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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5306498" data-attributes="member: 21169">Is this because the scenes are determined by player choices? And are those choices made during char gen, or play? Or perhaps both. I can see how the medusa encounter could be pre-determined because, say, one player has decided his father was petrified by her. The needs of story then pretty much demand an encounter with the medusa at some point, or at least some sort of resolution of the matter.In the superhero campaign I previously ran, one player always liked to give his PCs an arch nemesis at char gen. His first was an Arthurian knight who had Merlin as his enemy, his second was a genetically modified Hulk-type called Strongo who had an evil Leader-type brother called Monstro. (I added a third brother, Strango, who was, tbh, rather unnecessary.)In the D&D game I'm currently running, no one has quite such strong 'encounter drives' built in. Though there is the paladin of the Raven Queen I mentioned in another thread, who wants to destroy undead.D&D characters traditionally start off motivated only by money, magic items and level ups. Those things can be found in lots of places, as the typical D&D world is filled with such things, so they are free to wander. Only as the game goes on would arch nemeses, such as Obmi, appear. Once such a nemesis does turn up though, one could say the game changes and a future encounter becomes fixed.Ofc the Conan-style, money seeking approach is not the only way to play D&D. Dragonlance is a strong reaction against this - there is, I believe, no gold on Krynn - in favour of what is seen as more LotR-style motivations - the PCs in Dragonlance fight the draconians because they are trying to despoil the PCs homeland. And there's less choice there. The players aren't able to say, "Well, there's some kobolds with money, some orcs with money and some draconians with money. We could kill any of them and take their stuff and it would get us what we want."</blockquote>

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