"A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable."
Comprehension of how to dungeon master D&D relies upon (a) understanding what the outcome is; (b) how and why it's assigned the value it has; and (c) the steps we have to take as a DM to make certain the players are able to influence the game's outcome, without losing that attachment or the game's negotiable quality. This is all the harder because D&D has multiple, independent outcomes, each of which can be strived for by the players.
For example, in our scenario, are the players here for the experience, and therefore levels? To obtain an understanding of this dungeon's nature, and why it's resisted discovery for 25 years? Is it the treasure? Is it the sheer emotional process of gaming?
Yes. To all the above. But that doesn't mean the above are equal in the party's mind, and especially between players. As a player, at 1st to 3rd level, I'd be primarily concerned with experience, to a degree of about 90%. I'm not going to get much from the emotional process, because I've been gaming for so long that I'm jaded. The mystery carries little weight, as I assume all will become clear once the proper steps are taken, and I can wait for that marshmallow rather easily. And treasure is a means towards experience.
Later on, when I have sufficient power to carry out my own program, I'll steadily grow less interested in experience and more in the achievement of other outcomes. I like that D&D is especially flexible in this way. It's not a one-trick pony, where grinding is the only way to advance the character. I like that I can choose which outcome, in this moment, matters most to me, while making room to enable other players in the game the opportunity to achieve their desired outcomes, all at the same time.
It's the primary reason why player-vs.-player is game-toxic; it makes it impossible for multiple players to achieve multiple positive outcomes simultaneously. In essence, it subverts D&D's most powerful achievement as a game. Want to compete? Play a competition based game, not D&D.
As a DM, it's part of my responsibility to be aware of, and facilitate to a degree, the player's desired outcomes. This, however, it a tremendously fluid and indistinct mandate. I don't want to give the players what they want; but at the same time, I don't want to purposefully withhold it from them, either. My choices, and my actions, decides how difficult it is for the players to achieve their goals ... and as it happens, making the wrong choice, on either end of the spectrum of "too easy" and "too hard" decides absolutely whether or not the game I'm running is playable.
I've covered "playability" at length, but as it's been some years, let's briefly review, from the words of Ian Bogost:
"And there's something deeply abhorrent about games, something kind of revolting ~ but then out of that revulsion comes sublimity. Occasionally. And it's not just true for games. When you operate a mechanism, like a steering wheel, we sometimes talk about the 'play' that's built into that system, and has a space through which the steering wheel can be turned before the shaft couples with and turns the pinion at its end, or you can find this elsewhere, too. The play of light, the play of the waves, a play on words — and the game designers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman have adopted this sense of play in their formal definition of the concept, which is one that I like a lot; free movement within a more rigid structure."
Interestingly, the Game Mechanics book above also quotes Salen and Zimmerman.
It's key here to understand that the right point between "too easy" and "too hard" isn't a single place on the spectrum. The game wavers from one extreme to the other, so that at some point it has to be easier for the players to achieve their desired outcome, while at others it has to be near impossible. Comprehending this, and when to make a given situation go this way or that, is absolutely essential to one's skill as a dungeon master.
Though it must be said that nearly everyone associated with D&D and other role-playing games, outside a few game designers and book writers, are woefully ignorant to this. Magical-thinking idealism tends to reign out there in the wide world: notions like "the DM is always right" ... or "the players are always right" ... or "that the rules have to be played as written" ... are really more dogma than strategies for providing good game play. No one is "always" right, not even the rules. The game is far too complicated — and wants to be complicated — for any single fixed policy to meaningfully address all the problems that will arise in a single session, much less an ongoing campaign. Not only are we forced to gloss over game issues for which no rule has been written, the motives and beliefs of any one human being is a movable feast of the first order.
Yet the endless parade of content makers on youtube, reddit and various podcast platforms continue to espouse arguments based on premises like, "if you do this, everything will be fine." Um, no. Nothing will ever be fine. I've been running games for 44 years (and this blog is just past 15 years old now), and very often emotions get so high that counselling inter-party disputes is as much of a game skill as describing a setting, memorising the rules or rapidly adjudicating combat.
As such, when I see someone arguing that "moving the goalposts" in gameplay is a no-no, it's easy to see a lack of understanding in how D&D calculates outcomes and the player's exertations. D&D is not football. One such "goal post" is the monster that has to be killed to achieve the outcome ... but the monster gathers intel during the contest, and the monster moves, and the monster's motives can also change, while the players' mistakes adjust continously how far that particular goal post is from their current location/success.
The pre-made dungeon counters all this, by having the monster located in room 46b, or at the most roaming between rooms 42 and 46. Whereas I'm describing a game in which the monster's present location in 46b is entirely changeable at any given moment depending on how the players respond post-room 1. Thus, the program of how the dungeon setting runs is wholly different from that of the games I see being played online, or anywhere, except apparently at my game table.
Suppose, for example, with the last post (linked above), the players do something wholly unlike a typical D&D party when encountering the 15 mooks. Suppose they run immediately, suspecting the encounter isn't what it appears to be. Suppose they fight for a round or two, determine the mooks are fairly weak, and then run at that point? How does that influence the manner in which the Witch below (who is unknown to the players) carries out her campaign? Does she decide the party isn't a threat, but chooses to keep tabs on them? Does she realise that these are not dopes, but dangerous people who won't rush in, and can wait for their marshmallows?
In short, the party has meaningful choices they're not smart enough to know exist. Ask yourself, dear reader: did the possibility of not fighting the mooks even occur? Or did you, like every other D&D player, just assume that of course you'd fight them.
