Quote from: Omega;844614No. Just a fair chance of bumping into "something" during the course of wandering the town or city. They arent all automatically hostile. You encounter bandits during the day and they are just casing some location, or the party out as possible targets. Think of it as those rare things that stand out amidst the general populace.

The tables were there for when the DM had not pre-prepped a town or just wanted some quick inspirations or ideas. Or for solo play.

But based on that table. Wandering towns and cities was not safe. PCs had reason to stay armed and armoured.

BX had a 1 in 6 chance of an encounter in a city, but far fewer hostile ones. And was only checked 3-4 times a day. And even those were not necessarily auto hostile. They might even be friendly.

Well, yes, "attacked" was a wrong turn of speech. What I meant was "2:1 or 3:5 chance of at least one encounter with people that might attack you, depending on the reaction roll and circumstances".
If that seems about right to you, then yes, maybe adventurers in such games should be walking armed:).

Quote from: jibbajibba;844619Adventurers would wear a mail shirt, boots, leather gloves, thick trousers, leather cap , maybe leather bracers on their arms. No one is wearing a cloak, or chain mail bikini, or lots of plate armour.

If you were to extend that realism to what aventurers wore then showing up in town in a mail shirt and your standard kit would be fine.

Cloaks are quite useful to travelers, from what I know.
And the problem with wearing armour to town isn't just about comfort;).

Quote from: AsenRG;844651Cloaks are quite useful to travelers, from what I know.
And the problem with wearing armour to town isn't just about comfort;).

Well you might have a cloak rolled up in your backpack I give you that but you'll not be wearing it and climbing, crawling through a cave, running after a bunch of orcs (or blokes from Bristol in masks).

Comfort is the thing though. An old chain shirt worn over a jerkin isn't threatening at all if you are out shopping or just arrived in town. It might not be suitable for a dinner party or meeting the Prince but it will not attract any undue attention specially when one of your party is a 7 foot tall dragon man carrying a Flamberg....

It'd be even more laughable if you couldn't meet anyone in a city. And it's useful to have a table to impartially answer a  question such as "who passes by as we loiter on a streetcorner?" And yes, if it's the "Late Night in the Bad Parts of Town" table, there should be a chance to meet whatever shady characters hang out there at night, and depending on the world, they may or may not reasonably have any interest in attacking adventurers.

It was the specific example that had me LOL, not everything about it, but the chances of attack and the presence of certain monsters in the city:

Quote from: Omega;844466...
In AD&D in a city you had a chance of an encounter every 3 turns  with encounters including, Assassins, Bandits, Demons, Devils, Doppelgangers, all the way up to Vampires and Liches. For perspective. That is 2 checks per hour in an AD&D city. (Rounds were 1 minute, Turns 10 minutes.) With a 1 in 20, or 1 in 6 depending on how you read it, chance of an encounter happening. with about a 15-25% chance of something potentially bad encountered in the daytime and 40-50% at night. Luckily most of the monster stuff did not come out till night. ...

Who are the people in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neigh-bor-hood? Oh, a vampire is a person in my neighborhood... they're the assassins that you meet, when you're walking down the street...

It can be fun to play in a world where there are monsters everywhere, but it's also surreal, and can be nearly impossible to try to actually have make sense overall. One doesn't need to have to try to have it make sense, if everyone agrees the fun of frequent weird monsters outweighs the desire (if any) to have things make sense. Or one can use the "PCs are a weirdness focus" concept, which I like to have explicitly called out in my attempts to make sense of things, personally.

That is, especially as GM, but also as player, I like to know whether meeting monsters every day is something that's happening to me because I'm special, or whether everyone in town meets monsters on a regular basis.

Of course, this level of weirdness encounter exists in some fiction too. Such as Doctor Who, Supernatural, Penny Dreadful, Murder She Wrote...

As a DM and player I was happy to see the DMG had rules for hostile environments such as hot and cold climates and placing restrictions on armour, (and heavy clothing,) worn then. Disadvantage on those ever increasing CON saves can well do you in eventually.

Oh, hell, even outdoors my Encounters chart is set into "Animal, Event and Actual Encounter'
(Here's a recent one, the Northtag Fields)

In town, they are set up the same way, but the listing includes so, so many other non-encounters, and many more political ones/guild specific ones.  It is more what they see and might choose to interact with than people coming to interact with them.

Going into a new major city, there is a pretty small chance for my PCs to run into a real threatening encounter.  It is only after they have made enemies that things get ugly.

Which always seems to happen.

