ITT: GMs bitch about stupid double standards players have

ITT: GMs bitch about stupid double standards players have

>Doesn't think the GM should ever have quantum ogres because it cheapens the concept of player agency
>Thinks that after they get wasted in a landslide the GM should just write their new snowflake into the first available encounter

No John, you are the quantum ogres.

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>player consistently fudges rolls whenever possible and gets booty blasted the second the GM has a good roll

If you do 'quantum ogre' stuff right the players will never know, or even think about it.

>players don't fill out their character sheet properly and need to add in stuff as it comes up
>complains when you have to check the stats on an enemy in the monster manual

Pretend you didn't see them fudging the roll. Note how many times and how hard they did it. Apply the total as a curse/penalty in some appropriately inconvenient situations. They should learn not to push their luck when Lady Luck is an actual in-game entity you shouldn't offend.

>Pisses and moans about how much the players suck
>Still continues to GM every week instead of doing something else despite probably sucking at it
Wait, sorry, that's OP.

>players complain about railroading
>whine if they don't get a straight and unhindered path to their goals

Sometimes you just have to rant about this sort of shit, y'know?

I had to look up what a quantum ogre was

literally, the entirety of the game is a quantum ogre. The person who is the gm made up the ogre. They also made up the entire game and everything you're doing.

what is this

>Players want an intrigue campaign
>Get mad if any NPC sows even the most basic levels of competence.

>WTF why does the villain get away? I killed him fair and square!
>WTF why is my character dead? Come on, DM, I don't want to have to roll up another character!
I understand why this happens, and it's not terrible, but it's still a double standard.
Holy shit this.
>Villain was able to successfully outmaneuver you once due to sheer luck.
>Once
>Player gets bootyblasted

I can't relate to anything in this thread as a player, what the fuck kind of mouthbreathers are you playing with?

Maybe I'm just bitter, well its probably because I'm just bitter, but it seems to me most of the time when players want to do intrigue, it's because they want an ego boost, for NPCs to be baffled by their cunning and guile. Getting out-smarted puts a damper on it

People don't like to be made to feel dumb. Usually they'll get angry when it happens.

While I do agree with you as a forever GM, I do kinda feel an intrigue game requires a lot more trust from the players.
To run one properly, the GM has to act like his NPCs instead of doing the best possible thing from the GMs omniscient perspective, which can be hard to stick to

youtube.com/watch?v=4JuK1Yr35Io

Kaz gets it

My players are fine. It was mostly a stab at the retarded fa/tg/uys that act like the quantum ogre is an extreme violation of player agency.

>Complain about some aspects of a thing
>You clearly hate that thing!

Never heard of bitching because you care?

>constantly and consistently have to remind my players to edit shit they do in their character sheet

I mean I get it you're absorbed in the game but Christ it gets annoying to remind them to mark what slots they spent.

I've played with a lot of people who assume that tabletop games will be the vidya standard, that is, the player character always wins, even if they make minor mistakes, and that you have to go out of your way to 'lose'.
Yeah, it's one of those assumptions players make that makes sense in the context of a game but not in the game world itself.
Usually when I set up a villain to win something like that, it's to prop them up as an enemy to be knocked over in the endgame.
Fair enough. It can actually be a really hard effort to make sure not to 'cheat', because it's like you're the computer in video game, who can read everything nigh perfectly.

>that player that literally handicaps himself at character creation every fucking time by making a (in his mind) "cool concept" instead of a character with ability and motivation to interact with the rest of the world
>said player will then proceed to bitch at how his character has no reason or ability to participate in the party
>while the player without a single social skill and massive penalties to all his social interactions somehow manages to not only fit into the party but also become the party leader and face somehow
>the first player then proceeds by talking about other character concepts who all shared the same fucking critical flaws

I'd be mad if I wasn't so busy being impressed at his incompetence.

>DM premade
>handicapped player get mad when low level NPC does more damage than him a few times
>Get's mad when NPC inevitably leaves group
>Levels up and doesn't buff weak stats

It's not a double standard if they complain about death after you let the villains get away despite dying.

user, you are the double standards.

