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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 8287125" data-attributes="member: 6795602">I've read the first 20 pages or so.Here's my input.Story is literally any fictional event and since D&D has no defined stopping point and no preset duration or ending for any of it's 'chapters' or for the overall 'work' itself then it really doesn't lend itself to story terms like climax very well - because there is always or can always be a next chapter.  It's this continuous nature of D&D that IMO makes small snapshots of it's story nearly meaningless to analyze prior to the players moving on to a different campaign with different characters.But if we insist on using story terms like climax which is really what I think [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] is talking about - He's asking do you prefer that players can skillfully achieve advantages that undermine would-be 'climatic' events.  It seems to me this notion assumes a relatively concrete precrafted scenario with precrafted contingencies.  Which is surely 1 way to play D&D and a fairly popular one as far as I can tell.  I think there can be a true conflict in this kind of scenario about whether the DM modifies his adventure or blocks the rest in order to ensure there is a proper climax or whether he allows the would-be climax to be subverted provided there's no precrafted contingency to adjust it back toward being a climax.  In this kind of style, where the table is playing with the assumption of precrafted scenarios and precrafted contingencies then not giving the players their advantage would be 'unfair' on some level.  But DMing doesn't always have to be about fairness either.  Sometimes it can be about fun or providing a challenge or etc.  I think fairness tends to be the most important but the others can be used mostly via illusion on occasion and they can make a better experience for it.  So I can't really answer the OP because while I would tend toward what he terms skilled play being the priority, it's not such a priority that I'd never go a different route IMO.But also, D&D doesn't have to be played with precrafted scenarios and precrafted contingincies.  In other playstyles the BBEG can be loosely defined as strong but defeatable by the PC's and then that encounter gets instantiated only when the PC's arrive.  There can also be contingencies that haven't been precrafted.  So I think the question is a little loaded on unstated assumptions - which is another reason I can't actually answer the poll.</blockquote>

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