I totally respect people's choices to play that way, I just won't be playing with them. :)
Having a long, drawn-out penalty for death means you are more likely to die again. It also means the party is weaker and your teammates are also more likely to die. This results in a death spiral where every failure increases the chance of the next failure.
I would wager that these campaigns tend not to last very long, or if they do it's because the players begin to act extremely conservatively to the point where they get very little done. I can see the appeal from the DM's perspective of how they want their world to function, but I can't see how it makes an entertaining game to actually play. Some mechanics are exclusively "old-school" because people have since realized that they are simply not good mechanics for an enjoyable game.
Its an opinion piece for yourself not for everyone else.
A lot of people like the game aspect of D&D and don't go with the story teller aspect that Wotc is pushing now that Winninger took over. The story teller is where the DM writers up a nice railroad, the players never die and they have to listen to poorly thought out fan fiction. They stick around because they are in a Monty Haul campaign where loot flows like water and they never have to worry about death because its not on the plate.
A lot of people believe the DM sets up the world and the player sets the story. The player decides if they are going to kill the captured bandit, will they save the town or ignore it to go after phat lewtins. Of course killing the bandit could cause problems when they enter town and there is a wake for the bandit by his family or when the party comes back to the town they realize the lewts they got is nice, but the town was burned to the ground by the BBEG they bypassed, as does their access to a number of shops, spells and services. Consequence Free D&D isn't D&D its a poorly wrote out fan fic novel that a lot of players have chosen to trap themselves in. Death is a consequence. The CR will be adjusted down if they lose a player. It also makes players fight smarter. No DM worth their salt likes playing a game where the wizard face tanks and doesn't use any defensive spells, the rogue gets swatted by a hill giant because he's not using his cunning action and the fighter is wearing leather armor discussing morality with a hill giant as it kills the party. Oh, forgot 5E, the DM would come up with a convoluted reason why the Hill Giant left the nice party alone.
You realize that every RPG, whether it's tabletop or a videogame, at the end of the day is a story that the DM is telling. Without a story, what is D&D? It's nothing, it's trash and boring. To say WOTC is pushing story telling adventures, well DUH, They have to. They are writing a story then breaking it down into parts that the DM can adjust as needed. Without the story, all you have are small independent adventures that aren't connected in any way and forces the DM to have to do more work anyways.
A perfect example of this is Dragon of Icespire. They have a main plot (White Dragon is invading), but then have several quests that aren't connected each other besides (Let them know about the White Dragon), which is fine. It's the minimum connection needed. But I would have liked to of seen more work put into connecting the adventures to the main story plot.
But I also agree with your last sentiment. A game without consequence is also no fun. But so is a game where the DM railroads the players to follow story. Neither should happen. Characters should fear they might die, and DMs should be able to work around choices players make. There are obviously grey areas in all these examples, but the main point remains.
But all this is irrelevant since the original purpose of this thread is dead lol.
I totally respect people's choices to play that way, I just won't be playing with them. :)
Having a long, drawn-out penalty for death means you are more likely to die again. It also means the party is weaker and your teammates are also more likely to die. This results in a death spiral where every failure increases the chance of the next failure.
I would wager that these campaigns tend not to last very long, or if they do it's because the players begin to act extremely conservatively to the point where they get very little done. I can see the appeal from the DM's perspective of how they want their world to function, but I can't see how it makes an entertaining game to actually play. Some mechanics are exclusively "old-school" because people have since realized that they are simply not good mechanics for an enjoyable game.
Its an opinion piece for yourself not for everyone else.
A lot of people like the game aspect of D&D and don't go with the story teller aspect that Wotc is pushing now that Winninger took over. The story teller is where the DM writers up a nice railroad, the players never die and they have to listen to poorly thought out fan fiction. They stick around because they are in a Monty Haul campaign where loot flows like water and they never have to worry about death because its not on the plate.
A lot of people believe the DM sets up the world and the player sets the story. The player decides if they are going to kill the captured bandit, will they save the town or ignore it to go after phat lewtins. Of course killing the bandit could cause problems when they enter town and there is a wake for the bandit by his family or when the party comes back to the town they realize the lewts they got is nice, but the town was burned to the ground by the BBEG they bypassed, as does their access to a number of shops, spells and services. Consequence Free D&D isn't D&D its a poorly wrote out fan fic novel that a lot of players have chosen to trap themselves in. Death is a consequence. The CR will be adjusted down if they lose a player. It also makes players fight smarter. No DM worth their salt likes playing a game where the wizard face tanks and doesn't use any defensive spells, the rogue gets swatted by a hill giant because he's not using his cunning action and the fighter is wearing leather armor discussing morality with a hill giant as it kills the party. Oh, forgot 5E, the DM would come up with a convoluted reason why the Hill Giant left the nice party alone.
You realize that every RPG, whether it's tabletop or a videogame, at the end of the day is a story that the DM is telling. Without a story, what is D&D? It's nothing, it's trash and boring. To say WOTC is pushing story telling adventures, well DUH, They have to. They are writing a story then breaking it down into parts that the DM can adjust as needed. Without the story, all you have are small independent adventures that aren't connected in any way and forces the DM to have to do more work anyways.
A perfect example of this is Dragon of Icespire. They have a main plot (White Dragon is invading), but then have several quests that aren't connected each other besides (Let them know about the White Dragon), which is fine. It's the minimum connection needed. But I would have liked to of seen more work put into connecting the adventures to the main story plot.
