Search results

Ravenloft has a bed reputation precisely because so many of its modules did one or several of the following: Pulled players in to Ravenloft from some other setting (usually FR) without their prior consent or knowledge. If someone shows up psyched to play high fantasy and is thrown into...

This is exactly the wrong way to use Ravenloft, and why it has such a negative reputation among so many players and DMs. Railroading the campaign into a new setting explicitly to give yourself carte blanch to screw with the players is uncool. Ravenloft is a very specific kind of...

I play and DM a lot of D&D, mostly 4e these days, but I've played pretty much every edition from 1st onward. Regardless, this isn't an edition specific complaint. I would say that the most common type of player I play with is one primarily interested in acting out some sort of heroic fantasy...

Tautologies are...tautologies.

I think this is exactly right. Turd-proofing a game system is probably futile and certainly pointless. But even well-intentioned gamers and DM can run into problems if they have different playstyles or are looking for different things out of the game. Obviously some level of incompatability...

My issue with this is that railroading is frequently used to refer to a style of play that is the opposite of a sandbox. By bundling that style up with those negative connotations, it implicitly biases our dialogue in favor of sandboxes when, as I said, I don't actually believe sandboxes to be...

There's a pretty wide canyon between "monsters intentionally adopt the worst possible tactics short of actively stabbing themselves" and "monsters are ruthless tactical masters who always shift+charge to avoid AoO's, focus fire like maniacs, set up cdg's, etc." and most kids I've known and DMed...

Note: Since I know thread about ill-defined gamingterminology can easily devolve into semantic argument, for my own purposes and the purposes of this thread I'm going to define "railroading" as :"A process in which the gamemaster of a tabletop RPG has a predefined story for a session, adventure...

This pretty much gets it for me. In fantasy fiction, heroes generally overcome impossible odds, get insanely lucky, pull insane comebacks out of their ass, etc. This is part of why they're "heroes" and not chumps--it is understood that 99.9% percent of people, if faced with the odds the heroes...

The 60% to hit chance that he cites as the 4e standard seems a little low to me. I mean, maybe when the game was first made and if you weren't using a ton of synergy. These days though, its easy to optimize characters for a 70%+ base hit chance, and it is also easy to get massive synergy bonuses...

I think you're misunderstanding me. My original point had nothing to do with the long term rewards of pen and paper gaming. In fact, I was making the opposite point, that "story-driven" and "social" rewards can be just as instantaneously gratifying as the "ooh flashy" rewards of gaming, and I...

And my argument is that, unless we're literally splitting fractions of a second here, the type of gratification PNP games are good at offering can be just as "instant" as in video games. No, there's no "look at the flashy", but that isn't the only kind of instantaneous reward. When my friends...

I have to say, I don't find the argument that video games are better at delivering instant gratification and rewards than PnP to be a compelling one. I mean, obviously they're better at providing certain kinds of gratification and rewards. Constant mechanical engagement (i.e. not needing to...

My players don't mind conditions that add tactical complexity, like slowed or prone or something. They force them to make tough choices, and while they often have resources with which to counteract those conditions, those resources are limited, so they make things more strategically interesting...

1st edition gave you lots of awesome rules for playing a cool fantasy hero who raided unspeakably deadly dungeons for a chance at treasure and glory. 2nd edition did that too, but then it told you that actually using those rules made you a bad roleplayer, and the game was ideally played without...

Interesting. While I know virtually nothing about Wuxia beyond the films that have broken through in the west, I nevertheless almost qualified my original statement by pointing out that, while western fantasy novels share only superficial similarities with D&D in terms of structure, there are...

....what? "Similar stories" in what sense? You mean stories about getting bodily fluids on my nerd crap and then bragging about it on the internet? Unfortunately, I have none. Also, what the hell does this have to do with shrooms?

I won't "save" the PCs in the sense of fudging rolls or Deus Ex Machina, and my monsters make a sincere attempt to kill the PCs. However, I'm a DM who is naturally inclined to reward creativity, and this trait gets ratcheted up to 11 in "near-TPK" situations, such that if the players can hit...

#27 Characters will be on a constant trial basis with their group. If at any point they are not 100% optimized, everyone else in the group needs to say things like "deeps sucks" over and over again and then kick that character out.

I think video games can definitely provide useful inspiration--video games are probably closer to D&D in terms of fictional tropes and genre conventions than any other media. Think about it. People always compare D&D to fantasy novels, but for the most part, while they do share superficial...