Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

[Dr. Shades]

3) The party found the goblinoids and immediately started scheming about killing them. . . We ended the session after two rounds of combat with most of the hobgoblins dead, a bugbear dead, and the goblin shamen/boss and the goblins huddled up . . .

Is a bugbear considered to be a goblinoid?

[Xenophon]

Is a bugbear considered to be a goblinoid?

They are indeed.

[Physics Guy]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Inconsistency is the bugbear of fools!

It seems clear that consistency issues are goblinoid.

[honorentheos]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Inconsistency is the bugbear of fools!

It seems clear that consistency issues are goblinoid.

This should be a meme.

[honorentheos]

If you happen to be interested in podcasts, there are two episodes of a very small DM-focused podcast that jumped to my mind when I read this. You may find some inspiration out of them.

Thank you for the recommendation. I'll return and report once I've slotted them in. If you'll recall, the group previously enjoyed more of the puzzle and exploration aspects of their adventure and I'm hoping to lean into that with the story. Looking forward to hearing and hopefully incorporating some of those ideas.

I should have linked to these to episodes from the same podcast which I really like:

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show ... ks-e1kpbth

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show ... es-e1lc9fj

[Xenophon]

I did stumble across 2 handy sites this weekend. I found them to be very enlightening from my newer DM perspective.

First: https://www.themonstersknow.com/

One part zoology, one part military tactics, all parts interesting. It is a fairly comprehensive blog with write-ups for the tactics of all sorts of enemy types and some larger expansions to how they might behave/fight when paired together. Tons of content there that I haven't even begun to sort through but I do plan to come back when thinking through my encounters.

Second: https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/

Allows you to add in your PCs and monsters and simulate combat rounds. We talked about it before but it can be easy to lose sight of how much you're actually adding to an encounter and how quickly it could turn. Getting to see some averages mapped out for each round and get a feel for a battle's intensity seems valuable to me.

[honorentheos]

I did stumble across 2 handy sites this weekend. I found them to be very enlightening from my newer DM perspective.

First: https://www.themonstersknow.com/

One part zoology, one part military tactics, all parts interesting. It is a fairly comprehensive blog with write-ups for the tactics of all sorts of enemy types and some larger expansions to how they might behave/fight when paired together. Tons of content there that I haven't even begun to sort through but I do plan to come back when thinking through my encounters.

Second: https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/

Allows you to add in your PCs and monsters and simulate combat rounds. We talked about it before but it can be easy to lose sight of how much you're actually adding to an encounter and how quickly it could turn. Getting to see some averages mapped out for each round and get a feel for a battle's intensity seems valuable to me.

Hi Xeno -

I haven't seen the second link before, looks interesting. When it comes to encounter balance, I tend to focus on two things: comparative action economy and how hard the creature can "punch" in a round. I guess it's basically DPS but at a very high level. Can a monster take a PC down in a round based on it's action economy? That means it can kill a PC if it crits, so that's a deadly encounter. Can the group of monsters make the same number of attacks in a round compared to the actions/bonus actions the party is likely to attempt? That's going to be a slog, so is it narratively worth it or is there a way to make it more interesting than that?

This looks like it is much more accurate and probably what I should do. But to be candid, encounter balance is one area I'm prone to be lazy when it comes to adventure preparation. I've found players are so unpredictable that I'm gun shy now putting that much effort into something that has a good chance of not happening. Or going complete differently than I envision. So I map out main villain actions for three rounds and let things happen. I also use dndbeyond to build the encounters since it's easy to run them with stat blocks ready to hand. I'll have to check it out in more detail, though. Thanks for sharing it!

As for the first link, I'm a big fan of Keith Ammann's material and am excited to see you ran across it as well. I have four of his books, and I've also downloaded the two main Monsters Know What They're Doing books on Audible so I can listen to entries while driving. That said, I've also found I don't follow his recommendations exactly, either. The ideas behind the blog that became the books, though, are paradigm shifting and I really value his approach to thinking about creatures as either evolved or being unevolved creations of magic, survival-motivated vs having other motivations, and considering how their stat blocks must reflect this somehow. And also? Not being afraid to have the creatures act accordingly including trying to kill, eat, run, stalk, or otherwise behave in ways that make the world more rich. I've found many players hate creatures who don't act like video game obstacles who run up, "Rarrrrrrr!" and take damage until killed, which takes each group I DM for time to come to terms with and Ammann is to thank for that. The first time a ghoul tried to drag a knocked-out PC off to eat them sent a party into a panic as they had assumed it was going to just move to the next standing PC while their downed comrade made death saves. And that hooked me. It's also interesting to see how a party reacts to a fight between two creatures who didn't team up against them intentionally, such as when I had a bulette drawn to the party which was being attacked by a chimera. The bulette chomped one of the party members when it resurfaced and the chimera's dragon head breathed fire on both it and the party member it attacked. The players were shocked, and I reminded them the chimera and bulette weren't friend, one was looking for a meal and the other had been sent to kill them by a warlock and couldn't care less about their horses or any other random critter in the way of it's goal. So I guess I use Ammonn to help me think about the potential encounters as occurring between creatures that exist in the world for their own sakes and not just as bags of hit points the party needs to knock down to zero. The details of how he recommends doing that? Good information, but I never go into a session with his books open or having written down the steps he recommends.

