Unpopular opinions go here

[Faolyn]

?

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"?

Adventures, I believe, have something akin to a plot, or at least a specific direction you need to go in.

The party hears a rumor/gets an order to go to the landing location. After exploring, they learn they need magic crystals for whatever reason. While searching for the crystals, they meet the gnome, who can tell them of the reason they crashed--and it's because of dark intelligence inside of Ice Station Zebra. The dark intelligence is the BBEG, and once the party deals with it, the adventure is over. Between meeting the gnome and reaching the dark intelligence, there's other stuff, but in all honesty, that's mostly so they can level up. There may also be elements such as "if the party gets to the field of magic crystals by week 1, they find X; if they get there by week 2, X has been moved by yak-lemmings.

What you're describing, however, is a sandbox, which are notoriously prep-heavy simply because you need to know what's at each location.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That isn't an example of adding a flavor, though. That's an example of taking one of the six flavors and changing it out for a different sixth flavor. At least it is if they give the fighter supernaturally powerful abilities without them being supernatural in nature. Again, I don't care if Zoro the normal human trains to an incredible degree and can supernaturally cut someone from 100 feet away as long as the ability is supernatural(magic).

It's when someone tries to say that it's they should have that ability as a mundane ability that alters the flavor from chocolate chip to mint chip. So mythic fighters are okay. Mythic fighters doing supernatural things as mundane abilities is not okay. If you want that, leave fighters alone and add some other class(add a flavor) that we can ignore the way I personally ignore warlords. I'm happy for you to have the warlord flavor even though I will never eat it in my game.

I've advocated for such a class. But a lot of folks seem to prefer having their cake and eating it too.

 

[Lanefan]

Let me elaborate on the part of the conversation I was participating in was about.

This was primarily about the fact most attributes roll too many things together. Constitution includes resistance to disease/poison, durability and fatigue; Dexterity includes reaction time, agility, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.
This isn't a property limited to D&D, but its pretty endemic to it.

So what are you suggesting as an alternative? That there be 12 or 18 or however many ability scores instead of six? That skills and saves be divorced from ability scores (with saves instead using a 1e-2e-like system)? Or...?

 

[Lanefan]

Adventures, I believe, have something akin to a plot, or at least a specific direction you need to go in.

I'm not sure it's always quite that cut-and-dried (though the overly-linear design of many modern adventures would tend to agree with you).

Adventures usually have a specific goal of some sort...

The party hears a rumor/gets an order to go to the landing location. After exploring, they learn they need magic crystals for whatever reason. While searching for the crystals, they meet the gnome, who can tell them of the reason they crashed--and it's because of dark intelligence inside of Ice Station Zebra. The dark intelligence is the BBEG, and once the party deals with it, the adventure is over. Between meeting the gnome and reaching the dark intelligence, there's other stuff, but in all honesty, that's mostly so they can level up. There may also be elements such as "if the party gets to the field of magic crystals by week 1, they find X; if they get there by week 2, X has been moved by yak-lemmings.

...which here might be the recovery of the crystals, getting some info from the Gnome, defeating the dark intelligence, or even all of the above. Further, that goal can change as the adventure goes along: they initially came here for the crystals but now have to deal with this dark inteligence. But ideally the specific direction the PCs take to achieve this goal is largely left up to them; i.e. the adventure itself doesn't lead them from one plot point to the next, they instead have to figure it out on their own and in so doing maybe make mistakes or miss something.

For example, here they might by sheer luck beeline straight to dealing with the dark intelligence and never meet the Gnome. Or they might find the crystals, fix their ship, and take off without ever knowing the dark intelligence exists (and then maybe have to come back later on a separate mission specifically to deal with it).

What you're describing, however, is a sandbox, which are notoriously prep-heavy simply because you need to know what's at each location.

You've got to prep the whole adventure, for sure, but (if the adventure is well-designed) that doesn't necessarily give any expectation that the PCs will interact with everything in it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So what are you suggesting as an alternative? That there be 12 or 18 or however many ability scores instead of six? That skills and saves be divorced from ability scores (with saves instead using a 1e-2e-like system)? Or...?

I'm not actually suggesting anything, but if someone has an issue with the degree of lumping the traditional D&D attribute sets do, then splitting them out further is what they need to do, and I could absolutely see an argument for more than a dozen.

But at the end what degree of lumping and splitting one wants is entirely an issue of taste. My only point is, if you have an issue with how the lumping is now, its been that way from day one, and to act like it was better earlier (other than the edge case of P&S) does not seem a sound argument.

 

[Guest 7042500]

People thinking D&D is a viable resource for the study of arms and armor has virtually ruined the internet as a serious tool for said study.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

WotC can survive mild criticism posted online.

 

[Reynard]

WotC can survive mild criticism posted online.

Won't someone think of the 800000lb juggernaut?

 

[Micah Sweet]

WotC can survive mild criticism posted online.

Perhaps more than mild.

 

[billd91]

D&D isn't Mutants and Masterminds. M&M is a great game and it would be a better fit for the way some people want to play D&D.