Does 4e limit the scope of campaigns?

[Majoru Oakheart]

One of the key things for me when designing a new world that makes it different is that things just work differently in some ways than they did in the last game. Others might accomplish this by changing what edition of the game they play. Me, I just look at what worked/didn't work in the last game, tweak to suit that and the setting I have in mind (example: in my current game Gnomes are very rare, so I had to tweak the racial abundance table - yes, I have players who roll randomly for race - to reflect that) and go. But I'm using the same base rule set, built on the 1e platform, that I've been using since 1984.

I think it's that I don't really want to customize my worlds. Seems like it would take too much time. It's hard enough coming up with a plot, some encounters, and so on. I don't have the patience to write up house rules. I think about 2006, I finally decided to write up a 1 page document with some house rules. And the only thing they did was rebalance the game. Things like "No Frenzied Berserkers" and "Mordenkainen's Disjunction is not allowed". It took me 6 years of playing 3e before I decided to change anything at all.

I let D&D run...whatever D&D runs. But I've always been kind of a gamist. I know it's a game, I let it be a game with all the quirks that come with that. I understand that other people come from the point of view of attempting to simulate a world they have in their head and hate when the rules don't fit that world and have to fix the rules accordingly. I've never had to do that.

Fair enough, though I as a player would find that a bit dull.

I think this comes from the same place as your above comments. In my worlds, nearly everyone speaks common. In my 4e worlds, I use the PHB justification for that. There was a big human empire that used to occupy the entire continent and, although it died, everyone learned the trade language of that empire during the couple of hundred years it lasted. Regional languages may exist, but if you're not from those regions, you don't know them.

Oh, absolutely. But "heavily influence" does not equal "dictate", and things can still take sharp left turns sometimes.

Well, it's pretty close to dictate. I often leave my players with only 2 or 3 valid options. And they all get to the same place in the end.

Of course, they normally come up with an option that in my estimation will get them all killed or arrested, no question about it. And they are firmly convinced that, not only will they succeed but, it is a great idea. I often, have to step out of my DM role and say "Look, you aren't that stupid. You know this won't work."

I'm firmly on record with my players as refusing outright to DM a game where the PCs do nothing but get involved in buy-low-sell-high trade economics - and they would, if I let 'em.

Yeah, I'm with you. I also didn't want to run the game where my players decided to open up a tavern and run an underground fight ring as an entire campaign while the world was being attacked by powerful alien creatures.

I didn't want to run the game where the players holed themselves up in a warehouse armed with as many weapons as they could buy and decide to never leave.

Or the one where they spent the first 2 sessions whoring and drinking.

But it always seems to happen when I don't....push them. I've taken to just running purchased adventures and telling them, "We are playing Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. If your character doesn't want to do this quest, make another one. If at any point you feel your character would not continue on the adventure, make up another one." Even on the rare occasion when I decide to write my own games, it's pretty much understood that whatever I set out as an adventure is the point of the game. The characters are being challenged to solving the puzzle I put in front of them, not to drive the game forward.

That said, most of the time my games don't so much resemble summer blockbusters as they do the comedy skits being put on by the local amateur theater company down the road. And that's just how I like it.

Yeah, they end up as comedy skits most of the time, anyway. But, normally action-adventure-comedies. Between the stupid comments and silliness, there is still a plot of saving the world, beating up the bad guys and taking their stuff.

 

[Fenes]

I've taken to just running purchased adventures and telling them, "We are playing Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. If your character doesn't want to do this quest, make another one. If at any point you feel your character would not continue on the adventure, make up another one." Even on the rare occasion when I decide to write my own games, it's pretty much understood that whatever I set out as an adventure is the point of the game. The characters are being challenged to solving the puzzle I put in front of them, not to drive the game forward.

I tell my players: I prepare an adventure. If you don't want to do it I expect you to be active enough with your character to create another adventure on the fly.
What I dislike are players who do nothing, players who do something, start plots and projects are allright in my book, no matter if they bite on my own hooks or not.