Infrequent gaming

[Primitive Screwhead]

Sorry, I didn't mean to emphasise rebuilds, but rather to allow them.

QFT
I converted mid-game to 4e {for my sanity} and have to allow tweaks to characters as new material comes out and as players get a better grasp on the game. We are in our second year of play and every PC has been revised/tweaked a number of times.

I see this as important because a} the players are paying attention to the game between sessions, and b} they don't get annoyed with playing a character that they now know has a critical flaw.

I allow one full rewrite without an explanation, tweaks as needed, and have a relatively open 'replacement' policy for when a character has to wander off.

 

[haakon1]

I dunno. With my regular campaign, I feel free to run the game, and stop when we run out of time. The players will generally remember much of what's going on, and so we can pick things up again without problems. With big gaps between sessions, though, they would forget much of what was going on, and we'd spend a lot of frustrating time trying to get back up to speed.

That said, it might work differently with a different group - if they're all good at keeping track, or someone does a detailed campaign log and everyone reads it, I guess it would work.

As I said, you need to take notes and read it back at the start of the new session.

What I've found, with limited infrequent gaming time, is that starting a new adventure is much more time consuming than continuing an existing one, getting straight into the action without the elaborate set up, exploration, NPC interaction, etc. that goes into starting a new scenario.

So I recommend against the idea of short (which to me means lacking in depth and unsatisfying), self-contained (which to me means requiring set up and introduction) adventures for each seating of the game, and instead recommend running it as a normal campaign.

My thinking here is really that if you're playing infrequently, you're probably not playing much, and the last thing you want is to find yourself stuck playing a character you don't like, or who is inferior to the rest of the group. At the same time, due to the continuity concerns you mentioned, you don't really want people changing characters if you can help it. Hence my suggestion to allow people, if they want, to build an idealised version of the character, without being stuck with any decisions they've made in the past that they may now regret.

None of my players is interested in builds, and I don't see them competing amongst each other to see whose character is inferior or superior. I think if that's what a player wants out of D&D, infrequent gaming isn't going to make them happy, since they won't power up quickly and there won't be as many chances to try new builds and new rules.

Certainly, playing with my group isn't going to make them happy -- we're story and action driven, not out to "win" against each other but against the environment. And my players complained bitterly about the move from 3.0 to 3.5 being complicated and requiring new books, so we're anything but crunch-centric. Also, using a multiple sessions to run an adventure and 3-5 times a year pacing, that means even if I did encourage rebuilds/swapping out for new PCs, it would be a year at a time between character re-envisioning . . . so "fun with builds" really isn't a feature in my game, at all.

 

[Perun]

Thanks for the advice, everyone! There are some good ideas there that I might end up using.

Regards.

 

[Merkuri]

None of my players is interested in builds, and I don't see them competing amongst each other to see whose character is inferior or superior.

You don't need to be a powergamer or have an interest in the best "build" to get frustrated with a character's abilities. And you don't need to be explicitly competing against the other players to realize your character isn't able to hold his or her own in a fight.

I don't know if 4e is prone to this sort of thing because I don't have much experience playing it, but I know in 3e that it's possible to build a character that's just not a good fit for the type of campaign you're in. You may not find this out until you've played the character for a session or two.

For example, I once played a 3e bard in the World's Largest Dungeon and soon learned to regret it. While there were some roleplay encounters they were few and far between so the majority of the bard's toolbox was left to get rusty while I spent battles saying, "I inspire courage... again." I might have been a useful member of the party, but the lack of combat options I had made for a pretty boring combat experience and I soon realized that this was not the right character for this game.

If the DM had offered me the ability to completely switch around the "crunch" of that character while keeping the personality and background the same I probably would've taken him up on the option, and I am in no way a power gamer or interested in optimizing my PCs. Luckily we were near the end of the campaign when this character was introduced, so I didn't end up stuck with the bard in the WLD for very long.

