Is Tailor Made Better?

[Knaight]

The feeling of an impartial challenge. It's an itch that I get from time to time when I'm a player and it's like "You're a great GM, but sometimes I just want a published adventure. Definitely not all the time, but maybe once every couple of years." Your group blows right past somethings which normally give you issues and gets hung up on other things which never normally come up. There's something liberating about playing in a scenario where the designer has absolutely no clue what the party is like. Where, when rolling skills for instance, a 5 isn't necessarily a failure and a 15 isn't necessarily a success.

There's still some tailoring to the group happening here in terms of picking them though. At the very least you're picking a published adventure within a particular system and a particular genre, and that's group dependant - a group that would pick a Call of Cthulhu adventure wouldn't necessarily pick a D&D adventure.

[Darth Ultron]

Tailor made for the players is not the same thing as tailor made for the PCs.

I'm a big believer that everything should always be tailored to the players.

[Lorsa]

Tailor made for the players is not the same thing as tailor made for the PCs.

Absolutely. Tailor making for the PCs should only be done if it that is the kind of game your players want.

The feeling of an impartial challenge. It's an itch that I get from time to time when I'm a player and it's like "You're a great GM, but sometimes I just want a published adventure. Definitely not all the time, but maybe once every couple of years." Your group blows right past somethings which normally give you issues and gets hung up on other things which never normally come up. There's something liberating about playing in a scenario where the designer has absolutely no clue what the party is like. Where, when rolling skills for instance, a 5 isn't necessarily a failure and a 15 isn't necessarily a success.

Is tailor made almost always better? Definitely yes. Is there an itch it can't quite scratch? I'd say so.

Doesn't that mean that tailor making something for you involves running published adventures? Tailor making the game for the players isn't the same as tailor making the adventure for the players. It's about running the kind of game your players want.

Group is Trump. Group informs everything, including where to customize.

Way to hit the meta level in your description. Your explanation is better than mine.

Thanks! I know I missed a bit of the discussion in this thread due to time constraints. I did read the first post though but saw an obvious simple answer to the topic question which I believe holds true always. It will help you answer all the other questions such as:

Is tailor making the campaign for the PCs good or bad? Depends on your players.

Is tailor making an adventure for the players good or bad? Depends on your players.

Is tailor making encounters for the PCs good or bad? Depends on your players.

So, ultimately you should always tailor make the game for your players.

[Lorsa]

I'm a big believer that everything should always be tailored to the players.

Unless the players want to waste your time by random bar fights?

[Tanarii]

Absolutely. Tailor making for the PCs should only be done if it that is the kind of game your players want.

Sure. But the reason I pointed it out is I was under the impression that the OP was specifically talking about campaigns tailor made for the Pcs vs not tailor made for the Pcs.

Of course, thread discussions go wherever they go, if that's the topic now. For some reason it looked like topic mixup/confusion to me when I responded.

[Socratov]

IMO there exists a rule of thumb which should more or less go like this when dealing with tailoring campaigns to players or PC's:

If we understand quantity as the number of choices/items/plotleads and quality as how tailor made they are to a player's wishes/PC's then following relation for any aspect of the game (specific rewards, (side)plots and environments) can be established:

Quality should be inversely related to quantity.

or example: in a sandbox world with thousands of plots it does not matter if 80% of the plots don't involve specific background elements of every partymember. With many choices for plots the players already get rewarded with the opportunity to make a meaningful choice.

counterexample: if the players have only 1 plotline to investigate, you best damn well hope there is something in it for them, be it a special item, redemption of a certain regret in their backstory or vengeance.

Another example: if the players get one magic item per tier of play, you'd do very well to give the player what he damn well desires.

Another counter: if every session all players get a new toy, or even more, who cares that it's not exactly what they wished for. Certainly not the players. they will start trying to combine items and effects, just to see what happens.

1 caveat: never mix the two: don't item starve one player and rewarding them with exactly what they ask for, while showing the others with whatever you can roll for on the table: this will invariably create jealousy.

[Darth Ultron]

Unless the players want to waste your time by random bar fights?

Yes, as DM, I do reserve the right to say NO, unlike many other DMs. So should a group of players come to me and say ''wez want to play an RPGz wherez wez ''bar fight'' a lotz and endlesslyz'', I would tell such players ''sorry, I'm not the DM your looking for, move along." Simple enough.

And in the bigger picture I don't let anyone waste game time. For example, after your third ''emergency'' phone call you will simply be told to leave the game(''Best of luck Edgar, hope you can deal with that big emergency you have. And as soon as you have that taken care of, you will be welcomed back to the game...maybe")

[Cluedrew]

I've tried something like that, and, even crazier, a "the system changes out from under you every session" game. I concur with your assignment of "interesting and sometimes fun".