Quote from: LordVreeg;844695Oh, hell, even outdoors my Encounters chart is set into "Animal, Event and Actual Encounter'
(Here's a recent one, the Northtag Fields)

In town, they are set up the same way, but the listing includes so, so many other non-encounters, and many more political ones/guild specific ones.  It is more what they see and might choose to interact with than people coming to interact with them.

Going into a new major city, there is a pretty small chance for my PCs to run into a real threatening encounter.  It is only after they have made enemies that things get ugly.

Which always seems to happen.

That is a nice encounter chart structure.

Quote from: Skarg;844689It was the specific example that had me LOL, not everything about it, but the chances of attack and the presence of certain monsters in the city:

It can be fun to play in a world where there are monsters everywhere, but it's also surreal, and can be nearly impossible to try to actually have make sense overall. One doesn't need to have to try to have it make sense, if everyone agrees the fun of frequent weird monsters outweighs the desire (if any) to have things make sense. Or one can use the "PCs are a weirdness focus" concept, which I like to have explicitly called out in my attempts to make sense of things, personally.

That is, especially as GM, but also as player, I like to know whether meeting monsters every day is something that's happening to me because I'm special, or whether everyone in town meets monsters on a regular basis.

1: To be fair. Aside from bandits and the like, the chances of monsters is only 1% each. (aside from Wererats and Werewolves who have a 3% and 2% chance respectively. and only at night.)

2: The rules specifically say "don't put it there if it does not make sense for it to be there somehow." If I roll up a lich while the PCs are in the tavern having a meal then its up to me to either say "WTF???" and re-roll, or to puzzle out why the lich is there. I can just make stuff up on the fly, or make some NPC rolls to get some ideas. Or in my example, the assassin hiding amongst the party of frat boy elves. I can say, "That makes no sense." and revert him back to a regular carouser. Or I can puzzle out why hes there in the group. Is he after one of the PCs? Or is he about to kill one of the rowdy elves during the ensuing brawl and pin the blame on the PCs. etc.
BX though was so much weirder. You could have cities with friendly spectres roaming the streets, or gnolls out carousing, or get your kneecaps assaulted by irate gnomes.

3: In AD&D and BX the impression I get is that this stuff happens more to the PCs. For whatever reasons they are encounter magnets. But is happening to other people as well to a lesser degree, especially if they are adventurers. But as the rules say. It was expected that the DM would have a town or city fleshed out beforehand and their own possible encounter tables, or say nothing at all happens ever.

Quote from: AsenRG;844594Remember the old westerns. The hero goes out and behaves sort of normally, but is expecting trouble. A wizened old citizen notices a minor sign and without breaking his concentration, tells the people to get the kids off the streets, because lead is going to fly.
That's the effect of the PCs putting on armour that I'd expect, assuming that they were seen as protectors by the citizens.

That's a good analogy.

QuoteI'm struggling to remember a moment when some jarl was ambushed and had his armour on. Mind giving me a reference to the specific saga? I've got a Bulgarian translation sitting on my bookshelf in the other room.

Honestly I can't recall whether they were ever wearing armor when ambushed, but I assumed the ambushers wore armor some of the time. (Though probably not in an opportunistic ambush where you are out and about, your enemy is out and about, and you realize - "Hey there are more of us than there are of Skallagrim. Let's ambush the bastard." I'm pretty sure the attackers wore armor when they surrounded a guy's house and set it on fire though.

Quote from: Skarg;844689Of course, this level of weirdness encounter exists in some fiction too. Such as Doctor Who, Supernatural, Penny Dreadful, Murder She Wrote...

I'm still shocked that the authorities never figured out that Jessica Fletcher was a serial killer. Surely that is the simplest explanation for her proximity over the years to so many murders. Kindly old mystery writer my ass!

Quote from: LordVreeg;844695Oh, hell, even outdoors my Encounters chart is set into "Animal, Event and Actual Encounter'
(Here's a recent one, the Northtag Fields)

That is nice. I like the way you have included a varety of encounters including some that would qualify as tracks or evidence of other encounters, e.g. “Strange note” and “Bodies of large animal”

Quote from: Omega;844614No. Just a fair chance of bumping into "something" during the course of wandering the town or city. They arent all automatically hostile. You encounter bandits during the day and they are just casing some location, or the party out as possible targets. Think of it as those rare things that stand out amidst the general populace.

That's not a "fair" chance.  Skarg had it right: it's a surreal chance.  Your average party, following that logic, runs into more unusual encounters in a week's time in a small city than I've had in over half a century of living in one of the most heavily populated metropolitan areas in the history of the world.

