NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 4288446" data-attributes="member: 3087">I should put this in my sig.I was pretty worried that ePoL left out too much for the players. Mystery is just another way to look at it (i.e. instead of "avoiding talking about history" I just say "there is history you don't know") That -is- true. A collaborative effort is a lot of work, especially when a player does something and it gets "dropped" by someone else (sometimes because they've missed it and sometimes because two people don't see eye to eye).And then the DM (as sort of arbiter) has to pick up on that, and try to thread things back together.There were definitely posts people put up where I had to think and think and think and think to try to figure out how it would work.[sblock=Unimportant example](I basically re-wrote the plot from scratch after hewligan had Karothen receive "nothing" from the Geeche).Before that Karothen was -not- going to be a particularly important heroic soul. After that? He had to be. It didn't make sense otherwise.Of course, hewligan is gone now... but that does give me a "free" heroic soul to use as a deus ex machina. And since I didn't make him up myself he's a much richer character than he would be normally. IMHO anyway.[/sblock][sblock=Just speaking generally about homebrews/published settings, adventures and "control"]I'm a pretty control/power dynamics obsessed person. I think healthy relationships/lives etc come from people being at a parity in terms of power (and comfortable with that), or people being in dominant positions using their authority in a way that is transparent and everyone is more-or-less happy with.I usually only run published settings. I just think it creates a richer vision if the DM is writing on top of an existing world. You've given up your right to "total control". Maybe you hate drow or warlocks but drow exist in your world and you've got to make do and find stories you can tell that include them.If we pick a setting as a group, then everybody has say. If we're playing in Eberron then there are a bunch of things you've been promised (at least in theory, some people don't necessarily absorb that and run Eberron in ways that diverge from the book). But in theory, in addition to all the "game objects" you have, like shifters and artificers you also have a bunch of things you've (in theory) agreed to.The PCs are powerful, important heroesThe world is grey instead of black and whiteetc.If you're playing a "specific adventure" then there's even more parity. I tend to think that that's the reason why there are so many So-and-so's Published Adventure Z (rena1g's RHoD, Redclaws Eyes of the Lich Queen, S@s' AtG, etc). I tend to feel that this is DnD's strength: players have a lot more "rights" than they do in other games. (Some people don't think so but I just think they're confused about actual power as opposed to apparent/superficial power).With the forge, etc this is changing a bit, but DnD is still one of the few games where players have a lot of "rights" (especially in 3.5, with the CR rules). The clarity of rules, world and the strength of tradition mean that the players have a "right" to experience stories their a certain way, to have their characters treated a certain way, etc.[/sblock]Cool!I am actually not too concerned about this...-Most- of the story telling that's happened has been personal so far.I actually do have a deus ex machina way to just -start- the adventure. We could even just have basic character concepts and start <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res" target="_blank">in media res</a>.Any opinion about the "mystery level".Or is it not the big deal I was thinking it was?</blockquote>

Verification