To be fair the one that made me say "sometimes fun" was actually still well done, just not for me. Which gets back to one of the main issues with tailor made that I kind of skipped over before which is the whole "tailor made for you" part. Something tailor made for someone else is more likely to just not fit. Which is why the not tailor made versions exist anyways, they fit more people. In my view they don't fit those people as well as something tailor made for them.

Although I don't think World->System is a crazy idea. At least Genre->System shouldn't be because that is how most systems are designed. Beside generic systems almost all systems have a genre and information about the world baked into the system. Point is, following that idea even further seems appropriate. Now this is different from the choosing of a system and genre for play, but I feel like there is a kind of symmetry there.

The version my group uses is System>World>Party>Campaign.

This is the classic sandbox campaign, where a bunch of heroes meet at a tavern, have an initial bar brawl, then go find adventure together. The campaign flows from the party's choices. It is not tailored to them, but their earlier actions may have logical later consequences that affect the flow of the campaign. Ie as they gain levels and get more powerful and have done more stuff, the campaign focuses on more specific-to-the-party stuff.

I agree that that logic chain describes sandboxes as well very well but at the same time I wouldn't describe that game as a sandbox.

There are a couple of reasons for that. One, I usually associate the idea of a sandbox as a world focused game, but in our games it very much feels secondary to what we are doing. Similarly it is often very minimal, with just enough to get started defined at the start. Details do get filled in as needed, which does introduce some campaign->world dependency although "what would be there" is still a part of it as well, instead of there being a large map to explore.

The feeling of an impartial challenge.

One of the better agreements for less tailored I have seen. Because custom made and impartial do cut across each other strongly.

Role-playing games as war games (D&D is definitely part war game) might benefit from standardization in a way role-playing games as storytelling don't.

[Tanarii]

I agree that that logic chain describes sandboxes as well very well but at the same time I wouldn't describe that game as a sandbox.

There are a couple of reasons for that. One, I usually associate the idea of a sandbox as a world focused game, but in our games it very much feels secondary to what we are doing. Similarly it is often very minimal, with just enough to get started defined at the start. Details do get filled in as needed, which does introduce some campaign->world dependency although "what would be there" is still a part of it as well, instead of there being a large map to explore.

A sandbox campaign flows from the players interacting with the world. So the flow is DM creates world, players create characters, characters interact with world, campaign results. Especially true in a persistent world multi-party campaign sandbox with a small number of DMs (or one DM willing to put in an insane amount of time).

However, what I described, players meeting in a bar, or even unspecified way they meet, and them going on adventures together, can certainly apply to other kinds of play-styles. Adventure-of-the-week especially, especially WotC's official play. It's also fine for kicking off the first adventure of unrelated-adventures-in-series (common for modules) or even adventure-arc/path campaigns. Although the latter really lend themselves easily to system --> (optional world) --> campaign --> PCs, where you create PCs specifically tailored for the adventure path campaign.

[Knaight]

Although I don't think World->System is a crazy idea. At least Genre->System shouldn't be because that is how most systems are designed. Beside generic systems almost all systems have a genre and information about the world baked into the system. Point is, following that idea even further seems appropriate. Now this is different from the choosing of a system and genre for play, but I feel like there is a kind of symmetry there.

Generic systems still generally have some amount of a genre - it's just one that merges with others well, and is generally more a prefix or suffix than a well established genre. Savage Worlds for instance is pulp. It can do pulp action, pulp fantasy, pulp sci-fi, even pulp horror, but it's pulp. GURPS is grounded, and can do grounded action, grounded fantasy, grounded sci-fi, and even grounded super heroes (poorly), but if you want a pulpy game GURPS is a mistake.

This is why World->System and Genre->System both work, assuming you've got a decent collection. If you've got something specific to either use or hack slightly then use, you can use that. Otherwise, there's a fallback generic system to cover most everything. This does rely on having a bit of a collection, but it doesn't need one that large - I can personally state that my collection of books of different games (which is more than adequate) has fewer books in it than the D&D collections of a lot of people here.

Without the collection this has a tendency to lead to broken games where people try to make one game stretch where it really doesn't fit. Maybe that's down to earth Savage Worlds, maybe it's science fiction D&D.

[Quertus]

There's another aspect to this that I'd like to touch on, and that is the value one places on problem-solving skills.

Personally, I love the old-school rolled stats "so what can I make with this?" minigame. I love old-school drop in games with random parties and the "how do we play with this group of characters?" minigame. And I love the "standardized testing" of running through a module, and seeing how our strategy for using our random collection of random characters with random stats turns out.

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.

[Tanarii]

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.