But I also agree with your last sentiment. A game without consequence is also no fun. But so is a game where the DM railroads the players to follow story. Neither should happen. Characters should fear they might die, and DMs should be able to work around choices players make. There are obviously grey areas in all these examples, but the main point remains.
But all this is irrelevant since the original purpose of this thread is dead lol.
You set up the world you don't write a book and turn the players into your actors, more times than not that is Wotc approach. Set up the world, allow the players to interact, at the end of the session ask the players what they want to do next and plan for it. I set up a sandbox area, with things to do, including the main plot area, but I can also build two other main plot areas if the players decide to ignore it. That is when the players write the story, the DM sets up the world, runs the combat and NPC's but the players create the story.
You set up the world you don't write a book and turn the players into your actors, more times than not that is Wotc approach. Set up the world, allow the players to interact, at the end of the session ask the players what they want to do next and plan for it. I set up a sandbox area, with things to do, including the main plot area, but I can also build two other main plot areas if the players decide to ignore it. That is when the players write the story, the DM sets up the world, runs the combat and NPC's but the players create the story.
You just said what I basically said lol. You have a main plot that you want the characters to follow, maybe a couple plots just in case, and the players create the filler for everything in between. I don't see how this is any different to what WOTC is currently doing. The only difference is maybe there isn't more than one plot. But they can't have more than one plot, otherwise you'd have a HUGE ass book.
You either have a healthy amount of stories that a DM can take, run and adapt, in addition to a healthy amount of source books like Wildemount, or you have one or the other, in which case people would ***** that there wasn't enough of the other.
As I stated before, I do not like railroading. If the DM is going out of their way to force a specific storyline down the players throat, they need to stop DMing and become an author. But I do not agree that this is what WOTC is doing. I believe they are doing their best to provide a good balance of source books and adventure books, and I believe that a majority of their adventure books are not railroadie. They have main plots with smaller plots mixed in that the players can shape to whatever they decide to do.
You set up the world you don't write a book and turn the players into your actors, more times than not that is Wotc approach. Set up the world, allow the players to interact, at the end of the session ask the players what they want to do next and plan for it. I set up a sandbox area, with things to do, including the main plot area, but I can also build two other main plot areas if the players decide to ignore it. That is when the players write the story, the DM sets up the world, runs the combat and NPC's but the players create the story.
You just said what I basically said lol. You have a main plot that you want the characters to follow, maybe a couple plots just in case, and the players create the filler for everything in between. I don't see how this is any different to what WOTC is currently doing. The only difference is maybe there isn't more than one plot. But they can't have more than one plot, otherwise you'd have a HUGE ass book.
You either have a healthy amount of stories that a DM can take, run and adapt, in addition to a healthy amount of source books like Wildemount, or you have one or the other, in which case people would ***** that there wasn't enough of the other.
As I stated before, I do not like railroading. If the DM is going out of their way to force a specific storyline down the players throat, they need to stop DMing and become an author. But I do not agree that this is what WOTC is doing. I believe they are doing their best to provide a good balance of source books and adventure books, and I believe that a majority of their adventure books are not railroadie. They have main plots with smaller plots mixed in that the players can shape to whatever they decide to do.
I build content for where the players are going using a module as a backbone. If you run 1E content, they gave you a limited sandbox with encounters and a main encounter area. You can add in a quest board to either direct the players to the random encounter areas, the main encounter areas or add in side quests you come up with.
For instance, when I ran Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth, I set a side quest based on the Gnome village that is there as a base but not much else. A kobold tribe moved in and mined into the village and stole their statue of garl glittergold. The kobolds also ran an olympic style feats of strength and the players could enter it against a giant kobold with four arms. They chose to bypass it, came back from the caverns after two weeks and the village was raided and they lost access to some shops, they could rest just not buy the village was ruined. They decided to go after the kobolds (bypassed the event) run to the end turns out the kobolds are led by a Kobold Vampire Bard turned by Drezlna because she was trying to get rid of the gnomes they were too close to Iggwilv's treasure. I also put in a bahlnoth <sp> as causing illusions to hide the caves and try to defeat the party and I had the gnomes lose a very valuable dagger longtooth. I also put in the giant kobold as well as a monster to guard the vampire lair because they bypassed him and he was breathing fire, had scales and was regenerating. When the party killed him, he reverted to a troll and had a very nice red dragonscale belt. And of course a player put it on, and started the path on becoming cursed and turning into a Kobold to protect the village. Even after he figured out it was cursed and got it of, he tried putting it on again because of the bonuses.
A lot of WotC is extremely small content, might as well be following the 5 rooms from OSR but with a little extra. Does it even make sense for a lot of WotC content to have Short Rest, most likely no. In large dungeon complexes it does. WotC a lot of times doesn't put out content that uses WotC own rest mechanics.
I don't know much about 1e, so I can't comment on that, especially since that was 50 something years ago, things change and adapt. I've read through numerous adventures, mostly the ones they have on here, where short rests and long rests can be used all the time. I don't expect the game to tell me when I can take a short rest, much as I don't expect the game to tell me I have to use the bathroom. Some things are implied. If you are hooked on 1e and expecting 5e to be the same, then I can't do anything for ya there, but besides that, we are saying the same thing, and therefore this adventure is going in circles.
