Roll Initiative!

[Felon]

Why this wouldn't work in my game:

PC Rogue Player: Why didn't I warn the others of danger? You know I always go scouting, and I want an explanation of how our opponents saw through my (*rolls d20*) Sneak roll of 58?
PC Wizard Player: Why aren't we all invisible, or have a veil, or why haven't I mass charmed the monsters before they got to us? The rogue would have told me about them via our telepathic link.
PC Fighter 1 (defender type) Player: We could have skipped this battle if we were on our magic carpet. Why aren't we?
PC Fighter 2 (aggressive type) Player: You know I would have charged their leader the moment I saw them. As I am the only one who's usually mounted, the others will probably take a round or two just to get to the battle.
PC Cleric Player: Why didn't we negotiate with them before fighting? Between Fighter 2 and me, you know we can pull off 40+ Diplomacy rolls.
PC Bard Player: Awwww... I could have captivated them with my song while the others snuck past.
And you know what? Each and every one of the players above would have been right. WotC designer failed to take into consideration so many factors that his article is basically worthless. In medias res works sometimes. But not all the damn time.

There's an unfortunate trend in WotC articles to regard players as suffering from ADD and needing a non-stop flow of mindless violence to keep them focused. Shift your adventures into twentieth gear, because that's the dominant personality the game should cater to. Aything that requires patience is invariably undesirable. The thoughtful, detail-oriented gamer--the one who likes to scout ahead, search for devilishly-hidden traps, negotiate their way past encounters, and explore rather than exterminate--seems all but unaccounted for in their articles.

Fighty fight fight!!!

 

[Felon]

ANd, ultimately, neither of these things has anything at all to do with the subject of this thread. The only real issue regarding this method is "does it work for my campaign".

Your reasoning sounds pretty flawed. If the chief issue is "does it work for my campaign", then it makes little sense to dismiss the discussion of reasons why it won't work as having nothing at all to do with this thread.

 

[SteveC]

I am going to suggest that a couple of participants in this threat watch some more television, particularly the episodic action adventure shows that you see on your cable outlets.

What these shows do, almost by rote, is start each episode off with a bang. The characters are somewhere, doing something, and then...ACTION SCENE! Immediately after that, we cut to the show's opening credits (which usually also neatly summarize the overall plot of the entire show) and then...cut to commercial.

After we're back from commercial break, we get to see how the characters got there in the first place.

I think that's the trick we're talking about here. Nothing too special, but if it works, it works.

--Steve

 

[MarkB]

I am going to suggest that a couple of participants in this threat watch some more television, particularly the episodic action adventure shows that you see on your cable outlets.

What these shows do, almost by rote, is start each episode off with a bang. The characters are somewhere, doing something, and then...ACTION SCENE! Immediately after that, we cut to the show's opening credits (which usually also neatly summarize the overall plot of the entire show) and then...cut to commercial.

After we're back from commercial break, we get to see how the characters got there in the first place.

Which is rather trickier to do in D&D, where the characters, theoretically, get to decide how and if they get to any particular place.

And I get the feeling there's a large degree of variation as to how people run a game session, from start to finish. Some seem to favour an approach similar to episodic television, where a session has a specific start and end. Others tend to, as Lord Mhoram put it, just stick a metaphorical bookmark at the point they've reached when it's time to end the session, then pick up again from that point.

I tend to favour the latter approach myself - I prefer to think of a campaign as onle large, ongoing story rather than a set of individual episodes - but quite clearly, the opposite approach works for a lot of people.

 

[SteveC]

Which is rather trickier to do in D&D, where the characters, theoretically, get to decide how and if they get to any particular place.

And I get the feeling there's a large degree of variation as to how people run a game session, from start to finish. Some seem to favour an approach similar to episodic television, where a session has a specific start and end. Others tend to, as Lord Mhoram put it, just stick a metaphorical bookmark at the point they've reached when it's time to end the session, then pick up again from that point.

I tend to favour the latter approach myself - I prefer to think of a campaign as onle large, ongoing story rather than a set of individual episodes - but quite clearly, the opposite approach works for a lot of people.

You're certainly right: there is a huge variation on how people run their games, and I wasn't trying to say that this "start each session with a bang" method was the preferred way (heck, it isn't the way that I do things, so how good can it be ).

