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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8562709" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 93: March 1994part 4/5The Living City: Our location this month is both well mapped out and very adventure friendly, essentially being an open-ended location based scenario rather than their usual railroads. A weredragon and werespider have set up an inn for monsters and criminals called the Stash & Crash Inn, only accessible by a movable magical portal as obviously any adventurers finding out about this would love to shut them down terminally and gain lots of XP in the process. It's currently situated in an abandoned aqueduct tower, and the owner is getting suspicious, but they've been surreptitious enough in their comings & goings that searches haven't found the portal yet. Will you find out about it and decide to play the big heroes, or be on the wrong side of the law yourself and see the value in keeping it around as a place to hide out and meet people for other larcenous missions. Either way it seems pretty flexible, as you can easily scale the challenge level to the party by changing what the guests are at the time, and how likely they are to fight if the inn is attacked or just get out of there because they're not looking for trouble. It's much better as an adventure than their usual fare, and pretty decent as a location as well, reminding us that Raven's Bluff has some pretty heavy speciesism going on, but many "monsters" just want to go about their business and make a profit like anyone else, so places catering to them will spring up even if they're illegal, just like drugs & prostitution in the real world. Another instance where the short term heroic path doesn't fix the big structural injustices, but D&D isn't really equipped to run a game about tackling those anyway. You can have a decent enough session using this the way it was intended, and if you use it in other ways as well, more power to you. The Living Galaxy: Roger goes for another fairly formulaic topic that turns up regularly in advice columns - the challenges and rewards of one on one games vs ones with a full party. Whether it's a side-quest involving a single character from a larger campaign, or intended to be that way from the start, there's definitely some satisfaction to be found in not having to constantly share the limelight and concentrate on one person's backstory and struggles for self-actualisation. However, there are also some real practical problems, especially in D&D, where characters are siloed into narrow rigid skillsets by the class/level system. Most sci-fi systems are an improvement by comparison. However, there are absolutely tons of literary references in this case, with stories focusing on one protagonist actually being more frequent than ones that give equal screentime to a whole team. (and even if they try, one or two characters will probably wind up dominating anyway) So this is another of those columns that really demonstrates how bad D&D is at telling certain kinds of stories, and the things you can do to get a little closer. Get yourself playing something that'll let a character put a few points into everything, and then boost the ones they turn out to need selectively in play. Don't be afraid to give them more points than usual to boost their survivability, after all, it's not as if you have to worry about outshining the other players, or boring them by catering very specifically to one person's likes and dislikes. The fewer people you have to cater too, the less you need to worry about fairness and consistent application of the rules. Which really strikes to the heart of what RPG's can be, a way to make improv acting more fair and result in a narrative where everyone has a decent amount of input. Pretty thought provoking really, and also explains why the more massively multiplayer a game is, the more rigid it tends to become, explaining the ultra linear and restrictive living city modules, and the harder it is to keep it fun for everyone, not just the people on top. Living in a society gets exhausting, and sometimes wish fulfilment without endless compromising or waiting around for other people to turn up and be ready to play is what you need.</blockquote>

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