Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Legends and Lore October 22nd
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6039139" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>This reminds me a lot of my approach to GMing Rolemaster, which was my university and post-university game for nearly 20 years.</p><p></p><p>I couldn't go back to it, though - your mental overhead comment is spot on in that respect, and also there are too many mechanical bits that get in the way.</p><p></p><p>I suspect that you would find my game too slow and insufficiently narrativist for your taste.</p><p></p><p>I definitely come to RPGing from the traditional side of things, and use the indie ideas/techniques to strengthen a game that is rooted in traditional fantasy RPGing. I would think of my game as quite traditional except for the pushback I've experienced on these boards when describing my approach to GMing (with respect to metagame mechanics, GM authority over plot, "player entitlement", etc).</p><p></p><p>When my game achieves "drama", I think it would often be better characterised as melodrama or soap opera. When compared to novels or film, I find RPGing to be a pretty poor medium for conveying subtleties of character or situation, because there is so little deliberate creative control over the way those things emerge in the course of play - multiple creative participants, no scope for rewriting/editing, etc.</p><p></p><p>The short session that I GMed on the weekend began with the PCs barely alive after their fight with the hydra and its elemental bodyguards, and in two separate groups on the battlefield, separated by steaming water, hot semi-solid rock and lava. As the players debated how to proceed, I described the duergar theurge dropping down on a rope from the cleft in the cavern roof.</p><p></p><p>The players, and some of the PCs, already knew she was there - she had earlier dropped down a potion to help the invoker PC, and the invoker had signalled her that "the debt would be repayed". After a brief exchange of words between the duergar and a couple of the PCs, she walked past them and picked up the fragment of the Sceptre of Law (= Rod of Seven Parts) that had been cut from the neck of the hydra. The duergar explained that this was her due. The PCs disagreed - they would repay the debt, but a fragment of the Sceptre went beyond any dues that they owed, and she could not have it.</p><p></p><p>This disagreement ended up being resolved peacefully (mechanically, it was a complexity 2 skill challenge). The fragment of the Sceptre wanted to merge with the other 3 pieces wielded by the invoker PC, and it was clear that the duergar was having trouble controlling it - she was sweating (despite her Resist Fire 10) and paying less and less heed to what the PCs were saying. The invoker defused the situation by suggesting that the two parts of the rod be allowed to fuse, and then it be allowed to choose who should wield it. Each through their piece to the ground - she her one fragment, he his three conjoined fragments - and they fused together. The invoker then picked up the rod without trouble. He then invited her to take her turn. She struggled with it, and then relinquished. The PCs then set off with her to her clan stronghold, to rest and to learn what they can do to repay their debt in some suitable fashion.</p><p></p><p>As well as that dramatic centrepiece of the session, there was plenty of colour. Some of it was basically comedic - for example, the chaos drow trying to extract a guarantee of safe conduct from the ultra-lawful, devil-worshipping duergar; and the religious and historical discussions between the tiefling paladin and the duergar theurge, with the PC warpriest of Moradin occasionally chiming in from the sidelines. Some other colour was "pipe-laying", to borrow a phrase I learned from Robin Laws Hamlet's hit points - the PCs got to see the duergar orc and ogre slaves, and also got a demonstration of the duergar's Expansion ability in the context of a demonstration of how the duergar maintain control over their ogre servitors. This also created an opportunity for various PCs to evince their own hostility to orcs and ogres (especially the invoker, who is near-genocidal towards the "evil" humanoids, after they sacked and destroyed his home city). The whole episode also allowed the players to consolidate their conception of the place of duergar, and devils, in the cosmological conflict that is the centrepiece of the game. (And the tiefling in particular, in the initial interaction with the duergar theurge, emphasised multiple times that in earlier dealings with the duergar the PCs had always found them honourable and true to their word.)</p><p></p><p>But the negotiation with the duergar in the hydra cavern was also interspersed with a whole lot of procedural play - working out how the PCs make their way across the punishing terrain, for exampe, and how many hit points this cost them - which the system requires, given that a combat with the duergar was a clear possibility, but which I think you would regard as a significant impediment to resolving the central dramatic conflict.</p><p></p><p>This is where the "heaviness" of the D&D mechanics, even in 4e, puts a bit of a brake on the "now" in "Story Now".</p><p></p><p>The confidence I had in mind wasn't "confience that I'll win", but rather "confidence that I won't be hosed if I lose". My TPK example upthread is the sort of thing I have in mind - because 4e makes it (mechanically) easy to resolve 0 hp as unconsciousness rather than death, it creates scope for PCs to lose combat without necessarily dying. And because of the way it sets up the cosmology of the Shadowfell, it permits PCs to die without death necessarily being permanent - there are a lot of cosmological players (the Raven Queen, but not just her) who might send a spirit back for some reason, which allows PC death to be treated as a complication rather than a "game over" event.</p><p></p><p>When players know that losing a conflict doesn't have to mean losing the game, I think they become more willing to take risks with their PCs, and to push things a bit harder, rather than turtling up. Turtling is certainly one enemy of free-flowing, dramatic play, in my experience at least.