What needs to be removed to make high level dungeons work?

[Swordslinger]

The entire premise put forth in Swordslinger's post is silly. A competent content designer can provide a story that fits the challenges appropriate for high-level gamers, even considering unbalanced abilities.

As we established in another thread, when you say "competent" you mean: better than people who work on D&D for a living.

Look, no high level modules have ever worked, and nobody has brought proof to the contrary. Not with all the official modules, the dungeon/dragon submissions. Nothing. Nobody has yet designed an unbreakable high level module.

[Doom]

Not even sure how to address such an assertion. I would imagine most 'breaks' are usually developed by people that have flipped through the module and know exactly what they're up against.

Be that as it may, what's your definition of 'high level', anyway?

[K]

The entire premise put forth in Swordslinger's post is silly. A competent content designer can provide a story that fits the challenges appropriate for high-level gamers, even considering unbalanced abilities.

As we established in another thread, when you say "competent" you mean: better than people who work on D&D for a living.

Look, no high level modules have ever worked, and nobody has brought proof to the contrary. Not with all the official modules, the dungeon/dragon submissions. Nothing. Nobody has yet designed an unbreakable high level module.

Yeh, we all agreed that no module is "unbreakable" by your definition. Designing perfect railroad adventures is not a possible task.

Then, we decided that the whole idea of "breaking" the adventure was nonsensical on first principles. Solving problems in ways that the DM has not imagined is the whole point of a cooperative storytelling game.

[Swordslinger]

Yeh, we all agreed that no module is "unbreakable" by your definition. Designing perfect railroad adventures is not a possible task.

Then, we decided that the whole idea of "breaking" the adventure was nonsensical on first principles. Solving problems in ways that the DM has not imagined is the whole point of a cooperative storytelling game.

Creativity to defeat encounters and just plain skipping the entire adventure are different things.

[MGuy]

Yeh, we all agreed that no module is "unbreakable" by your definition. Designing perfect railroad adventures is not a possible task.

Then, we decided that the whole idea of "breaking" the adventure was nonsensical on first principles. Solving problems in ways that the DM has not imagined is the whole point of a cooperative storytelling game.

Creativity to defeat encounters and just plain skipping the entire adventure are different things.

Wouldn't "skipping" be more like not going on the adventure rather than "solving it really quickly"?

[K]

Yeh, we all agreed that no module is "unbreakable" by your definition. Designing perfect railroad adventures is not a possible task.

Then, we decided that the whole idea of "breaking" the adventure was nonsensical on first principles. Solving problems in ways that the DM has not imagined is the whole point of a cooperative storytelling game.

Creativity to defeat encounters and just plain skipping the entire adventure are different things.

Wouldn't "skipping" be more like not going on the adventure rather than "solving it really quickly"?

People are always going to skip parts of the adventure they think are dumb. They'll also skip stupidly dangerously things.

They will stop for things that are of profit: XP and treasure, mostly.

True story: I tried to run an Undermountain campaign. Players balked and did everything they could to stay out of Undermountain because it's a well-known death-trap and I had to do more adventures aboveground.

Another true story: I was a player in Red Hand of Doom. The plot called for us to XP up on random encounters on the road, but once we figured out that the DM was following a timeline we got a zombie chimera and flew to the next part of the adventure. The DM had to adjust encounters because the set-pieces that were supposed to happen on the road weren't going to happen on the road (for example, the encounter with a friendly elven village had to happen where they flew up on giant owls to wave us down. I almost Fireballed them).

The lesson from both of these is simple: you have to adapt adventures on the fly in response to player actions. If you can do that, it's not even possible to "skip the adventure" regardless of what your powers are.

That's not even a joke. Teleportation, summons, passwalls.... whatever.

If you can't do that, you should not be a DM.

[Aharon]

I remember people saying that The Bastion of Souls is a well written high-level adventure.

Anybody got an opinion on that?

[Swordslinger]

People are always going to skip parts of the adventure they think are dumb. They'll also skip stupidly dangerously things.

They will stop for things that are of profit: XP and treasure, mostly.

