Recent content by zarionofarabel

Sorry, I mistook what you said to mean you prepped plotlines for the PCs to play through. If you mean like "worldbuilding" specifically then I totally understand. I too engage in worldbuilding, though because of my laziness I usually use published settings or the setting that comes with a...

Cool...that's exactly what I do too! I guess the difference is it all just exists in my head instead of being written down on a piece of paper. [Bolded relevant part for clarity]

Well, yeah. That's the inherent advantage of an ad lib style. The entirety of the events of the campaign, both micro AND macro, can be drastically affected by choices the players make. I'm not saying that games with planned plotlines completely lack player agency, but ad lib games definitely...

It's a linear adventure is it not? I mean, as long as the players want to follow the prepped plotline. I am very curious...why do you think this? Is it that lack of prepped material will encourage a GM to force players to follow a prepped plotline?

Never meant for it to come off that way, sorry. Just curious is all. I've played in games with a couple of prepper GMs and they had material planned, but I don't think it was to the degree that you do it, at least the amount of paper they had didn't seem like it would hold that many words. Side...

I'm very curious to know...how often is the narrative driven by the actions of the PCs? How often do decisions players make actually effect events that happen in the game? Do players just play through all the stuff that's prepped? Can players in your games completely abandon a prepared plotline...

How would having it written down beforehand change anything though? Isn't it just as easy to change your preplanned stuff to "help" the NPC as it is to just make up an advantageous situation on the fly? I don't see how having stuff prepared ahead of time would have any effect on whether or not a...

How so? Nah. As long as I have even a general idea of what happened, coming up with clues is pretty easy. Then again I haven't watched a TV or movie mystery or thriller that contained anything truly surprising in a couple of decades, so that might make a difference. While I do try to throw in a...

I "world build" in my imagination between sessions, usually by daydreaming about stuff, if it's something really good and memorable I might even write it down! I full on improvise at the table during session play. I've always found it much easier, and helps spur my imagination, to riff off the...

Pendragon and The Great Pendragon Campaign! At least, most of it anyway as ideally it would be one year per session and the campaign is 80 years long...so yeah, that would be my first pick. Of course there would be the caveat that rule #4 would probably be broken as players would definitely have...

Sounds like a nice menu of powerful monsters that I could use as unique individuals! Heck, I could even use the pseudodragon as an individual, perhaps as a previously gigantic dragon like the others, that was "shrunken" by a powerful wizard! Nice!!!

I lose nothing by making monsters wholly unique. I gain the ability to suprise and frighten players by having monsters who's abilities are unknown. That means there is never a "oh whatever it's just a [insert monster] you only need to worry about it's X ability and it's vulnerable to Y"...

Yes! I much prefer "monsters" to be akin to the creatures of mythology. I have never liked the idea of "monsters" being natural. They should be strange and unworldly, creations of magic or dark powers, not part of the natural ecosystem. Yes!!! They really ruined Dragons when they made them "run...

I think it's purely group specific. I watch a heck of a lot of 5e D&D YT creators that espouse what I can only describe as a "collaborative storytelling" approach. It's mostly the OSR crowd that sticks to the "real seeming setting interaction" kind of game. A lot of the OSR crowd also has a well...

Something that just came to mind...though it's not D&D per se... In Pendragon, any time a fumble result is rolled during combat, if the PC/NPC that rolled the fumble is using a sword, they drop said sword. However, if they are using a weapon that is NOT a sword, the weapon breaks! Every...