ETA: I often see folks bring Ammann up when someone is having trouble making their encounters harder, focusing on the tactics he lays out. I have entered many an encounter with the best intentions of following some strict tactical plan and frankly find myself reacting to what's going on at the table so much that I can't say I rely on him for that despite the focus of the entries being on tactics. Again, I guess my takeaway is the tactics represent how the stat block can be made to make sense for a creature that exists due to successful behaviors from an evolutionary perspective, and they help contextualize a creature in the world. But the specifics of each encounter is almost never so scripted. Probably a failing on my part (see comment about encounter balance earlier).

[Xenophon]

Hi Xeno -

Hey, honor. Thanks as always for your perspective.

I suspected I might not have been stumbling onto anything revolutionary. I didn't realize Ammann had so much content to absorb. I think as a player I was probably less interested in the "meta" content, for lack of a better descriptor, and was mostly just interested in actually playing. Thinking more about the whys and hows of the game has been an interesting thought process shift for me and I've been pleased with just how much content there is to consume around it.

Your experience on mapping encounters matches mine quite closely, even from the player side of the table. "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face...", or something. I think I found the site most interesting for, as you mention, the contextualization part. I think it can add to the story telling if I try to think like the monsters as opposed to some outside entity watching them, something I'm not sure I was really thinking about in my notes as well as I should have. I'm also excited to have strong resources for helping me to introduce enemies I might not normally have enough experience with to feel comfortable tracking.

When it comes to encounter balance, I tend to focus on two things: comparative action economy and how hard the creature can "punch" in a round. I guess it's basically DPS but at a very high level. Can a monster take a PC down in a round based on it's action economy? That means it can kill a PC if it crits, so that's a deadly encounter. Can the group of monsters make the same number of attacks in a round compared to the actions/bonus actions the party is likely to attempt? That's going to be a slog, so is it narratively worth it or is there a way to make it more interesting than that?

Valuable insight. Likely my inexperience with DMing showing but I'm finding myself less certain in homebrewing encounters so I appreciated the calculator to sanity check me. I wouldn't imagine that they would go exactly like listed (when have the dice ever been consistent) but it was helpful to see if I wasn't taking all the actions into account.

Going back to my first run, we talked a bit about a potential trog encounter that I encouraged the team to tackle in a more diplomatic way. My gut had told me it wasn't going to go well just based on the sheer numbers but that feels a bit like luck. Running the exact team through the link showed me just how quickly it would have soured. Obviously I can make calls on the fly to mitigate some of that but I'm finding I feel better being a bit over-prepared right now.

[honorentheos]

Hi Xeno -

Going back to my first run, we talked a bit about a potential trog encounter that I encouraged the team to tackle in a more diplomatic way. My gut had told me it wasn't going to go well just based on the sheer numbers but that feels a bit like luck. Running the exact team through the link showed me just how quickly it would have soured. Obviously I can make calls on the fly to mitigate some of that but I'm finding I feel better being a bit over-prepared right now.

Wise. I've never felt I failed the table by being over prepared while I've felt disappointed after a session when I thought I had underprepared. My disappointments in the first case almost always come from some idea I had been excited to see play out that never came close to happening, so its selfish. I'll be interested to find out how closely your preparation helped determine the encounter balance.

To branch out, the most consequential under-preparation I've experienced has been readiness to reward an investigation of a room, body, or some other scene when combat is done or not part of the scene. Too often I found myself rolling on a random table to give the pc a handful of coins and gems. I've used a handful of online random generators in the situation as well, (donjon gives some of the most interesting results: https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/ )
But if the results are pocket change to PCs higher than 2nd level, or apparently worthless, it doesn't feel rewarding. And if it seems obvious these weak rewards were also rolled up on the fly, it makes exploration underwhelming and hurts the game.

I went in the wrong direction, trying hard to populate all sorts of locations in the game. But that made it certain I would put in more work that failed to be used.

The solution I've landed on is instead to identify clues and rewards tied to NPCs or key locations, and then figure out how or what makes sense to reveal when the party explores.

[honorentheos]

One other thought. Ammann is one of the sources I go to regularly for preparation, but the two I really think influenced my DMing the most are Justin Alexander and Michael Shea a.k.a. Sly Flourish.

I think Justin Alexander's So You Want to be a Game Master? that came out last year is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to develop the game mastering skills. It won a Gold Ennie this year, and I'd say it's very well deserved. https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/51 ... ard-winner

I also frequently reference The Alexandrian page for insights on topics.

Michael Shea's Lazy Dungeon Master approach is phenomenal in helping preparation for sessions as well, in my opinion. https://slyflourish.com/

I think everything I do to prepare for a game is somehow derived from one or both of them.

I'd also add Matt Coville's YouTube series Running the Game on DMing to the list of resources, but I find it more useful as theorycraft more than I actively do something each session the way I use the other two. Given you are using his entry adventure I'm guessing you already were familiar with Coville. For anyone interested who isn't and missed the posts earlier in this thread linking to him - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8