Modules are there, INCLUDING the ones released now a days, to give you the backbone of the story, in which, it's up to the DM to stylize it for the players they have. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story, but now that the story is finished, reading through it now, it sounds just like a story that WOTC might release. The only difference is, you didn't have all the middle parts right away. When WOTC releases an adventure, or a source book, or a module, or whatever, they have to try to come up with SOME sort of filler between the start and finish, otherwise you have a 3 page adventure with 1,000 random generators. Does this mean that the DM HAS to follow every single thing from start to finish, no, but that's up to the DM.
Much like the DMG is made to be interpreted and changed based on the DM, so is every adventure and module released by WOTC.
TL:DR, WOTC is a company that releases adventures that have to have a beginning, middle and end. Not just a Beginning and End.
I don't know much about 1e, so I can't comment on that, especially since that was 50 something years ago, things change and adapt. I've read through numerous adventures, mostly the ones they have on here, where short rests and long rests can be used all the time. I don't expect the game to tell me when I can take a short rest, much as I don't expect the game to tell me I have to use the bathroom. Some things are implied. If you are hooked on 1e and expecting 5e to be the same, then I can't do anything for ya there, but besides that, we are saying the same thing, and therefore this adventure is going in circles.
Modules are there, INCLUDING the ones released now a days, to give you the backbone of the story, in which, it's up to the DM to stylize it for the players they have. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story, but now that the story is finished, reading through it now, it sounds just like a story that WOTC might release. The only difference is, you didn't have all the middle parts right away. When WOTC releases an adventure, or a source book, or a module, or whatever, they have to try to come up with SOME sort of filler between the start and finish, otherwise you have a 3 page adventure with 1,000 random generators. Does this mean that the DM HAS to follow every single thing from start to finish, no, but that's up to the DM.
Much like the DMG is made to be interpreted and changed based on the DM, so is every adventure and module released by WOTC.
TL:DR, WOTC is a company that releases adventures that have to have a beginning, middle and end. Not just a Beginning and End.
You might be having issues with reading the paragraph or are a real strong WotC advocate and are threatened when WotC many faults are put on display. You can accept the faults or reject. But the faults remain.
You either have a healthy amount of stories that a DM can take, run and adapt, in addition to a healthy amount of source books like Wildemount, or you have one or the other, in which case people would ***** that there wasn't enough of the other.
You asked if I have a healthy amount of stories, I gave you an example of content I came up with to flesh out an existing module. The said module comes with a mini-sandbox, a list of encounters that you can use and the main encounter area. I created extra content because there is plenty of room to flesh out any area and I like to give the players choices. Mind you the players could have allied with the Kobolds and wiped out the gnomes if they wanted, or just ignored them both to let them kill each other, but now they have no base and and are going to have a very difficult time hauling all the treasure out without help.
. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story
The stolen statue and the Olympics are not part of the module I made it up. A good DM creates content that the party can choose to interact or not. Consequences for choosing to ignore content can include loss of access to resources or the BBEG becoming significantly stronger.
Look at Lost Mines of Phandelver, for the most part its an "ok" module, it has one dungeon that is of minor note. The Red Brands Hideout and the Lost Mines you could conceivably take a short rest and not get caught. If you go to Cragmaw Hideout or Castle, they are too small to logically do a short rest and Hideout has horrible balance issues for a level 1 party of 4 that the module is supposedly made to create, again bad module and game play mechanics coming from the company that made the rules. Their own writers couldn't balance an encounter and all DM's know that Cragmaw Caves causes problems, hence all the "Road To Phandalin" type modules to bump the party to level 2 as an example.
I don't know much about 1e, so I can't comment on that, especially since that was 50 something years ago, things change and adapt. I've read through numerous adventures, mostly the ones they have on here, where short rests and long rests can be used all the time. I don't expect the game to tell me when I can take a short rest, much as I don't expect the game to tell me I have to use the bathroom. Some things are implied. If you are hooked on 1e and expecting 5e to be the same, then I can't do anything for ya there, but besides that, we are saying the same thing, and therefore this adventure is going in circles.
Modules are there, INCLUDING the ones released now a days, to give you the backbone of the story, in which, it's up to the DM to stylize it for the players they have. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story, but now that the story is finished, reading through it now, it sounds just like a story that WOTC might release. The only difference is, you didn't have all the middle parts right away. When WOTC releases an adventure, or a source book, or a module, or whatever, they have to try to come up with SOME sort of filler between the start and finish, otherwise you have a 3 page adventure with 1,000 random generators. Does this mean that the DM HAS to follow every single thing from start to finish, no, but that's up to the DM.
Much like the DMG is made to be interpreted and changed based on the DM, so is every adventure and module released by WOTC.
TL:DR, WOTC is a company that releases adventures that have to have a beginning, middle and end. Not just a Beginning and End.
You might be having issues with reading the paragraph or are a real strong WotC advocate and are threatened when WotC many faults are put on display. You can accept the faults or reject. But the faults remain.
You either have a healthy amount of stories that a DM can take, run and adapt, in addition to a healthy amount of source books like Wildemount, or you have one or the other, in which case people would ***** that there wasn't enough of the other.
You asked if I have a healthy amount of stories, I gave you an example of content I came up with to flesh out an existing module. The said module comes with a mini-sandbox, a list of encounters that you can use and the main encounter area. I created extra content because there is plenty of room to flesh out any area and I like to give the players choices. Mind you the players could have allied with the Kobolds and wiped out the gnomes if they wanted, or just ignored them both to let them kill each other, but now they have no base and and are going to have a very difficult time hauling all the treasure out without help.
. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story
The stolen statue and the Olympics are not part of the module I made it up. A good DM creates content that the party can choose to interact or not. Consequences for choosing to ignore content can include loss of access to resources or the BBEG becoming significantly stronger.
Look at Lost Mines of Phandelver, for the most part its an "ok" module, it has one dungeon that is of minor note. The Red Brands Hideout and the Lost Mines you could conceivably take a short rest and not get caught. If you go to Cragmaw Hideout or Castle, they are too small to logically do a short rest and Hideout has horrible balance issues for a level 1 party of 4 that the module is supposedly made to create, again bad module and game play mechanics coming from the company that made the rules. Their own writers couldn't balance an encounter and all DM's know that Cragmaw Caves causes problems, hence all the "Road To Phandalin" type modules to bump the party to level 2 as an example.
I understand your thoughts on, if you follow the module to a T, sure, the goblin hideout for example, could be short rested without incident. But a DM can easily work around that by having patrolling goblins.
In your example on a 1e module, you adapted it to have bonus encounters and story line to add to it. Otherwise, you would of had a bland story to follow (I assume, because as I said, I know shit about 1e. I'm on 5e). But the same can be done with a simple module like lost mines.
Add patrolling goblins to make short rests less successful. Maybe a griffin is making travel on the road to phandelver more difficult. Maybe the goblins are actually necromancers and have some undead helping them. Just like your 1e module was a sandbox that you worked in, Lost Mines can be as well.
You are trying to compare a module that you modified for your party, directly to a book that can also be modified but are looking at as is.
In reference to essentially being a WOTC Stan, that's not the case, I have a couple books not by WOTC that I like. I just understand where they are coming from and understand that, as a DM, any book you get whether it's a source or story, can be modified. Icewind Dale is a book where you could throw out the whole story and just use the setting.
You either compare adjusted books to adjusted books, or as is to as is. You can't compare one to the other as it isn't a fair comparison.
Well, I like random points and so do most of my player so I will discard that option.
I will also don't let any players to re-roll their random hit points, my players would have to force me at gun point to re-roll their character statistics.
Still, I heard your feedback, every new character will have the same level as the lowest level of the party (wich will be likely less xp than the party).
And BioWizard, most of my players love their characters, but there are some that don't, still, even between those who love them, many tend to think "my next character is going to be awesome", instead of focusing on the current.
The issue with not allowing rerolls on HP is that you might end up with a so called tank who rolled too many 1s. I've played Mr. Always Unconscious before, it isn't really any fun. No one want's to play the teen sidekick when everyone else is a superhero - anyone who has been cursed by the dice and stuck in that role is likely to chafe under it. The point of the game is to have fun, and if people aren't, you need to ask why.
I don't know much about 1e, so I can't comment on that, especially since that was 50 something years ago, things change and adapt. I've read through numerous adventures, mostly the ones they have on here, where short rests and long rests can be used all the time. I don't expect the game to tell me when I can take a short rest, much as I don't expect the game to tell me I have to use the bathroom. Some things are implied. If you are hooked on 1e and expecting 5e to be the same, then I can't do anything for ya there, but besides that, we are saying the same thing, and therefore this adventure is going in circles.
Modules are there, INCLUDING the ones released now a days, to give you the backbone of the story, in which, it's up to the DM to stylize it for the players they have. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story, but now that the story is finished, reading through it now, it sounds just like a story that WOTC might release. The only difference is, you didn't have all the middle parts right away. When WOTC releases an adventure, or a source book, or a module, or whatever, they have to try to come up with SOME sort of filler between the start and finish, otherwise you have a 3 page adventure with 1,000 random generators. Does this mean that the DM HAS to follow every single thing from start to finish, no, but that's up to the DM.
Much like the DMG is made to be interpreted and changed based on the DM, so is every adventure and module released by WOTC.
TL:DR, WOTC is a company that releases adventures that have to have a beginning, middle and end. Not just a Beginning and End.
You might be having issues with reading the paragraph or are a real strong WotC advocate and are threatened when WotC many faults are put on display. You can accept the faults or reject. But the faults remain.
You either have a healthy amount of stories that a DM can take, run and adapt, in addition to a healthy amount of source books like Wildemount, or you have one or the other, in which case people would ***** that there wasn't enough of the other.
You asked if I have a healthy amount of stories, I gave you an example of content I came up with to flesh out an existing module. The said module comes with a mini-sandbox, a list of encounters that you can use and the main encounter area. I created extra content because there is plenty of room to flesh out any area and I like to give the players choices. Mind you the players could have allied with the Kobolds and wiped out the gnomes if they wanted, or just ignored them both to let them kill each other, but now they have no base and and are going to have a very difficult time hauling all the treasure out without help.
. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story
The stolen statue and the Olympics are not part of the module I made it up. A good DM creates content that the party can choose to interact or not. Consequences for choosing to ignore content can include loss of access to resources or the BBEG becoming significantly stronger.
Look at Lost Mines of Phandelver, for the most part its an "ok" module, it has one dungeon that is of minor note. The Red Brands Hideout and the Lost Mines you could conceivably take a short rest and not get caught. If you go to Cragmaw Hideout or Castle, they are too small to logically do a short rest and Hideout has horrible balance issues for a level 1 party of 4 that the module is supposedly made to create, again bad module and game play mechanics coming from the company that made the rules. Their own writers couldn't balance an encounter and all DM's know that Cragmaw Caves causes problems, hence all the "Road To Phandalin" type modules to bump the party to level 2 as an example.
