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Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell
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<blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5183823" data-attributes="member: 55271"><p>I generally hate adventures where:</p><p></p><p>(a) The reader/DM has this really amazing sequence of events playing out; but</p><p></p><p>(b) The players are only experiencing an essentially random series of encounters that they have no way of comprehending.</p><p></p><p>I just don't understand the methodology: If you're designing this really nifty stuff, why not take the relatively minimal effort necessary to <a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/three-clue-rule.html" target="_blank">let the players know about it</a>?</p><p></p><p>OTOH, this pickle-encounter doesn't qualify for me. Paizo's goblins are wacky little trouble-making imps. Having pickles fly randomly out of windows is, in fact, just part of the module's larger establishment of the goblins as whirling dervishes of chaotic destruction. In addition, the module does include a patently obvious way to figure out what the goblins are doing: Curious PCs can simply go to that room and interrogate the goblins. (Is there every chance for that interrogation to turn into a wacky comedy of fang-baring desperation? Yes. Yes, there is. But that tone was pretty well established as soon as we said 'pickle thieves".)</p><p></p><p>Hell, knowing some of the people I've played with over the years it wouldn't shock me if I somehow ended up with players offering to help the goblin chieftain out by tracking down his pickle thieves in exchange for getting what they want from the tribe.</p><p></p><p>Rather than being a detail that the players can never learn, this kind of detail is exactly the kind of rich texture which allows the PCs to chart their own course instead of following the railroad tracks.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Beginning of the End, post: 5183823, member: 55271"] I generally hate adventures where: (a) The reader/DM has this really amazing sequence of events playing out; but (b) The players are only experiencing an essentially random series of encounters that they have no way of comprehending. I just don't understand the methodology: If you're designing this really nifty stuff, why not take the relatively minimal effort necessary to [url=http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/three-clue-rule.html]let the players know about it[/url]? OTOH, this pickle-encounter doesn't qualify for me. Paizo's goblins are wacky little trouble-making imps. Having pickles fly randomly out of windows is, in fact, just part of the module's larger establishment of the goblins as whirling dervishes of chaotic destruction. In addition, the module does include a patently obvious way to figure out what the goblins are doing: Curious PCs can simply go to that room and interrogate the goblins. (Is there every chance for that interrogation to turn into a wacky comedy of fang-baring desperation? Yes. Yes, there is. But that tone was pretty well established as soon as we said 'pickle thieves".) Hell, knowing some of the people I've played with over the years it wouldn't shock me if I somehow ended up with players offering to help the goblin chieftain out by tracking down his pickle thieves in exchange for getting what they want from the tribe. Rather than being a detail that the players can never learn, this kind of detail is exactly the kind of rich texture which allows the PCs to chart their own course instead of following the railroad tracks. [/QUOTE]
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