I can see now where you're coming from. You're appealing to the lowest common denominator: the MMO grinders. Fuck roleplaying or interesting adventures, they just want to grind orcs in safety.

Good to know in a game of heroic fantasy they're skipping all the dangerous stuff. What great heroes.

Now it's all making sense. Why people on this board want things like stats for chickens. It's because fighting kobolds and rats are too damn hard, you might die! Why do that when you can just spend your starting gold on a bunch of chickens and power level to 6th level off them?

True story: I tried to run an Undermountain campaign. Players balked and did everything they could to stay out of Undermountain because it's a well-known death-trap and I had to do more adventures aboveground.

Seems like the disruptive type of players, like when you try to run a pirate campaign and some guy refuses to set foot on a ship, because being a pirate is too dangerous. That's just a dick move on the PCs part. I'd advise you find a new group. I wonder why that group even showed up in the first place?

The lesson from both of these is simple: you have to adapt adventures on the fly in response to player actions. If you can do that, it's not even possible to "skip the adventure" regardless of what your powers are.

That's not even a joke. Teleportation, summons, passwalls.... whatever.

I don't know how you'd have a random encounter during a teleportation. That's just silly. Does the elven village suddenly appear inside the monster's lair so they can still visit it? Seriously.. how am I supposed to adapt my encounters there?

[Doom]

Looks like somebody mixed some mescaline in with the morning coffee.

[mean_liar]

Good to know in a game of heroic fantasy they're skipping all the dangerous stuff. What great heroes.

Here's some illustrative hyperbole:

"Well, you know you have to rescue the princess. You can either travel to her prison by way of the Horrid Swamp of Sentient Annihilation Spheres, or the Dungeon of Templated Balors. What do you do?"

"We fly there?"

The emphasis is on avoidance of unnecessary risk; K's term was "stupidly dangerous things". As GM, you cannot expect players to go through your horribly unbalanced encounters simply because you wrote them.

[Username17]

Looks like somebody mixed some mescaline in with the morning coffee.

My writing on mescaline is pretty weird and sort of embarrassing, but I am generally able to respond to other people's positions better than that. The sort of disconnect between stimulus and response coupled with the arrogant douchebaggery is something I associate with coke heads.

-Username17

[Archmage]

I have to agree with K. You can't "skip" anything in a TTRPG because its not linear! No matter where the PCs go, they should find an adventure.

[echoVanguard]

I can see now where you're coming from. You're appealing to the lowest common denominator: the MMO grinders. Fuck roleplaying or interesting adventures, they just want to grind orcs in safety. Good to know in a game of heroic fantasy they're skipping all the dangerous stuff. What great heroes.

Now it's all making sense. Why people on this board want things like stats for chickens. It's because fighting kobolds and rats are too damn hard, you might die! Why do that when you can just spend your starting gold on a bunch of chickens and power level to 6th level off them?

Seems like the disruptive type of players, like when you try to run a pirate campaign and some guy refuses to set foot on a ship, because being a pirate is too dangerous. That's just a dick move on the PCs part. I'd advise you find a new group. I wonder why that group even showed up in the first place?

So, essentially you're saying that your beef is with the entire paradigm of player behavior?

echo

[K]

I can see now where you're coming from. You're appealing to the lowest common denominator: the MMO grinders. Fuck roleplaying or interesting adventures, they just want to grind orcs in safety. Good to know in a game of heroic fantasy they're skipping all the dangerous stuff. What great heroes.

Now it's all making sense. Why people on this board want things like stats for chickens. It's because fighting kobolds and rats are too damn hard, you might die! Why do that when you can just spend your starting gold on a bunch of chickens and power level to 6th level off them?

Seems like the disruptive type of players, like when you try to run a pirate campaign and some guy refuses to set foot on a ship, because being a pirate is too dangerous. That's just a dick move on the PCs part. I'd advise you find a new group. I wonder why that group even showed up in the first place?

So, essentially you're saying that your beef is with the entire paradigm of player behavior?

echo

I often wonder how people can draw the exact opposite conclusion from the same arguments.