This could go the other way around, too. One of your players might have created a PC that's geared towards fighting only to find out that they're no good in the RP sessions of the campaign, and those come up more often than fighting, so the next session that player might want to retool their PC to be more effective at diplomacy.

But my point is that even a non-powergamer non-optimizer player can get tired with the mechanics of their PC and want to try something different, so I think giving players the option to rebuild their PCs in the long gap between sessions is reasonable for any type of group. You don't want to end up with a player who's dissatisfied with their character because they could spend those two months between sessions dreading the next game instead of anticipating it.

 

[Janx]

A couple other ideas:

hand out more XP when playing less frequently. Speeding up advancement will make the players feel like they are accomplishing something. wouldn't go faster than 1 level per session, however.

Making some game time pass between sessions would also help, it'll make what's happened last time be less important to remember as if it were last week (which it wasn't).



I agree with others to cut to the chase, don't waste game time on stuff that doesn't matter. I'd make travel be as easy as, "you guys head out the city gate and in 3 days time, arrive at your destination."

Speed up combat. Read my blog for my "make combat faster" article or search these forums for threads on the topic (of which my article sums them up). If your group dawdles at combat, you're achieving less in the session.

 

[vagabundo]

I'd forgo XP altogether and let them level up in-between session - or every two sessions. If the sessions are self contained they can tell of their own mini-adventures as stories to their companions (also a good RP warm up).

You should also have lots of time to prep your game, so it could be awesome.

 

[haakon1]

You don't need to be a powergamer or have an interest in the best "build" to get frustrated with a character's abilities. And you don't need to be explicitly competing against the other players to realize your character isn't able to hold his or her own in a fight.
. . .
For example, I once played a 3e bard in the World's Largest Dungeon and soon learned to regret it. While there were some roleplay encounters they were few and far between so the majority of the bard's toolbox was left to get rusty while I spent battles saying, "I inspire courage... again." I might have been a useful member of the party, but the lack of combat options I had made for a pretty boring combat experience and I soon realized that this was not the right character for this game.

"Lack of combat options I had made for a pretty boring combat experience" may not be about power-gaming or one-upping other players, but it's not the complaint of someone who's focused on the story or on roleplaying the character.

I think my players ARE focused on story and roleplaying the character. I've seen them intentionaly make "suboptimal" character decisions or builds because it's who they want to play and the story they want to tell. I've got a player with a monk with an Int 18, because the player wanted a very smart, scholarly monk. Makes sense story wise, but it's crazy "build" wise.

And I don't think the variety of combat options is a problem. Most of us played AD&D, where combat for fighters was essentially "I roll a d20", "OK, roll for damage" -- there are way more options for any 3e character, so I don't think they'd be depressed by a 3e bard.

Actually, I think of bards as jack-of-all-trades characters, rather than just background musicians -- can rogue a little, wizard a little, heal a little -- so lack of choice doesn't seem like the problem to me. Not being as effective as a full-time character at any of these, so lack of EFFECTIVE choice, that I can understand.

The other issue for you is, World's Largest Dungeon really isn't a good campaign for someone who IS interested in their character's personality, social interactions, etc. From what I've played of it (never DM'd it), it's purely hack and slash, with no civilians to interact with, which is half the fun of a high Charisma character like a bard. So I get it that you might get bored, but I wouldn't think combat options were the problem -- just the lack of anything to do but combat.

I was playing a dwarven cleric -- optimized for survival underground, with high Con, high Dex, defensive spells, and infravision -- but I got bored because there didn't seem to be a point to it all. (And yes, I enjoy the defensive/supporting role of a 3e cleric.)

This could go the other way around, too. One of your players might have created a PC that's geared towards fighting only to find out that they're no good in the RP sessions of the campaign, and those come up more often than fighting, so the next session that player might want to retool their PC to be more effective at diplomacy.

My view is that not every character gets to be the star in every episode. Some of my adventures are geared to put one of the characters more in the spotlight, just like a TV series with an ensemble cast would do.

