Mechanics Cross-Pollination Thread

[The1True]

"Yes" is not always better.

I absolutely agree with you. This improvisational style is not always effective and is not the answer to everything. That said, you can improvise with the players cooperation without relinquishing authority.
I get that your style comes from DMing your kids who, especially at a younger age, would have been utterly lost if you had put them in control of their dice rolls and other complex game mechanics, but if you tried half the stuff you're talking about with a table of independent adults familiar with the game, I suspect you would meet stiff resistance.
Don't let that confuse me for an ultra-liberal game master. I definitely do my rolling behind the screen and rarely show my players the DM map. I read about these guys who lay the map on the table and do all their rolling in front of the players and that sounds lovely in theory but stupid in practice to me.
But yeah, if your players come up with a crackheaded idea, don't be afraid, say "Yes, and" and see where it takes you. I've ended up with at least two memorable demigods and a vengeful, NPC bastard-offspring this way...

 

[TerribleSorcery]

My outdoor adventure procedures are strictly old school, I use no 4e structures. So suggest away.

What I mean is, as you pointed out it seems like attrition isn't much of a factor in 4e due to how abilities work. I know you have healing surges and per-encounter powers and stuff. So doesn't running your outdoor stuff in an old-school way just highlight a mismatch? Your original post that started this off covers so much ground that it's difficult to know where to start.

Every mechanic of D&D is interrelated, as I am sure you know. Change one and who knows what might happen downstream. What you are dealing with seems like a variation of the old "15-minute adventuring day" problem I remember from 2e.

AFAIK, the common cures for this are 1) a dangerous world (you said your area is more or less civilized. For example, do you have a chance of meeting really lethal monsters on your encounter tables?), 2) random encounters that don't have treasure, and 3) gold for xp (you seem to have a hybrid system in place). What proportion of xp would you say comes from monsters vs treasure?

 

[squeen]

Even as a player, my good DM was a couple of years older and a natural leader---it was also his house we played at.
He stood apart physically and as an authority figure, and I think that worked best. We had all played before---some were even regular DM's for other groups, but when we played we left all that behind.

Similarly, Gygax developed the game DM-ing his kids primarily (plus a few friends).

EOTB says something similar. Play your game and let the players sort themselves out.

Don't get me wrong. It's not my story. The players are in the driver's seat. I love the unexpected and "emerging narrative". The DM is just the judge, but one that also sets the "straight-man" world into place---the ten-pins the player get to knock about in unexpected ways---and also serves as a reliable narrator of results. In that context he should be king. Being a DM is a ton of work---even your adult players should respect that and accept to some limits. If you play with DM Joe, it's his-world/his-rules....or at least that's how it used to be. If there was a DM that said to me "for my world to work, everyone has to a start out as a dwarf-thief", if the game experience he delivered was top-notch, I could easily roll with that---and it wouldn't be a mark against him.

Anyways, I'm with TerribleSorcery in that I'm not clear about what exactly is not working well about outdoor travel for Beoric. I went off on the personal tangent because, for me, outdoor travel has been surprisingly pleasant this campaign...whereas I'd struggled with it in the past. Perhaps because I started on a smaller-scale and manipulated the terrain in units of "a day's travel". Whatever it was, it produced that nice on-a-journey vibe.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

This means you need another method to make the choice of route and mode of transportation meaningful, as you can't rely on established game structures. Here are a few possibilities I thought of:

1. Like Alexis Smolensk, you play out every hex, and it takes years of real-world play to actually get anywhere.

2. You react to choice of route/mode with wanderers as usual, but you use less of them, and make the individual encounters more dangerous (higher risk of TPK, frequent use of save-or-die and save-or-suck, expect to see medusas, basilisks and level draining undead).

3. You have fewer encounters, but each "encounter" is really a mini-adventure, so that the assumptions regarding attrition function inside of the encounter. Because you have time to write adventures to occur between your adventures.

4. You tell the PCs they arrived without significant incident (thereby making choice of route/mode essentially irrelevant, and making your players wonder why a month long journey through the frontier is safer than the area immediately surrounding your average village).

