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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kibo" data-source="post: 250711" data-attributes="member: 5451">The Eye of the Beholderand I'm not talking about classic PC games.I've had super powered PC's, maybe they didn't have 3 handed swords of God Slaying and Animate Dead.  But they were not standard adventurers.    I was perhaps a little intimidated at first.  But it made me a much better DM/GM whatever, and made for better stories.  And that's what I get out of it.  A good story that's worth telling.  Not that I'm telling it, but that is my price.  I want to get a story that was worth the effort out of the deal.For my part, I played the movie rules against the characters, in the myriad game systems we played.  Throw more complex threats.  That's all there is too it.  This seems the antithesis of what I've said in another thread, about how I run, ran most of my stuff off the cuff.  But it's really not.  You've got the protagonists (most likely the players, possibly some NPC's), the wild cards (featured NPC's), the mob, and (everyones favorite) the bad guys.  Everyone needs something.  PC, NPC, Villains.  I'm talking about motivations.  It's such an easy way to get a cool story, I just can't say it enough in enough threads.  Cause motivations plus a rough idea for a cool story, and decent players are all it takes.  Set up a video camera then distill the game sessions in to a script and you have a method for sustaining your gamming habbit and getting to see your name ten feet high for eight bucks with a crowd of six hundred strangers.But that said.  There is something to be said for style.  You cannot have a hero with out it.  If the hero doesn't have it, he can't be a hero until he gets it.  You don't get style with a three handed sword that casts symbol of death on command.  That's gay.  And not the protected kind.  That's why it's so hard for superman to be cool.  He's got to save the world every issue.  Batman on the otherhand just has to foil overly elaborate plots that are really just simple robberies.  And is walking through the woods slaying sleeping goblins with Farslayer really the image of cool your players were hoping for?  If it is, that's where I would take my ball and go home.  What the hell is the point of that?  They don't me, they can mud, and do e-mail at the same time!While I'm not opposed to people having gear way beyond there means, but there needs to be a point, and most of all it must be cool.  Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch.  If it's powerful then perhaps it has a quest of its own "The One Ring", or certainly if its others must know of it, and powerful others must seek it "The One Ring."  And a thousand other permutations.  All of which are more fun than just wandering the woods killing everything, or checking local taverns for old hermits selling maps to dungeons.  If you can't bring yourself to do that to your players, you're selling them short.  It's not about winning it's about the struggle.  Everyone will have more fun, and years later you can kick yourself for not transcribing everything word for word, so you could sell the script for mint.Perhaps some of you are noting that qualifier farther up.  I said,  "decent players."  If you don't have all decent players, but at least one, you get saturday night live skits.  At the time I found them frequently infuriating, but in retrospect they are often quite amusing.</blockquote>

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