Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 8140879" data-attributes="member: 6999616">Reading the first article, it seems to be be an attempt to rationalise a casual, uninvolved play style into a description of all role-playing. To look at the examples:The shoggoth presentation is poor session management by the GM. Let the players take their pizza slices and finish laughing at their jokes, remind them that they have a game to get on with, so that they switch to concentrating on the session, and then spring the monster on them, preferably in a more invidious way than &quot;appearing from the shadows,&quot; so that it is close to them, with a positional advantage, by the time they notice it.The dragon attack is puzzling: how have &quot;high-level characters&quot; never met a dragon before? Even if they have not, they are likely to have heard about them and have some idea of what they do. In most D&amp;D worlds I've experienced, the best options for dragons are flee, talk or attack at full strength immediately. Getting in close is a good idea, because that makes it harder for the dragon to get lots of people in an area-effect breath weapon, and a dragon's sheer size mean there's space for everyone who does melee to attack.The rust monster scene is just weird. Does a &quot;high-level party&quot; not have a magician capable of dispatching, charming or polymorphing a rust monster quickly? To me, admittedly not a player of modern versions of D&amp;D, rust monsters are a low-to-medium level monster, and putting one up against high levels is just giving them something that they'll collect, usually via Polymorph Others and use as a weapon later.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="John Dallman, post: 8140879, member: 6999616"] Reading the first article, it seems to be be an attempt to rationalise a casual, uninvolved play style into a description of all role-playing. To look at the examples: The shoggoth presentation is poor session management by the GM. Let the players take their pizza slices and finish laughing at their jokes, remind them that they have a game to get on with, so that they switch to concentrating on the session, and then spring the monster on them, preferably in a more invidious way than "appearing from the shadows," so that it is close to them, with a positional advantage, by the time they notice it. The dragon attack is puzzling: how have "high-level characters" never met a dragon before? Even if they have not, they are likely to have heard about them and have some idea of what they do. In most D&D worlds I've experienced, the best options for dragons are flee, talk or attack at full strength [I]immediately[/I]. Getting in close is a [I]good[/I] idea, because that makes it harder for the dragon to get lots of people in an area-effect breath weapon, and a dragon's sheer size mean there's space for everyone who does melee to attack. The rust monster scene is just weird. Does a "high-level party" not have a magician capable of dispatching, charming or polymorphing a rust monster quickly? To me, admittedly not a player of modern versions of D&D, rust monsters are a low-to-medium level monster, and putting one up against high levels is just giving them something that they'll collect, usually via [I]Polymorph Others[/I] and use as a weapon later. [/QUOTE]

Verification