I'm not really happy with any of these. So I am asking whether you have problems like I have described regarding either the game outside of the dungeon, or regarding lengthy overland travel, and if so how you deal with them.

I recommend a mix? That's a bit useless as a piece of advice, so let me break it down a bit.

#4 is totally fine. Just make it costly and mainly available between major hubs. Want to spend 500gp / person to take a week-long journey on a ship from the major regional town to the country's capital? No problem, so long as you can pay for it. I would make it pricey enough that the PCs treat it as a real option, but not so pricey that it actually discourages them. The right level is basically when they whine about it but do it anyhow.

For the rest, I recommend using an encounter grid with a wide variety of options, some exceedingly dangerous (at the ends of the bell curve) and many that are more annoyances or frustrations (near the centre of the curve - results of 6, 7 and 8 if you're using 2d6). You can tune it so that the lair encounters even for the frustration-level encounters are somewhat tougher and more substantial than the regular results (this is where you can pull out a small Dyson map and run it as an mini-adventure). If you want to, feel free to roll ahead of time on the grid, and even to roll multiple times per hex if you want. I would also combine the encounter grid with reaction rolls. This creates a lot of variety of encounters, but also a surprising amount of potential risk if you play out the precarity of the neutral and friendly results ("Congrats, you've encountered a friendly hobgoblin fortress, they invite you inside and offer you a leg of roast halfling as a hearty welcome - not eating it would be a terrible offense to individuals who have shown you nothing but kindness so far.")

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Firstly, Pseudoephedrine's advice is good. I do something kind of like that, but let me expand.

Upon rereading Beoric's OP and thinking more, I will describe the way I do things. This may seem roundabout, but I hope it comes together at the end. If I grasp you aright, your worry is that with just one or two overland encounters a day, the group can 'nuke' enemies and just gradually rack up XP as they travel with no risk. Also you don't seem to run a combat-heavy game, so you aren't interested in slamming them with enough encounters every day to be a 'challenge'. Furthermore, when travelling long distances this would bog the game down in pointless bullshit.


In my home game, random encounters are still relevant despite the fact that the group usually sees one or none in a day. I am running Pathfinder, which I have beaten the hell out of (removed some skills, gimped others, simplified combat, shit like that). So the characters have quite a few abilities at their disposal. Because I'm not one to talk in this case, in lieu of just exhorting you to play B/X and put the fear of death into your players, the following things have made my game work:

Dynamic range. Some monsters on the table are more dangerous than others. Leaving the house always carries *some* risk, even in previously explored areas the dice might turn against you and dish up more challenge than you're used to. You can't get complacent (like Pseudo says above). At the same time, overall danger level is calibrated based on distinct regions of the map: the swamps are more dangerous than the jungle, the players know this, so they can choose their level of risk - they absolutely choose their route based on what region they might have to travel through - some areas they are too scared to even enter!

GP=XP and reduced monster experience awards (big wins are from treasure, but fighting tons of monsters does give decent XP. I need to reduce monster awards even further to get where I want). Experience from exploration (entering a new hex is 50-200 xp I think, discovering locations is 100 or 200. Split amongst the group that's next to nothing beyond 1st-2nd level. Special awards are given for important & secret sites). Anyway, beating on random encounters isn't likely to gain levels compared to the amount of risk being run.

Factions and reaction rolls, which might have ramifications down the line. Various factions have useful information, and want things, and have alliances & conflicts with other factions. Blasting away at everyone can bite you in the ass later. Likewise, befriending certain groups may upset others. (You know the deal)

Lasting effects. Monsters which may not be as harsh as "save or die" like medusae or even a level drain. My game is in a jungle region so we have stirges which drain CON, giant flies which implant parasites, creatures that spread disease, etc.

