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Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully  Videogames, or having less/little time to play?
I really don't want to drive to the game and sit through the session being mostly passive for several hours.
I suppose if I played D&d multiple times a week over several hours each day, I might found the 3E or 4E participation/instant gratification focus too stressful, because I have to contribute all the time and don't have any rest. But that's not the kind of time I have for playing. |
I currently get to play 1 regular (4-6 hour) session every 2 weeks and I still don't consider not being in combat the entire session to be a waste of time.
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Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully And this alone is already a problem. You don't really know how to challenge the players without taking a deep look at their actual statistics. You don't know beforehand if your campaign will be more combat focused or non-combat focused. You don't know if you'll use a lot of wilderness travel or if it will be more space combat. You can't look at the point buy value and say "oh, sure, this is the kind of opposition and challenges the party can face". You don't even have classes that can tell you what the character might be reasonably able to do. If you want an entertaining campaign that fits the characters (providing them "fair" challenges - from easy to hard ones), you need to look at the details. And that is a problem for preparing your campaign or adventures.
It is probably not unsurmountable, but it's still not a trivial task. |
Its actually not that hard. Once you know the Ads/ Disads and skills of the PC's, challenges are easy. Success is not determined as much by what they can beat, instead it is determined by how well the player role-plays the character as it is defined. A character who was successful in an adventure by being super heroic when he is defined by the player as being a coward will be lucky to get any reward. If that same character had faced danger and hid, or let others deal with it and there was a failure because of that, then the player would be rewarded for staying true to the character.
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Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully If this tactical grid is where most of the time is spent, balancing this element is crucial. if it's not where most of the time is spent, it's balance or imbalance doesn't hurt.
You can't balance combat vs non-combat, unless you can predict how much of each you will have in a typical campaign.
How do you balance non-combat aspects? Do you know how much people will spend on social encounters, wilderness travel, dungeon exploration or mystery solving?
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Its all about knowing what your players want. The system should provide robust options for both combat and non-combat and leave the balance to the DM. If you balance only for combat then you have made a combat game. If thats what everyone wants its the Holy Grail. If you have a mixed group including people that want to be just as good at doing things out of combat as others are in combat then a system that allows for that helps a lot. Sure you have skills but the combat character has the same stuff. In order to be balanced you have to take a heaping serving of combat powers and are still no better at other things than Mr. combat.
In effect, the DM is taken out of the loop for providing overall campaign balance, leaving the same flavor for every game.
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