I understand your thoughts on, if you follow the module to a T, sure, the goblin hideout for example, could be short rested without incident. But a DM can easily work around that by having patrolling goblins.
In your example on a 1e module, you adapted it to have bonus encounters and story line to add to it. Otherwise, you would of had a bland story to follow (I assume, because as I said, I know shit about 1e. I'm on 5e). But the same can be done with a simple module like lost mines.
Add patrolling goblins to make short rests less successful. Maybe a griffin is making travel on the road to phandelver more difficult. Maybe the goblins are actually necromancers and have some undead helping them. Just like your 1e module was a sandbox that you worked in, Lost Mines can be as well.
You are trying to compare a module that you modified for your party, directly to a book that can also be modified but are looking at as is.
In reference to essentially being a WOTC Stan, that's not the case, I have a couple books not by WOTC that I like. I just understand where they are coming from and understand that, as a DM, any book you get whether it's a source or story, can be modified. Icewind Dale is a book where you could throw out the whole story and just use the setting.
You either compare adjusted books to adjusted books, or as is to as is. You can't compare one to the other as it isn't a fair comparison.
Well we are an impasse, you talk about content you admit you know nothing off and make negative assumptions.
In your example on a 1e module, you adapted it to have bonus encounters and story line to add to it. Otherwise, you would of had a bland story to follow (I assume, because as I said, I know shit about 1e. I'm on 5e). But the same can be done with a simple module like lost mines.
WotC is having a lot of problems with their writing, plot line and game play for recent modules. It wasn't as bad pre-Winninger, it is noticeable now, quite noticeable. They are going significantly more towards Story Tellers rather than Gamers. You brought up Icewind Dale, you can beat the BBEG at level 7, for a module designed to go up to level 10. Descent into Avernus gives you no reason to go to Avernus, the linkage from the real world to there makes no sense. Strix is written for children to young adults. The time it takes to put Wotc content in usability is just not worth it. You can take 1E content, update the monsters to 5E and run it as is really really well with no change to content. You can't do that with 5E at this point, especially since Winninger took the helm.
If you want to get an idea of how bad WotC content and writers are, buy Goodman Games Expedition to Barrier Peaks conversion from 1E to 5E. Its one hell of a crazy fun house. You get a ton of hand outs you can show to the players. If you are creative you add in some familiar sci fi sounds and you'll have a good time. Or hey you could spend $50 for the legally distinct from Hogwarts - strix. Of course you could play D&D Beyond's take of Barrier Peaks that has good ideas, but they didn't put the time to make maps or make it easily playable. The best thing about that contraption are the semi-cursed items, that's all that was of worth from the 5E rendition.
Having a long, drawn-out penalty for death means you are more likely to die again. It also means the party is weaker and your teammates are also more likely to die. This results in a death spiral where every failure increases the chance of the next failure.
I disagree. You tailor encounters to the player levels. If you have 4 level 8 characters and prepare a Hard encounter, you prepare for 5600-8400XP. If one of the characters is at a lower level, say level 4. You adjust your encounter to 4575-6800XP. DnDBeyond's encounter builder already does the math for you.
Granted, level 1 characters are very squishy (even when fighting level 1 appropriate enemies), which is why my suggestion was to start at half the party's level. Also, you are the DM, you can make the lower level character draw less "aggro" to make sure they aren't wiped out by a single attack. Let's not pretend that the DM doesn't influence how monsters behave to make sure the party has fun.
Having a long, drawn-out penalty for death means you are more likely to die again. It also means the party is weaker and your teammates are also more likely to die. This results in a death spiral where every failure increases the chance of the next failure.
I disagree. You tailor encounters to the player levels. If you have 4 level 8 characters and prepare a Hard encounter, you prepare for 5600-8400XP. If one of the characters is at a lower level, say level 4. You adjust your encounter to 4575-6800XP. DnDBeyond's encounter builder already does the math for you.
Granted, level 1 characters are very squishy (even when fighting level 1 appropriate enemies), which is why my suggestion was to start at half the party's level. Also, you are the DM, you can make the lower level character draw less "aggro" to make sure they aren't wiped out by a single attack. Let's not pretend that the DM doesn't influence how monsters behave to make sure the party has fun.
A couple issues with that. For one thing, CR and encounter math is so fuzzy and imprecise that it's nearly useless. And on top of that D&D scales in a way that a 3rd level character is far less than half as useful than a 6th level character. And if you're going to do all that and then have monsters ignore the character, what really was your goal here - to actually create consequences or just to straight up punish the player?
And yes, you can dial back the challenge. Cause who doesn't want to fight two more levels worth of the stuff they've been fighting, right? That's what I mean about the game slowing to a crawl. You're just spinning your wheels waiting for the weak guy to catch up.
The other thing is - just, why? Seriously. Why do extra work for this? If your players are just killing themselves for the lols and the loss of a player's character isn't in and of itself a massive consequence in your game, slapping on an extra penalty for death is not going to fix the underlying issue(s) at your table. The whole thing just feels like a futile attempt to force players to care. If they don't care then something else is wrong, and the solution is not to just punish them every time they don't care.
In my group, a PC death is devastating. The characters grieve, the players grieve, the NPCs with connections to the PC grieve. Because they lost a friend. They rethink their goals, or make rash decisions in the name of vengeance, sometimes things they regret later. There's just no need for some kind of mechanical penalty if your players care about the game. It's like beating someone at Monopoly and then punching them in the face so they learn not to lose on purpose next time.
