Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8341842" data-attributes="member: 6785785">It's actually a pretty good adventure, overall. It's basic set up is very much like the old modules like Keep on the Borderlands, where you have a town, and a few nearby adventure sites, and some minimal motivation to act.Yeah, my bad....I was kind of conflating the two. I didn't have the Moldvay Basic set as a kid....my intro to Basic D&amp;D, which was pretty much simultaneous with AD&amp;D, was the Mentzer Red Box. I remember not even realizing that the two weren't compatible for the first couple of years of playing them.Right, following so many different iterations of the game and all the expectation that goes along with that, as well as a few decades of development for the hobby overall, the 5E team kind of had its work cut out for them. Their approach....and I agree it was probably necessary....was to try and keep as many folks happy as possible. And that has resulted in a very popular game, but it isn't always the most coherent or consistent version.This is why I think your daughter's game (or any group of beginners) would benefit from a published adventure (although if the gricks are evidence that they are in fact playing one, then perhaps it isn't any different); the actual advice on how to run the game tends to be in the adventure books themselves more so than the core books. What's in the core books is very broad and loose. The adventure books have specific scenarios, and so the advice gets more specific. Phandelver does indeed start with the GM telling the players that the PCs are on the road outside of Phandelver, and that they've come seeking a friend and then find out that friend is missing due to recent goblin raids. So it has that &quot;you're here, and this is why&quot; element and then the rest of the module is similar; there are locations, and then prompts to investigate other areas, and get involved in other scenarios.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 8341842, member: 6785785"] It's actually a pretty good adventure, overall. It's basic set up is very much like the old modules like Keep on the Borderlands, where you have a town, and a few nearby adventure sites, and some minimal motivation to act. Yeah, my bad....I was kind of conflating the two. I didn't have the Moldvay Basic set as a kid....my intro to Basic D&D, which was pretty much simultaneous with AD&D, was the Mentzer Red Box. I remember not even realizing that the two weren't compatible for the first couple of years of playing them. Right, following so many different iterations of the game and all the expectation that goes along with that, as well as a few decades of development for the hobby overall, the 5E team kind of had its work cut out for them. Their approach....and I agree it was probably necessary....was to try and keep as many folks happy as possible. And that has resulted in a very popular game, but it isn't always the most coherent or consistent version. This is why I think your daughter's game (or any group of beginners) would benefit from a published adventure (although if the gricks are evidence that they are in fact playing one, then perhaps it isn't any different); the actual advice on how to run the game tends to be in the adventure books themselves more so than the core books. What's in the core books is very broad and loose. The adventure books have specific scenarios, and so the advice gets more specific. Phandelver does indeed start with the GM telling the players that the PCs are on the road outside of Phandelver, and that they've come seeking a friend and then find out that friend is missing due to recent goblin raids. So it has that "you're here, and this is why" element and then the rest of the module is similar; there are locations, and then prompts to investigate other areas, and get involved in other scenarios. [/QUOTE]

Verification