Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 3914468" data-attributes="member: 12037">I think story awards come down to a few different things:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> a reward for accomplishing more complex goals than Kill The Monster</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> a cohesive mechanic relating various points together</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> a "wrap up" for quests with specific beginnings and endings</li> </ul>One thing everyone wants in their games (that I've seen at least) is some over-arching plot line or at the very least a link between Point A in the campaign and Point B. Something that says to them "This is why we do what we do." It can be as simple as killing the goblin raiders to save the village or as complex as... well, there's no quick way to summarize a complex plot, so I won't try. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> We can call it a quest or a story or whatever we want, but it is an interlinked series of encounters (whether they be combat, traps, dialog, whatever). When we design these encounters and when we look back on them, we see the trappings of the Quest. That's all the quest is, in effect, but it makes things more interesting, because it gives flavor and a sense of something greater to the PCs actions.The story award is basically a conceit that the PCs have worked through these linked encounters and come out victorious. It is a way of rewarding players for their ability to recognize this series, work their way through the series, and overcome the series. Whether the series comes about through DM creation before play, through DM improv during play, the player talking to the DM before play, or through the players own devious machinations during play doesn't matter. The point is that some goal has been attained, some quest has been fulfilled.So, that's where the story award comes in. The DM determines the difficulty of the whole attempt and assigns some XP. This takes for granted that some quests are actually more difficult than the sum of their parts. Just because no CR broke 4, as an arbitrary example, doesn't mean the quest was a "CR 4" quest. In effect, it wraps up the odds and ends that aren't accounted for. That's not all, though, just a part of it. It can also be used as a way to round XP to a nice even number, a way to reward players for great ideas on how the quest was handled, wrapped up with roleplaying XP, given out as a "end of adventure" award during wind down, and whatever else can be thought up.There are many many good reasons people have for like story awards. People like getting XP is probably the best good one in my book. Beyond all the fluffy stuff above, that's probably the core reason, Occam's Razor and all.Here's the thing. In my book, you are giving out quests in your game if you have any kind of linked encounters going on. So, you are creating a bunch of quests already. No extra work involved. I like handouts that explain these quests, and you don't?They just want a system for the story awards instead of it being all DM-fiat. I think that's fine. But, it has to be a DM mechanic because he is deciding how much XP to award. The Card is more of a helpful reminder than anything else, a concise place for Quest information. So, instead of having info strewn out among several loose-leaf, like we always have in the past, you've got a nice note card with the information on it.I'm not sure what you find distasteful. The quests will remain regardless, it isn't changing how quests work - indeed there has never been, and it isn't implied that 4e will have, any system for designing quests. Which, I think, is a shame, actually. Perhaps there will be and I'm just getting the wrong idea from the article. Unless the DMG2 had some? I didn't get the book.But, in any event, just because something is written down on a quest card doesn't mean that it has to be any more fleshed out because it is written down. I don't see it changing much beyond a suggestion of a helpful handout. If you have no problem with Quest XP then I'm not sure what would be troubling.</blockquote>

Verification