World of Warcraft taught me how to DM again.

[Calico_Jack73]

Let me start off by saying that I've been DMing and playing D&D on and off since 1981. Somewhere around the time Werewolf the Apocalypse debuted I got into playing the various World of Darkness games with a group that was very much into narrative roleplaying with grand overplots that plugged into the WoD metastory. I became so used to games with these huge overplots that I couldn't imagine running a game without one. This need for overplot has been causing me all sorts of heartache since I got back into D&D when 3E debuted. Coming up with an earthshattering overplot for low level characters in D&D can be incredibly frustrating.
Last month for Christmas, my brother-in-law got me the World of Warcraft Battlechest. I realize that I have become a Warcrack addict but I also realize from playing the low level quests that a good fantasy rpg doesn't NEED to have that huge overplot. There is absolutely nothing wrong with going on quests on the behalf of farmers who keep getting robbed by kobolds or finding and slaying giant scorpions in order to get the ingredients for a cure for someone in a village who is dying from a sting. A couple quests like this and you've got the makings for a good night of gaming with very low prep and stress for the DM.

Thank you Blizzard for showing me how to reduce my stress and have fun with my game again.

 

[ExploderWizard]

A lot of gamers get caught in the mindset of the world saving hero.
Not every adventure has to save the universe from certain doom.
If the PC's are constantly stopping the world from ending at low level then the impact
of adventures at higher levels can sometimes be lessened and treated
as if they were routine, which at that point, they are.

I'm glad to see that WOW had a positive impact on someone's
rpg activities. For me it just sucks too much time away from the
game and miniature projects I'm working on.

 

[dmccoy1693]

As a fellow graduate of the White Wolf Academy of GMing (I majored in Exalted and minored in Vampire myself), I too tend to fall into this type of problem. I tend to fall prone to, "Well if this is such a big problem, then why aren't the high level NPCs taking care of this,"-idus

Being allowed to let the PCs be upstanding citizens initially (instead of action heroes or epic heroes of old) isn't a bad idea.

 

[Sammael]

I also realize from playing the low level quests that a good fantasy rpg doesn't NEED to have that huge overplot. There is absolutely nothing wrong with going on quests on the behalf of farmers who keep getting robbed by kobolds or finding and slaying giant scorpions in order to get the ingredients for a cure for someone in a village who is dying from a sting. A couple quests like this and you've got the makings for a good night of gaming with very low prep and stress for the DM.

Thank you Blizzard for showing me how to reduce my stress and have fun with my game again.

This also depends on the players' expectations. I, for one, am willing to play such games for 4-5 sessions, but if no sign of a bigger story emerges in that time period, I will grow increasingly bored and then leave the game.

 

[Thanee]

I totally hate "prevent the apocalypse"-style overplots, that these things so often evolve (or degenerate) into... especially for low-level characters. That's epic stuff, not 1st-level stuff.

Also, not everything has to tie into some huge, convoluted superplot. Some things just happen in a local environment without any big schemes in the background. Actually, most things likely happen that way.

However, it's still nice to have small pieces put together to form something bigger and also having encounters and events tie into a bigger plot. Just not everything.

Kinda like the computer roleplaying games do missions... some are relevant for the main plot, most are just ways to do something and gain some treasure and experience, smaller subplots or even single events, that just happen on their own.

Bye
Thanee

 

[timbannock]

I used to be all over the apocalypse story lines myself.

Still am, too often, but two things have helped me recently:

Lost City of Barakus and Red Hand of Doom.

I ran a combined campaign with these two modules (Lost City through level 5 or 6, Red Hand afterward) and it was great: the plot was big and epic, but not world-shattering. It dealt with a small, dusty frontier area being raided by goblinoids. There was some apocalyptic stuff (summoning an Aspect of Tiamat), but somehow, having a small setting with only two small cities and a couple wild-west style towns just made it seem more localized. Plus the Players got to experience each city and each of the towns before the war started, so they had emotional connections to everything. This only could have been done in such a small, self-contained setting.

My biggest problem is toning down the epic plots in games like Vampire. I ran a Gehenna campaign and I just can't get out of that mode.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Also, not everything has to tie into some huge, convoluted superplot. Some things just happen in a local environment without any big schemes in the background. Actually, most things likely happen that way.

I agree that not everything should be related. But I think most things should. If most of the things you encounter are just side quests, it can get really boring. In the same way that you want a novel to be going somewhere, you want the game to be going somewhere as well. I don't mind when the characters in a novel stop at a town and buy supplies and help and old lady cross the street for a page. But after that, I want to know whether they meet up with their contact in the city, if they catch up with the villain and who the mysterious man following them is.

Kinda like the computer roleplaying games do missions... some are relevant for the main plot, most are just ways to do something and gain some treasure and experience, smaller subplots or even single events, that just happen on their own.

Part of the reason that these side quests are more prevalent in video games is that, in real time, most adventures would be finished in a couple of hours. Most people who spend their money on a game want it to last 20 or 30 hours. You need to fill that time in with something.

In tabletop games, there is almost never enough time. I'm fighting to get my players to stay 30 minutes longer to try to get as much done as possible. So, when things do happen, they are almost always related to the plot. I might throw one or two short side quests in to break it up a bit, but most of it is related.

 

[Sammael]

My biggest problem is toning down the epic plots in games like Vampire. I ran a Gehenna campaign and I just can't get out of that mode.

Is it even possible to run a non-Gehenna campaign in V:TM?

 

[Henry]

I haven't done it in a while, but back in 3.0 I ran a Forgotten Realms "sandbox" game (is that the correct term?) in this vein. The players had no overarching plots, just one or two subplots involving why some assassins were occasionally sent to spy on them or kill them, and the rest of the game was them wandering the countryside, helping who they wanted to help, killin' who needed killin', or sometimes running from jobs that were WAAAY too big for them. I'll never forget the town beseiged by hill giants they ran against -- they convinced the folk to fight, they invaded the giants' home to find FORTY hill giants, killed almost twenty but then had to run for their lives, spending the night cooped up in a root cellar in hiding until the morning, and when they emerged, they found the giants had razed the town to the ground in anger and carried EVERYONE else off (or had fled). They snuck out of the razed town, changed their names, and never went back....

They took to calling themselves the Company of the Endless Bridge, because they never finished a single quest - they'd take some up-front payment, do some initial good, then either cut and run if it got tough, or they'd just lose interest in finishing and then leaving the scene, moving progressively northward and up the Inner Sea/Westgate/Dalelands/Moonsea/Bloodlands region. Despite being more anti-heroes than "heroes", they had a good time with the campaign, because it was so different from the whole "save the realm" thing.

EDIT: Y'know, this sounds pretty dumb, but I only just now figured out why they probably never followed up on the whole "who is trying to kill them" subplot...

 

[Chainsaw]

In the 2E games I used to run, character theme development and power, for lack of a better phrase, was the main story motivator at lower levels. I didn't mandate it, of course, but that's just usually what the guys wanted to do. My players' characters started as weaklings of their respective class and used the first 5-7 levels to become what they'd envisioned. For example, a magic-user who wanted to be a necromancer sought out the tools to reach that goal - lost spellbooks, magic-items, etc - during his early life (ruins, castles, mercenary work, whatever). As he drew close to reaching his vision, then I'd start layering in a more elaborate plot. At first though, it was usually just "get better stuff."

Now, maybe you're thinking, "Can't you have both happening at once?" Sure, I guess, but we never needed that much going on at one time. What works best probably depends on the tastes and preferences of DM and players.