Thoughts on the quantum ogre?

>>50060864
I think this OP could do with more elaboration as to exactly what the hell that means.

Is the creature only sometimes an ogre when it's observed? Is it a Quasi-real entity that is an ogre when it exists in reality? Is it an AI that was created from the soul of an ogre which now survives as a quantum computer housed in an ogre shape in homage to its creators and origins?

>>50060864
If you do it right, players won't realize you've done anything at all. Thus, it's totally fine.

Is it an oni or an ogre?

>>50060864
Lazy DMing tool. Eat shit, DWfags.

>>50060929
It's a recurring P&PRPG term, like "Stormwind Fallacy" or "Tucker's Kobolds".
Quantum ogres are the GM's railroads in hidden superposition. Say, the players find a crossroads. If they go to the left, they find a bloodthirsty ogre to fight. If they go to the right, they find a bloodthirsty ogre to fight. If they go to one, then the other, they won't find two ogres, though.
The ogre was in a quantum superposition that only collapsed when the players made a decision.

>>50060956
I think it gets stretched to too broad a definition.
>The mountains are to the north.
>we go west
>the mountains are now west of you as well
is the worst kind of railroading while "I made a plot hook for this area but the players never encountered it so I'll recontextualize it for another area" is a pretty common tool for a sandbox game.

>>50060929
Not OP, but it means a monster that can't be avoided by the players, it just gets reskinned for a different environment depending on where they go.
Personally I approve of this necessary cheat. Calling it railroading is player entitlement.

>>50061039
The railroading comes in when people recommend having the entire campaign be one giant quantum ogre.

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Not really an issue. It's much more prevalent than a simple railroad. Lots of HIs have entire set pieces in quantum super position until the adventurers stumble upon them at a dramatically appropriate moment. But some GMs fins this dishonest as though they are bound to their previous decision of where the ogre probably would have been.

It all boils down to which type of GM you are.

Are you creating and curating a world where everything is a self motivated set piece moving like clockwork even when its not around? Or are you painting a story and the details outside the frame of the current scene don't matter other than the context they grant the present moment?

Prey of choice of the transdimensional elves.

>>50061005
But I'm an entitled shitpile who expects my GM to map out every 5 foot square of the entire campaign world, so that no matter where we go or what we do, we have a perfectly level-appropriate fight that was always there from the moment the GM started running the game. I will call anything else lazy railroading because I don't have the slightest idea what GMing is like.

>>50061270
>transdimensional elves
I always thought that quantum ogres were preyed upon by hawking giants.

>>50061101

The PCs will never find out anyway.

>>50060864
A quantum ogre is fine. Most players want their overall experience to hit a certain level of challenge, and without equally cheesey and far more tedious contrivances, your players are unlikely to walk through the world in a perfect such way to reach that level of challenge. Beyond the ogre scale it's fine too. I can only plan out so many dungeons and adventures. If the players ignore too many hooks, they'll start swinging back around with a new paint job, often with time-sensitive events scaled back a bit. If the player is so adverse to his character to fighting my ogres and going on my adventures, he probably shouldn't be at the my table.

>>50063666
>Implying that somebody who constantly has to resort to recycling encounters is any good at running a game.

>>50060985
Oh, well then its a perfectly valid tool to use if the party would probably enjoy an ogre encounter.

>>50060864
It's the tool of mediocre DMs who don't involve their players in the creative process.

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I'm running a dungeon world game tomorrow. Am I doing it right?

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>>50064748
Legit question, how are those two things related? I get how you could have players help design the world and areas with possible encounters and story events, but ultimately shouldn't the GM be deciding what exactly is encountered? A player might help determine that there are dire tigers in the jungle, but the DM should be deciding if they encounter one, and if he he decides that they will I think it's valid to put it in the players' way whether they get lost or stay on the path. Similarly, I can see a player working with the GM to have a rival of some kind, but it's still the GM determining when said rival shows up, whether that be in podunk village or capital city.

I would think the Quantum Ogre is a good tool to avoid complete improvisation. The GM already has a statblock prepared, so why discard it and pull a new one out of his ass if the players go down an unplanned route? Of course, he COULD have the stablock for anything that the players could possibly encounter always at the ready, but that means discarding 90% of it when the players pick one direction. Why not reskin some of those to use later?

I've never GM'd before, but that shit seems like an unholy ton of work compared to my piddly contributions as a player.

I don't understand why people are upset about them.
Each tiny bit of the world does not exist until the party encounters it. Period. It's not like an ogre just sits in the forest, if the party never goes anywhere near that forest. Said forest doesn't exist. People who say it's cheating sound like they assume that there's a fixed world with encounters pre-placed and pre-defined, like in a MMO, and not something that pans out around the players as they travel.