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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 3312381" data-attributes="member: 8835">I too have had some thoughts on the vein of how to make a campaign have a story, and be enduring.PirateCat's methods seem to work, what's odd, is by slowing the XP rate, he's making it take longer to advance, and thus at greater risk of campaign death (ignoring what's he's done to prevent that, slowing down the rate, making the campaign take longer allows more time for bad things to happen that kill campaigns).I've been looking at the problem from a different angle.  If you read books, or watch TV or movies, the kinds of events, solutions to problems, drama, etc, all seem geared to moving the plot forward (or twisting the plot with setbacks and revelations).  However, in few encounters, are the entire party killed off.  Nor does the party in a movie face as many encounters as a D&D party, just to face the bad guy.  It seems, the pacing is different, and scale is different.Consider the following common movie scenes that are handled by rules in D&D:In a fight: the good guys always, win, except the red shirts.  Exception: the good guys have to retreat, a major character is killed or captured.  TPK's don't happen. (Challenge: find me a movie, TV show or book, where the main characters all die, before the climax of the movie (meaning there's more movie and resolution left, it doesn't count if the heroes die at the end of the movie).In a puzzle situation: the good guys always figure out how to get out, usually at the last minute, before something bad happens.  The science guy always finishes the big technogadget to save the day.  It's never impossible to rewire something.  The key question, is it done ahead of time (and then does it actually work when needed), or does it get finished right before the critical moment.D&D approaches the above scenarios entirely differently.  As a result, you don't get movie-like effects.Based on that, I'm pondering, if an entirely different kind of RPG can be made.  One that emulates movie or novel storytelling.  Maybe there's dice, maybe there's cards involved, but have the entire encounter design system, and resolution system tailored to mimic what happens in fiction.I'm thinking, that for combat, players like having a play-by-play interaction for the fight.  I think the outcomes of the fight should be similar to movies (what moves the plot), and few players would enjoy fight resolution to come down to a single die roll to determine one of my "common fight outcomes".  So, it's a tought problem to solve.  Action points, Swashbuckling cards attempt to alleviate some of this.</blockquote>

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