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

[TheFlatline]

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

I asked this of Plebian a while back and never got a satisfactory answer. Written modules are written with a litany of assumptions in mind, including a party that is of a certain and variable level of utility.

If you run the module specifically as written, there is little to no room for free will, creativity, or smart thinking. At best, you're given binary choices that lead to a branching path that will, sooner or later, come back together and push you onto the next set piece.

This is the inherent, fundamental issue with modules, and is why basing game balance around a module as written verbatim is stupid and terribad. In fact, even people who slavishly run modules I can't imagine getting by without coming up with stuff on the fly at some point or another in the session.

All modules break sooner or later, not because teleport and scry are game-breaking, but because the inherent act of free will, the inherent unscripted nature of the characters your story is framed around, will inevitably, and sometimes quickly, pull you out of the module.

But yes, if you can show me an absolutely unbreakable published module I will be amazed. Especially if it's one that players don't rage quit halfway through due to being railroaded.

[fectin]

I'll start with asking for an unskippable module, where your players can't just say "screw this" and wander off. If skipping all the encounters in a module makes it broken, then you don't need to wait for teleport to come online. You can just leave.

[talozin]

If you run the module specifically as written, there is little to no room for free will, creativity, or smart thinking. At best, you're given binary choices that lead to a branching path that will, sooner or later, come back together and push you onto the next set piece.

This thread is making me think the early D&D modules might have been on to something. I mean, something like "Against the Giants" is pretty basic. A bunch of giants have been raiding your shit, here's where they live, MC gets a map and a roster and some very basic notes and that's about it. There's kind of an overarching plot that leads to the next adventure, but within the context of the adventure itself, the module doesn't care if the players go in the front door, go in the back door, cut a hole in the roof and ninja in, disguise themselves as giants and sneak in, map the whole place while invisible, figure out how to burn it all down and pick treasure out of the steaming ashes, whatever.

The early modules are, of course, generally terrible at explaining, or even mentioning, that it's up to MC to flesh out the skeletons they provide in ways that are interesting to the players. And the players can still decide to go get help from someone who's not in the module, or just go off and hunt dragons because giants have crap treasure, and fuck up the whole thing.

[Wrathzog]

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.

No, I don't, but once you establish that you're using XP awards in a game, it sets player expectations. The Chickens are a bad example because they're very obviously not a threat, but I've seen and run games where players steamroll through every encounter in a game and still expect full xp after every single one because they know that they just beat an "EL+X" encounter.
Which is why I haven't used XP rewards in years. It's too much book keeping and math on top of the terrible mindset players adopt about the Bags of XP that populate their world.

I'll start with asking for an unskippable module, where your players can't just say "screw this" and wander off. If skipping all the encounters in a module makes it broken, then you don't need to wait for teleport to come online. You can just leave.

I maintain that a Ravenloft Adventure of some sort will do it. You can't wander off or leave because the Dark Lord has closed off the boundaries of his domain. Teleport and Scry come with large disclaimers that they may not work as intended due to Mist Interference.
You're pretty much stuck until you deal with the Dark Lord.

[wotmaniac]

once you establish that you're using XP awards in a game, it sets player expectations.

the only thing that sets expectations is how the DM handles it.
If I (as the DM) just give full XP for every single encounter, and I don't even take confounding factors in to consideration, then yes, the whole world is just bags of XP waiting to be earned.
However, if I only give x% XP for non plot-driven encounters, then that discourages random killing. If I heavily factor in circumstance (e.g., intel, planning time, ambush vs. ambushed, etc.), this is going to encourage/discourage certain types of behavior. If I favor story awards vs. encounter awards, players will behave differently than if I only award combat.

So, the mere existence of XP doesn't set expectations -- precedence set by the DM does.

[tzor]

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.

That is wrong on so many levels, or is that it is right on so many levels?

"I'm going to use the out house."