I disagree. You tailor encounters to the player levels. If you have 4 level 8 characters and prepare a Hard encounter, you prepare for 5600-8400XP. If one of the characters is at a lower level, say level 4. You adjust your encounter to 4575-6800XP. DnDBeyond's encounter builder already does the math for you.
So, you have your level 4 character with, say, 27 hit points. A reasonable hard challenge is a Young Red Dragon at 5,900 xp. It breathes fire on the party, rolls average (56), character fails his save, instantly dead from full health. Fun adventure there...
I disagree. You tailor encounters to the player levels. If you have 4 level 8 characters and prepare a Hard encounter, you prepare for 5600-8400XP. If one of the characters is at a lower level, say level 4. You adjust your encounter to 4575-6800XP. DnDBeyond's encounter builder already does the math for you.
So, you have your level 4 character with, say, 27 hit points. A reasonable hard challenge is a Young Red Dragon at 5,900 xp. It breathes fire on the party, rolls average (56), character fails his save, instantly dead from full health. Fun adventure there...
But that player gets the fun of spending the rest of the game session creating his NEXT character.
How is that not fun? Turning up every week, dying in the first encounter, and spending an hour or two coming up with another character concept - and you can start to think of creative ways to make your next PC's death even more fun.
Level difference can ruin a player's experience. Being at the table and watching everyone else play while you have to hide in the back with 8 HP and a stick is not fun for most players.
I think it depends. I'm fine with players taking a penalty after a character death or retirement, but I usually wouldn't make the gap more than a level or maybe two at high enough levels. Because 5e is so compressed progression wise, there are very few ways (other than magic items, but I assume those also are reduced) to mitigate gaps- you can't make up a difference in spell levels, extra attacks, or proficiency bonus easily.
I think it's more reasonable to force players to use an array they rolled that's "bad" than to punish a new character. Retiring over and over to scum out good stat blocks is a frustrating experience for DMs, since it gives players an unfair advantage and it reflects an unwillingness of players to let their characters actually have weaknesses. Playing with the dice as they fall is a core tenet of D&D, and so trying to circumvent that via meta "I'm going to get my character killed" gameplay is not fun for anyone at the table- after all, if you're seriously role playing having a comrade die by running into a swarm of enemies and just standing there is going to be a huge "What happened there?" moment for the table.
If you want to go with a level penalty and not just forcing players to keep their arrays across characters I would allow a few "freebies" so that players don't metagame in the opposite direction (avoiding peril at all costs) but also make it clear that dying repeatedly will result in a level penalty until you "catch up". If a player has a problem with their array, and the DM doesn't allow them to re-roll, scumming out re-rolls by metagaming is not the solution. Characters don't need to be literally god tier rolls to be fun or enjoyable to play. Sometimes you just play an interesting character and let your array be what it is, highs and lows as they are.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
You realize that every RPG, whether it's tabletop or a videogame, at the end of the day is a story that the DM is telling. Without a story, what is D&D? It's nothing, it's trash and boring. To say WOTC is pushing story telling adventures, well DUH, They have to. They are writing a story then breaking it down into parts that the DM can adjust as needed. Without the story, all you have are small independent adventures that aren't connected in any way and forces the DM to have to do more work anyways.
A perfect example of this is Dragon of Icespire. They have a main plot (White Dragon is invading), but then have several quests that aren't connected each other besides (Let them know about the White Dragon), which is fine. It's the minimum connection needed. But I would have liked to of seen more work put into connecting the adventures to the main story plot.
But I also agree with your last sentiment. A game without consequence is also no fun. But so is a game where the DM railroads the players to follow story. Neither should happen. Characters should fear they might die, and DMs should be able to work around choices players make. There are obviously grey areas in all these examples, but the main point remains.
But all this is irrelevant since the original purpose of this thread is dead lol.
I don't have a signature.
You set up the world you don't write a book and turn the players into your actors, more times than not that is Wotc approach. Set up the world, allow the players to interact, at the end of the session ask the players what they want to do next and plan for it. I set up a sandbox area, with things to do, including the main plot area, but I can also build two other main plot areas if the players decide to ignore it. That is when the players write the story, the DM sets up the world, runs the combat and NPC's but the players create the story.
You just said what I basically said lol. You have a main plot that you want the characters to follow, maybe a couple plots just in case, and the players create the filler for everything in between. I don't see how this is any different to what WOTC is currently doing. The only difference is maybe there isn't more than one plot. But they can't have more than one plot, otherwise you'd have a HUGE ass book.
You either have a healthy amount of stories that a DM can take, run and adapt, in addition to a healthy amount of source books like Wildemount, or you have one or the other, in which case people would ***** that there wasn't enough of the other.
As I stated before, I do not like railroading. If the DM is going out of their way to force a specific storyline down the players throat, they need to stop DMing and become an author. But I do not agree that this is what WOTC is doing. I believe they are doing their best to provide a good balance of source books and adventure books, and I believe that a majority of their adventure books are not railroadie. They have main plots with smaller plots mixed in that the players can shape to whatever they decide to do.
I don't have a signature.
I build content for where the players are going using a module as a backbone. If you run 1E content, they gave you a limited sandbox with encounters and a main encounter area. You can add in a quest board to either direct the players to the random encounter areas, the main encounter areas or add in side quests you come up with.