This tbqh
If you want your villain to not die, than make him actually be smart and avoid conflict or leave the moment things look bad. Don't make a fiat because your players were able to succeed earlier than intended.

>player makes a character with no social skills
>ingame, doesn't talk to npcs or even emote about what hes doing
>ask whats up and why he isn't interacting
>tells me angrily that his character has no reason to interact with anyone so by spending the entire session doing nothing hes roleplaying his character despite clearly being bored
Dude

Yes, I get that impression as well.

It's not just trust. As the GM, you've made the world. The players don't know anything that doesn't ultimately come from you. That means, even when you don't have your NPCs in omniscience mode (and you shouldn't) they still probably know a lot more about what's going on than the players, who might or might not be dim bulbs.

There's a fundamental imbalance in favor of NPCs, because they've always been "adapted" to the setting, whereas the PCs can only do that as well as the players can.

Some people take issue with the idea that whether they take a left or right at Albuquerque they're fighting the level 5 ogre. Part of the GM's job is to hide this sort of thing, but to say there's something fundamentally wrong with that just seems dumb to me.

Personally my take is left or right decides whether the ogre has extra guards or a bad leg or somethign

That dude does not want to play a tabletop game, and because of social contracts feels he must. Let him go, user, he doesn't want to be here and I'm sure if you call him out on that and tell him that it's okay he'll fuck off without incident and thank you for asking. Trust me: that guy DOES NOT WANT TO BE THERE. I've been that guy.

Give him this.

You're right, I was just poking fun at the theoretical situation- I should have changed the order.
Every villain my parties have faced that doesn't have a prepared (as in, non-fiat) plan in case things go south has either been spared by the party, killed, or arrested and then executed. I find it bullshit for anyone other than a recurring villain to be spared death by the sword, and if they're worth their salt as a recurring villain they have a plan B (and C and D), so if the party manages to kill him before he retreats, he obviously didn't do his job well enough.
I do prefer to let characters off the hook when I can, more often than the villains. I just take it out of them in a way that doesn't involve rolling a new character.

God I've got a fucker who does EXACTLY this in my gaming group
>Has a new character idea every time he sees something he considers 'cool' on the internet
>Literally every single one of his characters is built around some concept or gimmick he's stolen from somewhere
>Comes up with character ideas and then pesters members of the group to run a game he could play them in, instead of waiting for someone to start up a game and then making a character *for* it
>Bitches and moans if he's told his character is not appropriate for the game
>If allowed to play that character he is severely limited in what he can do and why he'd do anything because the dumb cunt thought up all of his character's motivations and long term plans before the game even began
>Attention will then get caught by some new thing after a few sessions, interest in old character will plummet, will start talking about new character idea constantly and begging to be allowed to drop his character
I want him out of the group so fucking much. He's unbearable. We tell him why he's annoying and what his problems are but he still doesn't clean his act up. But, at the same time, his offences still aren't quite bad enough to kick him out.

You're kind of missing the point.

If, no matter which way the players go, they're definitely encountering that ogre, then they aren't playing a role-playing game at all. They're playing some fundamentally different, other sort of game that doesn't really have a proper designation (except for the somewhat pejorative term "storygame"—but this term has been assigned by the anti-quantum-ogre crowd).

A role-playing game is, at its heart, an exercise in exploration. You inhabit the role of a character exploring a setting created by the DM/GM/ref. This is a meaningless impossibility if the setting hasn't mostly been pre-defined before the player characters ever enter into the proceedings.

If the GM moves encounters around behind the scenes, or makes shit up on the fly, then the GM hasn't created a setting, only the illusion of one—hence, "illusionism". It's looked down about by old-school role-players because there's little meaningful difference between illusionism, a railroad (or "frustrated novelist") plot, and the hostile and arbitrary whims of a Viking Hat DM. All of these bad practices are fatal errors because they undercut the fundamental contract at the heart of a role-playing game, namely that the GM is to play the world impartially, neither favoring the players nor dicking them around.

