Quote from: Benoist;579473Not necessarily, because a dungeon is not 'just' a biological ecosystem (food sources need to make sense to some extent, like where does the Red Dragon get his food? Does he have an exit shaft to hunt for stuff?). These considerations do matter to me, but they aren't the only considerations that enter into the picture. If we are talking about magical power, or ore, or other types of resources valued by the baddies, this can be extrapolated to the notion that the meanest baddies will tend to gravitate towards the greatest sources of power and sustainability within the entire complex. If these sources of power are deep in the underworld, that's where you'll find the mean baddies.

It all depends how you make sense of your initial setting/dungeon set up. You can come up with reasons that actually make sense in that regard, I think.

I agree you can but often I find people haven't. The base setting for D&D for example doesn't. My hate is the room where the orcs are playing cards... are they always playing cards? if he PCs came back in a week would they be playing cards? whatabout in day time when they ought to be sleeping? etc etc ... Pet Gripe
Also the Dragon who has no way of getting out of their lair, the goblins that never need to take a shit, the Manticore that is still alive in a room that was trapped by the archmage Kastas 200 years ago and all the traps are still armed so it hasn't eaten for like 200 years .... etc etc

Quote from: Skywalker;579458As a matter of interest, what are people's thoughts on having a module stating as being for "starting PCs" or "levels 1 to 3"?

Quote from: Skywalker;579463I am trying to understand the distinction (if any) between suggested power level and suggested encounter per day, in terms of what people are finding offensive in the later.

FWIW I don't like suggested encounters per day either.

OK thanks for the clarification. I think that when you state on a module that it is intended for "level 2-5 player characters" it basically gives a theoretical approximation unconnected to the actual play of the general degree of danger involved in playing with that piece, i.e. it doesn't preclude anything about the way said characters then choose to confront these challenges and tackle them, whether they choose to push on, camp on site, retreat regularly, whatnot. The terms of engagement are basically up to the PCs.

Whereas when you say that your module is built with the assumption there are 4 encounters a day it's basically having preconceptions about the nature of the game play itself, how the module ought to be played and approached by the adventuring party. It's a much narrower and more intrusive way of conceptualizing an adventure setting. You see what I mean?

Suggested Encounters Per Day implies that you are designing encounters to always be tough, but winnable.  That doesn't mean they won't die, but it does mean that if they play smart and do not get real bad luck, they won't run into anything that they can't defeat.  Are you designing an amusement park or a world?  If you intend the experience of the game to be based around the individual gaming session, then you're going with the Amusement Park model, like DDMW's design.

What's wrong with having a lair of monsters you can't defeat in one go?  You head there, take them by surprise and inflict casualties before you have to leave.  After that, they might be on alert, so you can't do that same thing again.  Now you might have to play defense for the next few sessions as the Orcs counter-raid the village you were protecting in the first place, or your group rangers around killing orc hunting parties, thinning them further.  If you start off at low level, it might take a few levels and many sessions to finally once and for all, clear out an Orc lair.  Is that what flaccid purple calls FFV?  I call it Not An Amusement Park.

Quote from: Benoist;579478It's a much narrower and more intrusive way of conceptualizing an adventure setting. You see what I mean?

Yep. Thanks. I think the two concepts are related but they are aggravated if the scale is reduced as it has a seemingly more constrained effect on the way the adventure plays out.

I am definitely not a fan of the x encounters per day approach.

Quote from: Melan;579404Being ambushed by a flying dragon out of nowhere: dick move
Spotting a flying dragon moving in your direction and not even trying to hide somewhere, or bribe the dragon, or at least beg for mercy: death wish

Being forced to go into Dragon Swamp: dick move
Going into Dragon Swamp after seeing several piles of charred corpses, a ruined village and several large footprints: "So don't go into Dragon Swamp next time."

And so on.

As I see it, if every danger in the world has appropriate warning signs - that is just as unrealistic as there being only level-appropriate opponents to fight.  Both of these come from the same principle - that if the players die, they should have had a fair chance.  The difference is adding in threat-assessment challenges.  

