Quote from: Exploderwizard;580357Or just play whack-a-mole with the characters of stupid players.

The concept of "throwing" a golem at a 1st level party is pretty funny. It assumes that the party will be moved through scheduled fights on a treadmill with little to say about it.

A low level party may decide to explore a place in which there is a golem present. Does the mere existence of something indicate that it has been "thrown" at the party like a sling stone or something?

Well no the party might just go somewhere where ther eis an iron golem but no one knows about it.

There is an old haunted house in the village no one ever goes in and no one ever goes out. The PCs decide as its in a village and the village is full 0 level humans so the haunted house is probably a low level adventure for them. Theygo inside and the three ghosts that haunt it kill them and they never come out.
Now that we all agree is dickish. But in terms of itself its not. its called The Haunted House no one every comes out.  Ghosts are quite capacble of being bound to a localised area and not venturing forth from that location.
The only reason its dickish is meta gamey.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;580367Nothing dickish about it so long as the players had the opportunity to gather information about the place before going in. It is located in a town with people so the party wasn't "thrown" in. Information about the nature of threat should have been available to inquisitive PCs. If they don't bother to look for such info then it's their own fault.

But why is inofrmation available .... all they know is no on ever come out and the place is haunted.
They can find out that he owners died. That meybe they worshipped some hideous cult ...whatever  

They will make an assumption that it is a low level adventure because of its placement regardless of theinformation they receive, unless someone actually says there are 3 ghosts inside, which no one would know.

In another genre, say a CoC game the placement of the house woudl be fine. In a WoD game having 3 ghosts living in a regular house would be fine.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580341No I agree with all of that I am merely saying that the derfault sandbox build with level appropriate areas is just as meta gamey as a x encounters per day.

Ah OK, thanks for clarifying that.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580341Currently I have opted to remove the concepts of intelligent HD ranges Moster populations in favour of a single monstrous race that levels but based on function as opposed to location as part of a wider attempt to make a world as realistic as I can. I am toying with random populations based on a distribution curve. The result of this in play seems to be that high level characters rarely meet high level opponents.

Generally what happens in my campaign is that the scope of what the players attempt to do expands as they set there sights higher. They go after high value targets that they couldn't handle before. Or their new goals involve overcoming large numbers of lower HD/level opponents.

Where things get iffy is the mid-level (or the 175 to 200 pt level in GURPS) where the party is pretty capable, has  resources, but sometimes overreach in their goals.

One divide among D&D referee is whether leveled characters are "special" or part of the normal landscape. For example in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, Bob Bledsaw has leveled characters all over the place in a pyramid distribution. That pretty much the style I adopted for the AD&D campaigns in the Majestic Wilderlands and I resumed using that same style for the Swords & Wizardry campaign.  Like the point range of GURPS character, I arrange the range of leveled in a pyramid distribution.

For example in my upcoming Scourge of the Demon Wolf, the supplement portion of the book has a detailed village. There are 43 able bodied men and of those 16 are leveled and of those only 2 are above 2nd level. There also the Golden House, home to a group of magic-users. There are 5 masters all 6th level or above, 8 adept between 2nd and 5th level, and 14 apprentices that either zero-level or 1st level.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580341Using Meta game considerations is not terrible it makes for good games and I suspect may well be a better consideration for design than trying to reflect "reality" which may well proove to dangerous an unpredictable for actual game play. My point merely is that which meta game considerations you decide to adopt is kind of moot.

Agreed. It is a tool and in the right circumstance it can be very useful.

I do use a metagame consideration when designing for "reality".  I don't design with the most likely outcome in mind. I design with the most interesting outcome that is probable in mind. A subtle but useful distinction for dealing with what is a form of entertainment.

People can survey my Majestic Wilderland and point at various elements and say "Rob that not very likely." To which I reply "Yes you are right, but it is the most interesting out of what could happen."

Quote from: estar;580370Ah OK, thanks for clarifying that.