To summarize, it's not "quantum ogres = bad", it's "quantum ogres = not RPGing"

How would you know that the path you took wasn't always the ogre path?
Beside, you can have a little bit of illusion and not be railroading.
I get what you're saying, the idea that if it's not fully a living breathing world where every action should have a specific reaction, and not just DM whims, but I wouldn't say that's the end all be all of RP Games. It's not even possible to ignore, if your PC always just happen to miss combat, they won't have fun if that's what they enjoy, so sometimes you have to throw them a fight even though you didn't have that fight preplanned.

>I should have changed the order.
That actually would change the entire situation.

Actually this is entirely internally consistent.

>if you do quantum ogres I don't have agency
>if I'm not playing the game I don't have agency

See how that works?

But that's fundamentally different than the idea that no matter which path they choose they are encountering the fight.

Adding a bit of combat to an otherwise nonviolent setting may be fun/useful if such is desired as it adds a bit of variety, but again that's different to the original idea.

It's not that you're throwing in a fight you didn't preplan, you've planned out the fight and no matter what the players choose to do they're going to do that fight, that's shitty railroading and should not be lauded or otherwise praised in any way.

Preplan some encounters by all means, think about what the party will likely encounter, but there should never be a case where no matter how the players decide to act, they're going to fight that fucking ogre.

>A role-playing game is, at its heart, an exercise in exploration. You inhabit the role of a character exploring a setting created by the DM/GM/ref. This is a meaningless impossibility if the setting hasn't mostly been pre-defined before the player characters ever enter into the proceedings.
>mostly
There's the rub.
Not that user, but you have a point. However, there is a problem.
A GM can not be reasonably expected to draft and create and run an entire living breathing world created for the players down to the most minute details.
There has to be shortcuts.
Quantum ogres is one such possible shortcut.
If a GM runs a game that it exists entirely in the quantum state where all player decisions are meaningless, then that is not an RPG.
If the GM runs a game where every possible place or location or item the PCs could possibly encounter has been meticulously drafted and drawn out to the finest level of detail, that is not an RPG either. That is some Herculean effort at simulation.
The answer, of course, lies somewhere in between and the line is subjective.

The subject is mentioned briefly in this PDF. I think rather well.

> Players minmaxing endlessly and being munchkins with every fucking option no matter how much some less-optimized option fits the bullshit background they present.

Bitch endlessly when the npc's dare deviate from the plain vanilla they've optimized themselves against.

>Players have bad experience with other members of the group GMing
>Ask me to GM since I'm always the best at it
>Set up game and schedule everything around my work schedule since everyone else is underemployed and should be way more flexible.
>Half the group can't make it every session or has a last minute emergency that makes them have to cancel and don't tell me until it is already game time
>This happens for months on end until I tell them if they want to just play spontaneously and can't stick to a schedule they'll have to find a different GM
>Repeat in 3 months
Can't Wake Up.png

This is amazing, and it's going into my advice folder right alongside Tracks in the Sand and GM_Advice.

>Makes a character
>Bullies random mage apprentices like he's a highschool jock stereotype
>Brags and laughs about how much of an asshole his PC is
>Complains after the session that he doesn't feel like a hero

>Everyone makes regular characters
>One player min-mixes his character for combat to the point where he's way above the ability expected of him in combat but lacking in every other area
>Complains combat is too easy
>Complains his character can't influence anything outside of combat
You were the one who rolled up an attack dog with no charima or practical skills.

I would never want to play with the douche-canoe that wrote that pdf. He clearly has a hard-on for his railroad and doesn't get sandboxes at all.

The epiphany moment comes from realizing that if you don't understand sandboxes, you don't understand D&D at all.

You know how when people complain here on Veeky Forums, some witless putz always puts up that I.T. Crowd meme that says, "have you tried not playing D&D"?

It's actually not far off the mark, but it ought to read, "Have you tried not using an RPG like D&D for your narrative game?"

