Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kzach" data-source="post: 5839541" data-attributes="member: 56189">Two examples spring to mind that aren't quite what I'm talking about but lean enough in the right direction to provide some sort of insight into my meaning. Those are War of the Burning Sky (ENW's own adventure path) and the recent Neverwinter Campaign Book.Neither hit the mark spot-on, as I mentioned, but both provide you, the DM, with many questions to pose to the players and less answers than traditional modules. Instead of presenting a problem like, for instance, "The McGuffin is over here," and then trying to provide solutions like, "The PC's can do X, Y or Z to retrieve it," it simply states the problem with enough additional information to give the DM and players what they need to come up with creative solutions.This requires a creative DM and creative players who are willing to engage each other in a co-operative manner that results in an effective solution. It's this sort-of imaginative and creative play that I have all my best memories of D&D from because it engaged ME as a player THROUGH my PC. I needed both to come up with a solution and I needed the DM to creatively facilitate that solution.It's not for everyone. But I find that, more and more, it's what I feel I've been missing from my games ever since Powers & Options and the Handbooks of 2e started move towards a more strict adherence to rules and a less imaginative and creative approach to solutions in-game. I'm not saying 3e or 4e are bad because of this, simply that it seems to have been a trend in D&D that reached its peak in 4e and now seems to be on the decline. 5e, I'm hoping, is the harbinger of a hybrid of strong, simple, well-rounded rules, with the flexibility inherent within them to facilitate creative solutions and ad-hoc play.Umm... ok, I'll try to keep this simple and straightforward. You have a pit trap. It's 10'x10'x30' and there are no spikes below, just rocks and some skeletal remains. The trap is in a cave system and was probably a natural formation that someone has taken advantage of, most likely the kobolds you're currently chasing. The passageway it's in is 10'x15' so it entirely blocks your path forward.The above is the problem. It's the question. Now in a traditional module, I'd now go on to provide several answers to how the PC's could go about solving/answering this problem. I'd provide DC's and various potential scenarios that would provide various negative or positive outcomes.What this does, without many people realising, is that it locks you into those solutions. Some people can ignore them entirely and that's great, but in my experience on either side of the screen, I find that if you provide people with answers like this, then they tend to get a sort-of tunnel-vision and can't think outside the box, so to speak. Both as DM's and players.Now, instead of providing any answers whatsoever, the system itself has within it every means necessary to provide a solution... it just requires the creative input of the players in co-operation with their DM to find it. This, to me, was the essence of AD&D.Don't get me wrong, I love 4e and there was a reason why I stopped playing AD&D, which was primarily because I found myself constantly having to come up with house rules for every table in order to handle things that should be covered by the system and weren't. But on the flip-side of that coin, I also don't think 4e is flexible enough, or encourages the sort-of ad-hoc play that AD&D did.Again, I KNOW that 4e CAN be played much like what I'm saying, but you have to sort-of go with me on the whole notion of people artificially limiting themselves because they willingly or unknowingly stick to the rules. Therefore if 5e can manage to be an effective hybrid of AD&D and 4e, in terms of giving you a solid rules foundation whilst encouraging ad-hoc play, then I will be not only quite happy, but very impressed.The idea that I'm putting forward in this thread, however, is that we should take advantage of such a system and create modules to support it. Instead of wasting space with a bunch of potential solutions or answers to all the problems and questions we pose in a module, simply have more questions and problems!</blockquote>

Verification