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Advice for Caves of Chaos/B2
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7284584" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Why when people disagree with me, must they disagree with me on the basis of who they think I am and not what I said? I mean seriously, please stop telling me how to DM unless I actually ask for advice. (Ironically, when I actually ask for advice, no one ever wants to give it.) If you developed B2 into a more worthwhile campaign than what is presented or what the text would naturally result in after you did a period of trial and error, then good for you, but don't imagine my distaste for doing that is based on my inability to do so. Seriously, no one here is going to be particular impressed by 1-3 year long campaigns. B2 gave you nothing to work with and as template for how to develop dungeons or campaigns it largely sucked and probably led to innumerable terrible designs (see G1, G2, G3 or anything I produced prior to 1986 or so). The idea beginner scenario is not one that has to be completely redone, but one that shows on a small scale the sort of thing he ought to aspire to create on a larger scale.</p><p></p><p>It's not that you can't have fun with that sort of 'it's the 1970's and we just invented the RPG' stuff - certainly my middle school friends and I did have a lot of fun with kicking the doors down and taking their stuff - it's just that at this point I've been doing this more than 30 years and I've no more interest in that sort of thing. Besides which, by the time B2 was printed people - including Gygax - were already experimenting with much grander ideas. The sole idea in B2 seems to be, "These are the monsters in the basic handbook. Let's use them all." Which is probably the first idea that occurred to any budding DM.</p><p></p><p>Look, before you go talking about how you have to delve into your elbows in a module, you might want to look up my threads on how to turn the ideas in otherwise terrible modules like 'Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits' or 'Temple of Elemental Evil' into something actually worthy of play. Or you might want to consider that I have large portion of Isle of Dread mapped at a 1 mile to the hex scale with something like 500 pages of notes. I don't think anyone has ever accused me of not being able to build a sandbox. I got problems as a DM, but setting design isn't one of them. And I'm just saying, B2 is just not worth giving that sort of treatment because the fundamental ideas therein are so barren and unimaginative and well lacking. There is nothing in B2 that I couldn't expect an imaginative 13 year old with a thesaurus to write themselves. It's a module that was equaled and excelled probably tens of thousands of times. It would have never been accepted for publication in Dungeon magazine. It's just not very good. What you made out of it might be great, but that's like saying 'Iron Chef' is a great way to teach novice cooks.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7284584, member: 4937"] Why when people disagree with me, must they disagree with me on the basis of who they think I am and not what I said? I mean seriously, please stop telling me how to DM unless I actually ask for advice. (Ironically, when I actually ask for advice, no one ever wants to give it.) If you developed B2 into a more worthwhile campaign than what is presented or what the text would naturally result in after you did a period of trial and error, then good for you, but don't imagine my distaste for doing that is based on my inability to do so. Seriously, no one here is going to be particular impressed by 1-3 year long campaigns. B2 gave you nothing to work with and as template for how to develop dungeons or campaigns it largely sucked and probably led to innumerable terrible designs (see G1, G2, G3 or anything I produced prior to 1986 or so). The idea beginner scenario is not one that has to be completely redone, but one that shows on a small scale the sort of thing he ought to aspire to create on a larger scale. It's not that you can't have fun with that sort of 'it's the 1970's and we just invented the RPG' stuff - certainly my middle school friends and I did have a lot of fun with kicking the doors down and taking their stuff - it's just that at this point I've been doing this more than 30 years and I've no more interest in that sort of thing. Besides which, by the time B2 was printed people - including Gygax - were already experimenting with much grander ideas. The sole idea in B2 seems to be, "These are the monsters in the basic handbook. Let's use them all." Which is probably the first idea that occurred to any budding DM. Look, before you go talking about how you have to delve into your elbows in a module, you might want to look up my threads on how to turn the ideas in otherwise terrible modules like 'Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits' or 'Temple of Elemental Evil' into something actually worthy of play. Or you might want to consider that I have large portion of Isle of Dread mapped at a 1 mile to the hex scale with something like 500 pages of notes. I don't think anyone has ever accused me of not being able to build a sandbox. I got problems as a DM, but setting design isn't one of them. And I'm just saying, B2 is just not worth giving that sort of treatment because the fundamental ideas therein are so barren and unimaginative and well lacking. There is nothing in B2 that I couldn't expect an imaginative 13 year old with a thesaurus to write themselves. It's a module that was equaled and excelled probably tens of thousands of times. It would have never been accepted for publication in Dungeon magazine. It's just not very good. What you made out of it might be great, but that's like saying 'Iron Chef' is a great way to teach novice cooks. [/QUOTE]
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