Quote from: Bobloblah;436930There seems to be more of a bias towards believing that if something is there, it must be winnable. I've often wondered if this is spillover from electronic gaming, as in video games that's usually the case.

Back in the day, this "winning" attitude was around too.  This is old news.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;436922Personally, I think that the difference is-- by 3e they actually had rules that showed you exactly how difficult it was to run away.

In prior editions you could usually just say "We run away", and there might be some discussion, but the upshot is.. you run away.

Eeehhh... Rules Compendium has 3 pages of rules and discussion on what happens at the beginning of an encounter, replete with rules for evasion (pp. 91-93). Actually, it's only 10 pages later that the book describes how to run an encounter that turns into a combat. It's 4E, not prior editions, which passes over that matter lightly, by assuming that combat encounters are there to be fought, not avoided. I.e. the assumption that if a DM goes throuh the trouble of designing an encounter - full with special terrain effects etc. - he's also gonna run that encounter. The same thing plagues nearly all official 4E modules, from Shadowfell onwards, which are full with encounters which have to be fought so that the PCs level up 3 times by the end.

Which opens the 'worm of cans' of 'ooh, but older editions did not want encounters to be balanced':

Quote from: Bobloblah;436921That's something that I never liked from 3E onwards: the mentality that Encounters had to be Balanced for the party. Why? If you can't win, don't fight. Or, if it's too late for that, run. Not everything you run into is going to be a neatly parceled, completely winnable, level-appropriate package.

Actually, the Basic D&D Rules Compendium has a whole section on that whose very terms - Total Party Level, Challenge Percentage (later: Challenge Rating) - reads like a portion of the 3E DMG. Behold:

Quote from: RC, pp.100-101Balancing Encounters (Optional)

When the DM is uncertain as to whether an encounter is a fair challenge, he or she can use the following system to make that determination.
This optional rule gives a fairly accurate estimate of an encounter's impact on a PCs' party. Although this system is too involved to use with most random encounters, it is useful for prepared encounters. However, the DM is never required to use it, and no other rules in the D&D game depend on its use. (...)

Balancing Encounters Checklist

Follow these three steps to determine the impact of an encounter:
1. Determine the TPL (Total Party Level) of the PC party.
2. Determine the Individual Adjusted Hit Dice of the Monsters.
3. Determine the type of challenge faced.

Definitions

The terms used in the Balancing Encounters Checklist are defined here and presented in the order of procedure.

Determine the TPL

The Total Party Level (TPL) is the sum of the experience levels of all the characters in the party. If the party consists of six 10th level characters,
the TPL is 60 (6 x 10). The DM can adjust the TPL downward if the
party is not at full strength. (...)

Determine the Challenge

The challenge of an encounter is expressed as a percentage number. To find that number, divide the combined Individual Adjusted Hit Dice of the  monsters by the TPL of the player character party. Remember that a number such as ".5" actually translates into percentile form as "50%," as shown in the Challenge Percentage Table, found below.

Now, I understand that's 1991, not 80s BECMI, but the whole idea that "the edition that was never to be made" turned D&D upside down by introducing the idea of measuring encounter difficulty for the sake of balancing encounters... that seems to me hard to believe.

I personally have tons of 1st edition stuff and I still go out and get pieces of 2nd edition stuff because I'm kinda focused on the Realms and there is a lot of old lore there. I'm writing an adventure set in the ruins of Tith Tilendrothael. I wrote an adventure that took place in the prehistoric empire of Merrshaulk for DDXP. I'm doing another set in the Spine of the World mountains involving spelljammers..

Having the 2e stuff has been great for inspiration.. a bit here and a bit there.. inspiring! Lets set an adventure in that area! But that doesn't mean I'm going to turn around and start running AD&D at any point. Not seriously, anyhow.

Quote from: Windjammer;436938Eeehhh... Rules Compendium has 3 pages of rules and discussion on what happens at the beginning of an encounter, replete with rules for evasion (pp. 91-93). Actually, it's only 10 pages later that the book describes how to run an encounter that turns into a combat. It's 4E, not prior editions, which passes over that matter lightly, by assuming that combat encounters are there to be fought, not avoided. I.e. the assumption that if a DM goes throuh the trouble of designing an encounter - full with special terrain effects etc. - he's also gonna run that encounter. The same thing plagues nearly all official 4E modules, from Shadowfell onwards, which are full with encounters which have to be fought so that the PCs level up 3 times by the end.

