Quote from: Ratman_tf;1087658Yea, but if you're going to use an xp and level system, it's nice to have multiple ways to earn that xp. As long as the tail doesn't wag the dog. (role playing just for the xp reward)

The systemn I described earlier in the thread has almost infinite ways to award xp.

I don't believe in xp for role-playing.

Partly because, it leads to this uncomfortable situation where everyone gets judged on their performance like some kind of amateur theatre, partly because it tends to give additional rewards and to people who are already good at playing the game and having the most fun, and partly because, as you said, the tail can wag the dog.

The best motivator for role-playing is that if you do it you will have more fun.

Quote from: TJS;1087712Partly because, it leads to this uncomfortable situation where everyone gets judged on their performance like some kind of amateur theatre, partly because it tends to give additional rewards and to people who are already good at playing the game and having the most fun, and partly because, as you said, the tail can wag the dog.

As you can see from my documented I originally judged on the basis of roleplaying. But I found it untenable in the long run and switched to milestones set by whatever the player and the group are interested in achieving.

Considering my day job, "fuck the math" might come across as heresy but...yeah, it's not that important. As DM, you've huge leeway regarding EP awards, particularly  if the players complete the adventure successfully.

At best the numbers work for single encounter design. I wouldn't dream of an adventure where every encounter has exactly 1800 EP of monsters assigned to it, even if the CR system from which those numbers derive was remotely consistent (and, it isn't)...and then you've got variables regarding particular party setup. A CR 3 mummy, for example, is a real menace against some low level parties, but if half the party has fire attacks (quite possible), it's not a threat at all.

Now, for Adventure Design, you absolutely avoid the whole "1800 EP per encounter" thing. Yes, you need encounters, but a bit of variety there is good. You should also have at least one decent puzzle or thing the players can figure out for themselves. You should also have at least one opportunity for the players to make things easy or very hard for themselves--what you do not want is an "adventure" where the players basically just mindlessly smash their faces into monsters and press "I win" buttons for each encounter (and encounters should be unique, not identical according to some spreadsheet).

When you look at classic adventures, you typically see all these features.  Keep on the Borderlands had a wide variety of encounters, and if players figured out how each tribe was occupying different cave systems, and that most tribes had a structure of guardpost/warren/chieftan's room, they could help themselves. Or they could camp right in the middle of the valley and see how that works out...

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief? Lots of approaches there, but if the players figure out that all the toughest giants are partying in the main room they can give themselves a break and eventually discover giants aren't the real threat.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks? If players figure out what they're on, and take a guess that the center is probably where the commanders are, the adventure goes very differently than if they use the usual tactic of "explore every door one at a time, starting with the nearest."

Stuff like the above is why those 8-12 page adventures are standouts despite having far less detail than the much thicker "adventure books" you see today.

Quote from: SHARK;1087578Yeah, my friend. I agree. Fuck the math!:D

Agreed. I place stuff where I think it makes sense and just see what the party does with it. Gotta say it's made for way more memorable sessions this way, especially since they've learned that I don't really consider any sort of math.

I think it makes the game world seem more real, and they act and react accordingly: I've had them bait monsters into attacking each other, run and hide from a house-sized, eye-covered and eye-gobbling raven while exploring the corpse of a wolf that ate the sun, and bargain with a mimic queen that was trying to infiltrate a port city, pretending to be an abandoned ship filled with treasure (the chests were really her spawn that got scattered about, making it easy to hunt and pick people off at night). I don't think it would happen in a game where I'm sticking to CR and EL guidelines.

I also don't try and set things up where the PCs level after an adventure (or during it). If they do, they do, if not then I'd hope that the stuff they got and the things they did were reward enough.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1087672The OP stated (paraphrased) that you can take the total XP required to gain a level, divide it evenly over 20 encounters, then make some encounters below the baseline and others above the baseline to vary the difficulty.

While that ought to be true, it is not true.  

While the example I chose is illustrative, an encounter with 18 worgs also fits the 1800 XP 'per encounter budget'.  

If the werebear is a cakewalk and the worgs are a TPK, it is clear that there is a problem with the way XP scales with the number of creatures.  

Experimentation matters, sure, but someone needs to point out that the inputs are arbitrary, which is why the outputs don't make sense.

This. And, in any case, it's not just a matter of different opponents summing up to the same amount being actually different levels of threat. There's circumstances, too.

A couple of orcish crossbowmen having night vision carefully prepare an ambush and attack the party in an open field at night.
Now take the same two crossbowmen and make them accidentally stumble upon the party around a corner in a ghost town, in broad daylight.

They are exactly the same enemies, however the two encounters are drastically different as to the level of danger.

Points are a guideline.

I think my biggest problem with the mathematically designed adventure is that, in my experience, some encounters are bypassed entirely. Is this accounted for? Also, what about 'random' encounters? Should the latter only appear to balance out the former? Seems like a needless headache to me.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1087672The OP stated (paraphrased) that you can take the total XP required to gain a level, divide it evenly over 20 encounters, then make some encounters below the baseline and others above the baseline to vary the difficulty.

While that ought to be true, it is not true.  

While the example I chose is illustrative, an encounter with 18 worgs also fits the 1800 XP 'per encounter budget'.  

If the werebear is a cakewalk and the worgs are a TPK, it is clear that there is a problem with the way XP scales with the number of creatures.  

Experimentation matters, sure, but someone needs to point out that the inputs are arbitrary, which is why the outputs don't make sense.

The 5e DMG is explicit that this happens and needs to be taken into account in judging encounter difficulty, even though it doesn't effect XP reward. I don't have the DMG handy to get exact numbers, but an online calculator that pretends to emulate it treats this as:

5e CR values assume a party of 4-6 (?) characters is attacking ONE opponent.
If there are 2 opponents, add up their XP and then multiply by 1.5 to get CR value.
If there are 3-6 opponents, add up their XP and then multiply by 2.
...

So 18 worgs are ceteris paribus 4x as difficult as the wearbear: a medium-difficulty encounter for a party of four 11th-level characters, likely to kill 7th-level or lower characters. Because of the breakpoints, a single 1800xp wearbear is never "medium": it would be hard for 4 4th-level characters and easy for 4 5th-level characters.

In my experience this computation is broadly accurate for low-mid levels; the biggest problem I've had in it that it doesn't capture the fragility of new adventurers.

The CR system was revised in one of the splatbooks, but I don't have it so can't comment on that.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1087672Experimentation matters, sure, but someone needs to point out that the inputs are arbitrary, which is why the outputs don't make sense.

I see now what you were getting at now. Thanks for the clarification.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1087672While that ought to be true, it is not true.

In computer science, simulations invariably falls apart due to Chaos, inputs or data that lies between what you collected or are monitoring. We can get around this by narrowing the scope of what we are trying to calculating. Or setting things up so that Chaos happens beyond the time period we are interested in. Or the effects of Chaos are minimized for the time period we are interested.

What this means for tabletop roleplaying games that all game system are imperfect in how they represent the game world. Particularly simplistic scales like challenge ratings. But the allure remains that somehow everything can properly represented by game mechanics.

The key to making it all work has always been the human judgment as applied by the referee. The way to make good decisions is to play starting with running straightforward adventures like dungeons. Then keep expanding from there into more complex and nuanced situations.