[violence in the media]

I maintain that a Ravenloft Adventure of some sort will do it. You can't wander off or leave because the Dark Lord has closed off the boundaries of his domain. Teleport and Scry come with large disclaimers that they may not work as intended due to Mist Interference.
You're pretty much stuck until you deal with the Dark Lord.

Well, the players could ultimately just up and quit. I was part of a player revolt of that exact nature years ago in a 7th Sea game that had a lot of similarities to an frustrating, inescapable Ravenloft game. There were other issues with that game as well, but the railroad-i-ness was the main one. I mean, we tried solving the problem by talking with the MC on several occassions before that, but it was to no avail.

[Wrathzog]

the only thing that sets expectations is how the DM handles it.
...
So, the mere existence of XP doesn't set expectations -- precedence set by the DM does.

I agree with you in that I've long since changed to a system where characters level up upon the completion of a major quest or story arc.
I just think that if a system is explicit in how characters progress, then it better make sense.

Well, the players could ultimately just up and quit.

There's nothing we can do about that... and it's not really what we're talking about anyways.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Well, the players could ultimately just up and quit.

There's nothing we can do about that... and it's not really what we're talking about anyways.

Yes there is. You get them to not quit by running an interesting campaign.

[Wrathzog]

But my Ravenloft adventure IS interesting. It is interesting and if you don't understand why then it's obviously not for you.
*Hands on Hips*

But seriously, it's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is Players playing your campaign but skipping content. If your players don't want to play your adventure at all, that is a completely separate subject.

[Kaelik]

But my Ravenloft adventure IS interesting. It is interesting and if you don't understand why then it's obviously not for you.
*Hands on Hips*

But seriously, it's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is Players playing your campaign but skipping content. If your players don't want to play your adventure at all, that is a completely separate subject.

No, the point is those are the same thing. If I play Red Hand of Doom, and skip all the bullshit encounters on a flying Zombie Chimera, I do it for the exact same reason that I would skip your bullshit Ravenloft Dungeon in it's entirety. Because I'm skipping the parts that don't interest me, because they are not interesting. And the solution is to make them interesting.

Clearing the blockades on the roads in Red Hand could be interesting, because it is plot, ect.

[violence in the media]

But my Ravenloft adventure IS interesting. It is interesting and if you don't understand why then it's obviously not for you.
*Hands on Hips*

But seriously, it's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is Players playing your campaign but skipping content. If your players don't want to play your adventure at all, that is a completely separate subject.

I'm saying that is the ultimate escalation of players wanting to skip content and being frustrated, neutered, and railroaded into it at every turn.

Too many MCs take skipping content as a personal affront, when it often isn't intentional on the part of the players. The players don't usually know whether the Nine Dooms of Thrakazog is something that they're supposed to go confront or just serving as a cautionary warning against looting the (unprepared MCs) temple complex. They're not looking at your adventure plans, they don't know what you've written up, and they're not purposefully avoiding your hard work--they're doing whatever makes the most sense to them at the time. Sometimes they avoid the Nine Dooms because it doesn't appear sufficiently related to the task at hand. Other times, they abandon the main quest because sacking the temple seems more fun/profitable/in character and those Nine Dooms don't sound so bad. In both cases, whiny-ass MCs bitch that the players are forcing them to throw away/do on the fly a bunch of work.

Here's a secret: you can level with your players and, provided the game hasn't decended to the level of masochistic abuse, they'll work with you more often than not.

"Guys, look, the Temple of Nine Dooms is the only thing I have prepped right now, and I was kind of expecting you guys to go there. You don't have to, but I'll need 15-30 minutes to figure ou where to go from here. Unless you can think of reasons for your characters to change their minds?"

At this point the players will probably do their own mental gymnastics that will lead them to the temple doors. Maybe you'll all realize that they were operating on flawed information because the MC forgot to mention a critical tidbit, or Tim was in the bathroom when a vital clue pertinent to his character was revealed, or Susan will tell you that it didn't sound like her character would be useful in such a locale and thus wanted to pass.

