Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 6812319" data-attributes="member: 7635">In taking the Negative:Unless you are engaging in random dungeons crawls, most DMs create adventures with a certain range of outcomes in mind. By doing this, he creates a basic skeletal plot for the adventure. There is practically no escaping this. Good DMs can anticipate their player's typical course of action and plan accordingly for it. This allows him to create richer adventures without resorting to constant improvisation. In using the above example, a DM decides to terrorize a town with a vampire. He does so with the assumption that the players will do something about it. There is little point in creating a plot hook that he knows the player's will not bite for. By knowing his players will most likely go and slay the vampire (and complete the hook) he can then prepare his adventure accordingly. He might create a specific NPC who can give them important information, set up special items the group will need to find and retrieve to help them, and properly map and stock the lair of the vampire ahead of time. This creates a richer, more interesting scenario than a "winged" encounter with a vampire made up on the spot by the DM. Now, it should be made clear this is not "railroading." The PCs do not have to fight the vampire; they can theoretically ignore it and move on. (Though a Good DM knows his players and their PCs well enough to anticipate their course of action; a group of mostly good PCs with a paladin in it is most likely NOT going to leave or join the vampire. Unless your group is literally Chaotic Neutral, it should be possible to gauge your player's expected reaction and plan accordingly). Nor is the events of the plot linear; A does not need to follow B, but A and B are both options a DM prepares for. The PCs may visit the plot points in any order, skip some, or even create new ones (all the planning in the world can't catch all potential actions; the goal is minimize the need for improv, not eliminate it entirely). In many ways, it resembles the events of a Choose your own Adventure story than a novel. The main advantages to this style are:* Richer narratives thanks to preplanning.* Less need to improv.* A wider array of adventure types* Genre Emulation It can also be said that they are certainly a popular genre of adventure, as many well-loved modules (Ravenloft, Red Hand of Doom, Lost Mines of Phandelver, and nearly all APs) revolve around the concept of "story".</blockquote>

Verification