Slow healing. Especially since the characters are sleeping in basically the Peruvian rainforest, trying to cook their food and not get soaked every night. 1 HP per night of full rest, and cannot recover stat damage in the wilderness. (as much as I hate PF, stat damage being commonplace is a great idea IMHO)

After a mishap with a poison trap (the healer was busted down to 5 CON and almost died), they had to hide out and rest up for a week because they didn't want to march back to town at such reduced strength! Luckily, they made a bargain with a local hermit to stay with him, and had eventually bring him basically three full inventories' worth of swag in payment (there's that faction play again!). Note that the poison didn't come from a random encounter, but the fear was that running into some ordinarily easy enemies in their weakened state might get someone killed. These are the things that dangerous & memorable expeditions are made of.

Night encounters. Rare, but the chance that your rest might be disrupted makes the next day tougher and the tenor of the expedition suddenly changes.

Henchmen. Even weak monsters might kill your torch-bearers & scroll-caddies (the poor barbarian has been KO'd a dozen times, and one time a lizardman friend had his head bitten off by a giant mantis)

Supply chain. Being far enough from town that you must bring food. This is a big one: you may not be able to do this since the group is travelling through somewhat civilized areas, but it adds time pressure. Even a day's delay can be costly when your food supplies are ticking down.

Encumbrance. Related to above. My players are totally unwilling to carry enough gear that their movement rates suffer. As a result, they often have to dip out before clearing an area so they can bring their swag home and offload it. This can bite them in the ass sometimes. Once they killed a giant death worm, but didn't go those few steps further to find the treasure it was guarding - some passing NPCs strolled in and scooped it all up!

Getting lost. Again, I made life easy on myself here. A trackless rainy jungle is pretty great for getting the PCs turned around. Sometimes they find adventures they didn't know they were looking for. Sometimes they just wander for a bit, slowly running out of food.

Tons of shit to do. I suppose I am a "high-prep DM" at the bottom of things. I may steal from everywhere, run & adapt modules, use random generators to give me ideas, do whatever the fuck I can think of to fill up the hexes - but at the end of the day, everything my players see has been worked out in advance. Every hex has something to do, or interact with, a dungeon to explore, monsters to fight or maybe just a landmark to look at. So there are plenty of "adventures between the adventures," as you say. They often get sidetracked on the way to whatever they meant to do.


This post might be either 1) shit you already know, or 2) seemingly pointless, but I think that these procedures are what make my wilderness travel worth doing. To make random encounters relevant, tie them in to the rest of the game world. Sometimes it's just going to be a couple goblins to beat on, and that's fine. But when enough encounters require some thinking or resource management of some kind, then attrition and other "real world concerns" become a factor.

Does this make sense?? I think it only works when they are all used together. Even removing one or two elements might change things completely. Perhaps someone better versed in gaming theory (who uses words like "diegetic" in forum posts) can better explain this, but AFAIK the synthesis of elements & procedures has to be there.

Yora also said he doesn't like running dungeons. If you are at that point, you might be jammed up. If you don't have many fights, and the party mostly travels around in civilized regions, and there are no terrible & dangerous dungeons to explore: well shit, I am not sure what to do. I am trying to run an 'urbancrawl' game online but I have very little experience with it and wouldn't presume to advise anyone.


Finally: If your PCs are high enough level that none of these factors are a problem anymore (easy access to status recovery magic, create food & water, things that make resting safe, methods of carrying lots of shit, whatever) then it's time to handwave overland travel, give them a magic carpet or pay for carriage rides!

 

[squeen]

Did everything TS says---even the eventual magic carpet. (Hurray for the high-prep DMs!)

@TerribleSorcery : What is this "stat damage" of which you speak and what makes it common?

 

[Beoric]

If I grasp you aright, your worry is that with just one or two overland encounters a day, the group can 'nuke' enemies and just gradually rack up XP as they travel with no risk. Also you don't seem to run a combat-heavy game, so you aren't interested in slamming them with enough encounters every day to be a 'challenge'. Furthermore, when travelling long distances this would bog the game down in pointless bullshit.

Yes, that's basically it. Plus it is hard for players to judge the risk associated with encounters when they expect to have one or less encounters a day, because their AC and HP stay the same but the wizard's damage output increases several times over. If there is no need to conserve resources, there are a lot of encounters where if the wizard gets his spells off its a cakewalk, but if he doesn't its a TPK. Not really a 4e problem, but I think it is an every-other-e problem.

