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[Irda Ranger]

Originally Posted by WotC_Logan

1. What types of game do you run?

Player-chosen plot-driven sandbox.

The players will choose a theme or long term goal (such as overthrowing the Erl King or defending the City of Prester), and then I plop them in a city or place and start introducing them to campaign elements - NPCs, places, rumors, etc. They orient themselves within the world and then choose a direction. I plan very little in advance and use lots of random generators, but tailor the results of that randomness to fit the chosen theme/over-arching plot chosen by the players. Very little monster XP. Mostly quest/goal XP.

For all this to work the campaign world has to be "real". The players have to understand where the PCs are in it, how they fit, and how they can interact with it. Combat is an interaction, but it's not enough. Politics, economics, law, food, roads, religious observance, etc. etc. are all necessary.

That's why when someone says "you are not creating a world that actually exists somewhere (or could exist somewhere)" I shake my fist and shout "Yes I am! It's got magic and monsters, but it actually exists to us."

It's as real as Midkemia and Middle Earth, at any rate.

Originally Posted by WotC_Logan

2. What is the overarching goal of your game? What feel do you want and what experience should your players have?

Once we're done and look back it should look like a good novel. But from the beginning no one knows where it will all lead or end - least of all me! We're all "writing the novel" together, but for it to be believable we have to believe in the world; it has to "makes sense." If the game is just a collection of random combats there's no story. The player experience should be a good mix of satisfied curiosity and pride in accomplishment.

Originally Posted by WotC_Logan

3. Most importantly, what steps do you take to change the way the game plays, and in what way do they contribute to your goal?

I started a list of changes to 4E I would need to make. The first changes were to be in the XP rewards. Much less XP for monsters. Fighting monsters is not the goal. More XP for completing quests / accomplishing goals.

But then I started looking at the class powers (especially the magic) and thinking that I had no idea how these translated into out-of-combat abilities. I just couldn't picture most of them at all. And this created this really bizarre feeling that the combat "version" of the PC was completely divorced from the "reality" of the campaign setting. It was like it existed in its own little micro-reality, and "just don't think about it" was the order of the day.

So that didn't work for me. Add in the over-reliance on the boardgame aspects of combat and I've decided to try Rules Cyclopedia (which I've never played before - I was an AD&D 2E man before this).