At the D&D Classic at DDXP this year- (this is a 4e sequel to Keep on the Shadowfell) we avoided all of the combats except the last one..  by roleplaying. I was not running this adventure (I played a fighter) so I can't be blamed for being some kind of special case

Spoiler: we joined up with the hobgoblins.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;436942Having the 2e stuff has been great for inspiration.. a bit here and a bit there.. inspiring! Lets set an adventure in that area! But that doesn't mean I'm going to turn around and start running AD&D at any point. Not seriously, anyhow.

I agree.

Lots of 2E AD&D Forgotten Realms titles for inspiration.  (ie. For getting out of a writer's block).

Quote from: Thanlis;436882Oh, you know. About as often as a fighter in any edition sees a constant stream of goblins entering the room one at a time for easy kill-time comparison purposes.

Wow, still butthurt about that, eh?

Quote from: RandallS;436923Fairly often in my campaign worlds. Goblins, orcs, and other such beings breed fast and often so there are lots of them. If you are going to travel around the less civilized parts of the world, you are going to encounter them -- and in large numbers. Parties camped for the night look the same to the average goblin whether they are group of 2nd level characters or a group of 10th level characters....

Agreed, but I think back to the adventures that 10th level fighters went on...Against the Giants, Vault of the Drow, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

Yes, there were goblins there, and yes, theoretically, the fighter could mow them down, but, bottom line, you're still looking at an edge case. It'd be like me registering for 3rd grade math...sure, such problems come up for me, but I don't go out of my way to work on them, nor do I contemplate how ridiculous it is for me to do them so trivially while an 8 year old strugges on them.

I just don't see the reason for the bitterness, is all.

Quote from: Windjammer;436938Now, I understand that's 1991, not 80s BECMI, but the whole idea that "the edition that was never to be made" turned D&D upside down by introducing the idea of measuring encounter difficulty for the sake of balancing encounters... that seems to me hard to believe.

That's not what I'm trying to say. At all.

As an aside, I somtimes think there's so much antagonism on this board that it's difficult to take what someone posts without reading into it.

I was unaware of those rules in the RC, as it wasn't something I played from until more recently. And I'm not trying to paint newer editions as terrible. I've played tons of 3E and a little 4E. I'm just saying that I didn't like or use the EL and CR introduced in 3E, and preferred to eyeball encounters. My limited experience of 4E has been around set-piece encounters that were supposedly balanced. The DM believed it, the players knew it, and the result was predictable (CHARGE!). However, based on the experiences of others here, I'm willing to believe that the two groups I tried 4E with were not necessarily representative.

Quote from: ggroy;436931Back in the day, this "winning" attitude was around too.  This is old news.

You say this, but the only place I used to experience that was at Cons, where it really was about winning. Maybe the local scene was just...different.

Quote from: Windjammer;436938Now, I understand that's 1991, not 80s BECMI, but the whole idea that "the edition that was never to be made" turned D&D upside down by introducing the idea of measuring encounter difficulty for the sake of balancing encounters... that seems to me hard to believe.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that RC quote is a rehash of the Adventure Planning Method, designed by Frank Mentzer and appearing in a Dragon 101 (Sept 1985) article, "Plan it by the Numbers."

I believe this method was supposed to have been in the Companion set but got cut for a lack of space. Real shame, since it's very useful and easily adapted to AD&D.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;436922So I kind of have to chuckle at the macho talk. Someone who missed out on 3e and 4e talking smack about combat most likely wouldn't stand a chance in his first few battles- even against slightly disadvantaged opponents. He'd likely end up flanked and prone within a few rounds just because he doesn't really understand how the rules work.

Dammit, my irony meter keeps breaking.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;436942Having the 2e stuff has been great for inspiration.. a bit here and a bit there.. inspiring! Lets set an adventure in that area! But that doesn't mean I'm going to turn around and start running AD&D at any point. Not seriously, anyhow.

So, it sits on your shelf un-used.  Why would anyone take your criticisms of it seriously if you don't even play it?

Quote from: Doom;436947Agreed, but I think back to the adventures that 10th level fighters went on...Against the Giants, Vault of the Drow, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

When I used a TSR (or other published) adventure, it was set in my normal campaign world. In many cases, the characters had to travel from where they were to the adventure. As getting there was part of the adventure (and sometimes more fun that the pre-written adventure) it wasn't glossed over with a single "you leave the city of X and after over a month of boring travel you arrive at the a large fortification full of hill giants" sentence. There might not have been a goblins at the pre-written adventure site, but you can bet they probably encountered some on the way.

Quote from: FunTyrant;436067As the characters level up, everything scales up with them. A huge brute isn't as much of a problem anymore since the PCs have grown. Abstraction, remember?

Abstraction.

That's the crux of the issue.