That being said, if you're going to adopt the AD&D boardgame approach, and that you ought to expect X number of encounters a day because the rules say you have to make a check every half-hour, well ... that's your privilege to play the game you want how you want.

But with that in mind, why bring it up at all in this discussion?  If you're set on playing an unrealistic game, why make armor the exception?  Hell, you can just declare that all PCs can carry up to 500 lbs of gear each, anywhere they feel like going, and have one-second-access to any of those items they want whenever they want, and that's the rule.  What's to stop you?

A major metropolitan area in a 1st world country with a strong police force?  That's comparable, maybe to the good parts of town of a nation's shining capital.  Try doing the same in a city in a "third world" country.  Where local "militia groups" run rampant, there's a not-inconsiderable chance of finding a terrorist, and the idea of "law and order" are a sad joke.  The chances of you going a year without incident are fairly low.  Add in the PCs are both obvious outsiders and probably flashing money around and, well... yeah.  They're likely to get attacked.

I think any sensible DM would rule that PCs who take the time to learn local conventions, dress, etc., who don't flash gold around, who blend in, and who look like slightly desperate mercenaries rather than flush-with-coin adventurers get reduced chance.

But often PCs roll in and start hiring people and such.  Flashing that much coin around, no one thinks "it'd be easier to take out a few mugs for that coin?"

Quote from: Ravenswing;844721That's not a "fair" chance.  Skarg had it right: it's a surreal chance.  Your average party, following that logic, runs into more unusual encounters in a week's time in a small city than I've had in over half a century of living in one of the most heavily populated metropolitan areas in the history of the world.

Which goes to show that you live in a world that doesn't have wererats, kobolds, and liches.

Historically, many places have had death rates that are hundreds of times higher than a modern-day first-world city, and the cities as a whole survived. The people were not that comfortable - and they would appreciate what help they could get - but those that survived could get by.

They tend to have a different outlook, though, than modern-day first-world citizens.

Quote from: GreyICE;844725A major metropolitan area in a 1st world country with a strong police force?  That's comparable, maybe to the good parts of town of a nation's shining capital.  Try doing the same in a city in a "third world" country.  Where local "militia groups" run rampant, there's a not-inconsiderable chance of finding a terrorist, and the idea of "law and order" are a sad joke.  The chances of you going a year without incident are fairly low.  Add in the PCs are both obvious outsiders and probably flashing money around and, well... yeah.  They're likely to get attacked.

I think any sensible DM would rule that PCs who take the time to learn local conventions, dress, etc., who don't flash gold around, who blend in, and who look like slightly desperate mercenaries rather than flush-with-coin adventurers get reduced chance.

But often PCs roll in and start hiring people and such.  Flashing that much coin around, no one thinks "it'd be easier to take out a few mugs for that coin?"

Right, the chance of going a year....Not a couple of times a day.  That is maybe a 700 to one conversion.  I get the point, and if you play a game where it can happen even close to that regularly, maybe you tank up to go to the next neighborhood for a beer.

This 'issue' is primarily a D&D problem, simply because of armour being the player's dodge mechanic, and that DMs have been using encounter charts and have turn basic town encounters into full on Dungeons.

In other fantasy games, I've played, like Dragon Warrior or MRQ, that's not been that big an issue.

Quote from: Ravenswing;844721That's not a "fair" chance.  Skarg had it right: it's a surreal chance.

Its the same chance as wandering a dungeon. 1 in 20. Its just not helped by the fact I'm rolling an inordinate number of 20s.

On a second go through of a full 24 hours, 48 checks I got not a single encounter.

Then it happened again when doing a twelve hour test. 4 encounters. Giant rats, a merchant, some bandits we never knew was, and some laborers. That is from being out and about in town twelve hours which also may not be very realistic a time to be actually on the streets. But some of those could have happened in taverns or shops. Could definitely see the bandit encounter in a shop they are casing out.

As for board games and the rest. Um, what are you hallucinating? :confused:

Quote from: Skarg;844490LOL. Is there some missing context that makes this not insane?

Is it only for PC parties? Perhaps the assumption is that PC parties, with their supernatural ability to level up and become supermen, magically attract the forces of darkness to try to destroy them?

If everyone had that chance of hostile encounter, the whole town would be killed off in less than a week. Er, every town using those encounter tables, that is.

In the AD&D Players Handbook, Gygax flat-out said that the gold piece standard reflected a "California Gold Rush" economy in which merchants could afford to charge at a certain level because they were dealing with professional treasure hunters, who were stocking up in a town that was catering to them.  Similar principle here.

JG