Dragongirl
First Post
...what the most difficult aspect of designing a campaign/adventure, what would it be?
DMs If you had to choose...
- Thread starter Dragongirl
- Start date
howandwhy99
Adventurer
Time
Personally, I find the most difficult aspect of DMing original material is the amount of time and dedication it truly takes. It's a lot easier for me to run something ready-made, but designing is another story. If you really know the desires of your players, though, you can trim this down.
Other than that, I would say that flexibility is also pretty tricky. Players will tell you what they like and don't like, but changing plots and storylines in mid steam, while keeping it coherent and fun is a real challenge for me. It can really suck, but sometimes something I put a lot of time into can go straight to the trashbin because the group let me know their thoughts out of game.
Personally, I find the most difficult aspect of DMing original material is the amount of time and dedication it truly takes. It's a lot easier for me to run something ready-made, but designing is another story. If you really know the desires of your players, though, you can trim this down.
Other than that, I would say that flexibility is also pretty tricky. Players will tell you what they like and don't like, but changing plots and storylines in mid steam, while keeping it coherent and fun is a real challenge for me. It can really suck, but sometimes something I put a lot of time into can go straight to the trashbin because the group let me know their thoughts out of game.
The little things.
With scifi I find it really easy. I know in know uncertain terms how the real world works, so if my plans, as loose as they are go awry, so what, I still know where I am. After all a scifi world is just like the real one I'm so familiar with only with more technology and more Keneth Lay's and Neutron Jack's.
With fantasy, it seems tougher to get that subtler texture, the more delicate colors. One way to get around that is a great deal of planning. I personally abhore planning for reasons already mentioned. I suppose if I'd read more fantasy it would be simpler, but as it stands I'm VERY poorly read. And reading fantasy doesn't interest me much as I find so much of it poorly written (at least for me). Once more movies can't serve as a stand in the same what they can in scifi.
The real trick, at least I'm starting to think, is to create the game within the game. The soft rules so to speak. The richer that game is, the richer the world I paint will be.
With scifi I find it really easy. I know in know uncertain terms how the real world works, so if my plans, as loose as they are go awry, so what, I still know where I am. After all a scifi world is just like the real one I'm so familiar with only with more technology and more Keneth Lay's and Neutron Jack's.
With fantasy, it seems tougher to get that subtler texture, the more delicate colors. One way to get around that is a great deal of planning. I personally abhore planning for reasons already mentioned. I suppose if I'd read more fantasy it would be simpler, but as it stands I'm VERY poorly read. And reading fantasy doesn't interest me much as I find so much of it poorly written (at least for me). Once more movies can't serve as a stand in the same what they can in scifi.
The real trick, at least I'm starting to think, is to create the game within the game. The soft rules so to speak. The richer that game is, the richer the world I paint will be.
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Maps. I am damn lazy, and drawing up maps takes the most time in preparing adventures.
Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of everything is crap ("Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud.") definitely applies to fantasy. For good suggestions, take a look at Need Good Fantasy Literature Recommendations (again). I particularly recommend anything in Gollancz's Fantasy Masterworks series (published in the UK):
The Conan Chronicles by Robert E. Howard
The Conan Chronicles, vol. 2 by Robert E. Howard
The King Of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
etc.
Many of the books are available in US editions; some aren't.
There are surprisingly few good fantasy movies, but the recent Fellowship of the Ring and the original Conan the Barbarian are solid movies. You can find some good imagery in Labyrinth, Legend, Excalibur, and a few other decent fantasy flicks.
Numion
First Post
Making up a good plot is both the hardest and the most rewarding part for me. If the plot isn't good, I have also hard time designing the locales around it. On the other hand, if I have a clear image of what I want to make, drawing the maps and filling them is easy.
Or maybe the hardest part is getting inspiration, and to maintain it. I don't know.
Or maybe the hardest part is getting inspiration, and to maintain it. I don't know.
Zappo
Explorer
The time. Oh, I find it hard to draw the maps, to write the details, to stat NPCs, but only because of the time it takes. I just don't have time for all of that.
Ok, probably there's a bit of frustration in that answer... you see, I have an extremely important deadline for my university final exam in less than three days - should've been eight, but it seems like someone messed up some document... and right now all I can do is wait for my computer to calculate an ungodly amount of data I absolutley need and that I'm not sure it can do in just 72 hours
In three days, two of which being saturday and sunday, I can't even file the request for access to the university's big machines. Serves me well for waiting until the last moment, I guess.
What does this lead me to? Time is the problem. Time is always the problem. I can come up with more interesting concepts per hour than my friggin' pentium 3 can find maximal cliques in 6500-nodes tree association graphs. But the time to detail those concepts, to write them down, stat them, I miss sorely.
Finding the proper part for PCs in the plot is hard, too.
Ok, probably there's a bit of frustration in that answer... you see, I have an extremely important deadline for my university final exam in less than three days - should've been eight, but it seems like someone messed up some document... and right now all I can do is wait for my computer to calculate an ungodly amount of data I absolutley need and that I'm not sure it can do in just 72 hours
In three days, two of which being saturday and sunday, I can't even file the request for access to the university's big machines. Serves me well for waiting until the last moment, I guess.
What does this lead me to? Time is the problem. Time is always the problem. I can come up with more interesting concepts per hour than my friggin' pentium 3 can find maximal cliques in 6500-nodes tree association graphs. But the time to detail those concepts, to write them down, stat them, I miss sorely.
Finding the proper part for PCs in the plot is hard, too.
DM with a vengence
First Post
I suck at names, (cue informercial) which is why I carry around about six pages of maraxle's name generator program.
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Yes, in just one easy downloads, you get this powerful, editable, and small name generator. And best of all, it's free! If you download now, will throw in Namepak 2 for free as well. www.jhanson.com , our servers are standing by. (end infomercial)