A campaign tailor-made to the PCs doesn't necessarily mean tailor-made challenges either.

If we come to the no-campaign-yet table, with these three groups, and design or pick a campaign theme, adventure path or even initial adventure for them, it's likely to be different for each:
- Rogue, Bard, Illusionist / Enchanter Wizard, and Noble Fighter
- Barbarian, Druid, Ranger, and Outlander Fighter
- Monk, Cleric, Paladin, and Acolyte Fighter

I'm not a fan of adventures tailor made to a single party either, like to the point I'd not participate in a game if I thought the DM was dong that. That's why when I run one-party campaigns, I always try to use modules, adapt older edition modules (for D&D), or adapt third party material (for any any system).

There's always a degree of not wanting to overwhelm the party or make it a cake walk. That's fine. It's specifically tailoring the challenges with the knowledge the group decided no one wanted to play a character with healing or social skills or sneaking skills that I don't like. Sure, find adventures that don't require that so much. But don't modify any and all encounters that requires a missing skill set remove that, or hand out workarounds (potions, scrolls, etc) like candy.

[Darth Ultron]

Personally, I love the old-school rolled stats "so what can I make with this?" minigame. I love old-school drop in games with random parties and the "how do we play with this group of characters?" minigame. And I love the "standardized testing" of running through a module, and seeing how our strategy for using our random collection of random characters with random stats turns out.

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.

I agree. I like this style of play too.

I'm not overly fond of the thing where the players knowing they will go fight a red dragon load up on anti fire and anti dragon stuff and then go fight the dragon. Of course, this does not work 100% in my games as dragons, having high intelligence, are smart enough to prepare for this...and take something like a breath weapon feat.

And the thing where the players make special one trick pony dragon slaying characters that can do utterly nothing else is the worst. Though it is funny to have like a group of 15th level one trick pony characters killed by a single ghost.

[Cluedrew]

You lose all of that when the you throw in customized challenges.

I'm not a fan of adventures tailor made to a single party either, like to the point I'd not participate in a game if I thought the DM was dong that.

And this is why I started this thread, because my best games have come from the GM making off-the-cuff content for the party.

A mercenary, a naive mystic and a reality TV show host, with camera crew, walk into a bar. There is no punch line to this joke, other than that is how our campaign actually started. And it lead to one of the best campaigns I've ever had. And it ended with the characters giving up and going home. Could it have worked in a standard module? Maybe, we didn't try to. And what "standard" challenges do you run the party through when you have a single combatant, a financer, a survivalist, an airplane pilot and a guy with a camera and a phone. (The last two joined at the second town.)

But more than that I don't care how the party measures against objective standards. Because we are not playing against an objective standard or some tournament ranking, we are playing for us and the story we will be creating.

[Darth Ultron]

And this is why I started this thread, because my best games have come from the GM making off-the-cuff content for the party.

I find most players find they don't like tailor made adventures or characters as such as they thought they might.

The tailor made character, say the divine undead obliteration character, might be fun for a couple hours of mostly pointless, mostly challenge less pure combat roll playing fun. Then it just gets a bit hollow and boring.

The tailor made game, like the limited pirate mini game, can be fun for a couple hours or even game sessions, but it can quickly loose it appeal after you run through the common scenes.

In general, it is not as much fun to just cast knock on a locked door as it is to just figure out some way to open the door, get around it, or do something else.

[Quertus]

A campaign tailor-made to the PCs doesn't necessarily mean tailor-made challenges either.

If we come to the no-campaign-yet table, with these three groups, and design or pick a campaign theme, adventure path or even initial adventure for them, it's likely to be different for each:
- Rogue, Bard, Illusionist / Enchanter Wizard, and Noble Fighter
- Barbarian, Druid, Ranger, and Outlander Fighter
- Monk, Cleric, Paladin, and Acolyte Fighter

There's always a degree of not wanting to overwhelm the party or make it a cake walk. That's fine. It's specifically tailoring the challenges with the knowledge the group decided no one wanted to play a character with healing or social skills or sneaking skills that I don't like. Sure, find adventures that don't require that so much. But don't modify any and all encounters that requires a missing skill set remove that, or hand out workarounds (potions, scrolls, etc) like candy.

Hmmm... Actually, I would absolutely send them all on the same adventure path, conditionally. If the path was mostly (2e) undead, I might warn the (DPS) Rogue and Illusionist/Enchanter that their shtick might not work, and they might want to run different characters. That way, they are at least walking in forewarned if they choose to keep their characters. Similarly, I have warned a group that their planned course of action (attack a group of ninjas at their home base) was going to be trivially easy, and, while I'd run it, I didn't think that they'd enjoy it. They agreed, and did something else instead.

