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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
[Planescape] What would you want to see in a Mega-Adventure / Campaign?
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<blockquote data-quote="Oryan77" data-source="post: 6381694" data-attributes="member: 18701"><p>I agree with this. Everything else aside, people are buying/playing an adventure for one thing over all else, the quality of the plotline and the adventure scenarios. If that is great, you are good to go no matter what faults you have with your other poll options. The other things can be improved by the DM. If the plot needs to be improved, it's almost a waste running it.</p><p></p><p>For example, I had decided to run Tales from the Infinite Staircase a year ago. I prepped and converted (to 3.5) almost the entire thing and then realized, the plot kind of sucks. So I have changed everything in it. I'm still using most of the adventure sites as a basis, but I've completely changed the plotline, major NPCs, and removed entire chapters. So as a tool for mining ideas, the adventure is nice. But as a stand alone adventure, it kind of blows.</p><p></p><p> Yes, if you wanted to get that serious to having a PS feel, I agree with this. Planewalker.com did a pretty good job with this in their 3e conversion documents. They are still a little generic looking, but they do go in the right direction as far as PS aesthetics go.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This comment is exactly why I suggested making a 2nd poll about what the PS feel was to players. People are going to have their own opinions about what it is that makes a planar game a Planescape game. </p><p></p><p>See, I completely disagree with this line of thought. I was attracted to PS <strong><em>because</em></strong> it was all about the journey. The portals are there to help me as a DM cut out any nonsense that I don't feel like dealing with. But I still love the journey getting from point A to point B. The journey is what gives a PC the title "Planewalker".</p><p></p><p>Don't get me wrong, I completely understand where Kamikaze Midget is coming from and I agree with it for those that prefer to cut to the chase. Nothing wrong with that at all. The versatility of PS is what I love about the setting.</p><p></p><p>I like to introduce as many locations and planes as I can get away with during each adventure. I try not to make it exhausting, but I like the thought of needing to overcome various territories in order to get where you want to go. Just taking a portal from Sigil to your destination is extremely boring to me. I almost always require some use of a planar pathway (Yggdrasil and the Infinite Staircase being my favorites). The journey is just as important since I get to introduce new strange and exotic locations, unique NPCs and creatures, and the PCs get to experience all the different planar traits as they travel.</p><p></p><p>For my games, the PCs usually won't find a direct portal. They may not even figure out the entire route to get where they need to go. So they might find out about a portal that will take them to a location where they might find out from there how to reach their final destination. For example, in our last trip from Sigil, they needed to get the Shurrock on Bytopia. They were told that the gatetown Tradegate could get them to Bytopia. So they had to figure out how to get to Tradegate. So they learned that they could use the Infinite Staircase to get to Tradegate, but then they had to figure out how to find the staircase. This was all an adventure in itself, and the staircase acted like overland travel with "random encounters" and they stumbled into the Planewalker's Guild. Once they finally reached Bytopia, they realized that they still had to reach the other layer, which again involved overland travel. This allowed me a chance to run encounters on Centerspire which I've always wanted to do. On their trip back, they did some airborne travel when they finally used a gnomish hot air balloon. I got to run some airborne encounters.</p><p></p><p>So for me, the PS feel <strong>is</strong> about the travel just as much as the destination locations.</p><p></p><p></p><p>This is something that I don't think is that necessary for a good PS adventure, but it is one that if done well, would be a great benefit for the success of the adventure. I don't think most existing PS adventures did this a whole lot. Most of them were not much different from most other non PS adventures. An adventure doesn't necessarily need to have this in order to feel like a PS game. But like I said, it would be awesome if it involved the PCs drastically changing something, even if it was just as basic as a town sliding into another plane. I've always wanted to be better at thinking <strong>big</strong> like that in my own games.</p><p></p><p>I find it very hard to get PCs to actually change the planes based on their belief. It either takes some railroading and heavy handedness on the DMs part to basically make a change happen since the players aren't necessarily trying. Most players I've seen pretty much just run through the adventure and if they make it to the end and succeed, things change based on that outcome. The change happens more because they simply just finished the adventure and not so much because they made it their goal for that to happen. Changes based on belief seem to really only happen for players that love to take initiative and really absorb themselves into the campaign. Those kind of players have been rare in my circles. Fortunately, my current group seems to really get absorbed in the planar aspects of the setting. So I've been able to focus a lot more on things that I never did before (currently, law vs chaos rather than good vs evil). And they find this really interesting. My past groups wouldn't have given it a second thought.