>If, no matter which way the players go, they're definitely encountering that ogre, then they aren't playing a role-playing game at all

One, choice still matters unless you're using the quantum ogre incredibly poorly. If the players are specifically trying to avoid the ogre or seek it out, then suddenly the choice to go left or right matters and you don't use the quantum ogre. If the players are just fucking off and chosing paths at random or choosing which path to take with a different purpose in mind, the quantum ogre can be used.

Additionally, you're still playing a roleplaying game if you're not 'exploring the setting.' You have an absurd definition of roleplaying game. A roleplaying game is a game in which you play a specific role, and work with the GM to create an interesting narrative, overcome challenges, and interact with various creatures and characters. A completely fleshed-out setting is not required to qualify as an RPG.

> there's little meaningful difference between illusionism, a railroad (or "frustrated novelist") plot, and the hostile and arbitrary whims of a Viking Hat DM

Quantum encounters are a tool in the box of a good GM, not the entirety of a GM-ing style, and have absolutely nothing to do with railroading. I assume by 'Viking hat GM' you mean lol-randum GMing - which is yet a third thing that is distinct from the others. If you honestly think these are all indistinguishable from each other, you're retarded.

>they undercut the fundamental contract at the heart of a role-playing game, namely that the GM is to play the world impartially, neither favoring the players nor dicking them around.
Quantum encounters do no such thing. Nor is this a fundamental contract a thing. The GM is expected to keep things fair and fun.

>To summarize, it's not "quantum ogres = bad", it's "quantum ogres = not RPGing"
To summarize your position, it's not 'quantum ogres = not RPGing,' it's 'Stop liking what I don't like."

>not understanding sandboxes means not understanding D&D

I think you can have something that is more focused that isn't sandboxing or railroading and it can be good

I have a lot of things I enjoy doing, it doesn't mean I can't get annoyed at certain aspects of it.

Just because you like something doesn't mean you need to act like it's completely flawless, you know.

That .pdf was compiled by grabbing a whole bunch of posts off of Veeky Forums from a thread about railroading vs sandboxes.

If you honestly think offering the players a plot hook for a pre-planned plot is railroading, get the fuck out. You're the worst sort of entitled cunt of a player. The point of railroading is that it allows no deviation. If your plot has the flexibility to accommodate changes and can handle unexpected player moves, it's not a railroad. If your plot can be abandoned and left behind by the players if they so choose, it's not a railroad.

D&D isn't married to the sandbox style of game. Not even OD&D had that, given the wealth of modules and adventures published.

This. Most problems in life should first be approached with the question, "does it matter?"

And whether it matters has a lot to with whether quantum ogres are okay.

It's not all that important what physical direction the players are heading in, but what narrative direction they're heading in.

>I can't read a pdf: The post.

This is actually a good idea for a planescape campgain.

I shit you not, I once received "He's got chains on his arms!" as a character concept
Like.
Fucking what?

I've never encountered the term 'quantum ogre' before this thread but I get it now, completely. My problem with it is, with the profoundly huge amount of tools and options at any GMs fingertips, what kind of shitcunt would be so attached to a single encounter idea that they can't roll with the punches? You spent three hours statting out these monsters? D&D Monster Advancer can do it in seconds. Or you can use the Advancer and tweak manually after the fact and STILL have spent only minutes.

Let go of your idea if the players take a different route. Or just reframe the encounter to whatever context the players chose to enact. If the players knew that they were going to encounter the exact same ogre, then you fucked up. Git gud, son! For real. Attachment to "muh story" or even to "muh sandbox" and "muh prep!" is no excuse for such amateur-hour bullshit.

I'm tempted to use this concept anyway in my homebrew setting. Lady Luck enforcing a rigorously logical curse to those who attempt to defy her chaos really tickles me in a poetic justice sort of way. Thankfully my players have almost the same sense of sportsmanship that I do so they only game the system by RAW, and the idea they would feel the need to cheat is just laughable. So I'll keep this in reserve for whenever new players come around. It also helps that I'm an NG "Rule of Cool" GM with chaotic tendencies with a constant reinforcement that I won't kill anyone unfairly or through unannounced save-or-dies, but I won't be holding anyone's hand or pussyfooting around stupid decisions along the way.

