Zhure
First Post
First, let me apologize to those diligent RPGA members who run good scenarios. I'm sure such exist, but I've never seen one.
This weekend I went to the three-day local convention and attended six different RPGA events, none Living ... anything, but all -- frankly -- sucked a wet fart out of a dead pigeon's hindquarters with a soda straw. The games were four hour blocks of atrocities.
While I could say I was disappointed with the lack of game knowledge of the DMs*, my primary disappointment was the terribly lackluster pregenerated scenarios.
The first horrid scenario I want to talk about was called "The Big One." The PCs were all specialist wizards and had to follow a linear plot. While the linear-nature of pregenerated convention scenarios I understand, I don't understand not offering options and inexplicable "role-telling." The characters really had no choices to make and the planned encounters went from A to B to C, for eight iterations. Trying to do it in a different order yielded exactly the same result.
The role-telling was at the beginning, where EVERY wizard in this group of 13th level wizards FORGOT HIS SPELL COMPONENT POUCH IN THE LAB. No reason, just didn't take it with him to bed.
WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THE GOD'S????
I can imagine an apprentice or even a first level character doing this, but a 13th level character?
And on top of that, some of the characters memorized spells (like stoneskin) that he didn't have enough expensive components to cast. What? Huh?
While the scenario designers had put some thought and detail into this kind of clever plot, they missed a few rather obvious short-circuits which made the entire plot implausible ("We Dimension Door into the lab, bypassing the trap"; "We use Limited Wish to use Plane Shift to go home to the lab.")
The lack of spell components actually made one or two of the characters completely useless. How disheartening for my friend who played the character whose only spell he could cast was stoneskin (once) and had a wizard's BAB, no spellcraft and few hitpoints.
Finally, even if one made all the exactly correct assumptions and all the exactly correct moves, there was NO WAY to complete the characters' assigned mission, even if they bypassed the entire scenario. The metaplot of protecting their homeland was impossible to fulfill based on the existing conditions. Impossible. But we did fairly well and had partial success.
The other event I wanted to mention was a scenario called, "The Blood of Innocents." I'd prefer to call it, "The Worst Scenario Ever." The plot was completely linear. Completely, no deviation at all.
The characters contained a number of huge glaring errors, and that's just based on my cursory inspection. The character I played was a Cleric with the Animal and Air domains. He had no animal companion, wasn't allowed to get one and no earth elemantals appeared in the game. He wielded a quarterstaff even though he didn't have AMBI/TWF but was expected to dual-wield it. The damage amounts indicted that anyway (since at a 14 STR he should've done 1d6+3 OR 16d+2/1d6+1 and not 1d6+2/1d6+2 as listed). Also, as the only 1st level character in a group of 4th level characters, he had absolutely no role the two skills he had were not germane to the plot. By the first encounter he was out of spells.
All of the events of the scenario I can overlook as just boring writing. We completed the scenario early and I didn't think we'd made any blatant errors. The final resolution was the NPC paladin was able to save one of the six PCs from the plague and the rest died along with their village that they gave everything to save.
I was shocked. Since we finished early, the DM went over the other possible outcomes. Seems we managed to get the best possible solution.
I was shocked and flabbergasted. The best possible solution was a complete failure of the mission, the death of all our NPC relatives and dependents, and the village which we all lived in had to be burned to the ground. On top of all that, we had a near TPK, redeemed only by an NPC.
I was so angered at the loss of four hours of my life, I got up and left. They called me back to "fill out my RPGA forms." I marked a '1' in all categories and made some scathing comments. I voted as best roleplayer everyone except the RPG DMs who were playing (the one on my right was a good roleplayer if his 14 INT character was a four year old mongoloid caricature of an adventurer). I should've torn up my RPGA card (I did later) right on the spot and vented there.
Somehow I won $1 worth of prizes. They came and gave it to me where I was sitting outside smoking off my anger. I threw it to someone else. I was so mad I felt like starting a fist-fight with those complete morons who were making a bad impression to all sorts of new players. They were misrepresenting my hobby! They stole four hours of my life. I felt like Inigo Montoya when the Count offered him anything. Instead of wanting my father back, I wanted back four hours of my life.
"Gimme back my four hours you ______!"
Thanks for listening,
Greg
*One of the DM's, who later played in "The Worst Scenario Ever," played a Sorceress who assumed all her spells were extended because she had the Extend Spell Feat. Nah, don't bother bumping the spell level, don't bother taking a FRA. This same person let players move, load, shoot and take a five-foot step with a nonmagical light crossbow.
