The answer: when it's really a quantum ogre.
2011. Halcyon days. Summers were warmer then, and chocolate was tastier. There wasn't so much rubbish on TV, and children were polite to their elders. You could get change out of a £5 when you ordered a pint, and Suzanna Reid was still on BBC Breakfast. We will not see times like those again.
The talk of the town back then was quantum ogres. Like paleontologists picking over the bones in a mound of Inner Mongolian dust, it is impossible for us in these much-diminished days to establish just how that discussion began and what colour feathers it had. (A post I wrote in September of that year may bear some important clues.) Suffice to say: in that era, a mighty beast stalked the earth, and its scientific name, "Palette Shifting", gives some indication as to its nature.
I return to the desert to conduct more field work on the topic with some trepidation. But I believe that I may be able to at least provide a footnote to our understanding of the quantum ogre's life-cycle and behaviour.
Let's put it this way: palette shifting, meaning the quasi-railroading practice of substituting one encounter or location for another, to make sure the PCs experience it come what may (or to make sure they avoid something dangerous), is dastardly, rotten behaviour that cannot be countenanced. But the quantum ogre is nothing to be afraid of; in fact, the quantum ogre is your friend. Most of the work of running an RPG is, when it boils down to it, quantum ogres. Quantum ogres are everywhere.
What is a random encounter table, but a list of quantum ogres? An encounter takes place: the dice dictate it. But until the random encounter table is consulted, nobody knows what the encounter is. Like Schrodinger's Cat, until the dice are rolled, the encounter is all the encounters on the random encounter table. It is quantum ogres all the way down.
But that's obvious. Let's think a little bit more: when it comes down to it, isn't most of what a DM does at the table a matter of quantum ogres? Almost all that a DM does is to react to what the PCs do. What does such-and-such an NPC say in reaction to what the PCs say to him? What does such-and-such a monster do when the PCs do such-and-such? What happens when the PCs try such-and-such on the trap? It almost always comes from the same place: you don't know the answer to any of those questions until forced to produce an answer. The DM's head is a Schrodinger's Box: the answers are in there, in a sense, but until there's a need for them, he typically doesn't know what they are.
In that sense, your brain is full of quantum ogres. More than that, it should be full of quantum ogres, because the alternative is preconceptions about what is going to happen in any given circumstance, which is the enemy of flexible and responsive DMing. Quantum ogres in this view are not palette shifts; they are palettes full of colours whose hue you can't see until they're on the canvas.
If you could tell ahead of time, then it wouldn't be quantum
ReplyDeleteHow did I miss all that? I was just writing about dinosaurs in September of 2011. Jeez.
ReplyDeleteGood point. I think some classic adventures inevitably involve quantum ogres. Griffin Mountain/Island is the one that springs to mind. The (literal) merchant ogre in that, Joh Mih (?), could be anywhere in the vast region/island with his beguiling and cannibalistic daughters. But the players are probably going to meet him at some point ...
ReplyDeleteMost interesting random encounters in a good fantasy game are the same. The orcs with a captive dwarf who knows some interesting secrets, for example. The trolls with elven swords in their lair, who could be found in the northern marches or in the ettin-moors. Wherever they're found, their lair looks the same. The weeping ghost who will reveal a treasure in return for being avenged. And so on. And those sorts of encounters are much better than the bare-bones "2d6 goblins" sort.
On top of that, surely good GMing involves either sufficient misdirection to hide the strings, or a gleeful embrace of the fact that the story is taking form in front of us. I like the way that Whitehack and Dungeon World explicitly embrace the latter approach.
I've just posted a brief blog on rituals in games. I think they're useful because they entirely circumvent the "quantum ogre" question: something awful is going on, but it's going to be going on an awfully long time - long enough that it won't have reached its climax, however long the heroes take to get there:
https://hobgoblinry.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-rituals-of-infinity.html
I was maligning the blameless Joh Mith; it's Gondo Holst you need to watch! I've just had a look at Griffin Island, and it's pretty clear that the various encounters with transients will inevitably be used as "quantum ogres":
Delete"We leave town three days later, heading east."
"As evening falls, you see a caravan of wagons drawn by oxen, heading back towards town."
OR:
"We leave town the next day, heading west."
"As evening falls, you see a caravan of wagons drawn by oxen, heading back towards town."
But the game was never the worse for it - and I'm sure that holds true for most Griffin Mountain/Island campaigns.
"But the game was never the worse for it".... or WAS IT???
DeleteHeh.
ReplyDeleteAren't you conflating "The act of nullifying player actions" with "The Referee makes a decision?"
The first is a Quantum Ogre. The second is free will.
I think there is a neglected third interpretation: free will/decision-making is a quantum ogre. Conscious palette shifting is bad, but in reality most of what a DM does is made up on the spot and he isn't sure what's going to happen until the decision is thrust upon him.
