Players: status quo or tailored?

[Ridley's Cohort]

Other. If you mix it up you can get the best of both worlds.

Start with status quo as the foundation for the campaign, then tailor some of the challenges to really fit the PCs you have for maximum dramatic effect. You need to have plenty of potential challenges that are status quo to keep the players honest though.

If you ran a truly status quo world and truly status quo adventures, how do the heroes ever find anything to do that is neither far too difficult nor far to hard without some DM stand in telling them what to do?

"Isn't Disintegrating the Orc overkill?"
"I was bored."

 

[RuminDange]

Status Quo is preferred. The world goes on whether I as a player gets involved or not.


RD

 

[Plane Sailing]

I bet more people tailor their campaigns than admit it... not on the tailoring down as in the dragon example, but in tailoring up. How many of the encounters are walkovers for the 14th level characters? Why are they not running into as many CR1-3 creatures as they did at low level?

If the campaign hasn't departed for other planes, and is still in broadly the same world they started adventuring in last year, it is perhaps surprising how few ultra-low, you-get-no-xps encounters the PCs have

 

[Wild Gazebo]

The majority of the time I play a status quo campaign...but I do tailor specific encounters. I look at it as the difference between fixed and transitory environs. A king or famous warrior or mythical beast or BBEG will remain at a fixed HD while random encounters and 'rising action' will be specifically tailored...though many times encounters will be far lower than the prefered EL as the PCs rise in level (its all about the feel of the game at the time). So I do have a tendancy towards status quo. I hope that helps.


edit: oops this is the players poll...sorry I kant reed gud. Just assume this is in the dm thread. As a player I prefer a good mix...something to strive for with just enough stuff to keep me going.

 

[Jdvn1]

I'm also in the Mix-It-Up camp.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Status quo makes great background. But, really, the PCs will either avoid things too powerful for them (or run away if they can't) or ignore things too weak.

"There's a great wyrm dragon to the north? Okay, we won't go over there."

"There's a group of 5 goblins harassing school children to the south? Meh, somebody will kill them."

I think its nice to say how wonderful status quo is, but when I step into a dungeon as a player I don't want to die horribly in the first room because its realisitc (and it is very realistic) nor do I want to walk over everything there because they're so very weak (which is also very realistic). How many people would come back to a game where the DM did either of those things repeatedly?

I remember a while back when I actually got to play a game; we went through a dungeon, the battles very difficult and challenging for our three 7th level characters. At the end was a hydra that, if we had fought, would have killed us. So we ran. Do I think of it as a status quo encounter? No, I think of it as an encounter created way above us so that we would run away.

I would go so far as to say that there isn't actually such thing as a status quo "encounter" as long as the DM has knowlege of the PC party, since a good DM won't just throw insta-death situations at the PCs. A great wyrm dragon nearby exists, but it is a backdrop, a prop, an extention of the setting. It isn't an encounter unless it wants to talk to the PCs, in which case hasn't the encounter been altered so that the players won't die, or does it parlay with all travelers in its territory?

So, if most status quo aspects of the setting have no effect on the PCs in actuallity, but they interact with the tailored things all the time, that doesn't make it a status quo campaign. That just makes it a mostly tailored campaign with a lot of versimilitude.

EDIT: I'm partially just taking devil's advocate here. I would really like to hear some success stories of status quo.

 

[Zappo]

Tailored. Status quo is more realistic - but I'm not here for realism, I'm here for fun.

 

[GlassJaw]

Tailored. Status quo is more realistic - but I'm not here for realism, I'm here for fun.

So true.

But it really depends on the type of game. If I'm running a full-on all-options high-magic D&D campaign, I'll tailor it to high-heaven.

If it's something more gritty and low-magic, it will definitely be status quo.

So my vote would be "depends".

 

[Quasqueton]

I would really like to hear some success stories of status quo.

Well take that CR 15 dragon, for instance. He's not alone, just sitting in his cave. He has minions out raiding the land around. And the low and distant minions are the enemies the PCs take on at low levels. Then as the PCs gain power and knowledge of the dragon's "operation", they can take on more powerful minions---leutenants. Then they will move up the "food chain" and eventually right up against the dragon itself. And after defeating the CR 15 dragon, they learn that the dragon was actually working the kingdom on behalf of a demon prince. Etc.

Now, if the PCs decide to go right for the dragon first, at low levels, they will either bounce off the tougher defenses, or they will die.

Novice mountain climbers don't attempt Everest. They work the smaller mounts, then the larger, then the greats. Same with adventurers taking on adventure.

Quasqueton

 

[Saeviomagy]

Well take that CR 15 dragon, for instance. He's not alone, just sitting in his cave. He has minions out raiding the land around. And the low and distant minions are the enemies the PCs take on at low levels. Then as the PCs gain power and knowledge of the dragon's "operation", they can take on more powerful minions---leutenants. Then they will move up the "food chain" and eventually right up against the dragon itself. And after defeating the CR 15 dragon, they learn that the dragon was actually working the kingdom on behalf of a demon prince. Etc.

Now, if the PCs decide to go right for the dragon first, at low levels, they will either bounce off the tougher defenses, or they will die.

Novice mountain climbers don't attempt Everest. They work the smaller mounts, then the larger, then the greats. Same with adventurers taking on adventure.

Quasqueton

So what you mean is that you tailor what the PC's meet, but not what exists in the world.