Generally what happens in my campaign is that the scope of what the players attempt to do expands as they set there sights higher. They go after high value targets that they couldn't handle before. Or their new goals involve overcoming large numbers of lower HD/level opponents.

Where things get iffy is the mid-level (or the 175 to 200 pt level in GURPS) where the party is pretty capable, has  resources, but sometimes overreach in their goals.

One divide among D&D referee is whether leveled characters are "special" or part of the normal landscape. For example in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, Bob Bledsaw has leveled characters all over the place in a pyramid distribution. That pretty much the style I adopted for the AD&D campaigns in the Majestic Wilderlands and I resumed using that same style for the Swords & Wizardry campaign.  Like the point range of GURPS character, I arrange the range of leveled in a pyramid distribution.

For example in my upcoming Scourge of the Demon Wolf, the supplement portion of the book has a detailed village. There are 43 able bodied men and of those 16 are leveled and of those only 2 are above 2nd level. There also the Golden House, home to a group of magic-users. There are 5 masters all 6th level or above, 8 adept between 2nd and 5th level, and 14 apprentices that either zero-level or 1st level.




Agreed. It is a tool and in the right circumstance it can be very useful.

I do use a metagame consideration when designing for "reality".  I don't design with the most likely outcome in mind. I design with the most interesting outcome that is probable in mind. A subtle but useful distinction for dealing with what is a form of entertainment.

People can survey my Majestic Wilderland and point at various elements and say "Rob that not very likely." To which I reply "Yes you are right, but it is the most interesting out of what could happen."

Totally agree with this post.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580369But why is inofrmation available .... all they know is no on ever come out and the place is haunted.
They can find out that he owners died. That meybe they worshipped some hideous cult ...whatever  

" 3 ghosts in a house" might not be available as a convenient tidbit but there are some things that could be learned:

-how long has the place been haunted?
-who were the people that went inside? Notable badassess maybe?

Quote from: jibbajibba;580369They will make an assumption that it is a low level adventure because of its placement regardless of theinformation they receive, unless someone actually says there are 3 ghosts inside, which no one would know.

So the party could end up dead due to their own metagame assumptions proving wrong. Still not seeing a problem. Perhaps when the reaper has claimed enough characters the players will start engaging with the setting instead of metagaming.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580362So this what I am doing now using larger numbers of low level foes for competition for high level characters. I am not using D&D though where I am not sure how well that methodology would work.

It works very well and there an interesting story about how I finally grokked it.

At the boffer LARP I ran events for the average level of the player characters had started to reach into the 20s and a lot of event directors were resorting to just beefing up hit points and abilities for their creatures.

Well this left the low level newcomers at a tremendous disadvantage in the big town battles involving all the players. The people I run event with and I talked about this and what I came up with is to use a large number of low power creatures. Now since we only had a handful of people to play NPC monsters what we did is reset them out of sight. So the players were only fighting like 10 monsters at a time out of a horde of a 100 for example. So it wasn't ideal.

The part we didn't know is exactly where the set the lower level monsters at, and how many reset we will need before the event staff became too physically tired to continue. (A consideration unique to LARPS). It turned out that it worked with about what would be in D&D terms 3 HD to 5 HD creatures versus 20th characters*. And the players broke before the staff grew tried. So the technique worked. And had the virtue of allowing the low level newcomers to feel useful.

*NERO BOffer LARP doesn't have area effect spells like fireball. Only spells that targeted individuals.

With so many targets over the time of the battle players started running out of spells, consumable items, and hit points. A couple of years later I tried this in Swords & Wizardry and it worked pretty much the same way. Except that with area effect damage spells the player could kill a lot more monsters in the beginning of the battle. When they ran out of those spell it played out pretty much like the LARP events I managed.

Quote from: MGuy;580354That's just it. You have to not throw a golem at them and that's metagaming encounters. Some monsters are harder to judge.