DeleteHmm. I don't think of random monster tables as Quantum ogres. I was under the impression that a quantum ogre occurs when the DM forces an encounter on a group no matter what decision they make.
ReplyDeleteI'm saying I think it's a misnomer. What you're describing is palette shifting.
DeleteThe problem with Quantum Ogres is, in my opinion, nothing to do with the Ogre itself.
ReplyDeleteIf the party comes to a fork in the road through the forest and has no idea of what might be on either route, the choice of direction is effectively meaningless. In that instance, they have no agency, whether there's a Quantum Ogre on both paths, random encounters or two separate, pre-determined encounters.
Conversely, if the sign says 'North Road: Danger, Umber Hulks', then all you would need to make that a meaningful choice is to give players taking the north road a reasonable chance of encountering an Umber Hulk. Which could be a deterministic set-piece or merely a 'North Road' random encounter table where there's a 50% chance of Umber Hulks.
The trick is giving out reliable information from which the players can formulate a plan of action.
I think is the key here - agency, or lack thereof. I think it's fine to have quantum ogres as "things that happened" *IF* it's not something the PCs are actively avoiding.
DeleteIf, to use your example, the North Path had Umber Hulks and a quantum ogre, and the south path had evil feys and a quantum ogre, that would still be the PCs exercising agency - they chose fey or umber hulk - there just happen to be an ogre too.
But if the PCs take some special precautions specifically against the Ogre and no matter what they do the ogre can't be avoided then... it's a problem.
It's important for a GM to let the PCs come up with a convoluted plan to avoid an encounter, and well, let these plans succeed (if they are reasonable of course). Coming up with the plan and executing it *becomes* the encounter! And that's fine.
Ancalagon
I don't disagree with any of that, but I think this is well-trodden territory. What I'm trying to say is that the term "quantum ogre" is a bit of a misnomer and needs repurposing.
DeleteHere I thought Quantum Ogres started an encounter with 26HP and a 1d10 attack and couldn't be defeated until it took 150 points of damage wile was dealing out 3d8 with each fist not to mention it's flame breath.
ReplyDeleteSurely this is just a semantic issue. You're using the term Quantum Ogre to mean something else than it's original meaning.
ReplyDeleteIs there already a term for what you're describing as QUantum Ogres here? Maybe we need one.
Yes, you're right. We definitely do. I sense a follow-up coming on.
DeleteRegarding palette shifting, if there are no substantial mechanical effects associated with the shift, what's the point?
ReplyDeletePallet shifting? Ok when the pallet itself means something to you (you choose forest terrain because you are a ranger, meet the threat in the forest)
ReplyDeletealso though, presenting players with meaningless choices, flip a coin choices, means you're kind of random generating anyway.
There is a difference however, the stupidness/weirdness potential of your random generator; if you quantum ogre all the time, pallet shifting the planned encounters to wherever the PCs go, then it will to some extent feel like prep. It's bound to eventually. Part of the point of having random generation is weirdness and the challenge of making things make sense together.
On the other hand, you could roll for 10 random encounters before the players start, like the way that xcom or online boardgames "seed" rolls with a list of numbers, and then apply them to whatever comes next. Then players go one by one through your randomly generated "railroad" of encounters.
The simple principle is that you should give players information that allows them to make expectations, and then you follow up on those expectations.
Not because they are your customers, or because of group think, but because the essence of choice in games is being able to seek ends, to model possible outcomes and decide which ones match your interests and desire for risk or reward. Or which sound cool to you.
So then if people hear growling on the other side of the door, it should include something that growls, and a reason for it to be growling. And as you build up logic for how you depict things, players will be able to respond to that. And there shouldn't be the same signs from behind every door.
So it doesn't matter if your ogre warps from the river to the deep jungle, if the first thing you do after rolling is start describing the signs of approaching it, and let players choose to avoid it. Same for those 10 pre-rolled encounters.
You loose the prep-efficiency advantage, and the ability to easily curate a coherent tale, and so practical considerations will probably draw you back to true random generation, but you'll have given players meaningful choice, by presenting them with possible futures, (face ogre/detour) and delivered on it, by forcing the game to pick one.
This is to my mind even more important for player choice than things like ecology-specific random encounters; if the terrain list is long enough, you don't actually get much control anyway. It's cool to have different places feeling different, especially if you spend long enough in places for some kind of pattern to repeat, but you never really know how much those lists overlap, and sometimes an incongruous threat is actually pretty fun. If you roll an ice dragon in the middle of the woods, but you play up it's local changes to the terrain, then it already fits in it's location thanks to those signs.
I think you may cast the net a bit too wide here. To me the dreaded Quantum Ogre is limited to the case where the players will unconditionally arrive at an predefined (end) encounter that will have the exactly same setup independent of their choices.
ReplyDeleteThen it can be loosened up and widened from that very narrow and limited definition.