Quote from: Omega;812802And in MC itself. Easy to get lost in the abandoned mines and forts too. Or even the basic caves as some can really branch and twist.

I use the trick of only putting torches along the right side of tunnels going in... so follow the left side torches to find the way back out.

Minecraft gave me an extra keen appreciation of the vertical opportunities in designing underground areas... those tunnels that suddenly turn downward into deep black pits or wandering into an area and realizing there is a huge tunnel/cavern overhead, full of monsters that might jump down on you.
Hard to map those spaces well unless you really take your time about it.

If that's the type of play the players like, treat them like an audience and tailor your scenarios to that. That doesn't mean that they need to be all hack-and slash combat, but that should be the central focus. To give them some incentive for more clever play, add some thinking that is directly relevant to combat.

Keep the puzzles small but important - e.g. they are given a single clue (without working for it) that the main bad guy has a particular vulnerability, but the clue is a little bit cryptic. The entire rest of the session plays out as a simple hack and slash, but at the critical time, they need to work out what the clue means or the bad guy is pretty much invulnerable and they slowly but steadily lose the final battle.

For the first one, make it less deadly in that things get slowly more desperate until they realise that someone needs to work out the clue. That gives you more latitude to give them extra time while maintaining pressure to solve it. For instance, the bad guy stops attacking and makes the classic speech about along the lines "you can never defeat me...", etc, which might give them a further hint.

Over time you can add more "thinking" elements until it becomes an expected part of the game. You may never get them all excited about puzzle solving all night, but you might find a mix that works for everyone.

If you panic, it's easy to split groups - I've seen groups of inexperienced hikers split in a forest at dusk, and I've even turned a group round in a circle when I was starting out - I panicked in a thunderstorm on open moorland and tried to navigate by landmarks rather than compass.

Landmarks are very useful - ideally you want two as that lets you triangulate your position.

Even without a compass, the position of the sun in the sky is useful, as are stars, and yes, even hoary old stuff like which side of the tree trunk certain plants grow on has its uses.

Compass and pacing works surprisingly accurately with very little practice, and travelling in the dark or fog or snowstorms by dead-reckoning requires experience but is certainly doable.  It's very important in winter conditions, where landmarks like cliff edges are deathtraps - if think you're standing on the edge, you may actually be standing on a cornice of wind-compacted snow.

Underground or in an unfamiliar building with few windows, it's very easy to get screwed even without hostiles.  As for shipwrecks or submerged caverns -deathtraps.  Especially when you add time limits and "event pits" (one bad thing messes your plans, and from then on you're struggling to get out of danger - indeed it's much easier to get further into trouble). If you're relying on equipment or magic spells to keep you alive, well, there's another thing to go wrong.

3D geometry makes it even worse (says the ex-geologist who used to explore abandoned mineworkings when he was a student - not recommended).  Chalk, string, markings, distinctive locations - all useful.  And you want vellum or cloth/rag paper, not the usual stuff made from wood pulp - both are tougher and don't disintegrate in the wet.

Torches (in the D&D sense) have a limited lifespan, are bulky to carry and foul your air really quickly.  Candles (or magical lights) in little jars might be a better bet, but how many can you carry?

Most dungeoneers forget the block of lard or butter for getting stuck party members out of tight squeezes (yes, modern cavers do use butter...).

Thank you for the real world informed perspective!

It's great to ground and inspire game stuff with that kind of information.

I used to get lost every year in the Thunderbird Hotel. I REALLY should have mapped that place!

I have a question about players being dumb and granting experience points.

In my current game I am giving experience based on tasks. It's a pre-written module, so it will be for those quests written in the game.

However, that makes me wonder what to do when I'm playing a sandbox game (or even in this module if the players go do something else). When would I award experience then? In a sense, if I give experience for non "official" quests, isn't that basically telling the players they can pretty much go do anything and get experience for it.

And then there are battles. They got into a fight with some people that wasn't really meant to be a fight, and won. I did not give them experience for that though, because it wasn't a task, and it wasn't a fight that needed to happen. Would you give them experience for that?

Basically the question is, what counts as a completed task when you're giving out experience that way. Who decides it was a task. How significant does it have to be.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;812974However, that makes me wonder what to do when I'm playing a sandbox game (or even in this module if the players go do something else). When would I award experience then? In a sense, if I give experience for non "official" quests, isn't that basically telling the players they can pretty much go do anything and get experience for it.

And then there are battles. They got into a fight with some people that wasn't really meant to be a fight, and won. I did not give them experience for that though, because it wasn't a task, and it wasn't a fight that needed to happen. Would you give them experience for that?

Basically the question is, what counts as a completed task when you're giving out experience that way. Who decides it was a task. How significant does it have to be.

It depends.

