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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1682609" data-attributes="member: 5171">Aha.  Different from just plain swashbuckling.  Got it.  Others have offered some good suggestions on ways to work that in with the specific geography.  My only suggestion would be "If the part about them getting to the area with the inland sea is dull, just fast-forward to it with the little red line moving from one part of the map to the other."I know you took this campaign over, but why the heck were you guys playing in the Realms, then?  The reason to play in the Forgotten Realms is that you like the Forgotten Realms.  Even if the main reason you're doing it is "No time to make a homebrew", there are other campaign settings with different flavors.  Not a you-issue at all -- just a group playing in the wrong setting.Based on the disdain I'm getting here, I don't really feel qualified to comment on this without hearing the other side of things.  It's possible that you're right, that they do want to just rack up XP and loot.  It's possible that they just want to easily win combats and advance what they see as a fun story.  It's possible that they are doing some major tactical work that just keeps not working -- either because of bad luck ("Our tactics will make you Bill here the of sneak attacks!" they say, not knowing that you're about to ambush them with a combined ooze/construct/undead horde...) or possibly because you're listening to them and subconsciously nerfing their plans.I've caught myself doing this a few times -- I don't want the PCs to have too easy a time of it, so I subconsciously have bad guys react and adapt to the PCs' plans far faster than they should.  It's a bad habit that I've trained myself out of, because it's really DM metagaming -- those monsters don't know about the party's tactics, so I shouldn't play them as though they do. (The one notable exception is when I'm playing a super-genius spellcaster enemy and don't have a lot of time to prepare, at which point I mentally say, "Okay, he used scry and divinations and is prepared for anything the PCs do for the first five rounds of combat -- elemental protection as needed, negative energy protection, whatever would make the most sense at the time, he does that, through round five.")Maybe the next time they're planning for a fight, you should leave the room (or have them do so) so that you don't hear their plan. Then see how it goes.Well, yeah, this is a problem. If you don't wanna change the campaign, and they aren't happy in the campaign, that's bad.  No solution there.  It's give and take, and if you don't give, they're gonna get tired of you taking, and nobody's gonna have fun.Are they still happy with that style of play?  If so, tell them that it's their problem.  They should hire a cohort or something.  If not, you should allow things to change.As for playing things more intelligently if you have more time... this is not a real problem.  This is you making threats to get your way.  "Well, you could go visit the temple, even though I don't want you to, but if you do, I wouldn't have time to prepare something fun, so I'd just have to fill it full of spectres with improved turn resistance, and I know you don't have any ghost-touch weapons."That does sound like a hard problem.  You're feeling like you're competing with your players and, well, guess what?  You win.  You always win.  You, the DM, can always beat your players.  You get to hear their plans, you know their stats and weaknesses, and you can throw as much or as little at them as you like.  You always win.  Spending hours minmaxing the combat tactics of an ogre with an Int of 7 does not make you a better tactician than the party.  It means that you're making the entire world smarter than it should be in order to defeat the PCs.  Ogres with Ints of 7 shouldn't have good tactics.  Lousy tactics are part of their CR.  Sure, they can generally follow orders that somebody else gives, but with an Int of 7, they will probably forget most of the plan once they start hitting things.  Playing an ogre this way isn't "spoon-feeding" them anything.  It's playing something as it should be played.Sounds like you would have more fun playing a tactical wargame than serving as DM.  And it sounds like the game isn't going to be fun for everybody under the current plan.</blockquote>

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