Though it is funny to have like a group of 15th level one trick pony characters killed by a single ghost.

Agreed. Although, usually, it's "run away from a challenge that they realize that they cannot overcome" rather than just TPK.

And this is why I started this thread, because my best games have come from the GM making off-the-cuff content for the party.

A mercenary, a naive mystic and a reality TV show host, with camera crew, walk into a bar. There is no punch line to this joke, other than that is how our campaign actually started. And it lead to one of the best campaigns I've ever had. And it ended with the characters giving up and going home. Could it have worked in a standard module? Maybe, we didn't try to. And what "standard" challenges do you run the party through when you have a single combatant, a financer, a survivalist, an airplane pilot and a guy with a camera and a phone. (The last two joined at the second town.)

But more than that I don't care how the party measures against objective standards. Because we are not playing against an objective standard or some tournament ranking, we are playing for us and the story we will be creating.

Now, let's not conflate ideas here. I prefer to run a sandbox, and I'm all about the party choosing what the adventure is. But the question is, is the content created with a simulationist mindset to be true to the reality of the game world, or is it unrealistically custom tailored to the party?

In my ninja stronghold example, the ninjas were an "established" part of the world - they had a certain "strength", and the party was well beyond the point where that strength was an interesting challenge.

I find most players find they don't like tailor made adventures or characters as such as they thought they might.

The tailor made character, say the divine undead obliteration character, might be fun for a couple hours of mostly pointless, mostly challenge less pure combat roll playing fun. Then it just gets a bit hollow and boring.

The tailor made game, like the limited pirate mini game, can be fun for a couple hours or even game sessions, but it can quickly loose it appeal after you run through the common scenes.

In general, it is not as much fun to just cast knock on a locked door as it is to just figure out some way to open the door, get around it, or do something else.

Sorry, I don't quite follow. You don't think the players getting what they explicitly ask for is likely to be long-term fun. I think I understand your position thus far.

But what, exactly, are you putting forth as a counter proposal for producing fun games?

[Tanarii]

Hmmm... Actually, I would absolutely send them all on the same adventure path, conditionally.

That sounds like you're picking the campaign before looking at the characters then. Because IMO it's kinda hard to look at a party full of nature guys vs a party of crusaders vs a party of city slickers and think "these guys are perfect for campaign theme X".

I do note you focused on adventure path. Usually adventure paths are picked before characters are made, because the DM or group wants to run a specific one. Not picking the adventure path after everyone has made the characters.

Honestly, the idea of sitting down and making characters, then thinking "what campaign theme are these guys suited for" second is just bizarre to me. I'm used to either:
- DM picks campaign theme / adventure path, players make characters either with that knowledge in mind.
- DM picks campaign theme / adventure path, players make characters with no foreknowledge of what's coming.

I don't think I've ever played with a group that made characters first, then sat down to figure out what campaign they wanted to play. That's why my are comments are based on logical separation of terms / concepts, ie:
- tailor made for players vs tailor made for PCs Built
- tailor made campaign / adventure path theme vs tailor made encounters / challenges faced

[Darth Ultron]

Sorry, I don't quite follow. You don't think the players getting what they explicitly ask for is likely to be long-term fun. I think I understand your position thus far.

But what, exactly, are you putting forth as a counter proposal for producing fun games?

Yes, a lot of players and people in general, don't know what they want. And just as many can't say what they want. The players want a pirate game, but after an hour of just attacking merchant ships and getting trade goods, they are not having much fun. So the game gets changed up to ''plundering the Spanish Main'', so the characters get tons of gold, and they still don't have much fun.

Well, it gets tricky. It is not so much ''not giving the players what they want'', it is more simply ''not being so tailor made''.

At the most basic, a DM would need to talk to the players and get them to really explain what they want, and not just stop at the surface. The players need to get more deep into what they want: not just a pirate game: but what they really want and like. Not just the cover of the book: the pages in between.

A bit more advanced, and not all people or DMs can do it, is to figure out what the players want...without having the players directly tell them.

[Pleh]

I find this to depend greatly on the *kind* of game being pursued.

Are they more into the Roleplaying or the Rollplaying?

My games and my group tend to be more interested in the story, using the mechanics as a prop for creating narrative.

Tomb of Horrors uses a story as a prop to create a challenging puzzle. It largely doesn't matter WHO your character is, but whether they have the tools and you as a player have the wits to really take on the Tomb's hazards.

Rollplaying challenges like the ToH seem to be generally more fun when they aren't "tailor made" at all and rather stand alone as their own entity, offering players to use some amount of "trial and error" with disposable characters to uncover the puzzle's secrets.