My point is that players only always stop for plot points, the exact opposite of MMO grinding. They don't care if you've filled a dungeon full of traps and various random encounters that you think are awesome; they care about completing the adventure and are more than willing to skip everything else so they can get into the next story. Undermountain was a bust because the very idea of wandering around a death-trap with no better reward or story than you'd get from random encounters was not deemed worth it in terms of play time.

I mean, why do an adventure in a death trap when you can do one in some normal place and get the same XP and loot?

If you expect them to do something risky that does not directly advance the plot, they will find ways to avoid it. This is DnD, and at most levels dying is a permanent condition or grossly debilitating and TPK has always been the end of the campaign. This means that when given the choice between risky things and less risky things, they always choose the less risky things.

Now, you can bribe players with treasure and XP and sometimes they will take it, but usually that's only if they want an extra level or magic item before some final battle with a BBEG. The rest of the time, they honestly avoid things not directly related to the plot. The Red Hand of Doom campaign had to be adjusted because players didn't want to grind through three or four mostly unrelated encounters before getting to the next plot point.

On another note, I'll say again that if you can't adapt adventures to player actions, then you shouldn't DM. I mean, if you think the "trap-filled dungeon with a BBEG at the end" is the height of TTRPG and are getting frustrated that people are teleporting to the end, then you should go back to playing video games because you don't understand this kind of game at all by the simple fact that players demand better stories than this. Players teleporting to the end is not the problem; your complete lack of storytelling ability is the problem.

I even start to wonder if you've ever played table-top DnD at all for the simple reason that most players get bored and find a new DM when their current one only runs adventures that are "there is a BBEG, and you should go to his fortress and kill him." In my experience, that plot is actually pretty boring and people naturally balk after a while.

[CCarter]

Now it's all making sense. Why people on this board want things like stats for chickens. It's because fighting kobolds and rats are too damn hard, you might die! Why do that when you can just spend your starting gold on a bunch of chickens and power level to 6th level off them?

Yellow mold is the real way to power level...CR 5, easy to manufacture and the CON damage is less dangerous to 1st level characters than HP damage would be, particularly if you have someone with a decent Heal check on hand to help with the secondary Fort save.

=P

[fectin]

I can see now where you're coming from. You're appealing to the lowest common denominator: the MMO grinders. Fuck roleplaying or interesting adventures, they just want to grind orcs in safety. Good to know in a game of heroic fantasy they're skipping all the dangerous stuff. What great heroes.

Now it's all making sense. Why people on this board want things like stats for chickens. It's because fighting kobolds and rats are too damn hard, you might die! Why do that when you can just spend your starting gold on a bunch of chickens and power level to 6th level off them?

Seems like the disruptive type of players, like when you try to run a pirate campaign and some guy refuses to set foot on a ship, because being a pirate is too dangerous. That's just a dick move on the PCs part. I'd advise you find a new group. I wonder why that group even showed up in the first place?

So, essentially you're saying that your beef is with the entire paradigm of player behavior?

echo

I often wonder how people can draw the exact opposite conclusion from the same arguments.

My point is that players only always stop for plot points, the exact opposite of MMO grinding. They don't care if you've filled a dungeon full of traps and various random encounters that you think are awesome; they care about completing the adventure and are more than willing to skip everything else so they can get into the next story. Undermountain was a bust because the very idea of wandering around a death-trap with no better reward or story than you'd get from random encounters was not deemed worth it in terms of play time.

He's drawing the same conclusion as you, he just assumes grinding is the plot.

Seems like the disruptive type of players, like when you try to run a pirate campaign and some guy refuses to set foot on a ship, because being a pirate is too dangerous. That's just a dick move on the PCs part. I'd advise you find a new group. I wonder why that group even showed up in the first place?

Why are you trying to run a pirate campaign when your player obviously don't want to be pirates? Seriously, why?

Creativity to defeat encounters and just plain skipping the entire adventure are different things.

Could you give me an example of a module which can't be skipped? Because this sure sounds like a false dichotomy.

Edit: fear the wrath of my misaligned quote tags!

[Archmage]

Could you give me an example of a module which can't be skipped? Because this sure sounds like a false dichotomy.

