Search results

When I'm the DM, it is not my adventure. It is the players' adventure. When I'm a player, motivations arise as in real life -- only in different situations. The big exception is the occasional session of 4e "Living Forgotten Realms". In that case, I'm jumping through the hoops of Scenario X...

YOU made the claim that it is "often" a problem. How confusing! No; I am stating the fact of the matter. That is hardly the only alternative to the dysfunction ("megalomania") you described! Also, you can detail very LITTLE, and that is why you "railroad" when people reach the border of the...

You have to design the "railroad"; adding detail is optional (as ever, with or without rails). From what I have seen, a "detail" often added is a note that something is actually a non-functional piece of set dressing rather than an actual prop (or character, for that matter)! In over 30 years...

I found Covenant himself vividly irritating. The story of the Land was one of many "epic fantasies" I have set aside -- but one of the few I returned to and finished years later. Donaldson's work, I think, calls for one to see it through to the end. (McKillip's Riddle Master trilogy is another...

"I didn't think this was moose-hunting season" is not a remotely sensible response to a complaint that you have been shooting at a moose badly. However, the really practically important thing now is that you have put down the gun and nobody lost an eye. Whee!

Where I demur is that I consider that there are degrees of linearity. One pattern can approximate a single line, albeit a fuzzy one, more closely than another. What I have seen more often than either of those is more like 1 - (interlude) - 2 - 3 - (interlude) - 4 - etc.. It may be a fine...

You must be LOOKING at the entire world at once, which is possible only from a great remove. Zoom in from that outer-space perspective, and guess what? There are more details. You have got to do that if you are going actually to play! In actual play, nobody is "doing the entire world at once"...

I think the non-springing chance for traps got left out of AD&D as well (along with the standard frequency for dungeon wandering monsters). Actually, both Moldvay and Mentzer give "weight in coins" for individual pieces of equipment. Moldvay's encumbrance/movement rule is a little more...

Rather than S1, I would go for the richly atmospheric C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. It uses the conceit of a real-time limit (2 hours for tournament play) as well as accumulating damage due to poison gas. Part of the deadliness is the allure of all there is to investigate, despite the...

I will stick with 1st Ed. AD&D, as that is most familiar to me. (1) "The cockatrice is not a strong, steady flyer, and will not go above 300' unless provoked into one of its screaming fits of rage." (DMG, p. 51) (3) The "recovery time" from moderate intoxication is 2-4 hours. Certain...

Well, in the original game, anti-clerics get no roll at all on the turning table. In 1st ed. Advanced D&D, the table is like this sample column: Skeleton ... D Zombie ..... D Ghoul ....... T Shadow .... T Wight ....... 4 Ghast ....... 7 Wraith ...... 13 The "D" and "T" entries indicate that a...

The really big problem with the plotted epic is not the risk that, at the Cracks of Doom, Gollum might fail to save Middle-Earth from Frodo the Hobbit Lord. It's the risk that either the players or the dice will fail to follow the script long before the finale. Either the plot or the game must...

Sure. It really comes down to whether the reluctant hero with an epic quest is free to succeed or fail on the basis of skill and luck, free even to choose another goal in life. If, in the imagined situation itself, the Fates have made prophecies that absolutely must be fulfilled -- or the hero...

Anyway, whatever floats *your* boat is the thing. It is up to you, to how you run, to make "a quick, simple, fun game that doesn't get bogged down." Your mastery of the tools is what counts. It's fair to say that some rules sets (e.g., 4e) tend to have long fight scenes, but that's not "bogged...

Without * what *, for instance? One complicated mechanism wouldn't be a "heap", but it might be a clue as to how in the world you figure. I don't have C&C handy, but I can tell you from memory that the reason the text -- the Players Handbook alone, I think -- is so much longer than the original...

Into SF? The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells. I guess I may have seen "Star Trek" or something on TV before then, but as far as I recall that novel was my introduction. The heroic fantasy, swords and spells thing (in modern form, as opposed to mythology) didn't catch my interest much until someone...

Because the thief's approach (A) is more conducive to stealth (e.g., surprise) and (B) may involve less likelihood of traps, and certainly involves less likelihood of stumbling haplessly into whatever lies beyond and (C) at some point becomes much more likely to get the door open within a given...

That looks like a good list of very broad categories. Comments: 1) The Hand Wave: All 4 of the A series have "express lines" into them, because the set made up a tournament. A4 was the final round, so the top-ranked teams were going to play it with no choice in the matter in any case. No...

By "nothing", you of course mean what we have actually been talking about: ** outcomes **. We let players make any legal moves; we roll the dice to apply the results, not just for show. Apparently, your notion of "completely random" covers pretty much everything from Chess to Drang Nach Osten...

There is a thread already devoted to arguing over terminology, and what is Fun (TM) and what is not: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/297961-railroading-just-pejorative-term.html Do we really need another? Call it "slurtlzptaaqning" if you like, and let us move on. By any...