If you run Eberron games you are often looking at a month or more of travel, even by road. If you have only a few encounters there is a lot of recovery time between encounters, which means the encounters need to be intrinsically interesting or they don't really contribute anything. Since on the fly random encounters aren't usually that brilliant this means you instead need to generate non-random content, which may be a distraction from the main destination.

On the other hand, if you have lots of encounters (a) the PCs might not survive the journey, even along relatively populated roads from one major city to another; and (b) they may gain a level or three by the time they get there (overland random encounters potentially have lots of treasure, unlike dungeon random encounters), possibly stopping to train a couple of times along the way. (Like squeen I prefer slow advancement, but some of my players wouldn't stand for it. If I place a lot of encounters between the main bits they will be way higher level than I want them to be.)

To be clear, I'm not asking for advice here. Like everyone else I can jury-rig a solution; plus I do like running dungeons. But this thread is about mechanics, and I'm trying to figure out a mechanical or procedural solution that does not rely on DM skill, or the particular dispositions of the players. Something that can be coherently described, consistently applied, and does not require the alteration of existing mechanics.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

What is this "stat damage" of which you speak and what makes it common?

Example:

"Dire Rat CR 1/3

XP 135
N Small animal
Init +3; Senses low-light vision, scent; Perception +4

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 11 (+3 Dex, +1 size)
hp 5 (1d8+1)
Fort +3, Ref +5, Will +1

OFFENSE

Speed 40 ft., climb 20 ft., swim 20 ft.
Melee bite +1 (1d4 plus disease)
Special Attacks disease

STATISTICS

Str 10, Dex 17, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 4
Base Atk +0; CMB –1; CMD 12 (16 vs. trip)
Feats Skill Focus (Perception)
Skills Climb +11, Perception +4, Stealth +11, Swim +11; Racial Modifiers uses Dex to modify Climb and Swim

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Disease (Ex)
Filth fever: Bite—injury; save Fort DC 11; onset 1d3 days; frequency 1/day; effect 1d3 Dex damage and 1d3 Con damage; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based."


First of all, if I find the guy who created 3.x statblocks, he's the first going up against the wall when I'm dictator.

The important part here is the disease.

Now a DC 11 save is a gimme - this effect will rarely get through but when you roll for it on every attack, you can be confident that someone might get it if you fight 5 or 6 rats. Now the character is losing DEX and CON every day until they make 2 saves in a row. Again, recovery happens swiftly even at low levels, but this is one of the weakest effects out there. While this isn't a problem when you're fighting rats in your tavern's basement, this adds another element of attrition which works great in my wilderness game, because the party can't recover this stat damage sleeping in a rain-soaked jungle. They need to find somewhere better to rest, like the headquarters of a friendly faction (see how things tie together again???).

 

[Beoric]

Yeah, I've never played it but from reading the rulebooks it looks like 3e has less save-or-die, and more save-or-suck.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

If there is no need to conserve resources, there are a lot of encounters where if the wizard gets his spells off its a cakewalk, but if he doesn't its a TPK. Not really a 4e problem, but I think it is an every-other-e problem.

That has not been my experience. But if it isn't a 4E problem, then... no problem right??

... the encounters need to be intrinsically interesting ... this means you instead need to generate non-random content.

Yes.

(overland random encounters potentially have lots of treasure, unlike dungeon random encounters)

I suppose I didn't mention this up above. Almost none of my wilderness encounters carry treasure. Most of the enemies are stone- or iron-age humanoids with crappy gear. Or giant crabs.

 

[The1True]

it looks like 3e has less save-or-die, and more save-or-suck.

And that's how we like it!

he's the first going up against the wall when I'm dictator.

To be fair, you did stretch that stat block out significantly, but yeah, especially starting around intermediate CR's, those stat blocks get rapidly out of hand. I experimented with condensing things for the adventure contest, but if I were to run that at the table, I'd be forced to improvise/guestimate Saves and Ability Scores for opposed rolls (which is basically what I've been doing with Barrowmaze for my 3.5e group). It works fine except for boss battles. I'd much rather have a comprehensive 3.5 stat block for a boss battle.

