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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 481240" data-attributes="member: 2205">I'm not saying that the world should be tailored for the PCs, merely that the adventures should be tailored to the PCs.&nbsp; There's a difference.&nbsp; Plus, tailoring doesn't mean that the PCs can actually wade into any combat and come out smiling.&nbsp; I personally prefer to run pretty tough campaigns where the PCs have to be almost paranoid to do well.&nbsp; If players think, &quot;oh, the DM tailored this game to be the perfect ECL for us, we can take them&quot; then those players will be generating a lot of characters.By the same token, though, just running PCs through modules, or essentially saying, &quot;this is the adventure I wrote (or bought) so this is the adventure we're doing,&quot; regardless of whether or not it makes any sense whatsoever for those characters to do, is no fun for me.&nbsp; I dislike any hint of railroading, and telling the PCs up front that they need to construct a &quot;balanced&quot; party is the first hint to me of a campaign in which PC choices don't matter much except on the tactical battle map.&nbsp; If the PCs can't decide to avoid combat altogether, or avoid the adventure altogether, or that their strengths would naturally lead the group into a different type of adventure than what the DM had decided to put them through, then that's not tailored to the PCs.I, too, value a living breathing campaign world in which what the PCs do (and even more telling, what they don't do) has long-reaching effects that they can see later on in the game.&nbsp; But that doesn't mean that I put them through the adventures I want them to, it means I throw out hooks and see where they want to go, and I let them ultimately be in charge of their own game.&nbsp; And the hooks I throw out make sense for the PCs I have in the game, not the PCs that I don't have.&nbsp; So, yeah, I have to really tailor the game for the PCs: what choices they made in character generation and development, what choices they made in background and history, what they like to do, what they are good at doing, and what they can't do well.&nbsp; Doesn't mean that they don't face a broad range of challenges from those that they can sneeze at to those that they better run from as fast as they possibly can, but the game itself is very intimately tied to who the PCs are.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 481240, member: 2205"] I'm not saying that the world should be tailored for the PCs, merely that the [i]adventures[/i] should be tailored to the PCs. There's a difference. Plus, tailoring doesn't mean that the PCs can actually wade into any combat and come out smiling. I personally prefer to run pretty tough campaigns where the PCs have to be almost paranoid to do well. If players think, "oh, the DM tailored this game to be the perfect ECL for us, we can take them" then those players will be generating a lot of characters. By the same token, though, just running PCs through modules, or essentially saying, "this is the adventure I wrote (or bought) so this is the adventure we're doing," regardless of whether or not it makes any sense whatsoever for those characters to do, is no fun for me. I dislike any hint of railroading, and telling the PCs up front that they need to construct a "balanced" party is the first hint to me of a campaign in which PC choices don't matter much except on the tactical battle map. If the PCs can't decide to avoid combat altogether, or avoid the adventure altogether, or that their strengths would naturally lead the group into a different type of adventure than what the DM had decided to put them through, then that's not tailored to the PCs. I, too, value a living breathing campaign world in which what the PCs do (and even more telling, what they don't do) has long-reaching effects that they can see later on in the game. But that doesn't mean that I put them through the adventures I want them to, it means I throw out hooks and see where [i]they[/i] want to go, and I let them ultimately be in charge of their own game. And the hooks I throw out make sense for the PCs I have in the game, not the PCs that I don't have. So, yeah, I have to really tailor the game for the PCs: what choices they made in character generation and development, what choices they made in background and history, what they like to do, what they are good at doing, and what they can't do well. Doesn't mean that they don't face a broad range of challenges from those that they can sneeze at to those that they better run from as fast as they possibly can, but the game itself is very intimately tied to who the PCs are. [/QUOTE]

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