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Oryan77, post: 6381694, member: 18701"] I agree with this. Everything else aside, people are buying/playing an adventure for one thing over all else, the quality of the plotline and the adventure scenarios. If that is great, you are good to go no matter what faults you have with your other poll options. The other things can be improved by the DM. If the plot needs to be improved, it's almost a waste running it. For example, I had decided to run Tales from the Infinite Staircase a year ago. I prepped and converted (to 3.5) almost the entire thing and then realized, the plot kind of sucks. So I have changed everything in it. I'm still using most of the adventure sites as a basis, but I've completely changed the plotline, major NPCs, and removed entire chapters. So as a tool for mining ideas, the adventure is nice. But as a stand alone adventure, it kind of blows. Yes, if you wanted to get that serious to having a PS feel, I agree with this. Planewalker.com did a pretty good job with this in their 3e conversion documents. They are still a little generic looking, but they do go in the right direction as far as PS aesthetics go. This comment is exactly why I suggested making a 2nd poll about what the PS feel was to players. People are going to have their own opinions about what it is that makes a planar game a Planescape game. See, I completely disagree with this line of thought. I was attracted to PS [B][I]because[/I][/B] it was all about the journey. The portals are there to help me as a DM cut out any nonsense that I don't feel like dealing with. But I still love the journey getting from point A to point B. The journey is what gives a PC the title "Planewalker". Don't get me wrong, I completely understand where Kamikaze Midget is coming from and I agree with it for those that prefer to cut to the chase. Nothing wrong with that at all. The versatility of PS is what I love about the setting. I like to introduce as many locations and planes as I can get away with during each adventure. I try not to make it exhausting, but I like the thought of needing to overcome various territories in order to get where you want to go. Just taking a portal from Sigil to your destination is extremely boring to me. I almost always require some use of a planar pathway (Yggdrasil and the Infinite Staircase being my favorites). The journey is just as important since I get to introduce new strange and exotic locations, unique NPCs and creatures, and the PCs get to experience all the different planar traits as they travel. For my games, the PCs usually won't find a direct portal. They may not even figure out the entire route to get where they need to go. So they might find out about a portal that will take them to a location where they might find out from there how to reach their final destination. For example, in our last trip from Sigil, they needed to get the Shurrock on Bytopia. They were told that the gatetown Tradegate could get them to Bytopia. So they had to figure out how to get to Tradegate. So they learned that they could use the Infinite Staircase to get to Tradegate, but then they had to figure out how to find the staircase. This was all an adventure in itself, and the staircase acted like overland travel with "random encounters" and they stumbled into the Planewalker's Guild. Once they finally reached Bytopia, they realized that they still had to reach the other layer, which again involved overland travel. This allowed me a chance to run encounters on Centerspire which I've always wanted to do. On their trip back, they did some airborne travel when they finally used a gnomish hot air balloon. I got to run some airborne encounters. So for me, the PS feel [B]is[/B] about the travel just as much as the destination locations. This is something that I don't think is that necessary for a good PS adventure, but it is one that if done well, would be a great benefit for the success of the adventure. I don't think most existing PS adventures did this a whole lot. Most of them were not much different from most other non PS adventures. An adventure doesn't necessarily need to have this in order to feel like a PS game. But like I said, it would be awesome if it involved the PCs drastically changing something, even if it was just as basic as a town sliding into another plane. I've always wanted to be better at thinking [B]big[/B] like that in my own games. I find it very hard to get PCs to actually change the planes based on their belief. It either takes some railroading and heavy handedness on the DMs part to basically make a change happen since the players aren't necessarily trying. Most players I've seen pretty much just run through the adventure and if they make it to the end and succeed, things change based on that outcome. The change happens more because they simply just finished the adventure and not so much because they made it their goal for that to happen. Changes based on belief seem to really only happen for players that love to take initiative and really absorb themselves into the campaign. Those kind of players have been rare in my circles. Fortunately, my current group seems to really get absorbed in the planar aspects of the setting. So I've been able to focus a lot more on things that I never did before (currently, law vs chaos rather than good vs evil). And they find this really interesting. My past groups wouldn't have given it a second thought. [/QUOTE]
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[Planescape] What would you want to see in a Mega-Adventure / Campaign?
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