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General Tabletop Discussion
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Gamemastering advice on preparing adventures for Sword & Sorcery campaigns
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<blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8341091" data-attributes="member: 6670763"><p>Something that everyone participating in that discussion seems to agree on (or at least nobody contradicts), is that with Sword & Sorcery protagonists, you never know what they will do. Some are capable of great heroics, while others act entirely out of selfishness and spite. Or you have them doing both, one shortly after the other. The only rules they have to follow is their own sense of right and wrong, which they don't have to explain to anyone. Not even the GM.</p><p></p><p>I feel that instead of trying to rein in such tendencies, to create the feel of Sword & Sorcery, GMs should actually encourage them. But this also means that as GM, you can't really plan for what the players are likely to do in any scene they encounter. You might have some guesses what they might do in certain situations once you've become familiar with how they play their characters, but it's always possible that they decide on doing something completely different in the heat of the moment and decide to chop the head off the noble they helped plotting to overthrow his lord for the last three months.</p><p></p><p>To make such a campaign work, the only practical way to prepare anything is to not have any story prepared that you want the players to act out. Instead of preparing stories, you have to prepare situations (consisting of actors, conflicts, and locations) and unleash the players on them to do with as they please.</p><p>Sword & Sorcery PCs should be loose canons, and the players encouraged to do whatever they think is cool in the moment. If it causes difficult consequences down the road, those are bridges they can burn when they get there.</p><p></p><p>I think a major aspect of this is that <strong>"failure is always an option"</strong>. What Sword & Sorcery adventures need is a conclusion, not a victory. If an adventure ends with the PCs riding into the darkness of the night while the whole city goes down in flame, that's a successful conclusion. I think whatever systems of incentives is used for rewarding players to finishing an adventure, the condition should be on having a conclusion, not a victory. Even if they failed all their goals and suffered defeat, if they fought bravely, they should still get their earnings. It's not the style of Sword & Sorcery to to dwell on spilled milk under the bridge.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Yora, post: 8341091, member: 6670763"] Something that everyone participating in that discussion seems to agree on (or at least nobody contradicts), is that with Sword & Sorcery protagonists, you never know what they will do. Some are capable of great heroics, while others act entirely out of selfishness and spite. Or you have them doing both, one shortly after the other. The only rules they have to follow is their own sense of right and wrong, which they don't have to explain to anyone. Not even the GM. I feel that instead of trying to rein in such tendencies, to create the feel of Sword & Sorcery, GMs should actually encourage them. But this also means that as GM, you can't really plan for what the players are likely to do in any scene they encounter. You might have some guesses what they might do in certain situations once you've become familiar with how they play their characters, but it's always possible that they decide on doing something completely different in the heat of the moment and decide to chop the head off the noble they helped plotting to overthrow his lord for the last three months. To make such a campaign work, the only practical way to prepare anything is to not have any story prepared that you want the players to act out. Instead of preparing stories, you have to prepare situations (consisting of actors, conflicts, and locations) and unleash the players on them to do with as they please. Sword & Sorcery PCs should be loose canons, and the players encouraged to do whatever they think is cool in the moment. If it causes difficult consequences down the road, those are bridges they can burn when they get there. I think a major aspect of this is that [B]"failure is always an option"[/B]. What Sword & Sorcery adventures need is a conclusion, not a victory. If an adventure ends with the PCs riding into the darkness of the night while the whole city goes down in flame, that's a successful conclusion. I think whatever systems of incentives is used for rewarding players to finishing an adventure, the condition should be on having a conclusion, not a victory. Even if they failed all their goals and suffered defeat, if they fought bravely, they should still get their earnings. It's not the style of Sword & Sorcery to to dwell on spilled milk under the bridge. [/QUOTE]
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