Favorite Adventure Type?

[Gruns]

Hey all...
After a few years DMing for various groups, I've noticed something about people's preferred adventure types: Although most people claim to enjoy a mix of roleplaying, combat, intrigue, mystery, etc etc; when it all comes down to it, my groups most enjoy a simple dungeon crawl. Explore room to room killing everything you meet. It doesn't have to make sense- An Owlbear living one room away from a pair of Minotaurs is just fine. As long as they have phat lewt. It doesn't matter (to the PCs) if there's a rhyme or reason to the dungeon ecology since the PCs never usually hear WHY things are how they are anyway.
In my groups over the years, we've had over 20 different players (only 2 have been constant in all of the group mixups) so I'm basing this on a wide mixture of personality types. Even on this board, which I consider to have a slightly more refined pallette and should lean more toward a role-play kind of style, I find the bend is toward hack and slash. There was a recent poll here regarding best 3.0 modules. The winner? Forge of Fury. I'm currently running this right now for my group, and it's a total dungeon crawl! Nothing to interact with in a social manner (Well, there is that EL10(12) thing that you probably dont want to fight with your lvl 3 party). This is what got me thinking about this topic. When it comes down to it, people just like to kill bad guys and take their stuff.
Thoughts? Anyone feel strongly different about this?
Later!
Gruns

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

My own personal preference is away from dungeon crawls. Our current game spent the last four sessions in a dungeon-crawl converted 1st-Ed module and I've been tearing my hair out to get the heck out of there. I like story-exploration punctuated with combats ... as opposed to map-drawing and combat and drawing and combat and loot division.

We used a scrying device to totally end-run about the last 1/3 of the dungeon because we wanted to GET OUT OF THERE asap.

But that might just be myself and a few of my players ... we all enjoyed one of my games that was almost entirely PC upkeep and role-playing, with only a single story-centric combat per session or so.

--fje

 

[DSC-EricPrice]

I think there definitely is more of a push toward combat than roleplay, despite the fact I voted for the perfect balance here on the poll.

As an example, my wife and I sat down for our first game session with a group of people yesterday and began to RP pretty heavy our character emerging personalities and their interaction with the other PCs and NPCs around. It was obvious that the rest of the table was more interested in getting straight to the combat, and that they were a little embarassed by the RPing. By the end of the round though they were beginning to come out of their shell and interact some more, which in my mind is ALWAYS a good thing. If all I wanted to do was kill stuff, Id go play on my son's PS2.

 

[MonsterMash]

Well I voted for a perfect mix of combat and roleplay, but what that actually means in terms of time spent is probably different for every person that votes for that option. With 3e combat taking a fair bit of time that probably means sessions being around 60-70% of time on combat and 30-40% roleplay, but as always YMMV.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Ruins of Intrigue from Malhavoc is a good example of what I like in an adventure. Some of the exploration elements in the various Eberron adventures are also solid but lack depth.

 

[Jdvn1]

Depending on the sort of roleplaying, I like to have it no more than 40%-50% of the time.

 

[the Jester]

My group loves a good scrap, but they also love to roleplay, busting out the funny voices and character traits. From singing sea chanties to stopping everything so the halflings can eat, my players are a rare joy- the combo of rp and battle they like matches what I like almost perfectly (or so it appears)!

I'd say a typical session for us is half and half. Some games the combat level is much higher or lower, and once in a while an entire session is combat or an entire session goes by without a battle.

 

[Henry]

Could you define "perfect mix" a little better, please? Everybody probably wants that.

However, assuming you mean "about 50% combat/roleplay", I go with about 70% combat/roleplay as my favored mix, mainly because I can hold an actor's/storyteller's attention easier than I can hold a butt-kicker's, even during combats, so erring towards action over deep immerison is better in my opinion.

 

[howandwhy99]

This poll seems really limited to me. What about urban adventures? Wilderness survival adventures? Or even your stereotypical crypt crawl?

I like exciting worlds without too many pre-designed scenarios. The kind where the players make up all the fun, but because there are things/people/places where fun is to be had. Of course, all the npc's still need backgrounds and your actions require consequences too.

By far my favorite standard adventure style is the old Town and Dungeon format. This is a classic exemplified in B2 and T1. Plenty of imitators followed and numerous twists on the format have been published too. But I find this style really works to both give semblance to the "normal world" and also offers exploration into the "lairs of the unknown".

 

[Gruns]

Perfect Mix

Yeah, instead of "A Perfect Mix" it should have probably said "A 50/50 Mix"...

I'm kind of surprised there are so many right in the middle, but on the other hand, I kind of expected this from the people on these boards
My group tries to play things out with speaking/acting in character but it goes south really quick. Although often fun and entertaining, there is that feeling of awkwardness. Especially since all of my NPCs seem to have the same bad accent. And all of my dwarves talk like drunken Scottish pirates. So while we like to think we're good "roleplayers" we really just like to throw dice around and smack orcs around. And take their stuff.
I'd have to vote for the 2nd one on the list. And I dont really expect anyone to pick the first choice, as D&D just isn't quite that kind of game.
Later!
Gruns