Quote from: Emperor Norton;806450No, I don't, and you do realize you are doing the exact same thing the opening post is complaining about, only more extreme.

All it was suggesting is not to put ridiculously overpowering random encounters in your encounter charts, which was something Gygax himself suggested in his own GM advice, as cited upthread. (oops, guess Gygax wasn't a real roleplayer either).

But yay, one true wayism. If you don't play 100% Shawn Driscoll's way, you aren't a roleplayer. Man, the roleplaying hobby must be much smaller than even I thought.

Ha! You make it sound like the one single role-player in the world is a threat to the general public's charsheet bingo style of play. Just say you can't debate, or that you don't know how to (which explains no videos from you showing us your point of view).

I don't see random encounters as a major problem. A lot of starting DMs learn that style of play. If it becomes a habit though, I lose interest.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;806533Ha! You make it sound like the one single role-player in the world is a threat to the general public's charsheet bingo style of play. Just say you can't debate, or that you don't know how to (which explains no videos from you showing us your point of view).

I don't see random encounters as a major problem. A lot of starting DMs learn that style of play. If it becomes a habit though, I lose interest.

You don't even see the absurdity of your own statements.

You are the one who is saying "Hey, don't instakill your PCs with a random encounter that is ridiculously overpowering for them" is anti-roleplay advice.

You are the one who needs to back up your statement, because you are the one who is calling anyone who doesn't put instakill encounters on their random encounter charts not a roleplayer. And you've made zero argument as to why they aren't. You question my debate skills, yet you actually haven't put forth a single shred of support for your statement.

And why the fuck would I need Youtube videos of my group playing to back up my argument? Jesus Christ, the number of people on the whole board who have that could probably be counted on my hands, possibly even just one hand. Needing that to back up my assertion that your statement has no actual support is the most absurd thing I've ever read.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;806481See, the thing is, I'm actually more in agreement with this. I just think that if you are making a random encounter chart for an area you expect the players to be able to travel through, you should probably keep in mind the difficulty of what you are putting on it. I don't think that is pulling punches. It even says that not everything on it has to be level appropriate, just not to steamroll your players.

And keep in mind that this is all in the context of the DMG as a whole, which, admittedly, isn't really designed to give advice on sandbox play, and instead gives advice on a more adventure location oriented game (which, I would bet, though have nothing other than anecdotal evidence to back up, is a more popular style than pure sandbox).

In that context, of people wandering in areas that the GM intended them to be, the "don't put roflstomp encounters that will absolutely kill the players" isn't really bad advice.

If I'm going to be TPKed, I'd rather it be because of our characters doing badly, or the players acting stupid, or the enemies just roll super well, not because the GM put an encounter into an area we were supposed to be adventuring through that can happen 1% of the time that is pretty much death on a stick.

The world the PCs adventure in is a dangerous place. Sometimes, dangers are better avoided than faced head on.

This is an area where thinking like your character (unless he/she is a witless fool) instead of metagaming can be useful in the long term survival of the character.

The DM should do their part and make sure the world makes sense. A T-Rex living in an area will leave plenty of evidence of its existence. (This isn't Ungoro crater after all) PCs moving through such an area will be able to note these signs that something large and nasty is around somewhere.

Unless their mission involves hunting such a beast, common sense says this is an encounter to evade if at all possible. From a character perspective there is nothing to be gained from fighting it besides an opportunity to become T-Rex poop.

Likewise, if the party has to carry a message to another city and have a choice of taking a ship round the peninsula  or short cutting overland through FIRE GIANT PASS in the mountains wouldn't there be a reasonable expectation that the party may encounter fire giants in the mountains even though they are 4th level?

Such an encounter is perfectly fine. A combat encounter with fire giants would be a death sentence but an encounter doesn't have to involve combat. Fire giants are intelligent and can be negotiated with.

The game works just fine as written with such encounters. Certain types of PLAYERS are what can turn such encounters into unavoidable TPKs.

