NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9713795" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Okay.Do you think most players would view it that way? That if you were introducing this style to someone new, they would view it that way?Imagine someone whose only exposure to D&D is seeing Honor Among Thieves and good episodes of an actual-play podcast (doesn't have to be Critical Role but that's the most likely one), so they're excited to play the "real thing". Would you expect them to take that attitude?Because that--to me--is the crux here. Something SEVERAL people have used as a criticism of "narrative" games, both in this thread and elsewhere, is that they depend on the group already being highly aligned in terms of both what they want out of the experience, and what things they're expected to accept without comment. But now, with this argument, that seems to be no different for the "traditional GM" approach. That also requires the players to be highly aligned with what they want out of the experience, and even more about what things they're expected to accept without comment.If you're relying on pre-existing understanding, if that's supposed to be something that generally applies--which the people who have upvoted you seem to be saying--then doesn't that rather weaken several of the arguments already made?NGL, this is--or at least really obviously reads like--you saying that the campaign can't actually matter to people like me. That's pretty insulting. Imagine if I had said something like "In games where the players really matter, enthusiasm is vitally important to the GM as well as to the players." I'd have you guys jumping down my throat--and rightly so. This is sorta what I mean about the "double standard" I've mentioned previously. Wrong things, even hurtful things, are totally okay...when they come from one specific side.The campaign matters to me, immensely so. It matters to my players. They have, in fact, also praised me for how consistent and well-built it is, that it makes sense, that people have understandable motives and act on them in reasonable ways, that it has a cohesive concept and direction, that there have many times where they failed to connect the dots when they absolutely could have, and that cost them--and other times when they connected the dots better than I did, and thus it benefited them.But I haven't poured my heart and soul into really, frankly minor things like "this setting ABSOLUTELY CAN'T have gnomes" or whatever. I've put it into the themes of the campaign. Dragons are rare in the Tarrakhuna (as much a limitation on myself as on the campaign). Demons and Devils are powerful and dangerous--you don't mess with them without a good plan. Celestials...nobody knows for sure! (Well, the party does now, but originally they didn't.) Genies are the fantastical powerful species du jour. It's what I call a "chiaroscuro" world--like the painting technique, which emphasizes the few lighted, colorful things against pitch-dark shadows.. There are plenty of bright things. There are also dark shadows, and some pretty terrible stuff happens in them some of the time. Those shadows lengthen, deepen, intensify--and may snuff out the light, if no one works to maintain it. There may be assassin-cults and twisted abominations of ancient evil magic and the leftover detritus of a collapsed-and-fled genie empire built on the backs of mortal slaves. There may be horrible addictions and callous merchant-princes and tyrannical rulers. But there is hope--both in the form of heroes willing to step up to the plate to make a difference, and in the ordinary people who make those heroic acts possible, and who knit together the resulting aftermath into something that can stand the test of time (rather than being a flash in the pan, bound together only as long as a hero can hold it).That, to me, is what a "game where the campaign really matters" looks like. That's the deeply important structure getting the attention it deserves, as far as I'm concerned. I just flat-out don't understand why "you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT play gnomes" or "bards are FORBIDDEN" in any way contributes to the bones and muscles and organs of a setting. They're barely even skin-deep things. That doesn't mean they don't matter. But they're just...they're incredibly superficial as far as campaign-effort goes. To make such an ENORMOUS deal out of such superficial elements doesn't make sense to me. It's like obsessing over the font and kerning of a novel, as though that were of equal weight to the character-building or the editing.</blockquote>

Verification