In that style of game, "Guess what the GM wants" is EXACTLY what the players want to do (overcoming an unknown challenge). So all the GM has to do is make guessing their intentions both difficult and hazardous. The *less* they make it tailor to the characters, the less clues the players have about the solution and the better the puzzle.

Now in my own games, I GM with a heavy emphasis in exploring the heroic journeys of the characters my friends play. As nice as it seems to think I know them well enough to surprise them with "a perfect game," I've found it's actually presumptuous and arrogant of me to think that I can construct a great game by myself better than I can with their help. These games are not about a contest between the Players and the GM, but the GM rather is yet another Cooperative player with the rest of the party. While there may be secrets and surprises, they are not the goal my friends are pursuing. We're looking to see these heroes overcome adversity and attain greatness. In these instances, not only is tailor making the game good, but is better when done with the consultation of the player. In these cases, I like to ask for their ideal goals, what kinds of encounters they would like to play through, and what they need to be able to pick up along the way. I explain if anything they request seems unreasonable or outside the setting, but I do some work to try to fit things in as best I can.

Essentially, the more "cooperative" the game, the more Tailor Made works better. The more "competitive" the game, the less Tailor Made works better.

[Tanarii]

We're looking to see these heroes overcome adversity and attain greatness.

I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

[NichG]

I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

In the context of the post in comparing with things like ToH that are player skill based, the implication is that they want to see the characters overcome adversity, not to see the players overcome adversity. So it's not necessarily beneficial to what they want for failure to actually be possible.

[Pleh]

I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

That has not been my experience.

My tailor made games have had better success controlling the challenge level than my random, standard stock encounters. The latter often turns out accidentally easier or more difficult based on some combatant being unexpectedly trivialized.

The ones I make specifically taking party strengths and weaknesses into account have more consistently produced engaging and nontrivial encounters.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I find this statement at odds with your claims of a particularly cooperative play-style and tailor-made to the characters. You'd achieve this far more readily with a DM as a neutral arbiter / referee who is not tailor-making to the characters.

Strictly speaking this does not follow.

Consider three types of DMs:
- challenge server: this DM tailors challenges to the weaknesses of the characters but ensures doability with decent tactics. Both number and relative difficulty of challenges overcome are large.

- referee: no tailoring. Party picks and chooses and reasonably chooses the easier challenges. Number overcome is high, but relative difficulty is low.

- easy-mode: tailors challenges to the party's strengths. Low difficulty but high number.

Note that there are other types, but these are the best case for your statement. The weighted score of the first group is much higher than the other two, and the neutral and easy are similar with the neutral having higher variance since that's the only one that can (by construction) commonly TPK.

I'm of the school that rejects the idea that impartiality is possible, let alone inherently desirable. The only truly impartial DM is a computerized one. DMs should be fans of the players and their characters. Since their primary job IMO is to facilitate fun, they should learn what the players think it's fun and do more of that and less of what's not fun. That's inherently tailoring.

I'll expand on this tomorrow when I'm not on mobile and multitasking.

[Tanarii]

- referee: no tailoring. Party picks and chooses and reasonably chooses the easier challenges. Number overcome is high, but relative difficulty is low.

IMX this is rarely the case. Players almost always pick a harder challenge for themselves that if a DM "fairly" tailors the encounter. Because the rewards are commensurately higher. Of course, that takes a certain competitive mindset.

But yes, that does mean they are more likely to overextend themselves and fail to overcome the challenge. In that regard, they're hardly overcoming adversity. Unless you count dealing with failure as overcoming adversity.

Of course, if the failure was a TPK, it's hard to effectively deal with that unless there is ressurection magic available and the bodies can be recovered by other PCs or henchmen.

Even re rolling and learning from your experience is the player learning to overcome adversity. But that doesn't do the first batch of heroes much good.

Edit: I do like the AW rule of "be a fan of the characters", so I take your point there. It's not a bad rule for the right group. Especiall for that set of rules. But other other campaign styles, such as multi-party open table pseudo west-marches, a neutral DM arbiter works very well.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Preface: This is all my perception. Play-styles vary and none of this is intended as an attack, merely as an explanation of what I have experienced.

IMX this is rarely the case. Players almost always pick a harder challenge for themselves that if a DM "fairly" tailors the encounter. Because the rewards are commensurately higher. Of course, that takes a certain competitive mindset.

Doesn't this go against the whole combat as war thing? I've always heard that the whole point was to avoid (combat) challenges until you can steamroll them due to preparation and tactics. That makes basically all fights either cakewalks or near-TPKs.

But yes, that does mean they are more likely to overextend themselves and fail to overcome the challenge. In that regard, they're hardly overcoming adversity. Unless you count dealing with failure as overcoming adversity.

Of course, if the failure was a TPK, it's hard to effectively deal with that unless there is ressurection magic available and the bodies can be recovered by other PCs or henchmen.