This weekend I went to the three-day local convention and attended six different RPGA events, none Living ... anything, but all -- frankly -- sucked a wet fart out of a dead pigeon's hindquarters with a soda straw. The games were four hour blocks of atrocities.
While I could say I was disappointed with the lack of game knowledge of the DMs*, my primary disappointment was the terribly lackluster pregenerated scenarios.
The first horrid scenario I want to talk about was called "The Big One." The PCs were all specialist wizards and had to follow a linear plot. While the linear-nature of pregenerated convention scenarios I understand, I don't understand not offering options and inexplicable "role-telling." The characters really had no choices to make and the planned encounters went from A to B to C, for eight iterations. Trying to do it in a different order yielded exactly the same result.
The role-telling was at the beginning, where EVERY wizard in this group of 13th level wizards FORGOT HIS SPELL COMPONENT POUCH IN THE LAB. No reason, just didn't take it with him to bed.
WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THE GOD'S????
I can imagine an apprentice or even a first level character doing this, but a 13th level character?
And on top of that, some of the characters memorized spells (like stoneskin) that he didn't have enough expensive components to cast. What? Huh?
While the scenario designers had put some thought and detail into this kind of clever plot, they missed a few rather obvious short-circuits which made the entire plot implausible ("We Dimension Door into the lab, bypassing the trap"; "We use Limited Wish to use Plane Shift to go home to the lab.")
The lack of spell components actually made one or two of the characters completely useless. How disheartening for my friend who played the character whose only spell he could cast was stoneskin (once) and had a wizard's BAB, no spellcraft and few hitpoints.
Finally, even if one made all the exactly correct assumptions and all the exactly correct moves, there was NO WAY to complete the characters' assigned mission, even if they bypassed the entire scenario. The metaplot of protecting their homeland was impossible to fulfill based on the existing conditions. Impossible. But we did fairly well and had partial success.
The other event I wanted to mention was a scenario called, "The Blood of Innocents." I'd prefer to call it, "The Worst Scenario Ever." The plot was completely linear. Completely, no deviation at all.
The characters contained a number of huge glaring errors, and that's just based on my cursory inspection. The character I played was a Cleric with the Animal and Air domains. He had no animal companion, wasn't allowed to get one and no earth elemantals appeared in the game. He wielded a quarterstaff even though he didn't have AMBI/TWF but was expected to dual-wield it. The damage amounts indicted that anyway (since at a 14 STR he should've done 1d6+3 OR 16d+2/1d6+1 and not 1d6+2/1d6+2 as listed). Also, as the only 1st level character in a group of 4th level characters, he had absolutely no role the two skills he had were not germane to the plot. By the first encounter he was out of spells.
All of the events of the scenario I can overlook as just boring writing. We completed the scenario early and I didn't think we'd made any blatant errors. The final resolution was the NPC paladin was able to save one of the six PCs from the plague and the rest died along with their village that they gave everything to save.
I was shocked. Since we finished early, the DM went over the other possible outcomes. Seems we managed to get the best possible solution.
I was shocked and flabbergasted. The best possible solution was a complete failure of the mission, the death of all our NPC relatives and dependents, and the village which we all lived in had to be burned to the ground. On top of all that, we had a near TPK, redeemed only by an NPC.
I was so angered at the loss of four hours of my life, I got up and left. They called me back to "fill out my RPGA forms." I marked a '1' in all categories and made some scathing comments. I voted as best roleplayer everyone except the RPG DMs who were playing (the one on my right was a good roleplayer if his 14 INT character was a four year old mongoloid caricature of an adventurer). I should've torn up my RPGA card (I did later) right on the spot and vented there.
Somehow I won $1 worth of prizes. They came and gave it to me where I was sitting outside smoking off my anger. I threw it to someone else. I was so mad I felt like starting a fist-fight with those complete morons who were making a bad impression to all sorts of new players. They were misrepresenting my hobby! They stole four hours of my life. I felt like Inigo Montoya when the Count offered him anything. Instead of wanting my father back, I wanted back four hours of my life.
"Gimme back my four hours you ______!"
Thanks for listening,
Greg
*One of the DM's, who later played in "The Worst Scenario Ever," played a Sorceress who assumed all her spells were extended because she had the Extend Spell Feat. Nah, don't bother bumping the spell level, don't bother taking a FRA. This same person let players move, load, shoot and take a five-foot step with a nonmagical light crossbow.
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