The thing is, it is a highly successful way to start off the evening for an episodic campaign. If last week's session left the group having dinner with the king, the next session certainly can start with the group being attacked on the roadway, it's just a question of how they got there: did they accept the king's proposal for the job? Did they reject it and upset him? Did they listen to it and then decide to do something entirely different? A skilled GM can manipulate things to get the players to the point of the action while still giving them the ability to choose their own fate.

In one of the biggest and longest running campaigns I ever GMed, I started the game off with a funeral for the king, and told everyone that they had all become acquainted with him in the last year, and had become somewhat close over that time. I then asked them to make up a story about something that he said, or some annecdote they remembered from the campaign.

The game then jumped a year into the past, and one of the objectives became to introduce the particular saying or phrase at some point. I gave them a great deal of dramatic license to work with and we had a great time with it.

That was my first experience with these sort of GMing techniques. It was something that was difficult to pull off, but the results were worth it. Now I don't exactly do this with every campaign...
--Steve

 

[danzig138]

After we're back from commercial break, we get to see how the characters got there in the first place.

Just saw this same basic IMR discussion on RPG.net. . . I, and my players, would be like the example above, where everyone questioned why we were denied the option to do anything about the encounter before the encounter. I suppose if you're trying to run a game like an action TV show, this might work for you. It's not something that would work well with out play style though.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Just saw this same basic IMR discussion on RPG.net. . . I, and my players, would be like the example above, where everyone questioned why we were denied the option to do anything about the encounter before the encounter. I suppose if you're trying to run a game like an action TV show, this might work for you. It's not something that would work well with out play style though.

Yeah, I was reading this thread and thinking of that one.

And using a TV example there is also 24. The start of the next show is literally seconds from the end of the last. If there wasn't a combat brewing then there isn't combat right at the start. That is more the way I like to do thing... I also like my TV that way - 24 was an amazing breath of relief for me - I generally dislike episodic stuff, and like serial.

 

[Gold Roger]

Geeez, you know what? I start to think that many of wizards D&D designers and developers need a crashcours in communication and rethorics. Just take this article. The author makes a good and viable, but optional, DMing technique seem totally braindead and brings some rather massive damage to the image of wizards simply by speaking in absolutes and from a one sided point of view. Some more relativation and the worst you could have said would have been "Not my cup of tea."

Maybe they can get a lesson from Marc Rosewater (magic lead designer and former professional writer), he's got an idea of marketing. Or maybe they already did and didn't make the transision that D&D has both a different target audience and business model?

My point being, this article just isn't professional. This is one guys idea about DMing tricks for his homegame others may find usefull, good for a blog or forum, but for a professional design collumn only if written convincingly, which it absolutely isn't.

 

[Felon]

Geeez, you know what? I start to think that many of wizards D&D designers and developers need a crashcours in communication and rethorics. Just take this article. The author makes a good and viable, but optional, DMing technique seem totally braindead and brings some rather massive damage to the image of wizards simply by speaking in absolutes and from a one sided point of view. Some more relativation and the worst you could have said would have been "Not my cup of tea."

Right, as I said previously, this article and others (notably the ones telling us how the approach to traps needs to be re-invented) make an implicit assumption about what perferences are dominant amongst gamers. Might it just be possible, for instance, that some players would rather not have their characters thrust into a life-taking situation without any other recourse made available?

 

[Reynard]

Right, as I said previously, this article and others (notably the ones telling us how the approach to traps needs to be re-invented) make an implicit assumption about what perferences are dominant amongst gamers. Might it just be possible, for instance, that some players would rather not have their characters thrust into a life-taking situation without any other recourse made available?

It's also possible that those assumptions are actually correct and it is you and I that a different from the typical player. Really, only WotC would be in a position to know that, via suveys and research. What you and I do in our home campaigns may not be way the game is played by the majority and therefore don't matter enough to get a mention. People that care about storytelling and versimilitude and consistency might make up 1% of D&D players. If that were the case, there really wouldn't be much motivation on the part of WotC writers, designers and developers to even bring those things up, let alone dedicate resources to them.

Just by way of example -- if EN World was representative of the D&D buying public in general, there'd be official 3.5 versions of Planescape, Dark Sun and Birthright on the shelves.