&D way. Everything in my games is a part of a larger whole. You poke one part with a stick, and other parts will react in some way. Always. Truely random encounters do happen, but are just that: random (well, not really, but from the PCs pov they are). And rarely even remotely designed to be a resource drain issue (barring very low level characters, random stuff you're likely to encounter in a world where anyone can like walk to the next town without dying horribly should not be common nor much of a threat). I use those mostly as time filler during game sessions. I don't have enough time to get them into the next section of the scenario without rushing things, but it's still too early to end game night kind of situations. Eh. And sometimes to fill in a "flavor" of the area. So traveling through a swamp, maybe swamp things attack them. Through a desert? Desert things. Also allows the sense that time/distance is actually going by rather than just declaring "ok. It takes you X days to get to Y". I mean, if they are on a ship, traveling somewhere, it would be a shame not to have some sort of nautical based encounter, right?

My players specifically really want "balanced" encounters. I would much prefer a more organic free-form approach, but it is not to be at my table.

[Telok]

For your group that sounds like an unqualified success. You identified your mistake and seek to learn from it, so that's all good.