Thinking about it; I've been following the old school scene the last 10 years because I missed a certain feeling. That "Sure you can try to do that. Roll a dice." improvisational feeling that comes from the older, looser rule sets. I missed the exploration and resource management. I missed the old dungeon adventures with tons of short room descriptions and great illustrations so much that I was basically converting those instead of buying new official adventures (The Goodman Games, Dungeon Crawl Classics came close, but there were some real stinkers). I wanted all that, but when I sat down at the table with my friends, we all wanted the clear tactical play that came with the 3.5 ruleset. There were just much fewer arguments happening at the table. In our group, the DM has the last word but is definitely not some omnipotent, enigmatic god with arbitrary powers. We like a system that spells out what can and can't be done in combat and gamifies that tactical simulation to a degree we are most comfortable with.

When 4e came along, we eagerly bought all the books and played the introductory adventure, but the game for us had swung TOO far in a tactical direction, resembling a CCG to us more than what we were familiar with. By the time 5e came along, there was zero enthusiasm. I picked up the starter box and we started playing that, but meh; it didn't click. 3.5 found our sweet spot for tactical vs exploratory play.

I can totally understand how different groups prefer different systems. I think a good chunk of the conservative attitude, my group's included, is people growing old and falling into a comfortable rut with their friends and maybe not wanting to buy $200 worth of books every 10 years. We go online to rationalize and confirm our feelings of being left behind...alright, I'm just rambling now...to sum up: The result of my participating in these discussions is a renewed respect for all the versions of D&D; man, whatever keeps your bros coming back every Tuesday night, you do that! It's cool to poke fun and I'll take my well-deserved 3e jabs above, but there's definitely some gatekeeping that rears its ugly head on these forums from time to time, like only certain editions are allowed to carry the sacred flame of Gary on into the dark night, and that toxic shit is truly starting to bother me (once again, I am not referring to the gentle 3e-bashing quoted above). I think it excludes a giant swath of us from the conversation and I hate it. You can champion the benefits of your preferred style of elf-game without shitting on someone else's. Don't yuck my yum bro.

Cool, now I'm ranting and being passive aggressive. No idea what triggered this, sorry guys, lol.

 

[squeen]

...the wizard's damage output increases several times over. If there is no need to conserve resources, there are a lot of encounters where if the wizard gets his spells off its a cakewalk, but if he doesn't its a TPK. Not really a 4e problem, but I think it is an every-other-e problem.

Not sure I follow. Do you mean if the wizard gets his spells back he's all in, otherwise MIA?

Don't forget about the spell book. Traveling with it is risky. That affects a magic-user's travel radius.

If you run Eberron games you are often looking at a month or more of travel, even by road. If you have only a few encounters there is a lot of recovery time between encounters, which means the encounters need to be intrinsically interesting or they don't really contribute anything. Since on the fly random encounters aren't usually that brilliant this means you instead need to generate non-random content, which may be a distraction from the main destination.

I think the crux of your difficulty is the distances, they sound too large to be manageable if you are looking for "travel here, then adventure starts". Remember, the journey is the destination. How cool it is when a party has a long term goal. I would think that only way traveling far in post-apocalyptic worlds would work:

• most of the world is empty/barren (few encounters...preferrably interesting)
• things you bump into are scavengers and have very little treasure
• things you bump into tend to run away from large/powerful parties (less combat XP)
• resource management is about food/water/environment
• everything you bump into ends up capturing you and taking all your stuff (just threw that in because I'm reading John Carter)

On the other hand, if you have lots of encounters (a) the PCs might not survive the journey,

That's fine, right?

(b) they may gain a level or three by the time they get there (overland random encounters potentially have lots of treasure, unlike dungeon random encounters), possibly stopping to train a couple of times along the way. (Like squeen I prefer slow advancement, but some of my players wouldn't stand for it. If I place a lot of encounters between the main bits they will be way higher level than I want them to be.)