What the players do in the setting I've described moves the goal posts. Because logically, they ought to. Goalposts are desired outcomes, and in D&D those outcomes are not posts in the ground we have to kick a ball past.
While I want to enable the players in their desired goals, I also want to make those goals difficult to achieve. And, ultimately, that involves creating opportunities to give the players something they need, in order to fight something they're not strong enough to fight now. Sometimes, yes, that involves having a old soul appear and give the players a sword with which to kill the Jabberwock ... but with this particular dungeon, there are no old souls available and in any case, we can be more subtle. Thus, finally, (b), encountering things unintelligent living in the caves, that are unable to comprehend beyond their need for food.
Consider: like everyone who dwells in a home, there are always critters we'd like to be rid of, but which are enormously difficult to fully eradicate. You know, moths and ochre jellyfish and the like. As much as the Witch, over the last 25 years, might like to root out every miserable creature that flies or crawls in the vast compartments of her lair, there always seem to be a few that escape the hunt, which then birth the next generation of pests.
Ah well, what's a Witch to do? Anyway, they're something else to feed on the kobalds if they're stupid enough to ever open that blocked door, or upon the party if they wander off the path towards the Witch's personal lake. So a live-and-let-live policy is forced on her, just as its forced on all of us with regards to cockroaches, spiders, bats in the ceiling and whatnot.
These allow us two game benefits. First, it's something to harass the players, bleeding their hit points and blocking their desired free movement about the dungeon ... and second, the eradication of these things gives the players experience, working marvelously as an ongoing Nietzschian bargain as the players wander around and purposefully avoid directly following the mook's path back to their lair.
Of course, the players could do that; they might do it. And thus they'd find themselves at 1st level facing a 7th level monster with dangerously advanced powers, not to mention her undead warrior servant. Up front, not the way to go. My best strategy would be to block their way with mooks, which they'd have to fight anyway, in the hopes the players might realise that someone that controls 60 or so nasty squirgeling things is probably too strong to fight right off. Players can be rather stupidly rigid, sometimes, so there's no assurance they'd get the hint.
On the other hand, a few nasty encounters with relatively less dangerous and unorganised giant cockroaches, spiders and bats can add to the party's experience and self-awareness. That might lead to a greater desire to understand the setting rather than supposing the setting's been personally designed to supply their wants and desires. That might, in turn, reveal the back-end passage that would let the players surprise the Witch, who herself has never discovered, because it means a difficult passage through a very warm part of the hydrothermal branches of the tunnel aforementioned — and she hates temperatures above 3 C.
'Course, the backdoor has no value if the Witch is wandering through the dungeon, trying to learn what happened to that group that earlier killed her mooks.
The game's "play" depends greatly on how the players choose to turn that steering wheel. I can help by leaving coins and mushrooms for the party to gather in their Mario-like wanderings, but they've got to push past the scary-looking bits of those tunnels they're moving through. This is a place to stop, as that makes a good post to write next.
I have a question about "balance" (or perhaps the lack thereof).
ReplyDeleteWe don't want everything in the world to be tailored to the party's capabilities, but at the same time we want to create situations that are altogether challenging, potentially deadly and yet achievable enough to push the party forward.
In the scenario here, the party is 1st level. How do we arrive at the "proper" number of 15 mooks? We want to draw the party in deeper, but we could easily TPK with the full 60 mooks at once.
15-20 is half a squad. 60 is more than half a company. No one would ever send half a company on a recon mission.
ReplyDeleteLonger answer. We've already covered this problem with the previous post. The players HEAR the number coming ("More than ten. Probably not more than twenty"). They can judge for themselves how many unseen enemy they can take. If the creatures were bigger than humanoid-sized, we'd have said, "... sounds like BIG wet, fleshy masses slapping on stone." If it had been 60 mooks at once, then we'd have said, "You hear a huge number" and "At least 50" in answer to the players asking how many.
ReplyDeleteIt's important that we're HONEST. We're giving the players a fair chance to decide if they want to stand and fight. At the same time, as a DM we're deciding a number that they'd probably try to fight, while at the same time creating a large enough number that it makes the party sweat. You must ask yourself, again honestly, what that number would be for YOU, if you were playing.
There you are, you're a 1st level fighter with four other party members, a 1st level mage and ranger, and a 2nd level cleric and thief. What's enough to scare you, but which you'd be brave enough to fight anyway? 'Cause that's the sweet spot: the moment where the players feel fear, but are willing to grit their teeth and fight. Both of those emotions are critical to the IDEAL of role-playing and adventure. You've felt it yourself.
Further, a great deal depends on the space the battle happens in. If 15 attack you in the open, that's three attacks apiece and the battle can go sour, very quickly. But if the corridor's only wide enough for two or three combatants, then the heavier party members can hold the number up long enough for the spellcasters to unload. It also matters how far away the mooks are when the players hear them coming. Is there enough time to load spells? Drop equipment and improve movement speed? Ready a flask of oil as a grenade? Set some kind of trap? Can the party fall back while readying these things and others? These details are critical.
One set of players with the characters described above could easily handle 15 mooks, whereas another would get creamed through sheer lack of diligence. There is no EASY answer to your question, Shelby. Inevitably it comes down to your "best guess" based on how much DMing you've done with THIS party, as opposed to another group.
Thank you, that's very helpful.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of ink has been spilled trying to find an easy answer to that question and I suppose like everything else, it's all experience.
Well, I do what I can to help ChatGPT find the right answer.
ReplyDeleteHa!
ReplyDelete