If you're the kind of DM who buys and runs modules/"adventure paths/other canned TTRPG material, then sure, I can understand why you would be upset that the players "skipped" the adventure. You paid for a book or whatever that promised many hours of potentially entertaining play, maybe even a year of campaign sessions.

But that's really just one more reason to add to the list of "why pre-written modules are bad," or, at least, why they're a bad standard for what TTRPG play is supposed to be like.

Forget nonsense about disruptive players, if the goal is "rescue the princess" and the party can teleport in, grab her, and teleport back out to call the day saved, they are bad roleplayers if they don't do it, because guess what, that's what their characters would do if they weren't complete morons! There is no reason to be railroaded through the Castle of Doom just because you paid $20 for the Castle of Doom module--maybe next time you'll know better and you'll come up with your own adventure that encourages the kind of play you want. Or, even better, you'll be an adaptable DM and decide that rescuing the princess isn't the end of the story--because it isn't, since TTRPGs are non-linear--and it'll be the jumping-off point for an even better campaign.

TTRPGs are fun because they are the only truly non-linear form of gaming, allowing freedom and flexibility that no other medium permits due to the current limitations of technology. I pity players who have only been in campaigns that are scripted by the DM from start to finish, with the only real player choices being "which attack do I use this round?" and the witty one-liners their characters spout.

[Wrathzog]

Why are you trying to run a pirate campaign when your player obviously don't want to be pirates? Seriously, why?

Devil's Advocate, because none of your players want to be DM and you want to run a Pirate Campaign.

Could you give me an example of a module which can't be skipped? Because this sure sounds like a false dichotomy.

Ravenloft would be my example. You can have a Domain which is seriously one house and your party is stuck playing with the Dark Lord until you decide to let them go.
But Ravenloft is cheating, imo.

Now it's all making sense. Why people on this board want things like stats for chickens. It's because fighting kobolds and rats are too damn hard, you might die! Why do that when you can just spend your starting gold on a bunch of chickens and power level to 6th level off them?

If you put enough Chickens in an "Encounter," you can totally do that up to level 20. Working off of Raven Stats ("statistics presented here can describe most nonpredatory birds of similar size") with a CR of 1/6...
It would take grinding out just over 22 thousand Chickens.
The hardest part is the first level because you're fighting a dozen of them at a time. Bad luck with rolls could get you dead.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I'm pretty sure that you couldn't get past level 9 that way; the DM's guide says you generally shouldn't give XP for beating things at least 8 levels lower than you.

[Wrathzog]

Shouldn't. By RAW, 3K Chickens is a CR19 encounter.

[Kaelik]

If you put enough Chickens in an "Encounter," you can totally do that up to level 20. Working off of Raven Stats ("statistics presented here can describe most nonpredatory birds of similar size") with a CR of 1/6...
It would take grinding out just over 22 thousand Chickens.

Nope. XP is based on CR. If you are level 9, you gain 0XP for killing an infinite amount of chickens.

EDIT: Ninjaed.

Protip, you are wrong. Infinity chickens are still not a CR 19 encounter. They are still CR 1/6th creatures, in an EL X encounter.

[Wrathzog]

And CR goes up by 2 when you double the number of things you fight. I'll admit that it's been a while, but I remember that specifically.

[Kaelik]

And CR goes up by 2 when you double the number of things you fight. I'll admit that it's been a while, but I remember that specifically.

You remember wrong.

EL goes up. CR remains the same. XP is based off of CR. Therefore, infinite chickens == 0xp.

[Wrathzog]

Whoops. Alright, fine. Level 9 Chicken Killer then. That's still pretty silly.

[K]

Whoops. Alright, fine. Level 9 Chicken Killer then. That's still pretty silly.

Do you own a DMG? It clearly says "Judge the difficulty of an encounter on its own merits." It also says "An encounter so easy that it uses up none or almost none of the players resources shouldn't result in any XP award at all."

This is not a computer game. XP awards are always by DM fiat.

You don't even need fights or dead monsters to get levels. You can get story awards or RP awards and get levels that way. The DM really does decide it all, and the charts are guidelines.