Gain levels along the way is not necessarily bad, unless you've got a detailed plan in mind---but maybe then, you shouldn't.
You've got the 2 knobs. Frequency and treasure. Dial in the effect you want. Also, you have freedom to re-write the destination to be more challenging when they get there. I firmly believe longer campaigns (i.e. the Greater D&D) do not work without a DM actively generating content.

I prefer slow advancement, but some of my players wouldn't stand for it.

I admit, I haven't dealt with these sort of demanding players---I don't think I would have much sympathy for them.

I think it bears repeating because it's something that had not occurred to me until recently "vocalized": without slow level advancement, the characters quickly outgrow the world. As Huso says, the whole domain-play/extra-planear stuff is a viable solution to high-level play (or the equivalent in Eberron), so for an extended campaign, you have better be prepared to generate some. But the question is, how quickly do you want to burn through your nice little world and move on to a very different sort of game?...or requires a very deep world, and I don't think there's a lot of stuff out there pre-generated to cover all those bases. Has Eberron got it? Put that simple fact to your level-hungry players: If they get what they crave (INSTANT POWER!), it's really game over that much quicker....maybe before they even get to their destination. Twice as bright = half as long. Just a simple fact.

To be clear, I'm not asking for advice here...I'm trying to figure out a mechanical or procedural solution that does not rely on DM skill, or the particular dispositions of the players. Something that can be coherently described, consistently applied, and does not require the alteration of existing mechanics.

That's really a tall order. To restate, you looking for a magic-bullet that fixes the Eberron+4e over-land travel issue, but:

1. does not to change anything existing (in the world or the system)
2. does not to rely of DM skill (or custom content creation)
3. does not demand anything of your players (like patience)

That's a tall order. I know I've been replying here, but before I typed a single word, you probably felt you already knew what I was going to say....and didn't like it:

smaller scale + custom encounters along the way + GP equals XP for slow level advancement = extended travel goodness.​

I'll let wiser, more experienced DMs, field it from here. Maybe they have thought of a magic bullet. I may sound facetious, but I very deliberately down-sized the scale of my playable-world (even the big cities are small enough to be mistaken for large towns, low-level NPCs, etc.) to something managable because I did not feel like D&D had properly solved the problem of sweeping/global scale. We can dream it up---but we sure as hell can't seem to key it! (That leaves majority improv/rando content, of which I'm not a big fan.)

@The1True : I may be taking it too personal, but who else could you be accusing of gate-keeping other than myself? All the other old-guard seem to have left the building. If so, please don't read too much into my ranting --- I am a proponent of certain style of play, because I think it's fantastic/uncommon and want to spread the word. However, the pitfalls I rail against are edition agnostic. They existed in in OD&D and they exist today. When I see something creeping into prominence in the modern game that leans against the tired-old-aesthetic I'm advocating, I call it out as "rot" because I believe it to be detrimental. But I do that in 1e, 2e, B/X, etc. too. If you want me to stop preaching altogether, then I really have nothing left to say: I can only report what I believe works and/or highlight what I think impedes it---I have no knowledge or useful opinion beyond my direct experience (which is limited, so by now sound like a broken record). If what I'm saying bothers you...I'm sorry. Until something new happens in my game...I've got nothing else to report. Must I keep silent? Can't you just skip my oh-so-long-and-tedious posts? The shorter ones are usually light and trivial.

@TerribleSorcery : Thanks. I really like the sound of your jungles AND (especially) the notion that you can't really recover from a major illness while traveling. The latter is pure gold...and I'm gonna steal it!

 

[The1True]

I may be taking it too personal

Don't brother, I look forward to your overlong posts. There was some dismissive language used over in the Planescape thread, a subject I'm pretty invested in, and then more of the same in the high-level thread. I think the prevalence of later-edition fans on this forum should be a sign that people are interested in the guts of the old school D&D game and want to hear what its adherents have to say. They're reading Bryce' blog because they want to run old school games at their table. They want to do this in the system they and their players are most comfortable with. There's just got to be a way to talk about it without telling people they're doing it wrong, y'know?

