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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7586417" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>[3D][/3D]</p><p></p><p>In other words, I wrote a whole essay worth of questions, but rather than address any of them, you're going to say, "Well, that's just your opinion man." Nor are you going to attempt to counter my assertions. Ok, fine. Consider the rest of this "self-indulgent" rant addressed to someone that wants to talk. </p><p></p><p>What isn't my opinion is that even the evidence you site, such as pemerton's game that name drops the keep, bears little relationship to the text and the game he is playing doesn't even require the text. He doesn't really treat the Keep as a site based adventure, but is running a character driven and event based adventure. By his own admission, the Caves which are so central to the text, plays very little role in the adventure he actually made. Even NPCs which are very loosely drawn from the text such as the cleric who is an evil spy, on whom the adventure lavishes comparatively large attention, do not have the motivations or behavior in pemerton's hands that they have in the text. </p><p></p><p>What he may be running is a good game, but what he isn't running is "B2: Keep on the Borderlands" except in name. And this is what I tend to find about people who defend the module. They aren't actually defending the module. They are defending the unique game that they ran which the module played a comparatively small role in. In pemerton's case, the size of this role is extremely small. There is a Keep, and a Bailiff, and an evil cleric, but of the two sessions of play almost none of it is drawn from the text. A generic map of a Keep would have served him just as well, but as with most 'urban adventures' even the map could have probably been dispensed with, since urban adventures tend to occur on a single stage and the GM tends to just change the drapes between scenes.</p><p></p><p>Now, there could be a really interesting discussion of the processes and inputs that lead people to not play the game provided according to the text of it, and how those other processes developed them as DMs, and why they still reference the Keep - [MENTION=6859536]Monayuris[/MENTION] suggests that for him the Keep gives him the part of a game that is tedious to come up with which is interesting. But defending a module by saying that it is good for what not is in it, and that in play they made little use of what is in it and a lot of use of what is not, is not defending the module. </p><p></p><p>My play preferences are not so clear cut as all that - for one thing I deny the categories of simulationist/gamist/narrativist and the primary tenets of the GNS big theory framework that surround them. My ongoing campaign featured bits and pieces of 'Of Sound Mind' (in a game world without 'psionics'), 'The Whispering Cairn' (as an adventure location for 6th level characters), 'Mad God's Key' (with no Greyhawk specific lore), and 'The Isle of Dread' (with almost no content from the original module beyond the general setting). But why would I attempt to defend the quality of those modules by saying I didn't run them according to the text, that I altered them extensively, and that in some cases large portions of the module's plot simply didn't pertain to play as it happened in my game? Instead, I can defend those modules based on what is in the text, as modules that provide important instruction and good varied play if played as written, and which can also in more experienced hands be mined for useful content and played in ways the writer's couldn't have imagined.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7586417, member: 4937"] [3D][/3D] In other words, I wrote a whole essay worth of questions, but rather than address any of them, you're going to say, "Well, that's just your opinion man." Nor are you going to attempt to counter my assertions. Ok, fine. Consider the rest of this "self-indulgent" rant addressed to someone that wants to talk. What isn't my opinion is that even the evidence you site, such as pemerton's game that name drops the keep, bears little relationship to the text and the game he is playing doesn't even require the text. He doesn't really treat the Keep as a site based adventure, but is running a character driven and event based adventure. By his own admission, the Caves which are so central to the text, plays very little role in the adventure he actually made. Even NPCs which are very loosely drawn from the text such as the cleric who is an evil spy, on whom the adventure lavishes comparatively large attention, do not have the motivations or behavior in pemerton's hands that they have in the text. What he may be running is a good game, but what he isn't running is "B2: Keep on the Borderlands" except in name. And this is what I tend to find about people who defend the module. They aren't actually defending the module. They are defending the unique game that they ran which the module played a comparatively small role in. In pemerton's case, the size of this role is extremely small. There is a Keep, and a Bailiff, and an evil cleric, but of the two sessions of play almost none of it is drawn from the text. A generic map of a Keep would have served him just as well, but as with most 'urban adventures' even the map could have probably been dispensed with, since urban adventures tend to occur on a single stage and the GM tends to just change the drapes between scenes. Now, there could be a really interesting discussion of the processes and inputs that lead people to not play the game provided according to the text of it, and how those other processes developed them as DMs, and why they still reference the Keep - [MENTION=6859536]Monayuris[/MENTION] suggests that for him the Keep gives him the part of a game that is tedious to come up with which is interesting. But defending a module by saying that it is good for what not is in it, and that in play they made little use of what is in it and a lot of use of what is not, is not defending the module. My play preferences are not so clear cut as all that - for one thing I deny the categories of simulationist/gamist/narrativist and the primary tenets of the GNS big theory framework that surround them. My ongoing campaign featured bits and pieces of 'Of Sound Mind' (in a game world without 'psionics'), 'The Whispering Cairn' (as an adventure location for 6th level characters), 'Mad God's Key' (with no Greyhawk specific lore), and 'The Isle of Dread' (with almost no content from the original module beyond the general setting). But why would I attempt to defend the quality of those modules by saying I didn't run them according to the text, that I altered them extensively, and that in some cases large portions of the module's plot simply didn't pertain to play as it happened in my game? Instead, I can defend those modules based on what is in the text, as modules that provide important instruction and good varied play if played as written, and which can also in more experienced hands be mined for useful content and played in ways the writer's couldn't have imagined. [/QUOTE]
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