Unpopular opinions go here

[Fifth Element]

Exactly. Play solo for a while, play video games, play cards, do something else. I cannot imagine sitting down to a table and not trusting the referee.

If someone asks what the best approach to address one specific problem they're having with a game, and you tell them to just not play the game, you are not addressing their question.

 

[Fifth Element]

What stops me from slitting another character's throat isn't trust, it's that the rest of the party will turn around and slit mine in return.

This is very informative in interpreting your posts going forward.

 

[Fifth Element]

Which reminds me of another unpopular opinion of mine: level drain in AD&D served a purpose, in that it could be used to keep the game at its so-called "sweet spot" (in terms of level advancement) for longer. If you thought the game worked at its best between, say, 5th and 13th level, then level-draining spells and monsters kept it there longer.

What a horrific way of doing that. Why anyone would do that instead of just upping xp requirements to gain levels beyond a certain point is just baffling.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because you like.playing the game, and you don't know anyone else to play with? Or because the others on the game are your friends and even if one of them doesn't approach the game the same way you do, you still want to hang with them?

There are so many answers to this question that it's trivial to respond.

Does that mean the rules have to force people to behave the way you want, because some of them might be jerks?

 

[Reynard]

I'd interpret "running on the fly" to mean you're winging everything with minimal if any prep other than maybe some setting basics: here's the town, here's the dungeon, but the dungeon isn't pre-written: you're making it up as the PCs explore it.

That isn't "homebrewing an adventure", though. Homebrewing an adventure means prepping it out to module-level detail (though maybe only on scraps of paper, doesn't have to be neatly formatted!) and then running it as written.

Neither of these assertions are true.

 

[Hussar]

2e's Skills and Powers, gosh even 2e proper had more granularity

Really? Where?

Maybe it was in the skill system - oh wait. Zero granularity. Simple pass/fail based on your stat. Your skills remained largely static from 1st level onward. You might gain a skill every 3 or 4 levels, but, again, those never improved.

Maybe it was the combat system - nope.

Stats? Nope. Even less granularity than d20. Stats from 9-13 (or 14) were identical. The difference between an 18 Con non-fighter and a 10 Con non-fighter was 2 hp/level. OOhhh, be still my beating heart.

Ummm, where exactly is this granularity?

 

[Hussar]

Neither of these assertions are true.

Umm, that's pretty much the standard definition of "on the fly". If you have to do hours of prep before each session, that's the opposite of "on the fly".

What do you mean by "on the fly"? Because that seems to be the sticking point here why no one seems to get what you're saying @Reynard. Please define your terms.

 

[Reynard]

Umm, that's pretty much the standard definition of "on the fly". If you have to do hours of prep before each session, that's the opposite of "on the fly".

What do you mean by "on the fly"? Because that seems to be the sticking point here why no one seems to get what you're saying @Reynard. Please define your terms.

I don't prep adventures. I prep situations. That requires prep, and is homebrewing, and yet still demands that I run the game on the fly because there is no plot, only a set of circumstances into which the PCs find themselves. I'm not sure where the confusion is. I am hardly the only person to run games that way.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I don't prep adventures. I prep situations. That requires prep, and is homebrewing, and yet still demands that I run the game on the fly because there is no plot, only a set of circumstances into which the PCs find themselves. I'm not sure where the confusion is. I am hardly the only person to run games that way.

I run most of my games this way too.

 

[Hussar]

I don't prep adventures. I prep situations. That requires prep, and is homebrewing, and yet still demands that I run the game on the fly because there is no plot, only a set of circumstances into which the PCs find themselves. I'm not sure where the confusion is. I am hardly the only person to run games that way.

?

What is the difference between "adventure" and "situation"? That's the confusion on my part. When I prep an adventure, say my current Spelljammer campaign. They party has landed on an ice planet and are exploring. I have X number of locations they can explore. There is something of a story, although it's mostly background stuff and has little or nothing to do with what's immediately in front of them, just some background stuff that might come up later.

Now, to do this, I prepared the following locations:

1. Landing location where a mud monster tries to eat them.
2. Traveling locations - 3 or so for mostly random encounters
3. A snow tunnel maze created by yak-lemmings (don't ask) inhabited by a few other bits and bobs with maybe 7 or so encounters.
4. A field of magic crystals that are the reason the party is on the planet.
5. The home of a ship wrecked gnome who has been on the planet for a while and can fill in the blanks for the players.
6. A crashed Gift Bombard with a big cannon which the party used to destroy the psychic cloud monster that forced their landing in the first place.
7. Ice station Zebra - a ruin inhabited by a bunch of stuff where the answers to some of the lingering questions about the planet lie.

Now, there was no real "story" here in this adventure. Most of the encounters could have been done in any order, with a couple of exceptions. Is this what you would call "on the fly"? I sure don't. That's a very prep heavy adventure that took me rather more time than I like to get ready. There was virtually nothing "on the fly" about it, other than maybe one of the random encounters where I tossed it in at the last minute using the pre-prepped battle map and the baddies that I had prepped earlier.

So, what do you consider to be "on the fly"?