So all hail Lady Luck in her unyielding indifference and capriciousness.

Literally zero harm done. Setting up or randoming an encounter for every choice they could make doesn't help create a better story. GM should feel free to, but only feel obligated if the PCs are making an effort to avoid the quantum ogre.

>. My problem with it is, with the profoundly huge amount of tools and options at any GMs fingertips, what kind of shitcunt would be so attached to a single encounter idea that they can't roll with the punches?

The idea that A GM MUST plan a billion encounters is player entitlement. A proper quantum encounter isn't much other than a basic statblock and a concept. To use the aforementioned ogre - you have a floating encounter with your ogre planned, but it hasn't taken full form yet. You offer the players the option of taking the north or south road. the North road leads to the dwarven mountains. The south road leads to the trackless wastes.

If they take the north road, they'll hit mountainous terrain so you stick your ogre in a cave. Are they going to leave from the road and seek shelter? He stays in the cave. If they just camp on the side of the road the ogre goes hunting and finds them. Decide whether the ogre needs help or is just a combat encounter based on their reactions.

If they go south, that's rocky desert. Why's the ogre there? Must be raiding caravans. They stumble upon a smashed caravan with some dying guards, and footsteps leading away. Ogre has dragged them off to his rocky cave. Will they save the captured people who will no doubt be eaten?

Players decide FUCK ROADS and lash a raft together and head down the river. They find a Ogre trapper who ambushes bears for furs. Do they trade or fight?

The idea behind quantum encounters is not to say 'this ogre is wherever you go next' but 'AN ogre is wherever you go next, and that location shapes why the ogre is there and how you will interact with him. They're encounter seeds, not fully built encounters that follow your party around.

>The idea that A GM MUST plan a billion encounters is player entitlement
This.

Players who have no idea what kind of work it would be to fill literally every hex in the entire game world with perfectly-balanced fun encounters and NPCs with original professional-quality writing... yet these same players probably can't be assed to write more than a single half-assed paragraph of backstory of justifiacation their PC whose build was mindlessly ripped off the internet for its high damage stats.

Like what, do you want me to literally do nothing but roll random encounters and randomized dungeons for you to jerk off to? Oh right, then you'd try to shit on me for "poor writing".

>justifiacation

I should learn to not post while angry.

I have one, GMd for this girl until recently and she's a fellow player in another campaign
Party steamrolling an encouner:
>LOL OP WE SO STRONG (several memes)

Party getting their shit kicked in:
>WOW ARE YOU REALLY GONNA WIPE US ALL, NICE DIFFICULTY THERE
GM tones down the difficulty and party goes back to kicking ass
>LELEL WE WINNING LELEL

Also pissed me the fuck out how she was ready to complain out of character when I rolled a skillcheck on her PC and wasn't even done describing what the character was doing to her's

D&D, at it's heart is not a sandbox or a railroad.

It is a tactical wargame distilled down to controling individual units (PCs) versus a more general crowd of foes (the GM, his monsters, and the adventure.)

It is, fundamentally, about dungeon crashing and murderhoboing.

If we choose to then do other, debateably more interesting things between dungeon-crash, murderhoboing, then we build on that from our group's styles.

If your players couldn't find a plot hook with both hands and someone else's brain, then you kinda have to railroad a little.

If your players constantly want to explore weird tangents to your plans, then for them to have anything to do that session, they kinda have to use the island theory in that pdf. Or "quantum ogres," if I'm understanding that term in the OP.

As a GM, you kinda only have a limited time to both build stuff to run, and actually run it. Around an actual table, sometimes it can be easy to rough out a quick encounter map. For a session on a digital table, you sometimes need to put more effort into that individual map.

I honestly wouldn't call that an outright double standard. One is outright laziness on the part of the GM the latter is a person actually wanting to participate. You deciding to no use a pre-planned encounter due to player choices doesn't inherently keep anyone from having fun and playing the game while the player is pretty much sitting around with his thumb up his ass while he waits for you to throw his character into the story.