Minions, healing surges and many other 4e-isms are new concepts of Abstraction.   They are fine abstractions, but they are different from the old edition Abstractions...which are many and all of them can easily be called absurd, broken or whatever.

Seriously, they can...and have been for decades.  

There is no right level of Abstraction.   Every person has their own level of acceptance when it comes to Abstractions.   For some, a one minute round is just peachy.   For others, daily powers for fighters is even peachier.

I play OD&D.  It's full of abstract nonsense.  Defending a 1e abstraction versus a 4e abstraction is just silliness.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;436925Not that I want to pick a fight, but I suspect most people are playing pre-4e D&D, and therefore....what most people want.....is not 4e D&D. But that discussion probably deserves a thread of its own...

Instead of suspecting, attend your local game conventions.  At least then you will have a local view.

In Los Angeles, the RPGA is a dynamo.  They regularly have 30-50 players showing up at multiple monthly game days around the city.  At the three big local cons, they usually host 100+ 4e events over 4 days.

Pathfinder is doing nicely too, about 1/5th of the 4e events.

Pre-3e sadly only gets a few sessions, and usually I am the one running them.  I always fill up the tables, so there are definitely Pre-3e interest among players.

Quote from: Bobloblah;436930There seems to be more of a bias towards believing that if something is there, it must be winnable.

It makes total sense that players expect fights to be winnable.   The vast majority of RPG players want their characters to be the heroes, the protagonists, the focus of the game.  

Running away isn't as fun as victory.   That's why CoC isn't as popular since Run Away and Pyrrchic Victory are the main options in CoC.

Players enjoy slaying the dragon.  Losing occassionally is fine, but they aren't showing up at a RPG session to be slapped around by the GM's "real world".

And I run pretty vicious games.  I always discuss that with players beforehand so they know what to expect.

Quote from: ggroy;436931Back in the day, this "winning" attitude was around too.  This is old news.

Very true.

Being called a "Killer DM" wasn't a badge of honor.  It was "stay away from that dude's game, he's a douche."

Quote from: Windjammer;436938

QuotePersonally, I think that the difference is-- by 3e they actually had rules that showed you exactly how difficult it was to run away.

Eeehhh... Rules Compendium has 3 pages of rules and discussion on what happens at the beginning of an encounter, replete with rules for evasion (pp. 91-93).

OD&D had detailed rules for Avoiding Monsters in 1974.

Quote from: Windjammer;436938

QuoteThat's something that I never liked from 3E onwards: the mentality that Encounters had to be Balanced for the party. Why? If you can't win, don't fight. Or, if it's too late for that, run. Not everything you run into is going to be a neatly parceled, completely winnable, level-appropriate package.

Actually, the Basic D&D Rules Compendium has a whole section on that whose very terms - Total Party Level, Challenge Percentage (later: Challenge Rating) - reads like a portion of the 3E DMG. Behold:

AD&D probably features the most detailed systems for balancing encounters in the history of the game. (The relative degree of their effectiveness is a matter for open debate.)

So in both these instances, the claim that 3E was somehow revolutionary is pretty much patently false. 3E was consistent with the traditions of D&D stretching back to 1974 in pretty much every meaningful way.

What is true, however, is that the Internet fetishized the guidelines for encounter balance until you ended up with My Precious Encounters(TM) -- the idea that every encounter should be perfectly balanced on a completely predictable ladder that would level the PCs up at a safe, secure, and steady pace until they reached 20th level right on schedule.

This fetishization, however, didn't have much of anything to do with what was actually published in the 3E rulebooks. It was a cancerous tumor created wholly within the virulent fandom. As I wrote in Revisiting Encounter Design: "By the time The Forge of Fury was released as part of the original Adventure Path in late 2000, the meme had already taken hold. The Forge of Fury -- an adventure for 3rd to 5th level characters -- included, as one of its encounters, a CR 10 roper. You'll note that this encounter follows the guidelines printed in the DMG precisely. It didn't matter. The fanboys howled from one side of the Internet to the other about this horrible and unbalanced encounter. And why were they howling? Because encounters should always have an EL equal to the average level of the PCs."

As that particular essay goes on to describe, this obsession with "EL equal to average level of the PCs" has a lot of really negative effects on D&D gameplay. There are two ways to fix those problems:

(1) Redesign the entire game to "fix the math" (i.e., 4E).

(2) Go back to the classic method of encounter design. (This doesn't mean abandoning the CR/EL system. It means using the CR/EL appropriately.)

Agreed on all counts.

BTW very good summary (just prior to the actual Forge of Fury quote you pulled for your post) in your essay.