Even re rolling and learning from your experience is the player learning to overcome adversity. But that doesn't do the first batch of heroes much good.

And thus the variation in expected weighted challenge (the sum of challenges overcome before TPK/other ending) is huge. And learning isn't really all that possible unless the TPK was due to identifiable mistakes, since the new party isn't going to be facing those exact challenges (unlike a game like Dark Souls, for example). And in an open-table game, that means those characters are lost along with all of their accomplishments.

Edit: I do like the AW rule of "be a fan of the characters", so I take your point there. It's not a bad rule for the right group. Especiall for that set of rules. But other other campaign styles, such as multi-party open table pseudo west-marches, a neutral DM arbiter works very well.

Neutrality is an illusion for TTRPGs. It can work for wargames, because they're a) competitive, b) have 2 sides other than the referee, and c) have fixed, externally imposed criteria (maps and objectives) and d) have comprehensive rules. None of those are true in TTRPGs (outside of very unique situations like tournament module runs).

a) Each party is atomic--even in a west-marches style you can't run multiple groups through the same scenario once one succeeds--once it's cleared, it's cleared (until something else moves in). Especially since the same player (not character) may be in multiple groups because they're ad hoc parties. This makes them cooperative, not competitive.

b) The "referee" is playing one side of the game. That's inherently partial. The judge is a party to the case.

c) The objectives and maps are not fixed (unless you're railroading hard-core). Throwing this one away (rigidly running modules without adaptation to the group) seems to throw away the best part of TTRPGs in favor of a more-limited CRPG style. CRPGs have better writing, better mechanics (because they can do the hard numerical lifting), and better graphics. TTRPGs have freedom. That's abandoned if you only use modules and stick strictly to them.

d) Board games (including wargames) can have comprehensive, closed rules. If it's not expressly allowed, it's forbidden. TTRPGs can't. Especially in 5e D&D, which I know you play. As soon as the DM has to make a ruling, neutrality is suspect. The DM should make the ruling that's best for the fun of those particular players (which doesn't mean giving them what they want--enabling cheat codes isn't fun for very long). But as soon as you do that, you're no longer impartial or neutral. You've weighed in on the side of the players.

That's why I believe that the notion of impartiality is not inherently a good thing. The DM should be partial. Should favor the players, by knowing what they like and tailoring/modifying the game to fit them. This happens most at the micro level. Adjusting how a particular enemy acts so you're not constantly picking on the same character. Allowing things that are a little bit of a stretch, but still plausible. Interpreting proposed actions generously (as opposed to "gotcha DMing"). These are all partial actions.

Being a referee is part of a DMs job. But only part. And not the biggest part. The biggest part, for me, is being a facilitator of fun. This requires knowing who you're playing with well enough to make adjustments to the Holy Module (or whatever) in an attempt to maximize fun. If you're playing in an open-table setting, this requires more on-the-spot judgement, and probably more strict rules to allow other groups to continue to have fun (call this impartiality between groups). This is different from being impartial between the setting and the individual groups.

As an example of this (at an open-table, multi-DM environment) gone wrong--I played at one where I started a few weeks after the "old-timers." For the first few sessions (before I got there), there had been a tendency to let the items/gold flow like water. Once they realized this was a problem, they (the DMs) clamped down institutionally. But that meant that the old characters started out ahead and no one could catch up. Trying to be impartial and "fair" bred resentment. A better way would have been to ret-con those too-powerful toys (with the players' cooperation) and get everyone back on the same footing. That would have been very non-neutral, but better for the game as a whole.

[Darth Ultron]

That has not been my experience.

My tailor made games have had better success controlling the challenge level than my random, standard stock encounters. The latter often turns out accidentally easier or more difficult based on some combatant being unexpectedly trivialized.

The ones I make specifically taking party strengths and weaknesses into account have more consistently produced engaging and nontrivial encounters.

Mine too. I very much like to tailor things to both the players and the characters. Though it does depend on the type of players. New or inexperienced players will just about automatically have a better fun time in a Tailor Made encounter. And the ''B'' type less aggressive player will often have much more fun in an encounter made for them.

And this is overly true of anything not combat: The DM does really need to make such things for a player or character and put them in the game. There needs to be a hook or thread for the player to see and take; otherwise they often won't even try to do anything.

This also touches on the tier problem for games like D&D 3X and beyond: If the DM just does standard events, then the tier problem thrives and is in full effect: The DM has a standard event, the spellcasters dominate/control/do everything and every other character just watches. This does not happen in tailor made events.

[Tanarii]

Preface: This is all my perception. Play-styles vary and none of this is intended as an attack, merely as an explanation of what I have experienced.