I mean they are both somewhat bad but they cannot be considered a double standard. Like
>Players bitch about GM never including subterfuge or diplomacy in games
>Players just butcher, torture, or intimidate anyone who gets in their way anyway

>players want to be payed gold because they believe they dont have enough gold for things
>dicks around in the town, gets arrested, follows random red herrings of their own invention, and doesnt deal with the castle of the undead

>have 2 thick-as-thieves chucklefuck players who just want to fuck everyone over in the most inefficient and fun (relatively speaking) way possible
>have 2 contemplative armchair philosophers who want to have emotional connections to every NPC they pass and pry into every detail of the setting like there's some hidden knowledge I'll give them
>chucklefucks want action, heroics, and humor
>philosophers want roleplay, depth, and grimdarkness
>ALL I WANT TO DO IS BALANCE THIS IN A NICE ORIGINAL SETTING BUT NOBODY WILL BUDGE AN INCH

Offering quantumogreable choices is pretty dumb desu. The choice really means nothing, it's a waste of time to offer it.

Offer them a choice to trek through Ogre Mountains or Lizard Swamp, /that/ is a valid and interesting choice, that's going to have different progression due to terrain even if Ogres and Lizards are roughly equivalent in statblocks.

Sounds to me like you have two different games.

(not that that's an acceptable or optimal solution at all)

>grim&gritty duo of investigators are following a trail of insane bonny and clyde style murderhobos

Jesus christ, why didn't I think of that?

I actually had a DM that did this with my game and another one in a Starwars setting.
The other party was a pair of space pirates that were pillaging Imperial space.
We were two intrepid Imperial Agents who made two different versions of James Bond unawares of eachother, I played a Pierce Brosnan style Bond, he played a Daniel Craig who specializes in shooting off heads Bond.

Because it's /fucking hell hard/ to pull of?

Make the FUN players take mandatory calling cards for their characters, but let them hide or disguise them on each scene.

Investigators have to figure out which recent murders are their quarry and where they are going next.

Dramaguys having to OOC observe the others do the murder is going to add some dramatic tension. Although gotta make sure no metagaming goes on; do the clue parts in private or by notes.

>murderers are stalking the next target
>making rolls to sneak and follow
>on the other side of the table, investigators are rushing to find the target too
>the investigators secure their target
>the murderer stabs the victim, revealing that the cops got something wrong and picked up the wrong target
Classic move.

>GM constantly fudges dice rolls to make the game 'fun.'
>Flips out at a player for cheating when he catches them lying about an attack roll.

Literally no difference.

Looking
Up
Spells

>GM rolls die and announces result
>player is outraged because of the high number and yanks down GM screen
>the die is not even the high number: it's actually a nat20 or setting equivalent
>if the GM had announced the crit, the PC would be dead

I hate it when players don't understand that I just want to make the game fun for them...

I like this way of doing things. And I agree with your post.

Lately there's a retard coming on Veeky Forums, who is complaining about fudging rolls and GMs who "cheat" and "play the game wrong" because they don't "follow the rules". I am pretty sure he also posted in this very thread.

You shouldn't waste your time with him: arguing with him is not worth it, because he is absolutely dead set in "the game should be random in every aspect and the rules should always be respected by players And GM alike. With no houserules and no modifications"

When someone is as obstinate and unadaptable as he is, you already know that arguing is not going to go anywhere, no matter how good your points are, he will repeat the same things over and over again and he will use every logical fallacy he can to try and undermine your points.

I entirely respect and understand why GM's run this playstyle. GMing is a lot of hard work and any shortcuts to make that process more simple make a lot of sense.

I just don't think it is neccesary to do so. I mean in your example is it that much more difficult to make it so the Ogre is to the North, Trolls are to the south and lzardmen trappers live in the rivers ? And if it isn't much more difficult why bother with the quantum ogres at all don't you just hold yourself and your group back?