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6039139, member: 42582"] This reminds me a lot of my approach to GMing Rolemaster, which was my university and post-university game for nearly 20 years. I couldn't go back to it, though - your mental overhead comment is spot on in that respect, and also there are too many mechanical bits that get in the way. I suspect that you would find my game too slow and insufficiently narrativist for your taste. I definitely come to RPGing from the traditional side of things, and use the indie ideas/techniques to strengthen a game that is rooted in traditional fantasy RPGing. I would think of my game as quite traditional except for the pushback I've experienced on these boards when describing my approach to GMing (with respect to metagame mechanics, GM authority over plot, "player entitlement", etc). When my game achieves "drama", I think it would often be better characterised as melodrama or soap opera. When compared to novels or film, I find RPGing to be a pretty poor medium for conveying subtleties of character or situation, because there is so little deliberate creative control over the way those things emerge in the course of play - multiple creative participants, no scope for rewriting/editing, etc. The short session that I GMed on the weekend began with the PCs barely alive after their fight with the hydra and its elemental bodyguards, and in two separate groups on the battlefield, separated by steaming water, hot semi-solid rock and lava. As the players debated how to proceed, I described the duergar theurge dropping down on a rope from the cleft in the cavern roof. The players, and some of the PCs, already knew she was there - she had earlier dropped down a potion to help the invoker PC, and the invoker had signalled her that "the debt would be repayed". After a brief exchange of words between the duergar and a couple of the PCs, she walked past them and picked up the fragment of the Sceptre of Law (= Rod of Seven Parts) that had been cut from the neck of the hydra. The duergar explained that this was her due. The PCs disagreed - they would repay the debt, but a fragment of the Sceptre went beyond any dues that they owed, and she could not have it. This disagreement ended up being resolved peacefully (mechanically, it was a complexity 2 skill challenge). The fragment of the Sceptre wanted to merge with the other 3 pieces wielded by the invoker PC, and it was clear that the duergar was having trouble controlling it - she was sweating (despite her Resist Fire 10) and paying less and less heed to what the PCs were saying. The invoker defused the situation by suggesting that the two parts of the rod be allowed to fuse, and then it be allowed to choose who should wield it. Each through their piece to the ground - she her one fragment, he his three conjoined fragments - and they fused together. The invoker then picked up the rod without trouble. He then invited her to take her turn. She struggled with it, and then relinquished. The PCs then set off with her to her clan stronghold, to rest and to learn what they can do to repay their debt in some suitable fashion. As well as that dramatic centrepiece of the session, there was plenty of colour. Some of it was basically comedic - for example, the chaos drow trying to extract a guarantee of safe conduct from the ultra-lawful, devil-worshipping duergar; and the religious and historical discussions between the tiefling paladin and the duergar theurge, with the PC warpriest of Moradin occasionally chiming in from the sidelines. Some other colour was "pipe-laying", to borrow a phrase I learned from Robin Laws Hamlet's hit points - the PCs got to see the duergar orc and ogre slaves, and also got a demonstration of the duergar's Expansion ability in the context of a demonstration of how the duergar maintain control over their ogre servitors. This also created an opportunity for various PCs to evince their own hostility to orcs and ogres (especially the invoker, who is near-genocidal towards the "evil" humanoids, after they sacked and destroyed his home city). The whole episode also allowed the players to consolidate their conception of the place of duergar, and devils, in the cosmological conflict that is the centrepiece of the game. (And the tiefling in particular, in the initial interaction with the duergar theurge, emphasised multiple times that in earlier dealings with the duergar the PCs had always found them honourable and true to their word.) But the negotiation with the duergar in the hydra cavern was also interspersed with a whole lot of procedural play - working out how the PCs make their way across the punishing terrain, for exampe, and how many hit points this cost them - which the system requires, given that a combat with the duergar was a clear possibility, but which I think you would regard as a significant impediment to resolving the central dramatic conflict. This is where the "heaviness" of the D&D mechanics, even in 4e, puts a bit of a brake on the "now" in "Story Now". The confidence I had in mind wasn't "confience that I'll win", but rather "confidence that I won't be hosed if I lose". My TPK example upthread is the sort of thing I have in mind - because 4e makes it (mechanically) easy to resolve 0 hp as unconsciousness rather than death, it creates scope for PCs to lose combat without necessarily dying. And because of the way it sets up the cosmology of the Shadowfell, it permits PCs to die without death necessarily being permanent - there are a lot of cosmological players (the Raven Queen, but not just her) who might send a spirit back for some reason, which allows PC death to be treated as a complication rather than a "game over" event. When players know that losing a conflict doesn't have to mean losing the game, I think they become more willing to take risks with their PCs, and to push things a bit harder, rather than turtling up. Turtling is certainly one enemy of free-flowing, dramatic play, in my experience at least. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Legends and Lore October 22nd
Top