In my experience, though, threat assessment in D&D is based mostly on reading GM cues rather than any realistic in-game-world logic - because the whole setup of monsters isn't really logical.  The vast majority of D&D adventures that I've seen - published or not - are based more around making challenges appropriate to the PCs, not around "what would an underground dungeon really look like".  

If you're really following in-game-world logic, then sometimes the PCs won't have a fair chance.  This isn't necessarily a dick move - but it should be clearly understood from the beginning that this is the case.

Quote from: Skywalker;579458As a matter of interest, what are people's thoughts on having a module stating as being for "starting PCs" or "levels 1 to 3"?

Originally, modules were designed for tournament play. In a tournament situation, it makes sense to have a level playing field. Somehow this shifted at some point into being a design ethos.

Of course, it's nearly impossible to design an adventure module for sandbox play, so to some extent you can't fault that as a design choice since it's much easier than trying to just make a location-based non-linear sandbox adventure that can be played by anyone and be commercially viable.

Ultimately, I've always viewed adventure modules like those you describe as Training Wheels, not as a goal to emulate. Like training wheels, once you've gotten some experience, you are supposed to get rid of them. I can see that they have value for beginning GMs who don't have any idea what to do, but once that GM gets some experience, they should be able to shed the constraints of the module, including the level-locked encounters.

Quote from: jibbajibba;579477I agree you can but often I find people haven't. The base setting for D&D for example doesn't. My hate is the room where the orcs are playing cards... are they always playing cards? if he PCs came back in a week would they be playing cards? whatabout in day time when they ought to be sleeping? etc etc ... Pet Gripe

Actually, alot of the original dungeon modules had information on who would be in a room and what they'd be doing based on the time of day. They had a routine.

QuoteAlso the Dragon who has no way of getting out of their lair, the goblins that never need to take a shit, the Manticore that is still alive in a room that was trapped by the archmage Kastas 200 years ago and all the traps are still armed so it hasn't eaten for like 200 years .... etc etc

I don't really remember any of that happening. People bring that stuff up, but I've never actually encountered it in a game. I'm sure there's poorly designed dungeons with those sorts of things, but I've never run into them.

Quote from: jhkim;579485As I see it, if every danger in the world has appropriate warning signs - that is just as unrealistic as there being only level-appropriate opponents to fight.  Both of these come from the same principle - that if the players die, they should have had a fair chance.  The difference is adding in threat-assessment challenges.  

In my experience, though, threat assessment in D&D is based mostly on reading GM cues rather than any realistic in-game-world logic - because the whole setup of monsters isn't really logical.  The vast majority of D&D adventures that I've seen - published or not - are based more around making challenges appropriate to the PCs, not around "what would an underground dungeon really look like".  

If you're really following in-game-world logic, then sometimes the PCs won't have a fair chance.  This isn't necessarily a dick move - but it should be clearly understood from the beginning that this is the case.

More over if you're going for "realistic" things attacking you that you can't stop is a very real thing that really happens in the real wold all the time. If DnD if you're doing anything to hamper a more powerful being's plot, even at low levels, you're likely to be targeted by that higher power and be ambushed/killed without warning or respite. It goes unsaid a lot but players aren't really keen on their character's dying to higher level challenges.

Quote from: jibbajibba;579476The world builder wouldn;t work that way though, that is an adventure build.

And the two tend to go hand-in-hand.  Unless every possible hex of the map has been fully detailed, there are things that are still 'nebulous' until the PCs decide to go there.  Once you start deciding on what reasonably should be there, you can work with the PCs you have to try to make the session fun.  It is a game, after all.  If everywhere the PCs went wasn't fun or resulted in instant death, it wouldn't be a very good game.

And a good DM would be ensuring that PCs have a reason to go there (and reasons to do a dozen other totally different things).  That is, every adventure has a 'hook' - something to alert the PCs to the possibility of undergoing an 'adventure' and achieving some kind of reward.  A villager is in trouble; a family member just lost the family fortune in a rigged game of high stakes poker; a mage is offering a small fortune for a medusa's head.  The PCs decide what they want to deal with - now, assuming they decide to go for the medusa's head, there's a good chance that the DM knew 'sort of' what would be there, but not 'exactly' what would be there.  So, he's fleshing out a piece of his world that has been mostly abstract - ie, the medusa might have shown up on a 'random encounter chart', but the rest of the information wasn't specifically known.