Quantum ogre
>prepare 1 statblock, modify it a bit depending on what the encounter is for cave ogre, trapper ogre and sea ogre

Ogres, trolls and lizardmen
>prepare 3 statblocks with wholly different combat tactics

You only have to prep character motivations for the first one, and the tactics can be similar. Have you ever thought of how lizardmen and single ogre might fight differently? Have you thought of the potential loot that might be provided in that environment and picked it out for lizardmen vs ogres?

Have you considered the party balance and attempted to balance one singular enemy to make everyone be able to do something, and considered how 5 enemies would be able to have to fight the party and give them a challenging if winnable fight?

And then, for the second, you throw away the two other statblocks, so that work's gone as soon as the party levels up. You're literally doing 3 times as much work compared to only writing up one statblock (slightly modified).

This is the best advice in the thread by far.

What the argument REALLY boils down to is this: interesting monsters interact with their environment! A monster who is "just there" is bad by comparison, whether it's a quantum monster or not.

Again you are making it sound like this is a lot of work but in reality I don't think it is at all.

The statblocks are all printed in the Monster Manual you don't need to invent them yourself. There's also CR guidelines in the books.

So I will imagine I'm playing 4e with a party of four level 4 players.

CR appropriate Encounters are:

> 5 Lizardfolk. 1 giant lizard
>1 Troll
>2 Ogres

As for tactics it's fairly simple to work them out and then just play that out.

The Lizardmen use hit and run tactics and flee at half strength.
The Ogres fight to the death defending their young in their cave but don't pursue past it.
The troll is hungry so will try to drag individual pc's away to eat.

That took me 5 minutes ? Maybe I'm fortunate in I've been gming long enough to fairly easily be able to run any number of encounters on the fly but I really don't understand the great difficulty here that means you have to copy and paste the same encounter with different scenery?

> 4e

Woops, I meant 5E for those encounters.

>using the statblocks
My players regularly blow through CR equivalent monsters unless I carefully add boosted powers to the monsters. Even then, simply cutting and pasting monsters out of the statblocks leads to pretty piss poor fights in ten by ten feet squares or an open battlefield.

I would have had to have made three sets of terrain anyway but that plays a part in the difficulty, too. And the strategies that a lizardfolk, a troll and an ogre are going to be vastly different.

If you're happy with monster manual statblocks and no customisation so you get to be able to fight monsters with no brains or forethought, and think it'll be a better game, then sorry, I'll make my game better with crafted quantum ogres.

Sounds like your wasting time for something your players wont notice and probably wouldn't care about. Hell you could just make a handful of really unique encounters and just simply had your players randomly encounter them when appropriate. Cause they will probably remember that Ogre more if you put more thought into it then just randomly grabbing some random stat blocks because you don't want your players thinking it was a quantum ogre. Cause im pretty sure most players just forget about the filler encounters unless someone died. So save yourself some time and prepare better encounters then random trash the players need to clear cause then your just wasting their time.

>a retard
>implying there isn't more than one person that doesn't like it when the GM completely removes their agency or consequences of their actions

>players encounter an ogre
>YOU'RE REMOVING OUR AGENCY!

o-okay

Every time I see this image, it takes me a moment to realize she doesn't have a USB flash drive in her mouth.

Sign of the times, man.

I was going to add the point in my original post that you can obviously then adjust the encounters further towards your group but I thought it went without saying alas I was mistaken. This still doesn't take a long time. Maybe 5-10 minutes per encounter tops.

Each of the examples came with terrain and how the monsters use it so I'm not sure where the blank battlefield came from.

I'm happy with games that have a unique variety of encounters for my players to choose to tackle that form the actual world they are exploring. They have choice and agency as a result. If they hear rumours of trolls they can do some research and bring their acid vials, or water breathing potions to fight the lizardmen at their own game . I mean what do you do in your games if your players try to gather information about the areas in the world before they venture off? Do all the npc's say that ogres exist in every corner of the land?