On the other hand, maybe they thought of something you didn't that is actually a more expedient route to their goal,and they want to stick with that. Maybe they'll tell you that they're sick and tired of this whole Nine Dooms thing, and that the adventure kind of sucks, and they want to keep playing their characters but they'd like to go do something else. In this case, under no circumstances are you to agree to let them knot-cut or abandon the adventure, have them travel halfway across the world to another adventure, and then force them to deal with the Nine Dooms bullshit in any capacity.

[Wrathzog]

Hold on. Let's go over this again.

Scenario 1: I agree to be a player in Red Hand of Doom. In the course of playing, I get a Flying Mount. I fly straight to the final dungeon and murder the big bad. I do this because there is no logical reason for my character to not take the fastest path to the objective of my campaign.

Scenario 2: I agree to be a player in a Ravenloft Campaign. The party wanders into the mists and we find ourselves in front of a mansion. We don't want to be here. When we try to leave, we find ourselves back in front of the Mansion. Teleport fizzles every time we cast it.
I flip the fucking table.

This is how I understand the two scenarios. I do not get how they are at all similar. Seriously, help me out here.

[Kaelik]

Hold on. Let's go over this again.

Scenario 1: I agree to be a player in Red Hand of Doom. In the course of playing, I get a Flying Mount. I fly straight to the final dungeon and murder the big bad. I do this because there is no logical reason for my character to not take the fastest path to the objective of my campaign.

Scenario 2: I agree to be a player in a Ravenloft Campaign. The party wanders into the mists and we find ourselves in front of a mansion. We don't want to be here. When we try to leave, we find ourselves back in front of the Mansion. Teleport fizzles every time we cast it.
I flip the fucking table.

This is how I understand the two scenarios. I do not get how they are at all similar. Seriously, help me out here.

First of all, Scenario one is not actually possible, or terribly useful.

Two, your are strawmanning. The sensible thing for my character to do in Ravenloft is to sit down and not move, or build a fort and never leave it, and never enter the Mansion. People can refuse to play Ravenloft, and people can refuse to play Red Hand, and people can flip the table in Red Hand. And completely ignoring the entire fucking module by staying perfectly still is exactly like ignoring the entire module by going from point A to Point Z.

Secondly, a character, for example, some weird Wizard + something pair that teleports straight to the boss, Ray of Stupids him to death, and then teleports out, and uses the same tactic against everyone is not playing the module exactly as much as not going into Ravenloft.

[violence in the media]

Hold on. Let's go over this again.

Scenario 1: I agree to be a player in Red Hand of Doom. In the course of playing, I get a Flying Mount. I fly straight to the final dungeon and murder the big bad. I do this because there is no logical reason for my character to not take the fastest path to the objective of my campaign.

Scenario 2: I agree to be a player in a Ravenloft Campaign. The party wanders into the mists and we find ourselves in front of a mansion. We don't want to be here. When we try to leave, we find ourselves back in front of the Mansion. Teleport fizzles every time we cast it.
I flip the fucking table.

This is how I understand the two scenarios. I do not get how they are at all similar. Seriously, help me out here.

Because in scenario 2 you're working backwards from the Conclusion. Conclusion: nothing the players do will allow them to escape the mansion until they confront the Dark Lord. They don't even really get to figure out the "rules" of the horror and escape, unless that's the actual intention.

That said, this is more a problem of communication than anything. Maybe the players weren't knowledgeable about the conceits of Ravenloft and didn't realize what they signed up for. Maybe they wanted to play Ravenloft for jaunty chapeaus and corsetry and never thought they'd be arbitrarily stuck in a mansion the whole time. Who knows?

[tzor]

I think we are all missing the key element of good effective campaign module design. We assume that the adventure is a long process of going from point A to point Z and so the question in our minds is how do you get them to go to B,C,D,E,F,G .... W,X & Y.

That's not how you should design a good module. A good module should be like the old Burma Shave advdertisements. You see a nice sign in the road ahead. Then you see another and another and suddenly it starts to form a pattern. A pattern that will end with the words "Burma Shave." (Duh.) But you might not know that ahead of time.