Absolutely. I have a current preference for old-style DM as neutral arbiter, but that's because of the campaign I'm running. My comment was definitely triggered by that current preference, but also by the seeming mismatch between the comment and what he was trying to say.

Doesn't this go against the whole combat as war thing? I've always heard that the whole point was to avoid (combat) challenges until you can steamroll them due to preparation and tactics. That makes basically all fights either cakewalks or near-TPKs.

Absolutely not! You've completely misunderstood Combat as War. The goal is to FACE insanely powerful challenges ... after you've figure out a way to make them beat-able. You use your smarts to figure out how to take a seemingly unbeatable challenge, and instead steam-roll it. In theory, it's the ultimate in challenging yourself as a player. If you can't figure out a way to beat it, yeah you're going to be forced to avoid combat. Because otherwise you're dead.

And thus the variation in expected weighted challenge (the sum of challenges overcome before TPK/other ending) is huge. And learning isn't really all that possible unless the TPK was due to identifiable mistakes, since the new party isn't going to be facing those exact challenges (unlike a game like Dark Souls, for example). And in an open-table game, that means those characters are lost along with all of their accomplishments.

Sure. If you can't learn from failed strategies and tactics, you definitely shouldn't be playing a game play-style that requires choosing to competitively challenging yourself, with a serious likelyhood of failure unless you're very good.

(Edit: Sometimes the lesson learned is: the system doesn't allow you to live to second level without making a bunch of characters at once and hoping one survives ... and it never tells you that. And we don't want to play that way.)

Neutrality is an illusion for TTRPGs.

Perfect neutrality is impossible. But you can strive for it an introduce tools to get closer to it.

b) The "referee" is playing one side of the game. That's inherently partial. The judge is a party to the case.

This is why you introduce tools to counter that. For starters, this is why there are almost always complex combat rules. Plus other rules for resolution. It's also why many games include random tables for various things, instead of purely putting it in the DM's hands.

c) The objectives and maps are not fixed (unless you're railroading hard-core). Throwing this one away (rigidly running modules without adaptation to the group) seems to throw away the best part of TTRPGs in favor of a more-limited CRPG style. CRPGs have better writing, better mechanics (because they can do the hard numerical lifting), and better graphics. TTRPGs have freedom. That's abandoned if you only use modules and stick strictly to them.

Tish Tosh and Nonsense. The party is free to interact with the objectives and maps how they like, and the referee is expected to have things react naturally (living world). But that doesn't mean there's any problem with adapting a module to the world, and to the system, without any regard to the particular group involved. I do this all the time, and it works very, very well. It's something I highly recommend to any DM.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Absolutely not! You've completely misunderstood Combat as War. The goal is to FACE insanely powerful challenges ... after you've figure out a way to make them beat-able. You use your smarts to figure out how to take a seemingly unbeatable challenge, and instead steam-roll it. In theory, it's the ultimate in challenging yourself as a player. If you can't figure out a way to beat it, yeah you're going to be forced to avoid combat. Because otherwise you're dead.

Sure. If you can't learn from failed strategies and tactics, you definitely shouldn't be playing a game play-style that requires choosing to competitively challenging yourself, with a serious likelyhood of failure unless you're very good.

(Edit: Sometimes the lesson learned is: the system doesn't allow you to live to second level without making a bunch of characters at once and hoping one survives ... and it never tells you that. And we don't want to play that way.)

But in practice, everything is either a steam-roll or a TPK/failure. And since you only have one shot at things, your career ends with the first mistake. That leads to high variance. Some parties get lucky, others get squished right off. It's a style that demands that you don't get attached to characters (and thus don't invest in role-playing). It's a very meta-gaming style (using information the character isn't privy to). Neither of those is bad, just very alien to most modern players.

Tish Tosh and Nonsense. The party is free to interact with the objectives and maps how they like, and the referee is expected to have things react naturally (living world). But that doesn't mean there's any problem with adapting a module to the world, and to the system, without any regard to the particular group involved. I do this all the time, and it works very, very well. It's something I highly recommend to any DM.

But as soon as you have anything react outside of the printed module, you're breaking neutrality and impartiality. It's binary--either you railroad (and thus are impartial) or you adapt to the actions of the players (and you're either not impartial or you're lying to yourself). "Living worlds" AREN'T. They're a fiction--no human can keep track of enough items to even come close to a simulation of what should be there. Not enough is specified, either. That means that as soon as you consider anything like fun, you're acting partially. And that's good. Impartiality is a false goal. A DM should be partial. Should care about the fun of the party enough to throw out prepared material and make stuff up when needed. Otherwise, you're playing a CRPG without any of the advantages of having a computer to crunch numbers.

