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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ArghMark" data-source="post: 4795851" data-attributes="member: 83266">I've come to the odd conclusion that the game 'setting' interferes with this. In early games (3e) my players found a series of interconnected, defensible tunnels. After clearing them out, they turned it into their main base and put an inn on top of it. Later, after clearing a castle of its lord (A dragon) we busily settled in to start doing crazy stuff.Both of those games died quickly after that happened. While the plot called for it, we were just expecting more 'adventure.' Later we began an Ars Magica game. While our characters (well.. most of them) weren't directly involved with the nearby town, we spend seasons building up trade routes, magical towers, defensible positions and magical wards. The game ended on a high note - While our series of magical towers were destroyed, but we killed the annoying fellow who'd been chasing us for years. Ars Magica has built into it its most important character - the 'covenant', or where the characters live. PC's deal with their own issues but they all work towards the covenant and often volunteer to do so. It changed as we built on it and did strange magical things to it, but as a general rule we liked it and wanted it to continue. I think it may be because in D+D your entire skill set is devoted to 'adventuring'. People don't want to settle down that much because its not what they are expecting out of the game. Also D+D games in my experience tend to be fast paced. A regular occurence in Ars could be 'two seasons go by, you do nothing but research and nothing of extreme importance occurs.'Playing D+D gives you players who want to kill stuff and save the day. Playing Kobolds Ate My Baby gives you kobolds who want to eat babies. Playing forgotten realms gives you people who want to look and be as cool as Drizzle or Elmunster. I think it has a significant effect. Also explaining to players what the story will be needing out of them is good; tell them 'You will be running a thieves guild' rather than they recieve it and think its a rather mixed blessing.Also, the GM has to make it interesting.</blockquote>

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