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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6020229" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 293: March 2002part 4/10T.V. Structure: Designing your campaign more like a TV series than a simulation or a novel? Yup, Robin Laws is up to his usual tricks. Stuff like series bible, concept sketches, episodic stories with an overarching plot for each season and putting the spotlight on different members of the ensemble in particular episodes can all be used in an RPG, and will hopefully result in a faster-paced campaign than just setting them loose in a sandbox. Of course, there is the omnipresent danger that either the players or the dice might not play along and he warns you against making your plans too precise. You can't expect them to do a hot springs episode when there's a world that needs saving in a few months time. Nor can you make one person the star indefinitely without destabilising the game in the long run. You'll almost definitely benefit from discussing the character generation and rough season arcs collaboratively, rather than making it up on your own and expecting the players to play along when they don't know which direction you thought they'd take. As this both gives you a cool idea and warns you of it's pitfalls beforehand, I think it counts as one of his better ideas. Just don't try and model your campaign on a painting, lovingly detailed, but ultimately completely static. I don't think that would turn out so well. Countrycraft: Meanwhile, Ray still thinks that creating a setting with a whole bunch of characters and plot hooks, and then letting stories happen organically, is preferable than trying to force players into a particular plot. Still, as he's pointed out before, creating a setting and keeping it alive can be a lot of hard work. So any mechanical help is always welcome. Such as a 3e updating of the Birthright domain management rules, taking advantage of the new skill system to improve the amount of control PC's have. There's still a fair amount of bookkeeping involved, but the character sheet for a nation is smaller than that for a PC, and the war system is pretty quick to resolve. So obviously this is less innovative than the previous article, but it still has the aim of creating a fun game. Worldbuilding is definitely one area where one size doesn't fit all. And 3e could definitely benefit from bringing back domain level play, so I approve of this. Monsters with class: We already opened 3e monsters up to becoming PC's almost universally. And we saw LA adjustments introduced soon afterwards. Now they give us LA adjustments for nearly all the existing monsters in the MM. Of course, the problem with these is their tendency to overestimate power levels, resulting in creatures that are actually unplayably weak at their supposed LA, especially if they choose class levels that don't complement their racial abilities. Trying to create a balanced game when you have creatures with an enormous variety of capabilities is an exceedingly tricky task, especially as levels are a fairly granular measure of power. So this is a reminder that they're trying for game balance in their design at this point, but still a long way from getting it perfect. This is going to be a long rocky road, isn't it.</blockquote>

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