To use a Star Trek: The Next Generation analogy, if I'm doing a Worf episode, I don't want the guy who's playing Data to suddenly say, "Wait, now I want to be a great warrior too! I want to drop my feat in 'computer lore' and replace it with 'Klingon sword fighting'." That kills the campaign for people who do care about the story and the roleplaying.

But a good DM will build a good campaign, one that keeps it overall interesting for everybody, with a mix of challenges and situations.

 

[Merkuri]

"Lack of combat options I had made for a pretty boring combat experience" may not be about power-gaming or one-upping other players, but it's not the complaint of someone who's focused on the story or on roleplaying the character.

Heh, ask anybody in my group what they think I like better, combat or roleplay and they will resoundingly answer "roleplay". I always flesh out my characters (sometimes too much for their own good), and even my WLD characters had at least a full page of background written up about them. I make up funny accents and draw up portraits for my PCs. I make choices about how they level up based on what happened to them in the plot, the most memorable of which was when a single-class 3e cleric of mine had so many friends die around her in gruesome ways that I decided she had lost faith and could no longer advance as a cleric.

But combat is a big part of D&D and I enjoy it as well. If my character is ineffective in combat or if my options are so limited it's boring, then I can start to get dissatisfied with the "crunch" of the character.

My point is that a lot of players aren't binary about combat and roleplay. You can enjoy them both, and even if you're having a super fun time with the roleplaying aspect of your character you could start to dread combat if your PC turns out to be really sub-par. And in rare cases like that if it's a very long time between games some of the players may appreciate the ability to swap out levels or abilities for something they think might be more enjoyable. I'm not saying this will happen often. The players may never take advantage of it. But I think it would be a good option to know is there.

To use a Star Trek: The Next Generation analogy, if I'm doing a Worf episode, I don't want the guy who's playing Data to suddenly say, "Wait, now I want to be a great warrior too! I want to drop my feat in 'computer lore' and replace it with 'Klingon sword fighting'." That kills the campaign for people who do care about the story and the roleplaying.

I believe it was implied that you were allowed to change your character as long as the concept and the character itself stayed the same. If the group really is full of players that value the story and the roleplaying then they will probably not make changes which are that drastic. However, if Data's player realized that he was never using his Andorian Empathy feat and he wanted to swap it out for the "Ability to use my severed head as a stapler" feat, or maybe the Vulcan Neck Pinch feat, then sure, those still fit with the character, so go ahead. (Data may not be a Vulcan, but I could see him learning this move. It fits his style.) But if Data's player is really into the character he would probably not even try to pick up bat'leth proficiency unless there was a good RP reason for it, and he certainly wouldn't be replacing "computer lore" with it.

 

[delericho]

My view is that not every character gets to be the star in every episode. Some of my adventures are geared to put one of the characters more in the spotlight, just like a TV series with an ensemble cast would do.

If you're gaming only a few times every year, I would strongly recommend not focussing a session on any one character. In a regular campaign you can do this because everyone will get their turn in the spotlight in fairly short order, but if you're gaming only a few times a year, surely you want everyone fully involved in every session?

I believe it was implied that you were allowed to change your character as long as the concept and the character itself stayed the same.

Yep, that was my intent.

However, if Data's player realized that he was never using his Andorian Empathy feat and he wanted to swap it out for the "Ability to use my severed head as a stapler" feat, or maybe the Vulcan Neck Pinch feat, then sure, those still fit with the character, so go ahead. (Data may not be a Vulcan, but I could see him learning this move. It fits his style.)

If I recall correctly, Data actually did learn the 'neck pinch' (from Spock), in the episode "Unification".

 

[Garmorn]

As far as setting approach, try something like Stargate where each adventure/session is self contained verses. the normal continuous adventure model. A city campaign that used the party as trouble shooters is another ideal. Steal plot form Traveler or other SF games, where each planet is a seperate adventure might work.