Ignoring the deeper complexities for a moment, the fundamental key is that each sign needs to be attractive. You have to get the players to head out to the next sign on the road. Point B has to lead the players to want to see point C, and so forth and so on. Point B really should have no clue about where point D is. I mean we know who is on first base, but third base? I don't know. (Precisely!)

Ravenloft is a really bad example at everything because it is 100% pure railroad. The better modules have "all roads eventually lead to Rome" as opposed to "there is only one damn road and it leads to Rome." As long as you don't know there is a Rome and you are one way or the other heading to it, the problem of railroading doesn't come into play.

At high levels, this is accomplished by in the first place not knowing the final destination and in the second place having the route to that destination be more than just physical. Trans dimensional dungeoning and the notion of questing being more than just getting something but becomming something, allows for epic level characters to obtain epic level quests.

[K]

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.

That is wrong on so many levels, or is that it is right on so many levels?

"I'm going to use the out house."

There is a reason that "I magic missile the darkness" is an understandable player reaction.

[hyzmarca]

I'll start with asking for an unskippable module, where your players can't just say "screw this" and wander off. If skipping all the encounters in a module makes it broken, then you don't need to wait for teleport to come online. You can just leave.

I maintain that a Ravenloft Adventure of some sort will do it. You can't wander off or leave because the Dark Lord has closed off the boundaries of his domain. Teleport and Scry come with large disclaimers that they may not work as intended due to Mist Interference.
You're pretty much stuck until you deal with the Dark Lord.

You can always just set the mansion on fire and roast your marshmallows in it. Very few Dark Lords are flame retardant.


But Ravenloft has different player expectations due to the nature of the setting.

If you're playing Paranoia, Friend Computer eventually will execute you for being a Commie Mutant Traitor.

If you're playing Call of Cthulu you will be driven insane and possibly raped by fish-men.

If you're playing a Ravenloft game the Dark Powers will dick with you. It's the nature of the setting. Players should go into it expecting to be frustrated and terrorized.

[name_here]

It is always possible that the outhouse is a mimic, or occupied by a sewer demon, or something.

DnD has a storied tradition of normally inanimate things that want to murder you, leading to the jokes about the "room of death", where the floor, walls, ceiling, and treasure chest in the middle are all different monsters that want to kill you.

[Red_Rob]

Ravenloft is a really bad example at everything because it is 100% pure railroad. The better modules have "all roads eventually lead to Rome" as opposed to "there is only one damn road and it leads to Rome." As long as you don't know there is a Rome and you are one way or the other heading to it, the problem of railroading doesn't come into play.

I remember a talk by Ken Hite in which he described railroading as "a pejorative term for a game in which something is accomplished." It's available here under "Investigative gaming seminar".

How much railroading is too much? As DM's we all have to have something planned for the evenings entertainment, but when does a well planned adventure become a ride on the Plot Express? I tend to think that as long as the players have free agency in how they accomplish a goal, its fine if the goal itself is pre-determined.

[hyzmarca]

It is always possible that the outhouse is a mimic, or occupied by a sewer demon, or something.

DnD has a storied tradition of normally inanimate things that want to murder you, leading to the jokes about the "room of death", where the floor, walls, ceiling, and treasure chest in the middle are all different monsters that want to kill you.

You know, simply putting a gelatenous cube in your toilet is probably a verry practical solution to sanitation in a world with no modern septic systems. The risk of falling in and getting eaten is greatly outweighted by the health benefits of not dumping your shit in the street (or worse, the river that supplies the town's drinking water).

[tzor]

It is always possible that the outhouse is a mimic, or occupied by a sewer demon, or something.

I'm right in the middle of script frenzy making a radio play about all the wild excesses of 1E. The actual outhouse would be a bit too large for a mimic, but the toilet seat ... let me just drop my armor and sit down ... chomp!

