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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harr" data-source="post: 4587473" data-attributes="member: 47190">Wow, that article is entertaining, and yet, horrible. I'm not a veteran DM, but I think I can say pretty safely that if I took that attitude into my game I could expect some pretty catastrophic consequences, like resentful players, storyline sabotage and a campaign that slowly grinds to a halt because players start to miss sessions cause seriously, why would they even make the effort to show up?If players start to do "Station Squatting", that's their way of showing you what they are interested in and what they want to do. What harm would it have done to this DM to go "Ok guys, I have nothing more prepared for the barge this week, we can finish off this gaming session with some easy trading or something, but get ready ready for next week, you want some barge, I'll give you some barge!"Then next week? Some pirates attack the barge. The players get wind of some extremely rare spice that could be their path to riches if they can find the island (with their barge) and navigate the watery-jungle mega-dungeon inside it (using their barge). Suddenly, a huge tower just springs up out of nowhere in the niddle of a swamp, nobody can get to it to investigate it except the characters (using... you guessed it... their barge).Seriously man, if their players love their barge? You CAN revolve the adventures and the danger and the stuff AROUND THE FRICKING BARGE. How could this guy not even address this is beyond me. It really just looks like he wrote a linear adventure and is insulted that the player didn't want to follow the line of his written adventure. Some writers are prima-donna like that.I mean how easy, how drop-dead simple would it have been to go just, well guess what guys turns out you found a hidden river offshoot and you can actually go to (whatever the city they were supposed to go to was called) ON YOUR BARGE!! WOW! I am a fricking GENIUS over here!! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />And if the players want to open a bakery... god... ok... They party gets wind of an extremely rare crystalline sugar that only grows in the deepest reaches of some natural caves infested by beholders. And the bakery across the street is already getting a supply of it somehow, threatening to put THEIR bakery out of business. Next week... some troll thugs arrive and offer to start accepting weekly payments of 1000gp for 'protection'. Will they pay, will they fight, or will they start looking for the boss of these thugs and show him what's what when he messes with THEIR bakery? Next week... a client who they sold a cake to ate it and got violently ill and died. She rose two days later as a ghoul. The cityfold are blaming the bakery for this. Are they going to sit back and let the mob burn down THEIR bakery, or are they going to find the truth behind all this?! Next week... the characters suddenly realize that all the cakes that are left undecorated in the kitchen at night, by morning are completely and beautifully finished with drawings and patterns that far surpass anything they would ever be able to do. What's going on here?? Next week....Right, so anyway, point: If your players are station-squatting, listen to them. They are showing you what's fun for them. LISTEN to them. You CAN make heroic adventurous stuff to accomodate it, and if you already prepped up a lot of stuff ahead of time, you CAN change that stuff a LITTLE bit a still use it.And really, whoever that guy in that article is, sorry, but IMHO he has no business giving advice to anybody, I mean, I consider myself a newbie at DMing still and already I know better than that (edit-> and it's mostly from reading these forums, go ENWorld! lol)</blockquote>

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