Quote from: jibbajibba;579476The world builder would say there is a medusa that lives in this cave complex. What else woudl live with a medusa? Well is it one medusa or more (insert plot reason its 1 or 3 ). On the basis that a medusa must live on some sort of magical energy as she is in the same position as Midas vis a vis lunch. What other creatures would live with her. So in your example She has a bunch of Grimlock servants. Also she is snakey so there may be serpents, make one of them a giant viper. What else might live in the lair of a medusa? etc ... So rather than going from the CR to the dungoen you go from the dungeon to the CR.

The two can go hand-in-hand.  In this particular case, since I decided that the 'medusa' was the boss, I didn't want to include any more 'challenging' monsters.  Basically the Medusa set a 'challenge' cap for my purposes.  I could have had 'non-aligned' monsters that were more difficult, but since I'm making the dungeon and I want the medusa to be the 'focus', that's the way I decided to roll.  

Grimlocks make sense as 'servants' because they're immune to the gaze attack (since they don't have eyes).  Rather than a wizard, I could make the grimlock caster a cleric or possibly an adept - but someone that has come to worship the medusa and has his thralls working with her.  

Of course, I could choose to make a straight up fight a disaster - I could increase the number of grimlocks and put in a grimlock barbarian champion - he wants to wrest control of the tribe from the wizard (or cleric or whatever), so the PCs could end up in an agreement to kill the leader and let the next-in-line take over leadership and abandon the medusa.  

Lots of possibilities.  

Quote from: jibbajibba;579476You don't build it as a challenge for a 5th level party you build it as a place where a medusa would live. It really doesn't matter if the CR rating ends up meaning the lair is only suitable for 7th level characters it just means the 5th level guys can't kill the medusa yet and need to go and do something else instead.

You can do both.  If I have level 5 PCs, and they're going to take on a medusa, I want to make sure that doing so is challenging.  If it's too easy, it's boring.  If it's too hard, they all die.  

Even with a 'sandbox' approach, there tends to be some customization to make it interesting for the PCs at your table.  

Play the game, not the world!

Quote from: Doctor Jest;579492Ultimately, I've always viewed adventure modules like those you describe as Training Wheels, not as a goal to emulate. Like training wheels, once you've gotten some experience, you are supposed to get rid of them. I can see that they have value for beginning GMs who don't have any idea what to do, but once that GM gets some experience, they should be able to shed the constraints of the module, including the level-locked encounters.

Cool. So, suggested encounters per day may be something that has value for beginning GMs, at least by that standard?

Quote from: Skywalker;579506Cool. So, suggested encounters per day may be something that has value for beginning GMs, at least by that standard?

Nope.  Suggested encounters for a party that level, sure - it lets the new GM get a feel for what a party can or cannot handle.  Suggested Encounters Per Day trains a GM to provide a specfic playstyle experience- period.  X amount of Y level encounters expends Z level of resources, which means A number of set encounters to reach B level, etc. ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;579503Play the game, not the world!

Excluded middle - again.

Play the game and the world.

I would rather avoid any random encounters in game play.

I can't defend it. I believe it removes from player choice and might dangerously justify GM railroading.

Suggested Encounters Per Day means that I set aside the random encounter table, because wherever my players go I "should adjust" locale to SEPD#, thus making the world a predictable pablum wherever they go. Their choices suddenly don't mean much. Throw in CR/EL into the equation (along with projected Lvl advancement rates) and suddenly a flat, knowingly meta-game-able probability exists where GM setting decisions are now reduced to color palette swaps on re-skinned stats. And now PC decisions, though "empowered" through this meta-game, have no real consequences in setting or its challenges. The whole game dynamic changes with little in the way of exploration and strategic risk, IME.

Removal of Wandering Monster Tables and Morale were two big things that led to (unforeseen?) shifts in play. The game's scope becomes tighter (and I think smaller, too), but it's a net loss exchange for me. It's a different game, which is obviously pleasurable for some, but not all that interesting for my RPG desires.