Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orcus" data-source="post: 1121391" data-attributes="member: 1254">Buzz, I was never saying you were wrong, that handholding is bad and that "give me more than a hole in the ground" is wrong.All I am saying is that that is one theory of module design and it is one type of customer expectation. And that leads to problems for adventure writers. Because there is just as large a camp that says "just give me the hole in the ground because the plot you write wont fit my game anyway." or "dont railroad me."It is the real crux of the problem for module writers. I think one reason we have succeeded is we have tried to ride the fence and have done so rather well--enough flexibility for those who want no forced story and enough story and motivations to satisfy those who want them.And believe me, that is one thin tightrope to walk.The other problem is that people will judge an adventure not for what it is but for how it fit in their game.An example is our Wizard's Amulet. That was a free downloadable adventure that was released the first hour of the first day of GenCon (right after 12 am) the day 3E was released (the earliest anyone was allowed to have anything for release). In fact, it was the first d20 module available. It was designed to be downloaded and to get you up and running in 15 minutes. It had hooks and pregens and had a railroaded story. But the concept was that it was a jumpstart adventure (it was also free). But people still griped that the plot was too forced. Of course it was! That was how it was designed. So you see, people dont care what you tell them, they care only about how things fit them. Which isnt bad, it is just something to keep in mind.Clark</blockquote>

Verification