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Character play vs Player play
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6412656" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I agree with basically everything that [MENTION=6783796]Lerysh[/MENTION] has posted upthread, including this.</p><p></p><p>Foreshadowing, in a D&D adventure, I think works when it is for the benefit of the players <em>as playrers</em>, that is, it opens up avenues for them to expore in play. If it just the GM showing off his/her world-building, then I don't really see the point.</p><p></p><p>I think that depends entirely on the context and the inclinations of the players.</p><p></p><p>If you are playing Tomb of Horrors as Gygax intended, and the player of the barbarian has engaged in clever deduction (using spells, free-form roleplaying, etc) to decide to walk down the RHS rather than the LHS of the corridor, then for the GM to change the location of the trap would be lame. Cheating, in fact.</p><p></p><p>But if the GM has simply described a corridor, and the barbarian player arbitrarily decides that his/her barbarian is walking down the RHS, then having the barbarian attacked by the trap seems like fun! Isn't that what barbarians, with their trap-sense and high hit points, are all about?</p><p></p><p>In a Burning Wheel session that I GMed recently, only of the players had as an instinct (a type of character trait) "If I fall, cast falconskin (and thereby turn into a bird)". Therefore, I decided that the antagonist wizard lived in a tower, with the stuff that the PCs wanted at the top of it. So that there would be a chance for the PC to fall - the player's choice of instinct is a marker of the sort of situations that he wants to have come up in play.</p><p></p><p>I use the same sort of technique in my 4e game all the time. When one of the players scrutinised a stone column to see if it was suspicous, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">it turned out to be a roper</a>. When the paladin of the Raven Queen goes out looking for Orcus cultists, he finds them. Etc.</p><p></p><p>Not everyone is playing D&D in Gygaxian style.</p><p></p><p>And on that note, that not everyone plays the game the same way,</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm with Paraxis on this. The adventure sounds horrible to me.</p><p></p><p>Not just for this reason, but the whole premise. If I turned up to a session of D&D and the GM expected me to engage in conversations with a food critic (that well-known mediaevel occupation!) to learn about the herbal origins of his soup, I'd be going nuts. To me, that is not the stuff from which heroic fantasy adventure is made.</p><p></p><p>Even in a modern investigation game like Call of Cthuhu, I would find this particular adventure, at least as described, incredibly weak. It's not even as if there is something distinctively interesting about the woods that makes the bow, the soup etc more than meets the eye. It seems to be a McGuffin pure-and-simple.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6412656, member: 42582"] I agree with basically everything that [MENTION=6783796]Lerysh[/MENTION] has posted upthread, including this. Foreshadowing, in a D&D adventure, I think works when it is for the benefit of the players [I]as playrers[/I], that is, it opens up avenues for them to expore in play. If it just the GM showing off his/her world-building, then I don't really see the point. I think that depends entirely on the context and the inclinations of the players. If you are playing Tomb of Horrors as Gygax intended, and the player of the barbarian has engaged in clever deduction (using spells, free-form roleplaying, etc) to decide to walk down the RHS rather than the LHS of the corridor, then for the GM to change the location of the trap would be lame. Cheating, in fact. But if the GM has simply described a corridor, and the barbarian player arbitrarily decides that his/her barbarian is walking down the RHS, then having the barbarian attacked by the trap seems like fun! Isn't that what barbarians, with their trap-sense and high hit points, are all about? In a Burning Wheel session that I GMed recently, only of the players had as an instinct (a type of character trait) "If I fall, cast falconskin (and thereby turn into a bird)". Therefore, I decided that the antagonist wizard lived in a tower, with the stuff that the PCs wanted at the top of it. So that there would be a chance for the PC to fall - the player's choice of instinct is a marker of the sort of situations that he wants to have come up in play. I use the same sort of technique in my 4e game all the time. When one of the players scrutinised a stone column to see if it was suspicous, [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra]it turned out to be a roper[/url]. When the paladin of the Raven Queen goes out looking for Orcus cultists, he finds them. Etc. Not everyone is playing D&D in Gygaxian style. And on that note, that not everyone plays the game the same way, I'm with Paraxis on this. The adventure sounds horrible to me. Not just for this reason, but the whole premise. If I turned up to a session of D&D and the GM expected me to engage in conversations with a food critic (that well-known mediaevel occupation!) to learn about the herbal origins of his soup, I'd be going nuts. To me, that is not the stuff from which heroic fantasy adventure is made. Even in a modern investigation game like Call of Cthuhu, I would find this particular adventure, at least as described, incredibly weak. It's not even as if there is something distinctively interesting about the woods that makes the bow, the soup etc more than meets the eye. It seems to be a McGuffin pure-and-simple. [/QUOTE]
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