The players might decide round the table what they want to do, in effect setting their own goals. Or you might place encounter sites out in the world for them to find and interact with, in effect elective goals.

In either case, the goals should include notable challenge and risk to be worth XP. No quests to 'get a round in at the pub' unless the pub happens to be in the middle of a besieged city and you are currently outside... ("Quick lads, we're in...")

... I personally would walk on a game if the GM said that we only got XP for "GM approved tasks". That kind of thought leads to a removal of player agency in such a passive aggressive way. "You can do anything you want, but if you don't want to do what I want, you don't advance."

Quote from: Emperor Norton;813054... I personally would walk on a game if the GM said that we only got XP for "GM approved tasks". That kind of thought leads to a removal of player agency in such a passive aggressive way. "You can do anything you want, but if you don't want to do what I want, you don't advance."

Yes, that's why I was wondering how viable giving experience for completing tasks was. And also, the players don't know ahead of time which one of these tasks is the one that will give experience. (That's arguably a good thing though since it removes a layer of metagaming.)

So what method do you use instead then?

Quote from: Momotaro;812820If you panic, it's easy to split groups - I've seen groups of inexperienced hikers split in a forest at dusk, and I've even turned a group round in a circle when I was starting out - I panicked in a thunderstorm on open moorland and tried to navigate by landmarks rather than compass.

And it's not hard for inexperienced folks to panic when they're lost in the woods.  The advice I give to newbie hikers is simple: the instant you think you're lost, sit down.  Build a small fire.  Have a drink from your water bottle.  If you've got anything to eat, have a bite.  Don't think of anything for five minutes.

See: you're not really lost, you've got a camp right there.  And now that the panic's ebbed, and the forest doesn't seem like such a hostile place, think about it.  Go back over your trail, in your head.  Picture every landmark you've seen.  You're probably not lost at all.

Quote from: Necrozius;812528It's funny that the author says: "stick to balanced encounters because D&D just CAN'T HANDLE retreat at all" when he actually makes some extremely decent rulings on handling retreat in the system without breaking anything. Ha.

Funny that it's changed so much (if indeed it has) as to make it impossible to handle retreat just as soldiers have handled it in the real world. IF that's the case, then it's one more reason to get back to the old understanding that, in an RPG, 'rules' are just guidelines to be be dropped when something else is more appropriate.

Quote from: Kiero;812453Mapping. Something I'm glad has mostly died as a necessary activity in playing RPGs. Course it also ties into another dull concept, the dungeon. What better way to avoid all the richness of 95% of a campaign setting than spending it in a hole in the ground far away from civilisation.

It's not everyone's delight, but neither is anything else. If you want some great red wine and blue cheese, for instance, I'm not the one to make a recommendation. On the other hand, I can appreciate a good dungeon.

Quote from: angry-rantsA typical combat is designed to resolve in three to five rounds.

What's a typical combat? Anyhow, "and it's kissing cousin Pathfinder" clearly indicates we're not talking about TSR-era D&D. In that, it's common to have closely matched fights last two or three times as long.

When you get down to an average of four rounds, you're typically talking a big advantage for one side or the other. Guess for whom usually? But it's not too hard to notice when yours is the side getting so clobbered. (The alternative reason is that both sides have had their damage output jacked up big time.)

QuoteEspecially because, with the way balance works, once the PCs start to lose, they are likely to continue losing.

If it's not just bad luck on the dice? Yeah, probabilities are called that for a reason.

One approach to consider is the philosophy of the original Monty Haul (Jim Ward).

So far from advocating a "give-away" game (which MH has been taken to mean), Jim opposed the safe handing-out of power that passes for "game balance" in some quarters. He preferred a "game equilibrium" in which great power comes at - and with! - great risks.

One thing he recommended was placing more goodies guarded by traps instead of monsters. (This sure fits in his Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World games, in which 'traps' are often accidental rather than contrived hazards.)

Another thing was that monsters should use stuff. If you want that Phlobotomizer, a direct assault is going to get you a taste of it (and maybe use up its charges).

Once you get it, the Killer Queen isn't going to give up her jones for a Phlobotomizer just because a "pee-see" has got it. She'll send the Bee Girls after said figure, and be glad if it's saved her some trouble. "Wham bam, thank you man."

If the players want to get - and keep - their mitts on stuff, they'll get either cunning or dead.

If they don't find that fun, they'll get themselves off to a game that's more their speed.

Jim Ward is also an inveterate gambler; in the introduction to "Bottle City" Rob Kuntz said that if there was a lever, Jim would yank it.

It's one of the big reason D&D has so many "Cake or Death" type traps in it; that's what the players liked.

Really, OD&D and AD&D 1st edition was influenced more than anything else by the particular play style of three people; Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz, and Ernie Gygax.  By 1974 Rob and Ernie were already complaining that the game was too easy.