TSR How Did I Survive AD&D? Fudging and Railroads, Apparently

[EzekielRaiden]

But with much more style and grace showmanship a good DM can keep the players "on the rails".

A great generic way is: greed. If the player character is offered a great reward for a task, then amazingly the player will stay on the rails and do that task. Works every time.

Only if you presume your players literally never care about anything other than grabby-hands wealth-acquisition.

I don't choose to play with such players, and I would never run games for such players.

Greed is only a useful motivator when players never have higher motivations than it. As soon as they do, greed loses its luster fantastically quickly.

 

[Zardnaar]

Only if you presume your players literally never care about anything other than grabby-hands wealth-acquisition.

I don't choose to play with such players, and I would never run games for such players.

Greed is only a useful motivator when players never have higher motivations than it. As soon as they do, greed loses its luster fantastically quickly.

Greeds never been a big motivation. Power has been.

Doing a 1E style campaign. 1gp=1xp, xp for magic items ( and monsters, Role-playing, quests etc).

Kinda new for me/bit different. 2E lacked it and my BECMI DM house ruled it out (1 year to hit level 4).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Only if you presume your players literally never care about anything other than grabby-hands wealth-acquisition.

I don't choose to play with such players, and I would never run games for such players.

Greed is only a useful motivator when players never have higher motivations than it. As soon as they do, greed loses its luster fantastically quickly.

I don't think I could find any players motivated by the acquisition of pretend wealth*. Another reason sandboxes don't work well with my group. They really just want to beat up bad guys and save the (pretend) world.


*Or power

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think I could find any players motivated by the acquisition of pretend wealth. Another reason sandboxes don't work well with my group. They really just want to beat up bad guys and save the (pretend) world.

Mine want to level up. They're not to worried how.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Mine want to level up. They're not to worried how.

My players voted unanimously to ditch xp and use milestone levelling. So they could level up by doing hero stuff.

 

[Zardnaar]

My players voted unanimously to ditch xp and use milestone levelling. So they could level up by doing hero stuff.

We do that in 5E, xp for OSR.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't think I could find any players motivated by the acquisition of pretend wealth*. Another reason sandboxes don't work well with my group. They really just want to beat up bad guys and save the (pretend) world.


*Or power

Yep. That's been the motivation for the vast majority of people I've played with. Sure, it's cool to get some fun combo or have a cool weapon or whatever. But getting to be a Big Damn Hero and slap down some jerks that so richly deserve to be taken down a peg or five? That's the draw.

And then, at least in the game I run, I get them to care about things and people and they're like "I didn't sign up for all these feels! How dare you make us feel this with our own feelings! When is the next session?"

 

[Zardnaar]

Yep. That's been the motivation for the vast majority of people I've played with. Sure, it's cool to get some fun combo or have a cool weapon or whatever. But getting to be a Big Damn Hero and slap down some jerks that so richly deserve to be taken down a peg or five? That's the draw.

And then, at least in the game I run, I get them to care about things and people and they're like "I didn't sign up for all these feels! How dare you make us feel this with our own feelings! When is the next session?"

Main objective is fun. How one gets there varies.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd say it depends on whether this is:
(a) the premise you start off the campaign with
(b) a new adventure hook following up after a major resolved plot (e.g. "we just stopped Dagnast McBadguy")
or
(c) inflicted upon the players in order to ensure that they do, in fact, go to where they're "supposed" to go

There's a fourth possibility as well:

(d) the disease is merely serving as a doom-clock to keep the party moving, perhaps more quickly than they otherwise might, and is a side piece to the actual adventure. For example they think they're going out after the cure and their odds are very good of finding it, but the real adventure will reveal itself during this process e.g. finding the cure draws them in to Castle Amber or Ravenloft or somewhere else they then have to complete an adventure to get out of.

This might relate to your point c above, but it could also just be a means of (in theory) preventing the 5-minute workday approach.

And this illustrates an important point: context matters. It's incredibly important to know WHY and HOW something is happening. There's sort of a sliding scale between "perfectly reasonable no-problems DMing choices" on one end and "blatant bullcrap" on the other, and this specific thing, inflicting a disease on the party out of the blue? Yeah that falls in the grey-est of grey areas.

Context matters, and so does frequency: is this disease business a one-off for this adventure only (in which case it's probably OK no matter what) or is it, or something similar, a feature of almost every adventure in the campaign (in which case it's very likely bad)?

 

[Lanefan]

Only if you presume your players literally never care about anything other than grabby-hands wealth-acquisition.

Yep, that's oftentimes pretty much the case around here, much to our amusement sometimes.

I'm not the greediest player in our crew and yet one of my characters long ago invented a new version of the NG alignment: Neutral Greedy.

I don't choose to play with such players, and I would never run games for such players.

Said while looking down your nose from a lofty height at players like me and many others, judging by the implied tone.

Greed is only a useful motivator when players never have higher motivations than it. As soon as they do, greed loses its luster fantastically quickly.

I've found different. Fulfilment of those higher motivations has to be paid for somehow, thus greed is and remains at least a secondary motivator throughout.