Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marshal Lucky" data-source="post: 3679474" data-attributes="member: 54050">The clever DM will simply place the tower (from my example), plus other sites, and let PCs work out if and how they want to go at it. Sometimes the planning and preparation are as fun as the assault itself. This not only encourages players to think and improvise (two things that are discouraged in railroad games), but gives the campaign a more natural feel.For example:I began a new campaign with the PCs (all 1st level) starting in a small coastal village. I planned the players' map (what their characters would know about -or think they know about). I placed all sorts of monsters and encounters on my map (100 x 100 miles). A pair of hill giants lived in the hills, an annis lived in another stretch of hills, a couple of aquatic ogres lived in the swamp, while a sea hag lurked in a cave by the sea. A wizard's tower guarded by goblins was up in the mountains, and a group of bugbears haunted a ruined castle. A vicious gang of brigands (which I intended to be the party's first opponents) lived in the woods near the village. The party (for reasons I still don't understand) decided to go after the hill giants first! Thanks to their incredible luck (and my incredibly bad attack rolls), the party killed both giants while only losing the cleric's donkey, which was killed by a hurled boulder.Now in a railroad game, that wouldn't have happened. The party would have been dragged into the woods looking for the brigands. As it turned out, the brigands came looking for them. And if the party had been TPKed (which would have happened if I hadn't rolled so many 1s), they would have learned not to bite off more than they could chew.The moral to the story is, don't be afraid to improvise and never plan an adventure in too much detail, since no plan survives contact with the enemy. Keep your options open and keep as many of them as possible.</blockquote>

Verification