Easilly assembled encounters, more character driven adventures?

[med stud]

Uhm...because I want to take full advantage of every rule set I use? If I run a 4e game, it's going to be full of pits over lava, hordes of minions, and rolling boulders.

Um, you can take full advantage of a rule set one piece at a time, you know. You can have one encounter with 10 kobold minions, the next encounter with some kind of death trap and the third to be a battle on a bridge across a river of lava.

You don't have to combine them every time. I have read the same information as you, and I haven't seen it stated or hinted at that you have to use everything at the same time, every encounter.

 

[Lizard]

The trick is to run the game the way you want to run it, and the devil take the zeitgeist. Why, I'll bet you've never even banned wizards and paladins.

Good bet.

I try to include as much as I can. I like vast, sweeping, open, anything-can-happen worlds, because if I don't use those, I end up cancelling campaigns early because I have ideas I can't fit into the world I'm running. There's a reason I go for universal-esque systems instead of specialized, focused, ones. (D&D is focused on fantasy, but it's very broad fantasy that can have street-level gang wars at first level, crashed generation ships at 10th level and raiding hell at 20th level. Or even the other way 'round.)

 

[hong]

Good bet.

blah blah blah

And the only thing stopping you designing your encounters the way you want to, is you.

 

[hong]

Um, you can take full advantage of a rule set one piece at a time, you know. You can have one encounter with 10 kobold minions, the next encounter with some kind of death trap and the third to be a battle on a bridge across a river of lava.

You don't have to combine them every time. I have read the same information as you, and I haven't seen it stated or hinted at that you have to use everything at the same time, every encounter.

Lizard is just going through a phase of looking at the world through brown-coloured glasses.

 

[Lizard]

And the only thing stopping you designing your encounters the way you want to, is you.

True. I am always free to design encounters which are poor uses of the system.

Why would I want to, though?

 

[Lizard]

Lizard is just going through a phase of looking at the world through brown-coloured glasses.

Phase?

When I was 13, my mother complained I was too cynical.

That was 30 years ago.

This ain't no phase.

 

[hong]

Phase?

When I was 13, my mother complained I was too cynical.

That was 30 years ago.

This ain't no phase.

Ah, so you do this better than Guardians of Order, then.

 

[hong]

True. I am always free to design encounters which are poor uses of the system.

Why would I want to, though?

The system will not care if you use it well or not. The system is a dead thing, coming to life only in the hands that can revitalise and mold it into a living campaign. Running a campaign is not supposed to be character building, brown-coloured glasses notwithstanding.

 

[Lizard]

The system will not care if you use it well or not.

My players will.

What else matters?

 

[hong]

My players will.

What else matters?

Ah, so your players will apparently care that you must run the game in a manner to which they are unaccustomed. That clears so much up.