I would have no problems throwing a golem at 1st level characters PROVIDED they were not required to fight it. If they have the chance to turn around and leave it rather than fight it, I don't see any reason to worry about it.  Note that I run sandbox games so there's never a case of "they have to get by the golem or the game comes to a halt". The ability to decide when to risk combat and when to avoid it is an important player skill in my games.

Quote from: estar;580338What point-buy/classless system do you play?

In the past year?  Shadowrun, Alpha Omega, Dark Heresy, and Usagi Yojimbo

Quote from: jibbajibba;580364Well no the party might just go somewhere where there is an iron golem but no one knows about it.

There is an old haunted house in the village no one ever goes in and no one ever goes out. The PCs decide as its in a village and the village is full 0 level humans so the haunted house is probably a low level adventure for them. Theygo inside and the three ghosts that haunt it kill them and they never come out.
Now that we all agree is dickish. But in terms of itself its not. its called The Haunted House no one every comes out.  Ghosts are quite capacble of being bound to a localised area and not venturing forth from that location.
The only reason its dickish is meta gamey.

Yep.  That grain merchant who saw an 'ogre' and ran like a npc will, was actually a hill giant, but using 'organic setting logic' the grain merchant wasn't wrong in his description.  Or what he thought was a cat was actually a displacer beast

Quote from: Exploderwizard;580365Totally possible. If the climate and terrain favor those types of monsters then they may be present.

There is a major difference between the presence of something in a given area and throwing the PCs into a thunderdome with it.

Unless they pop on the random encounter.  Putting them there is 'organic setting logic'

Quote from: Sommerjon;580386Unless they pop on the random encounter.  Putting them there is 'organic setting logic'

And? A random encounter is just that. Random encounter does not mean a fight will happen.

First, we have to consider encounter distance. Outdoors this can be quite a ways off so evasion at first sighting is a possible option.

Assuming evasion is unsuitable for whatever reason and a meeting takes place there are a variety of possibilities. Being random, whatever is encountered has business of its own. What kind of reaction does it have? Can it be communicated with, and would it accept an offer of food or treasure?

If it is big, dumb, and wants to eat you there are things to try that might let you outhink it and escape.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;580372" 3 ghosts in a house" might not be available as a convenient tidbit but there are some things that could be learned:

-how long has the place been haunted?
-who were the people that went inside? Notable badassess maybe?

And the questions posed by the Players have to go through the meta game filter by the DM so he can give adequate hints on what is actually there.  Regardless of what the PCs actually know, it's the Players that have to understand the hints.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;580372So the party could end up dead due to their own metagame assumptions proving wrong. Still not seeing a problem. Perhaps when the reaper has claimed enough characters the players will start engaging with the setting instead of metagaming.

Wha?  This makes no sense.  How are they supposed to engage the setting without meta gaming?
Have you ever sat down and read through the Monster Manuals and saw just how many creatures are similar in appearance/favored terrain yet are vastly different in power levels?

Quote from: Sommerjon;580390Wha?  This makes no sense.  How are they supposed to engage the setting without meta gaming?

Hey guys, everything we dug up about this house has been bad news. Lets give it a miss and go after those goblins the merchant told us about.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580347Because the Mountains of Dread are just as likely to have a number of low level predators/creatures with a few high level Apex predators as the forest of Ho-Hum unless someone cleared out the Apex predators from the forest of Ho-Hum in which case they probably cleared out the bandits as well.

I'm flagging miscommunication here: Your previous posts made it look like you were saying that Middle Earth is really metagamey because Mordor is nastier than the Shire and everybody knows what Smaug lives. (That's because this is the situation everybody else is talking about, so they just assume you're talking about the same thing.)

What you appear to be saying is that WoW-style areas in which all of the creatures in a given area fall into a specific CR bracket is a metagamey. I'm pretty sure everybody here would agree with that.

Quote from: jibbajibba;580369But why is inofrmation available .... all they know is no on ever come out and the place is haunted. (...) They will make an assumption that it is a low level adventure because of its placement regardless of the information they receive, unless someone actually says there are 3 ghosts inside, which no one would know.