The type of player who only wants to fight past any obstacle, one never puts up with any lip from an NPC, one who demands respect from everyone they meet or else a fight is in the offering. These players will turn perfectly fine encounters into mudstomp TPKs because they cannot fathom an encounter without a fight.

Let them die. I put up with enough of that shit as a teenager. If you come to the game with those attitudes as an adult, your characters will die over and over.

Ungoro crater.

Proof WoW is run on 3.5e and the TRexes took a stupid number of Rogue levels... nngh

I dunno. I kinda take those parts of any RPG book that try to tell you *how* to GM as just guidelines for noob-GM's. I don't take them seriously (nor should anyone that doesn't already understand what kind of game they're trying to run.)

That said, I have no problem with random encounters being dangerous. What I do is if I'm feeling it's a good time for a random encounter check and it's successful - I usually use the moment to do some setup to the encounter if it's appropriate. I never just pop some random monster on the PC's out of nowhere, without taking into considerations the time and place and the PC's natural precautions and dispositions that have evolved over the game that might make the encounter "interesting". Maybe there is a REASON that their are T-Rexes running around the woods... or whatever. I dont' concern myself with TPK's in designing encounters simply because anything the party can't "handle" then there's probably a good reason for it, and I'll be damned if it's because some rule or random table proscribed it to me. Same is true for throwing the PC's softball encounters. GM's should think about the "randomness" of their encounters to the degree that it detracts/adds to their game. The point is to make things interesting *and* fun.

TL/DR - I make "random encounters" have relevance to other possibilities. I will even create sub-plots out of them.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;806715The world the PCs adventure in is a dangerous place. Sometimes, dangers are better avoided than faced head on.

This is an area where thinking like your character (unless he/she is a witless fool) instead of metagaming can be useful in the long term survival of the character.

The DM should do their part and make sure the world makes sense. A T-Rex living in an area will leave plenty of evidence of its existence. (This isn't Ungoro crater after all) PCs moving through such an area will be able to note these signs that something large and nasty is around somewhere.

Unless their mission involves hunting such a beast, common sense says this is an encounter to evade if at all possible. From a character perspective there is nothing to be gained from fighting it besides an opportunity to become T-Rex poop.

Likewise, if the party has to carry a message to another city and have a choice of taking a ship round the peninsula  or short cutting overland through FIRE GIANT PASS in the mountains wouldn't there be a reasonable expectation that the party may encounter fire giants in the mountains even though they are 4th level?

Such an encounter is perfectly fine. A combat encounter with fire giants would be a death sentence but an encounter doesn't have to involve combat. Fire giants are intelligent and can be negotiated with.

The game works just fine as written with such encounters. Certain types of PLAYERS are what can turn such encounters into unavoidable TPKs.

The type of player who only wants to fight past any obstacle, one never puts up with any lip from an NPC, one who demands respect from everyone they meet or else a fight is in the offering. These players will turn perfectly fine encounters into mudstomp TPKs because they cannot fathom an encounter without a fight.

Let them die. I put up with enough of that shit as a teenager. If you come to the game with those attitudes as an adult, your characters will die over and over.

I don't think we are actually disagreeing at all.

Like I said, if the characters die through bad choices, that is one thing, if they die because the GM rolled a 1% chance on a hostile encounter that kills them before they can do anything about it in an area they are supposed to be travelling in, that's another.

As long as there are paths the character can take to avoid the situation, I'm good with it.

Also, I think its a very good idea to give info on relative strength to people with appropriate knowledge skills. Like in 5e, how strong is a cave bear? Make a Intelligence(Nature) check. (or make it a passive check, or just give the answer if they are proficient, if you don't want an extra roll).

I think its super important for players to have access to the knowledge of about how powerful an enemy is, and to have ways to avoid combat with any encounter that would overpower them. As long as those things are in there, I'm good.

Now, can you also sneak in some things that are harder for them to judge? Sure. Especially with NPCs, but I mean, Wisdom(Insight) is a good way to judge the relative skill of an NPC, kind of a sizing up. (You notice the way he carries his sword, or the stance he is in is ready to spring). Just make a character who is actively trying to hide it make Charisma (deception) against i.