I understand your style of gming. When I started gming I would do the same thing and design a certain amount of 'precious encounters' then funnell my players through them one way or another because that's how I thought the game was meant to be run and I was prpbably also scared the game would fall apart if my 'precious encounters' were not followed. But god was it boring. I loosened up and adjusted to a more sandbox style of play and I now play to find out what will happen which is a lot more fun.

Granted pehaps it was from designing lots of set piece encounters and running them that I am now able to essentially do that on the fly but honestly a video game can create a far more interesting tactical combats than a tabletop RPG can,'precious encounters' no matter how well designed are not really the games strength.

The unique strength of RPG's is the vast amount of choice and possibilities and taking that away so the tactical combats you've ( by the sounds of it spent hours designing?)play out perfectly seems to be shooting yourself in the foot.

>You shouldn't waste your time with him: arguing with him is not worth it, because he is absolutely dead set in "the game should be random in every aspect and the rules should always be respected by players And GM alike. With no houserules and no modifications
He should just play VTNL than, the only game retarded enough for such a gibbering idiot.

>go down the road to the eastern kingdoms
YOU ENCOUNTER AN ARAB OGRE
>take a boat-trip to the southern kingdoms
YOU'RE ATTACKED BY A SEA OGRE
>take the train to the western states
YOU'RE ATTACKED BY A FREEDOM OGRE
>fuck that shit, go hide in the closet
>BAM! A CLOSET OGRE UP IN YOUR SHIT!
>that's it, I'm going to bed
YOU'RE SUDDENLY WOKEN UP BY THE OGRE OF CHRISTMAS PAST, HE PROMPTLY ATTACKS YOU

YOU ARE IN OGRE KINGDOM, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
love is ogre

>NICE ORIGINAL SETTING
To be honest as cool as your setting might be, your players aren't going to care/be able to care enough. You shouldn't expect too much.

That sounds pretty fun. I roll up an ogre PC

Bet your own of those DMs whose campaign is best described as wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle.

If your players wanted to indulge in these choices on which trash to kill. Hope they don't discover Skyrim or The Witcher since those atleast have better graphics.

> Do all the npc's say that ogres exist in every corner of the land?
It's called quantum because once observed in anyway, it exists. If the players ask which way the ogre is and they go the opposite way, than they won't find the ogre because they collapsed the wave function. Basic science.

>If they hear rumours of trolls they can do some research and bring their acid vials, or water breathing potions to fight the lizardmen at their own game
This isn't taken away either though.

I also think that these anons are right. If the DM has to work less and have more fun, I'm all for it.

Nah man. Offer to let the players travel down Ogre Road or through Dragons Pass. And if they choose dragons pass, let them fight the dragon and party wipe.

Dumb fucks want to fight a dragon, that's on them.

Or they can try to sneak past it or whatever and get the experience they would have got from the ogre but no loot or reputation. In fact people might be skeptical because the Ogre is blocking all traffic from their two and the pass has a dragon.

You realise you create depth by presenting a variety of meaningful choices to the players right?

If every choice leads to the same encounter, even if it is a super awesome special magical encounter, your game doesn't have any depth as it's just a railroad which ironically is what video games do better.

No, no, because if every way the party turns leads to an encounter that their decisions didn't influence, it removes player agency! I wanted to fight lizardmen! Fuck the GM that says there aren't lizardmen in the next encounter. GIVE ME LIZARDS YOU SHIT.

That is why they are called quantum ogres. That means that until the players inform themselves and know there is an ogre in the north, that ogre could be anywhere. If they know there is an ogre in the north and they elect going south and inform themselves, in the south will be a tribe of Hobgoblins instead.

This is what quantum ogre means. Unless the players know about the whereabouts of the monster, it could be anywhere.

I personally had never heard of the term “quantum ogre” before this thread.
This approach makes more sense when it’s used with something more involved than a single ogre encounter.
If you worked to flesh out a dungeon for your players to discover and explore and they turn left instead of right, abandoning your planned adventure in favor of strolling through farmland is dumb.
You just have them discover the dungeon on the left road instead.


Now you’re just making this ogre-complicated.

/thread ogre