For instance, when I ran Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth, I set a side quest based on the Gnome village that is there as a base but not much else. A kobold tribe moved in and mined into the village and stole their statue of garl glittergold. The kobolds also ran an olympic style feats of strength and the players could enter it against a giant kobold with four arms. They chose to bypass it, came back from the caverns after two weeks and the village was raided and they lost access to some shops, they could rest just not buy the village was ruined. They decided to go after the kobolds (bypassed the event) run to the end turns out the kobolds are led by a Kobold Vampire Bard turned by Drezlna because she was trying to get rid of the gnomes they were too close to Iggwilv's treasure. I also put in a bahlnoth <sp> as causing illusions to hide the caves and try to defeat the party and I had the gnomes lose a very valuable dagger longtooth. I also put in the giant kobold as well as a monster to guard the vampire lair because they bypassed him and he was breathing fire, had scales and was regenerating. When the party killed him, he reverted to a troll and had a very nice red dragonscale belt. And of course a player put it on, and started the path on becoming cursed and turning into a Kobold to protect the village. Even after he figured out it was cursed and got it of, he tried putting it on again because of the bonuses.
A lot of WotC is extremely small content, might as well be following the 5 rooms from OSR but with a little extra. Does it even make sense for a lot of WotC content to have Short Rest, most likely no. In large dungeon complexes it does. WotC a lot of times doesn't put out content that uses WotC own rest mechanics.
I don't know much about 1e, so I can't comment on that, especially since that was 50 something years ago, things change and adapt. I've read through numerous adventures, mostly the ones they have on here, where short rests and long rests can be used all the time. I don't expect the game to tell me when I can take a short rest, much as I don't expect the game to tell me I have to use the bathroom. Some things are implied. If you are hooked on 1e and expecting 5e to be the same, then I can't do anything for ya there, but besides that, we are saying the same thing, and therefore this adventure is going in circles.
Modules are there, INCLUDING the ones released now a days, to give you the backbone of the story, in which, it's up to the DM to stylize it for the players they have. You're coming from a place where you had a barebones thing (Stolen Statue and Olympics) then adapted as your players advanced through the story, but now that the story is finished, reading through it now, it sounds just like a story that WOTC might release. The only difference is, you didn't have all the middle parts right away. When WOTC releases an adventure, or a source book, or a module, or whatever, they have to try to come up with SOME sort of filler between the start and finish, otherwise you have a 3 page adventure with 1,000 random generators. Does this mean that the DM HAS to follow every single thing from start to finish, no, but that's up to the DM.
Much like the DMG is made to be interpreted and changed based on the DM, so is every adventure and module released by WOTC.
TL:DR, WOTC is a company that releases adventures that have to have a beginning, middle and end. Not just a Beginning and End.
I don't have a signature.
You might be having issues with reading the paragraph or are a real strong WotC advocate and are threatened when WotC many faults are put on display. You can accept the faults or reject. But the faults remain.
You asked if I have a healthy amount of stories, I gave you an example of content I came up with to flesh out an existing module. The said module comes with a mini-sandbox, a list of encounters that you can use and the main encounter area. I created extra content because there is plenty of room to flesh out any area and I like to give the players choices. Mind you the players could have allied with the Kobolds and wiped out the gnomes if they wanted, or just ignored them both to let them kill each other, but now they have no base and and are going to have a very difficult time hauling all the treasure out without help.
The stolen statue and the Olympics are not part of the module I made it up. A good DM creates content that the party can choose to interact or not. Consequences for choosing to ignore content can include loss of access to resources or the BBEG becoming significantly stronger.
Look at Lost Mines of Phandelver, for the most part its an "ok" module, it has one dungeon that is of minor note. The Red Brands Hideout and the Lost Mines you could conceivably take a short rest and not get caught. If you go to Cragmaw Hideout or Castle, they are too small to logically do a short rest and Hideout has horrible balance issues for a level 1 party of 4 that the module is supposedly made to create, again bad module and game play mechanics coming from the company that made the rules. Their own writers couldn't balance an encounter and all DM's know that Cragmaw Caves causes problems, hence all the "Road To Phandalin" type modules to bump the party to level 2 as an example.
I understand your thoughts on, if you follow the module to a T, sure, the goblin hideout for example, could be short rested without incident. But a DM can easily work around that by having patrolling goblins.
In your example on a 1e module, you adapted it to have bonus encounters and story line to add to it. Otherwise, you would of had a bland story to follow (I assume, because as I said, I know shit about 1e. I'm on 5e). But the same can be done with a simple module like lost mines.
Add patrolling goblins to make short rests less successful. Maybe a griffin is making travel on the road to phandelver more difficult. Maybe the goblins are actually necromancers and have some undead helping them. Just like your 1e module was a sandbox that you worked in, Lost Mines can be as well.
You are trying to compare a module that you modified for your party, directly to a book that can also be modified but are looking at as is.
In reference to essentially being a WOTC Stan, that's not the case, I have a couple books not by WOTC that I like. I just understand where they are coming from and understand that, as a DM, any book you get whether it's a source or story, can be modified. Icewind Dale is a book where you could throw out the whole story and just use the setting.
You either compare adjusted books to adjusted books, or as is to as is. You can't compare one to the other as it isn't a fair comparison.
I don't have a signature.
