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Legends and Lore October 22nd
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6037913" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>Yeah. It can be either/or or both all at once (to different parties at the table). It just depends on who is at the table. As time went on my table has contracted and has become more coherent where the three players all have very specific, very focused tastes...tastes which are in line with each other. </p><p></p><p>There was one player (he had a 5 year run with us) that we used to play with that was of the "ponderous" variety. He loved examination and scrutiny and cautious OD&D dungeon crawl style where literally no strategic or precautionary stone could go unturned. Due to his insistent prodding, my players spent an entire 4 hour session (4 hours...yes, 4 hours) deliberating on the best way to traverse a large drain line system in order to attempt to circumvent a singular stealth contest against a few guards when they were attempting to break a political prisoner (a coup led to a doppleganger assuming his identity and a crime syndicate in power) out of a subterranean, city dungeon. Ponderous (and agonizing) indeed.</p><p></p><p>And, like everyone else, I had your classic "light-hearted and rompy Benny Hill theme queuer" guy. Those guys though can actually be useful in a group of stodgy, "by the book" players. He was quiet and cornered...but every now and then he would pull out his wild-card and an interesting (often silly) gambit would arise. </p><p></p><p>I think the Strategic Power Plays that bother me the most are both ponderous and light-hearted and rompy. That is how the one I outlined upthread manifested in play. In a game where you are trying to conjure a menial level of thematic quality, they dilute the effort into something pretty undesirable.</p><p></p><p>Heroes staying behind after unsuccessfully convincing the settlers to evacuate (when they could make their way to safety), standing shoulder to shoulder with an overmatched force of trappers and mostly amateur warriors...staring down their doom...but turning the small settlement into a deathtrap to make sure the bastards pay for their effort or they decide to cut off the slaughter because the toll is too high. That is exciting and heroically thematic. Those same guys whipping out the nuclear missiles and shooting them from their big, orange flying carousel in the sky with carnival music serenading the scene...not so much. And I'm not talking about gonzo fantasy here...just a confluence of absurdities that with their powers combined they create a Captain Planet with clown shoes.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think in much of my writing about my games they may have come off as "Adventure Path-ey". In reality, my games are anything but. I do a considerable amount of "story arc" and "scene script" writing. However, in no way do I force this upon my players. Further, only rarely does the emergent play go according to my anticipated, preconceived arcs/scenes. More than anything, they are a skeleton for me to mentally prepare and visualize the game before it is played (and thus be more prepared to improvise). I come from an athletic background whereby I would mentally prepare for everything...running the game, the series, etc through my mind before it would happen. Its something of a ritual. It helps me know where to go when the "script flips". That is how I write Skill Challenges. I compose the most intuitive path from beginning to conclusion and for each skill check resolution I compose scene/genre-relevant "fail forward" and "success with new adversity" results such that I have kind of a "choose your own adventure" schematic (if you're familiar with those children's books). Its extremely helpful in coherently facilitating the scene/genre theme you're going for. To my mind, if there was one bit of advice for Skill Challenges that should have been in the books, it is that.</p><p></p><p>It seems that to some groups and Game Masters, preparation by way of story-arc/scene writing automatically assumes a rail-roaded, adventure path-ey game rather than a player-choice, organically driven, emergent fiction (it seems every time I invoke "story-arcs" or "scenes", people assume the former). Perhaps that is the case much of the time, but I am quite certain that they need not be one in the same.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 6037913, member: 6696971"] Yeah. It can be either/or or both all at once (to different parties at the table). It just depends on who is at the table. As time went on my table has contracted and has become more coherent where the three players all have very specific, very focused tastes...tastes which are in line with each other. There was one player (he had a 5 year run with us) that we used to play with that was of the "ponderous" variety. He loved examination and scrutiny and cautious OD&D dungeon crawl style where literally no strategic or precautionary stone could go unturned. Due to his insistent prodding, my players spent an entire 4 hour session (4 hours...yes, 4 hours) deliberating on the best way to traverse a large drain line system in order to attempt to circumvent a singular stealth contest against a few guards when they were attempting to break a political prisoner (a coup led to a doppleganger assuming his identity and a crime syndicate in power) out of a subterranean, city dungeon. Ponderous (and agonizing) indeed. And, like everyone else, I had your classic "light-hearted and rompy Benny Hill theme queuer" guy. Those guys though can actually be useful in a group of stodgy, "by the book" players. He was quiet and cornered...but every now and then he would pull out his wild-card and an interesting (often silly) gambit would arise. I think the Strategic Power Plays that bother me the most are both ponderous and light-hearted and rompy. That is how the one I outlined upthread manifested in play. In a game where you are trying to conjure a menial level of thematic quality, they dilute the effort into something pretty undesirable. Heroes staying behind after unsuccessfully convincing the settlers to evacuate (when they could make their way to safety), standing shoulder to shoulder with an overmatched force of trappers and mostly amateur warriors...staring down their doom...but turning the small settlement into a deathtrap to make sure the bastards pay for their effort or they decide to cut off the slaughter because the toll is too high. That is exciting and heroically thematic. Those same guys whipping out the nuclear missiles and shooting them from their big, orange flying carousel in the sky with carnival music serenading the scene...not so much. And I'm not talking about gonzo fantasy here...just a confluence of absurdities that with their powers combined they create a Captain Planet with clown shoes. I think in much of my writing about my games they may have come off as "Adventure Path-ey". In reality, my games are anything but. I do a considerable amount of "story arc" and "scene script" writing. However, in no way do I force this upon my players. Further, only rarely does the emergent play go according to my anticipated, preconceived arcs/scenes. More than anything, they are a skeleton for me to mentally prepare and visualize the game before it is played (and thus be more prepared to improvise). I come from an athletic background whereby I would mentally prepare for everything...running the game, the series, etc through my mind before it would happen. Its something of a ritual. It helps me know where to go when the "script flips". That is how I write Skill Challenges. I compose the most intuitive path from beginning to conclusion and for each skill check resolution I compose scene/genre-relevant "fail forward" and "success with new adversity" results such that I have kind of a "choose your own adventure" schematic (if you're familiar with those children's books). Its extremely helpful in coherently facilitating the scene/genre theme you're going for. To my mind, if there was one bit of advice for Skill Challenges that should have been in the books, it is that. It seems that to some groups and Game Masters, preparation by way of story-arc/scene writing automatically assumes a rail-roaded, adventure path-ey game rather than a player-choice, organically driven, emergent fiction (it seems every time I invoke "story-arcs" or "scenes", people assume the former). Perhaps that is the case much of the time, but I am quite certain that they need not be one in the same. [/QUOTE]
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