For example, I happen to think the classic 'Ghost Tower of Inverness' is a wet sack of dicks railroad, but if you like it, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. Maybe you found some redeeming feature in it that I never noticed. Maybe your players did everything right and turned it into a story for the ages. I won't know until you have a chance to relate the story, and you're not going to do that if I shit all over the subject and make you feel like an idiot for liking it. I guess that's where I'm going with this.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

To be clear, I'm not asking for advice here. Like everyone else I can jury-rig a solution; plus I do like running dungeons. But this thread is about mechanics, and I'm trying to figure out a mechanical or procedural solution that does not rely on DM skill, or the particular dispositions of the players. Something that can be coherently described, consistently applied, and does not require the alteration of existing mechanics.

Yeah, this is why I suggest using the grid. I developed it for a campaign in 2011 where the PCs were exploring and surveying an island the size of Jamaica. Then all you have to do is decide how often PCs roll on it, how touch the encounters are, and how much treasure you want to give out (which I suggest mainly clustering in the lairs rather than the other results).

 

[Beoric]

Not sure I follow. Do you mean if the wizard gets his spells back he's all in, otherwise MIA?

Don't forget about the spell book. Traveling with it is risky. That affects a magic-user's travel radius.

I mean a wizard is always a glass cannon, but by mid level if he doesn't need to conserve his spells he becomes a glass nuke. At that point "safe" encounters become too safe, and riskier encounters become very swingy. Because in a risky encounter with a nuclear party if the wizard gets to act before someone takes him out its game over for team monster, but if the wizard gets taken out before he gets to act its a TPK.

Also, its risky to leave spells books behind, where are you going to store them securely? Spell books are relatively resistant to damage, and you can hedge your bets with the contain you put them in. Also, I always make backup spellbooks and damn the cost.

I think it bears repeating because it's something that had not occurred to me until recently "vocalized": without slow level advancement, the characters quickly outgrow the world.

Yes, this is one of my problems. If a PC starts his career in a village in the Shadow Marches and in the adventure that take him to second level he learns of something he wants in Karrnath, it is a problem if he gains a couple of levels on his way to Zarash'ak, and a level figuring out his next steps in Zarash'ak, and a level on the way to Sharn, and a level in Sharn while figuring out the best way to Karrnath, and a level getting to the Karrnathi border, and a level crossing the Karrnathi border (since Breland and Karrnath are in a cold war), and a level getting to castle Koln in Karnnath. At which point he's tenth level and the character of the adventures needs to change entirely; he has, as you say outgrown aspects of the world.

That's really a tall order. To restate, you looking for a magic-bullet that fixes the Eberron+4e over-land travel issue, but:

1. does not to change anything existing (in the world or the system)
2. does not to rely of DM skill (or custom content creation)
3. does not demand anything of your players (like patience)

That's a tall order.

I'm looking for a discussion, which is what I am getting. And its a similar problem if you run Greyhawk in 1e, have you seen the distances there?

Look, sometimes you can run things in a small local area, but sometimes the PC's want to go to exotic places. I don't think they should be forced to play a particular limited dynamic, and I think its worth looking at solutions to help D&D adapt to different playstyles.

For example, I happen to think the classic 'Ghost Tower of Inverness' is a wet sack of dicks railroad

That's because it is. It's a tournament dungeon, so it has to be a railroad, but unlike, say, A2 it didn't have nonlinear stuff tacked on before it was published.

 

[squeen]

I'm looking for a discussion, which is what I am getting. And its a similar problem if you run Greyhawk in 1e, have you seen the distances there?

Look, sometimes you can run things in a small local area, but sometimes the PC's want to go to exotic places. I don't think they should be forced to play a particular limited dynamic, and I think its worth looking at solutions to help D&D adapt to different playstyles.

Nothing wrong in looking for a solution to what I think is a long-standing/unsolved problem.

a) Did anyone really "play" Greyhawk over large distances? Have a look at Trent Foster's taxonomy of Old School D&D post here. Arneson pretty much stuck to Blackmoor, and Gygax (when he wasn't playing war games) I think pretty much stayed near Greyhawk City and it's nearby environs (e.g. Castle Greyhawk). As Trent mentions, he tried an AD&D Hommlet reboot of his game (note the smaller scale!), but while many folks technically had adventures "in" the World of Greyhawk---how many actually had world-spanning travels? I dunno, but I think very few. What about the Myastra(?) and Forgotten Realms? How well did that work out? (genuine question, not snark).

