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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 8305432" data-attributes="member: 6855114">After reading other posts, I think I need to clarify things a bit further with two examples. I ran OotA thrice;  once with both of my groups and once with our Friday night dungeons. The first group was going with the flow, acting and reacting to stimuli but never initiated anything of their own beyond what was asked of them or what the situations warranted.The second group, made alliances with Grey dwarves, Mithril  halls, Triboar and the Lord's Alliance. They went to build a castle on the entrance to the underwater that led to the trading outpost, controlling the flow of trade towards that trading post and used the castle itself as a staging ground to their forays into the underdark.The third group is mainly for show, but they too, to a lesser extent, used politics and alliances to get their way and improve their chance of success.  Of these, only the second group succeeded. The first one was obliterated by Demogorgon and the third ended in the Labyrinth through a streak of bad luck and very poor, but entertaining decisions. I should point out that I am on the hard side of DMing and all my players appreciate it. I am also very democratic and all rules, house or optional are voted upon by everyone. I roll on the open, so no fudging from me. All of this makes games particularly hard games where attrition can be high, buy the feeling of achievement that comes with a successful endeavor is hard to beat. Like [USER=6944632]@Paul L[/USER] Ming I am often seen by external players as an adversarial DM. That is far from the truth. Nowadays,  hard is considered adversarial and this is a loss for our community. I DMed for a few of those that were scorning my style and guess what? They liked it in the end. Hard does not mean no RP.Hard does not mean no explorations.Hard is simply that, hard...And when you know something is and will be hard, you often try to find every single little advantage that will help you tip the sales in your favor. Be it tactics or politics or even simple historical knowledge, you will try to use those to your advantage. And thus, because you want these advantages, you will interact with the game world a lot more than if you do not need that advantage to succeed.</blockquote>

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