Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 1293969" data-attributes="member: 3820">Excellent advice, although I'd add the caveat that it's always good to keep a sharp eye on pacing, and on the tastes of your players. I've played in a game that followed this guideline for several years, and it wound up feeling almost more like a chore than like a game toward the end — we certainly felt that we had to keep our PCs involved in hunting things down, to the point that we almost never got to do anything that our PCs would have enjoyed or seen as fun. Things that we as players would have enjoyed as well! No mingling and socializing at a fancy affair, no taking a week off to go fishing, certainly no time to pursue romantic entanglements — if we weren't out there making progress against the antagonists, we'd be sorry in no time sharp. The ramifications of one particular mistake we made were still kicking us around by the time my wife and I moved away to WNC and left the campaign on a regular basis, and continue to do so whenever we visit/are visited by our friends and had time to game with them again. Now, this is certainly one of the better games I've ever played in, and it was great for making us feel empowered — even at lower levels, entire noble households were rising and falling based on what we were doing. But because the pace kept on picking up as we got to higher and higher level, and the threats kept rising in scope, we started feeling as though we'd never get to enjoy the fruits of our labors, and the power-ups of new levels and magic items couldn't compete with what we were missing. This may not be a problem for all groups — some people would be much happier with that kind of unrelenting pace — but it should definitely be said that the pacing should complement the players' tastes to some extent. This is hardly scientific reasoning, but I think that another reason that D&D spellcasting doesn't match up with literary magic use is because novels cannot afford to let magic get too repetitive if they want to keep the wonder, while a certain amount of repetitiveness is unavoidable in a roleplaying game. In a novel, a particular trick can only be used a few times before it isn't really that interesting to the reader any more; that's why you often see magic systems where spells (or magical effects) are spontaneously created to deal with the situation at hand. But in a game like D&D where spell effects are clearly defined and ranked and categorized ahead of time, once you find a particular spell or spell combination that works really well, it's in your best interests to use it as often as required. The game often assumes that you'll be using the best tools for the job, even if it means repeating yourself. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because a player has a lot more fun casting sonic-substituted fireballs again and again than a third party would have reading about another sonic-substituted fireball going off in a book. But it is a difference, and it does mean that the game probably won't match the expectations a person brings from other fantasy media. (Note that I don't say the game will be lesser than those expectations — it just won't match them.)</blockquote>

Verification