Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riastlin" data-source="post: 5584412" data-attributes="member: 94022">I think you are on to something here (though I don't entirely agree -- that's just my opinion of course).  I certainly agree that in some ways it takes a little more work to set yourself apart as a DM in 4ed, and I also think its also a lot more difficult to just do an abyssmal job it (railroading not included of course).  Where I think that 4ed can lead to a sense of not having the "highest of highs" is that its certainly pretty easy for a DM to forget about working on the story aspects and just keep plugging away with combats.  In earlier editions, it was almost a requirement to think about story because it took so much more work to create interesting combats (IMHO).   I know that there were times for instance, where I intentionally designed pure roleplay encounters/elements as a means of buying myself time in a session.  It took me a lot of time to come up with interesting and dynamic encounters (as it frequently required giving Class levels to a monster or something similar) whereas a roleplay encounter could be as simple as "there's a group of kobolds in the sewers who are not too bright but are trying to lay claim to them and charge for passage".  That line bought me close to an hour of session time as I had these kobolds (who were standard kobolds for the most part) trying to extort a 5 gp toll from the level 8 party of PCs.  My players loved it and we were all rolling with laughter as these kobolds were at first threatening and then later offering up information to, the party.   With 4ed though, its pretty easy, as you say, to come up with a fun dynamic fight and in some respects its almost easier than designing a roleplay encounter -- especially if one or more players suspect they've stumbled upon a skill challenge as they often revert to what I call "combat mode"; i.e. "I roll diplomacy" as opposed to actually saying what they are saying, etc.   This is where I think this article scores a lot of points in my book.  It shows that you can still have that more "old school" experience in 4ed.</blockquote>

Verification