It's interesting what you can get away with in a radio play!

[Kaelik]

I think we are all missing the key element of good effective campaign module design. We assume that the adventure is a long process of going from point A to point Z and so the question in our minds is how do you get them to go to B,C,D,E,F,G .... W,X & Y.

That's not how you should design a good module. A good module should be like the old Burma Shave advdertisements. You see a nice sign in the road ahead. Then you see another and another and suddenly it starts to form a pattern. A pattern that will end with the words "Burma Shave." (Duh.) But you might not know that ahead of time.

Ignoring the deeper complexities for a moment, the fundamental key is that each sign needs to be attractive. You have to get the players to head out to the next sign on the road. Point B has to lead the players to want to see point C, and so forth and so on. Point B really should have no clue about where point D is. I mean we know who is on first base, but third base? I don't know. (Precisely!)

Ravenloft is a really bad example at everything because it is 100% pure railroad. The better modules have "all roads eventually lead to Rome" as opposed to "there is only one damn road and it leads to Rome." As long as you don't know there is a Rome and you are one way or the other heading to it, the problem of railroading doesn't come into play.

At high levels, this is accomplished by in the first place not knowing the final destination and in the second place having the route to that destination be more than just physical. Trans dimensional dungeoning and the notion of questing being more than just getting something but becomming something, allows for epic level characters to obtain epic level quests.

Well I`m not missing it. I specifically called out Red Hand of Doom because plot point 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all things you do because you want to do them, and they are actually more important than 5, which is kill the big bad. Hence telling Warzog that flying to the big bad and killing him doesn`t actuallly make sense, because it`s not what your character would actually do, even if he could do it, and did know about the big bad.

[Wrathzog]

I'm saying that is the ultimate escalation of players wanting to skip content and being frustrated, neutered, and railroaded into it at every turn.

See, there's the disconnect. I still don't see how any of that pertains to the thread.

If your players are making logical decisions that result in skipped content and you didn't see it coming at all, then whatever. This is all fixable within the game. The DM can react however he wants and hopefully he keeps this in mind for next week.
If your players are skipping content out of Spite and Hatred because of how shitty you are as a DM, then that is a completely separate issue that requires some level of interpersonal communication to solve outside of the scope of the game.

If you're playing a Ravenloft game the Dark Powers will dick with you. It's the nature of the setting. Players shuld go into it expecting to be frustrated and terrorized.

Exactly. Which is why I brought it up when someone asked for an "unskippable module." I was answering what I thought was a simple question.

Hence telling Warzog that flying to the big bad and killing him doesn`t actuallly make sense, because it`s not what your character would actually do, even if he could do it, and did know about the big bad.

You make a lot of assumptions about a character that doesn't exist.

[echoVanguard]

Ravenloft has different player expectations due to the nature of the setting.

If you're playing Paranoia, Friend Computer eventually will execute you for being a Commie Mutant Traitor.

If you're playing Call of Cthulu you will be driven insane and possibly raped by fish-men.

If you're playing a Ravenloft game the Dark Powers will dick with you. It's the nature of the setting. Players should go into it expecting to be frustrated and terrorized.

This is a pretty important point that I think a lot of people in this thread are missing. Heroes of Horror has an interesting part where it talks about the contract between the players and the DM that is germane here - in essence, it says that the players agree to operate within the scope of the setting and the genre, and the DM agrees to not take things too far.

As to the the question of skipping the adventure to kill the last guy, there's only two ways this can happen.

1: The players become aware of an enemy they can easily kill using their abilities, and they do it. Simple and straightforward. If the adventure contains suitable circumstances to allow this, then everyone is behaving logically.

2: A player skips content to "finish the module" based on information his character does not have. This is illogical and would require some creative adjudication to handle, but simple enough (for example, the player kills the BBEG's decoy body double).

Lastly, any time the players know the content of a module you will run, it is pretty much required that you will have to change the module in some way. Paranoia has a highly applicable rule: "Knowledge of the rules is treason".

echo