They'll only be likely to make that assumption if it's a WoW-style metagame sandbox. If it's a more naturalistic sandbox, they'll stop making that kind of mistake pretty quick.

Re: Information. Unless the GM is specifically designing an informational black hole (which is more characteristic of a railroad than a sandbox), there's almost always methods by which additional information can be gained and/or cautious explorations can be attempted.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had awhile ago where someone claimed that the Caves of Chaos in Keep on the Borderlands didn't represent a meaningful choice because the PCs had no information about what lay beyond each cave entrance. But, of course, the decision to blindly choose a cave entrance (instead of observing them to see what goes in and out or examining them for clues) is itself a meaningful decision.

This whole line of thinking assumes, once again, that the GM is required to force feed content to the players. Once you abandon that assumption, the problem goes away.

Quote from: Sommerjon;580390How are they supposed to engage the setting without meta gaming?

I suppose that's the other option, though: Claim that it's impossible to stay in-character when playing a roleplaying game.

:huhsign:

Quote from: jibbajibba;580364There is an old haunted house in the village no one ever goes in and no one ever goes out. The PCs decide as its in a village and the village is full 0 level humans so the haunted house is probably a low level adventure for them. Theygo inside and the three ghosts that haunt it kill them and they never come out.
Now that we all agree is dickish. But in terms of itself its not. its called The Haunted House no one every comes out.  Ghosts are quite capacble of being bound to a localised area and not venturing forth from that location.
The only reason its dickish is meta gamey.

It is a logical adventure site. But it is also logical that PCs should run (or try to hide) when they see the ghosts, and definitely try to run if one of them gets killed by them. Remember, you only have to run as fast as the slowest party member.

Or to cite my party's encounter with Saracek, a very powerful undead in the dungeons of Rappan Athuk (nasty, nasty place). Saracek managed to dish out so much damage so fast that the party decided to get out ASAP, but Brantar the Cleric got trapped in the room.
Brantar: "Help! Help! The party is in peril!"
Grey Fox, evil grey elf Fighter/Rogue: "What 'party'? The 'party' has already fled."
(Brantar eventually survived the situation by surrendering and converting to the cause of Evil. He died much later when he got flattened by a 10 ton stone block in the completely optional tomb of a demilich. Grey Fox died in a fumbled assassination attempt against Bifur the Axe, a dwarven commander in the Shrine of Odin, in the surprisingly common "just one more round" syndrome. In another completely optional adventure.)

Quote from: RandallS;580382I would have no problems throwing a golem at 1st level characters PROVIDED they were not required to fight it.

That's basically it. What matters is player agency, their ability to make informed choices in the way they end up tackling the challenges of the game, then dealing with the natural consequences of their actions. If you are exploring a complex at level 1 and discovered a Clay Golem that is dormant, linked to some kind of alchemical placenta that seems made of sandy matter, and you decide to disturb it by hacking through its crucible or poking at it to "see what it does", you are suicidal, and should be killed as a natural result of your stupidity.

Basically, it seems like there are two kinds of metagame here:

1) Make sure that all threats have suitable warning signs on them such that the players can know the danger and avoid it.  If the players don't read the signals right, then they screwed up and may be killed.  

2) Make sure that threats aren't such that they are challenging but won't automatically overwhelm the party.  If the players aren't smart about being prepared and dealing well with the threats, then they screwed up and may be killed.  


The point of both of these are "fair challenge" - i.e. avoiding the situation where the PCs are beaten without having a fair chance.  Both of #1 and #2 can sometimes be justified as logical outcomes of the world.  However, ultimately I think that world logic will sometimes lead to unfair situations where PCs die even though they did the right thing.  A true wild world won't always have warning signs, just like it won't always have balanced encounters.  

As I said in an early post, I tend to prefer tactical challenges to challenges of reading the GM's cues.  Thus, I usually prefer #2, but I don't mind some of #1.