I assert most people play the "Lesser D&D"---individual modules strung together, and far fewer the "Greater D&D" of an extended campaign. Of the latter group, most write their own world and limit it somehow (e.g. DP's and Malrex's and Lendore's Isles). Look how small the Frog's Lost Lands started out in it's heyday---just a handful of cities on a straight road.

Too big, is too big!

Still, if you can crack the code, more power to you!

What I think they are selling you with Eberron is a "story book", not a textbook/how-to manual.

b) The mage's spellbook is suppose to be his Achilles Heel. Just saying. That's why he builds a tower and broods in it.

 

[The1True]

Too big, is too big!

That's what she said! WOOOOOOOOO

dad jokes aside, I ran a Greyhawk campaign that started with the U modules, went to the UK modules and then thanks to the ship and crew they snagged in U1, wandered south around the horn of the Amedio and headed west into the wild blue yonder. New ports every week. Strange lands and cultures. Exotic beasts. Adventures on the high seas. Just filling in a big empty map sheet as we went. Fun.

This goes to the high level conundrum as well, since the farther we wandered from typical, medieval European civilization, the easier it got to drop exotic threats into the world for the increasingly high-level PC's; constantly renewing their thirst for adventure and dancing around the tendency towards domain play that creeps in after name level (9). Eventually though, the threats became increasingly otherworldly and access to/the ability to trade high-level items became increasingly rare and unsatisfying (around 15ish?) and the party traveled on to the outer planes (Sigil) in search of challenges and reward. We went all the way to lvl 30; played for 3 years. The only complaint being the 8hr-long high-level combats that come with 3.5e power-creep. It becomes a technical game in the end (as mentioned by the Blue Bard, I believe). Sort of like scuba diving; eventually you end up pretty focused on your equipment, investing thousands of dollars and days of prep for maybe 15 minutes of bottom time. The deep end has its own particular pleasures for a certain kind of person.

I do love that 1st-5th lvl 'sweet spot' for sure, but I feel sad for people who hit reset shortly thereafter every time. How are you ever going to get to fight the Tarrasque?! Building a superhero is rad!

I guess travelling by boat is kind of cheating for the purposes of this conversation?

 

[squeen]

Sounds cool. Definetely Greater D&D. I keep hoping my players will eventually make it to the Coast and head out onto the high sea!

When you went south, how did you handle random encounters and the like---as Beoric laments. Sounds like maybe you just manually created content that was level-appropriate for your party. No?

 

[Beoric]

I guess travelling by boat is kind of cheating for the purposes of this conversation?

Um, pirates, sea monsters, ghost ships, sahuagin raiders, sirens?

When you went south, how did you handle random encounters and the like---as Beoric laments. Sounds like maybe you just manually created content that was level-appropriate for your party. No?

Making it up as you go works well enough in the short term. If you do it a lot you need to build in some randomness to avoid falling into a rut of your own natural patterns - at least I do. I know a lot of people fall into the pattern of exactly one encounter between point A and point B every time the party travels.

I think what I need to do is assume that the number of encounters you would usually have on a given journey when travel is counted in days is about right; and then tweak the frequency so that you end up with roughly the same number of encounters with a longer journey. The types of encounters would also have to be adjusted to reflect the fact that the concerns of long distance travel are different from the concerns of short distance travel. Randomly generated population centres should trend bigger (since if you travel long distances you probably see lots of villages) and any losses should be measured in retainers, mounts, supplies and the like.

What's the consensus on the sweet spot for random overland encounters? Moldvay for example has them a lot less frequently (usually one check per day, possibly up to 4 checks per day) than does AD&D (checks 3-12 times daily). Or am I missing something, and the systems are supposed to be used differently?

 

[squeen]

FWIW, I check 1 in 6 every 8-hours, traveling or camped for random OR any pre-generated content in an area (...which can include folks you meet traveling the other direction).