The issue with not allowing rerolls on HP is that you might end up with a so called tank who rolled too many 1s. I've played Mr. Always Unconscious before, it isn't really any fun. No one want's to play the teen sidekick when everyone else is a superhero - anyone who has been cursed by the dice and stuck in that role is likely to chafe under it. The point of the game is to have fun, and if people aren't, you need to ask why.
Well we are an impasse, you talk about content you admit you know nothing off and make negative assumptions.
WotC is having a lot of problems with their writing, plot line and game play for recent modules. It wasn't as bad pre-Winninger, it is noticeable now, quite noticeable. They are going significantly more towards Story Tellers rather than Gamers. You brought up Icewind Dale, you can beat the BBEG at level 7, for a module designed to go up to level 10. Descent into Avernus gives you no reason to go to Avernus, the linkage from the real world to there makes no sense. Strix is written for children to young adults. The time it takes to put Wotc content in usability is just not worth it. You can take 1E content, update the monsters to 5E and run it as is really really well with no change to content. You can't do that with 5E at this point, especially since Winninger took the helm.
If you want to get an idea of how bad WotC content and writers are, buy Goodman Games Expedition to Barrier Peaks conversion from 1E to 5E. Its one hell of a crazy fun house. You get a ton of hand outs you can show to the players. If you are creative you add in some familiar sci fi sounds and you'll have a good time. Or hey you could spend $50 for the legally distinct from Hogwarts - strix. Of course you could play D&D Beyond's take of Barrier Peaks that has good ideas, but they didn't put the time to make maps or make it easily playable. The best thing about that contraption are the semi-cursed items, that's all that was of worth from the 5E rendition.
I disagree. You tailor encounters to the player levels. If you have 4 level 8 characters and prepare a Hard encounter, you prepare for 5600-8400XP. If one of the characters is at a lower level, say level 4. You adjust your encounter to 4575-6800XP. DnDBeyond's encounter builder already does the math for you.
Granted, level 1 characters are very squishy (even when fighting level 1 appropriate enemies), which is why my suggestion was to start at half the party's level. Also, you are the DM, you can make the lower level character draw less "aggro" to make sure they aren't wiped out by a single attack. Let's not pretend that the DM doesn't influence how monsters behave to make sure the party has fun.
A couple issues with that. For one thing, CR and encounter math is so fuzzy and imprecise that it's nearly useless. And on top of that D&D scales in a way that a 3rd level character is far less than half as useful than a 6th level character. And if you're going to do all that and then have monsters ignore the character, what really was your goal here - to actually create consequences or just to straight up punish the player?
And yes, you can dial back the challenge. Cause who doesn't want to fight two more levels worth of the stuff they've been fighting, right? That's what I mean about the game slowing to a crawl. You're just spinning your wheels waiting for the weak guy to catch up.
The other thing is - just, why? Seriously. Why do extra work for this? If your players are just killing themselves for the lols and the loss of a player's character isn't in and of itself a massive consequence in your game, slapping on an extra penalty for death is not going to fix the underlying issue(s) at your table. The whole thing just feels like a futile attempt to force players to care. If they don't care then something else is wrong, and the solution is not to just punish them every time they don't care.
In my group, a PC death is devastating. The characters grieve, the players grieve, the NPCs with connections to the PC grieve. Because they lost a friend. They rethink their goals, or make rash decisions in the name of vengeance, sometimes things they regret later. There's just no need for some kind of mechanical penalty if your players care about the game. It's like beating someone at Monopoly and then punching them in the face so they learn not to lose on purpose next time.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
So, you have your level 4 character with, say, 27 hit points. A reasonable hard challenge is a Young Red Dragon at 5,900 xp. It breathes fire on the party, rolls average (56), character fails his save, instantly dead from full health. Fun adventure there...
But that player gets the fun of spending the rest of the game session creating his NEXT character.
How is that not fun? Turning up every week, dying in the first encounter, and spending an hour or two coming up with another character concept - and you can start to think of creative ways to make your next PC's death even more fun.
Level difference can ruin a player's experience. Being at the table and watching everyone else play while you have to hide in the back with 8 HP and a stick is not fun for most players.
I think it depends. I'm fine with players taking a penalty after a character death or retirement, but I usually wouldn't make the gap more than a level or maybe two at high enough levels. Because 5e is so compressed progression wise, there are very few ways (other than magic items, but I assume those also are reduced) to mitigate gaps- you can't make up a difference in spell levels, extra attacks, or proficiency bonus easily.
I think it's more reasonable to force players to use an array they rolled that's "bad" than to punish a new character. Retiring over and over to scum out good stat blocks is a frustrating experience for DMs, since it gives players an unfair advantage and it reflects an unwillingness of players to let their characters actually have weaknesses. Playing with the dice as they fall is a core tenet of D&D, and so trying to circumvent that via meta "I'm going to get my character killed" gameplay is not fun for anyone at the table- after all, if you're seriously role playing having a comrade die by running into a swarm of enemies and just standing there is going to be a huge "What happened there?" moment for the table.
If you want to go with a level penalty and not just forcing players to keep their arrays across characters I would allow a few "freebies" so that players don't metagame in the opposite direction (avoiding peril at all costs) but also make it clear that dying repeatedly will result in a level penalty until you "catch up". If a player has a problem with their array, and the DM doesn't allow them to re-roll, scumming out re-rolls by metagaming is not the solution. Characters don't need to be literally god tier rolls to be fun or enjoyable to play. Sometimes you just play an interesting character and let your array be what it is, highs and lows as they are.