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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6061804" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 301: November 2002part 9/10DM's toolbox: The advice here, on the other hand, is some quite handy stuff on pacing. Encounters of exactly your ECL all the time are BORING! You do need to switch things up with harder ones, easier ones, explorey bits, puzzles, interactions, the occasional cut scene. So far, so good. What I do find amusing is the idea that the average DM would find running published adventures goes more smoothly than their own stuff, when i've had so many experiences that are the precise opposite. Be it because they're trying to run the module without reading it first, or simply feel less free to improvise than when they've created their own adventure, I can think of quite a few experiences where the module bits have ground more than the self-created plots. (this applies even more to the WoD, where as much as I love the games, most of the modules suuuuuck.) So while the solution is perfectly decent, they're arriving at it by a road I haven't travelled down, which makes it more interesting by context. And that does raise an important point. Games get changed from edition to edition based on what problems actually get reported. And the ways a system breaks, or not, depends on how a group plays it. As we discovered over it's lifespan, 3e demonstrated problems when released into the wild that the playtesters never would have found no matter how long it was tested, because of the parameters they were set when testing. Which is why testing by people completely unconnected to the designers can be so beneficial. Once again, the lesson both IC and OOC boils down to &quot;It's good to have variety.&quot;Against that bloody misspelling, nodwick fights in vain.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 6061804, member: 27780"] [B][U]Dragon Issue 301: November 2002[/U][/B] part 9/10 DM's toolbox: The advice here, on the other hand, is some quite handy stuff on pacing. Encounters of exactly your ECL all the time are BORING! You do need to switch things up with harder ones, easier ones, explorey bits, puzzles, interactions, the occasional cut scene. So far, so good. What I do find amusing is the idea that the average DM would find running published adventures goes more smoothly than their own stuff, when i've had so many experiences that are the precise opposite. Be it because they're trying to run the module without reading it first, or simply feel less free to improvise than when they've created their own adventure, I can think of quite a few experiences where the module bits have ground more than the self-created plots. (this applies even more to the WoD, where as much as I love the games, most of the modules suuuuuck.) So while the solution is perfectly decent, they're arriving at it by a road I haven't travelled down, which makes it more interesting by context. And that does raise an important point. Games get changed from edition to edition based on what problems actually get reported. And the ways a system breaks, or not, depends on how a group plays it. As we discovered over it's lifespan, 3e demonstrated problems when released into the wild that the playtesters never would have found no matter how long it was tested, because of the parameters they were set when testing. Which is why testing by people completely unconnected to the designers can be so beneficial. Once again, the lesson both IC and OOC boils down to "It's good to have variety." Against that bloody misspelling, nodwick fights in vain. [/QUOTE]

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