I've had DMs that used modules as the core (maps + encounters). It sucked as soon as you went off script at all. They spent minutes looking up facts and trying to assemble things at the table, wasting everyone's time. Things felt patched together, because they were. Players' actions didn't fundamentally matter, because the modules were too easily broken. Clever ways of sequence breaking were disallowed, because otherwise things fell apart.

Modules are best if run straight, with knowing acceptance that you're on rails. That, or heavily modified (take the map but rewrite all context). That's as much work as rebuilding the module, so the savings are minimal.

[Tanarii]

But in practice, everything is either a steam-roll or a TPK/failure.

Nah. In practice it's either "run away using one of our carefully planned evasion and escape methods" or "we can probably get this by the skin of our teeth, due to careful and clever planning."

And since you only have one shot at things, your career ends with the first mistake.

You're far less likely to get one shot at something in a single party campaign. In a multi-party (and multiple character's per player) campaign, other players or other character's of the player can recover the bodies to be raised. Henchmen, which are more typical in such campaigns but also might be in single party campaigns, also can do that.

If you're playing a single party campaign or in a world with no way to raise the dead, fatal mistakes are a problem. The player might learn, but the character can't.

It's a style that demands that you don't get attached to characters (and thus don't invest in role-playing).

Roleplaying is making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment, so there's usually MORE roleplaying in such games. Not always of course, but if your decisions being made are more important to life and death, that's a lot more important roleplaying than when they aren't.

But as soon as you have anything react outside of the printed module, you're breaking neutrality and impartiality. It's binary--either you railroad (and thus are impartial) or you adapt to the actions of the players (and you're either not impartial or you're lying to yourself).

Black and white, binary thinking indicates a problem with the thinking, not the thing it's being applied to. "If it can't be done fully, it can't be attempted at all." That's nonsense.

"Living worlds" AREN'T. They're a fiction--no human can keep track of enough items to even come close to a simulation of what should be there. Not enough is specified, either.

What's that got to do with the price of milk? Again, this is an attempt to make a binary statement. Again it's "If it can't be done fully, it can't be attempted at all." That's still nonsense.

That means that as soon as you consider anything like fun, you're acting partially.

Fun is different for different people. For some people it's the challenge of defeating a challenging world, with the DM attempting to be as neutral as possible, and not acting in their favor (or disfavor) as much as possible. So ... more nonsense.

And that's good. Impartiality is a false goal. A DM should be partial. Should care about the fun of the party enough to throw out prepared material and make stuff up when needed. otherwise, you're playing a CRPG without any of the advantages of having a computer to crunch numbers.

It's good if that's what the players and DM want. But it's not a false goal, and it's definitely NOT playing a CRPG. Because otherwise the players don't have agency. That fact that you try to conflate a neutral arbiter DM and lack of player agency is disturbing, and I'm not sure where it ...

I've had DMs that used modules as the core (maps + encounters). It sucked as soon as you went off script at all. They spent minutes looking up facts and trying to assemble things at the table, wasting everyone's time. Things felt patched together, because they were. Players' actions didn't fundamentally matter, because the modules were too easily broken. Clever ways of sequence breaking were disallowed, because otherwise things fell apart.

Modules are best if run straight, with knowing acceptance that you're on rails. That, or heavily modified (take the map but rewrite all context). That's as much work as rebuilding the module, so the savings are minimal.

... ah. I'm sorry you've had DMs that sucked at handling player agency and decision making and adapting on the fly. Because that's got nothing to do with being a neutral arbiter/referee DM. Or not being one, for that matter.

[Cluedrew]

c) The objectives and maps are not fixed (unless you're railroading hard-core). Throwing this one away (rigidly running modules without adaptation to the group) seems to throw away the best part of TTRPGs in favor of a more-limited CRPG style. CRPGs have better writing, better mechanics (because they can do the hard numerical lifting), and better graphics. TTRPGs have freedom. That's abandoned if you only use modules and stick strictly to them.

And this is why I feel that (in the general case) that tailor made is better. There are a lot of things that that people try to get out of table-top/pen-&-paper systems that I don't really understand. I like deep complex strategy games where you spend ages pondering your strategy, figuring out how to adapt and making the best use of your strategies. I like stories that have strange bits of fate linking them together (but not too much), with twists, surprizes and symbolic moments.

And sure I like when we get a bit of that in a TT/PP game, but that is hardly the point for me. If it was I would be playing a war game or reading a book. What role-playing games have beyond any other medium (barring improv. theater and the like) is adaptability. What is best for the people around this table? What is best considering all the things that have taken us to this point?

Most games have to decide that far in advance, role-playing games don't and I think lends them a that is only improved by tailoring the various aspects of the game for each other.