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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5637875" data-attributes="member: 46713">Yes! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />In theory, yes. In reality it depends on your form (and to a somewhat lesser degree on your player's form) on that day. When everything flows, it's the best gaming experience you can ever have. If your brain locks up, it's at best mediocre.Status-quo gaming, though, in my experience, is rarely (and mostly accidentally) great. Usually, things start out well, but the longer the campaign runs, the more difficult it becomes to keep the players (and yourself) interested.Since I started playing 3e I changed my DMing style radically. My reason for changing it was twofold: Firstly and most importantly I simply didn't have the time to fully prep everything I'd have needed for status-quo adventuring.Secondly, because of scheduling problems I was looking at an everchanging party composition. I had a pool of nine players and who showed up for a session and who didn't could not be planned ahead. So, without a status-quo party, using a status-quo setting didn't make much sense for me.Luckily, the improved degree of control over encounter composition by calculating ELs (or XP budgets) allowed me to adjust the difficulty on the fly for best dramatic effect.I was also noticing the effect of combat taking much longer than in previous editions: Combat had to matter. I completely got rid of random encounters, replacing them by adjustable, planned encounters.Encounters I didn't use in a given adventure went into a pool to be modified as required and reused at a later time.If I didn't use a published module as a basis for my adventures, I even got rid of maps in favour of a graph, linking events and encounters. I also liberally planted story-hooks and rumours without thinking too much about where they should lead.Between sessions I could make changes to the graphs and storyline based on what the pcs had done and what they were interested in doing the next session.I love this approach to adventure design and 4e makes it even easier to prep for sessions in this way.</blockquote>

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