Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="NoWayJose" data-source="post: 5524324" data-attributes="member: 84810">I don't know exactly. If you think difficulty level is a misnomer, maybe just label it 'choose your style' (fun and casual, gritty and challenging, etc.) where mechanics and adventure is structured to facilitate that play style. Like I wrote initially, this is just a thought experiment.&nbsp;I wasn't leaning to tweaking a homegrown campaign. I was curious if this was theoretically possible for official WoTC, Pathfinder or 3rd party publisher materials.&nbsp;I have been out of RPing for a while, but do most published adventures suggest something else as an alternative to combat, or does the adventure and/or DM more-or-less expect the PCs to slug it out through every encounter? I remember some sessions where it didn't seem to matter what the players said to try to talk their way out of combat, we almost always ended up in combat, maybe because our persuasive roleplaying sucked, maybe because the DM had planned for and expected to &quot;use up&quot; every major encounter, maybe because the adventure was structured to best fit that kind of 'next battle, ok, next battle' formula.&nbsp;That's exactly why I emphasized an optional higher difficulty that is layered over the standard rules. DM buys a new adventure, it offers casual, normal, difficult, and DM and/or players have a consensus on which level or play style they'd like to attempt.&nbsp;I think the difficulty level they're happy with depends very much on their expectations from the system. I could be happy with a casual difficulty level in 4E D&amp;D, and yet be paradoxically happy with a high difficulty level in Call of Cthulhu. If D&amp;D doesn't offer a gritty alternative, or a think-before-you-act alternative, how would players know to be happy with anything but the status quo?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="NoWayJose, post: 5524324, member: 84810"] I don't know exactly. If you think difficulty level is a misnomer, maybe just label it 'choose your style' (fun and casual, gritty and challenging, etc.) where mechanics and adventure is structured to facilitate that play style. Like I wrote initially, this is just a thought experiment. I wasn't leaning to tweaking a homegrown campaign. I was curious if this was theoretically possible for official WoTC, Pathfinder or 3rd party publisher materials. I have been out of RPing for a while, but do most published adventures suggest something else as an alternative to combat, or does the adventure and/or DM more-or-less expect the PCs to slug it out through every encounter? I remember some sessions where it didn't seem to matter what the players said to try to talk their way out of combat, we almost always ended up in combat, maybe because our persuasive roleplaying sucked, maybe because the DM had planned for and expected to "use up" every major encounter, maybe because the adventure was structured to best fit that kind of 'next battle, ok, next battle' formula. That's exactly why I emphasized an optional higher difficulty that is layered over the standard rules. DM buys a new adventure, it offers casual, normal, difficult, and DM and/or players have a consensus on which level or play style they'd like to attempt. I think the difficulty level they're happy with depends very much on their expectations from the system. I could be happy with a casual difficulty level in 4E D&D, and yet be paradoxically happy with a high difficulty level in Call of Cthulhu. If D&D doesn't offer a gritty alternative, or a think-before-you-act alternative, how would players know to be happy with anything but the status quo? [/QUOTE]

Verification