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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8851922" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>That's one of the biggest problems.</p><p></p><p>And I'm not sure exactly what you do about it accept take a big risk on publishing modules that are less ambitious than what impresses a jaded DM like me. More "Lost Mine of Phandelver" type stuff.</p><p></p><p>One summer I ran an open dungeon crawl at a local gaming store every week. At first, I was trying to prep mini adventures to the standards of what I might run at my table. And it sort of worked. It was really hard to condense things down to something that could be run in 3 hours and was also approachable by players of mixed skill. Some of my adventures were hits. Others not so much, because there is only so non-linear you can be in three hours or a five-room dungeon. Also stuff I considered reasonably interesting problem solving and tactics was above the heads of many of the players at an open table. But the biggest problem is three hours of game play was taking me 10+ hours of prep work a week. </p><p></p><p>So I switched strategies and stopped offering any sort of narrative or sophistication, and just did straight up old school haven delve format in the Gygaxian style using a mega dungeon generated off inspiration from the appendix in the 1e DMG. It was mindless as all get out, and none of it made sense, and it didn't transcend kicking doors down, killing everything and taking the stuff but everyone had fun every session and I could get 3 hours of game play out of an hour or two of mapping and basic notes.</p><p></p><p>Part of the problem is that us 40-year grognards have different standards of what is fun than we did when we were 15, and we are probably asking the 15 year olds to do too much. If Matt Mercer is your guide to what it takes to run a game, well that's probably above my level of prep because he can afford to treat it like a job. I'd be bored to tears with a diet of simple dungeon crawls. I've poked way too many things with 10 foot poles and killed far too many goblins and taken their stuff. If I paid a professional DM and got that sort of lazy crap, I'd be disappointed.</p><p></p><p>But my teenage daughter would probably love that game if she could find a peer to run it. And I think we're expecting kids these days to learn to run before they can crawl.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8851922, member: 4937"] That's one of the biggest problems. And I'm not sure exactly what you do about it accept take a big risk on publishing modules that are less ambitious than what impresses a jaded DM like me. More "Lost Mine of Phandelver" type stuff. One summer I ran an open dungeon crawl at a local gaming store every week. At first, I was trying to prep mini adventures to the standards of what I might run at my table. And it sort of worked. It was really hard to condense things down to something that could be run in 3 hours and was also approachable by players of mixed skill. Some of my adventures were hits. Others not so much, because there is only so non-linear you can be in three hours or a five-room dungeon. Also stuff I considered reasonably interesting problem solving and tactics was above the heads of many of the players at an open table. But the biggest problem is three hours of game play was taking me 10+ hours of prep work a week. So I switched strategies and stopped offering any sort of narrative or sophistication, and just did straight up old school haven delve format in the Gygaxian style using a mega dungeon generated off inspiration from the appendix in the 1e DMG. It was mindless as all get out, and none of it made sense, and it didn't transcend kicking doors down, killing everything and taking the stuff but everyone had fun every session and I could get 3 hours of game play out of an hour or two of mapping and basic notes. Part of the problem is that us 40-year grognards have different standards of what is fun than we did when we were 15, and we are probably asking the 15 year olds to do too much. If Matt Mercer is your guide to what it takes to run a game, well that's probably above my level of prep because he can afford to treat it like a job. I'd be bored to tears with a diet of simple dungeon crawls. I've poked way too many things with 10 foot poles and killed far too many goblins and taken their stuff. If I paid a professional DM and got that sort of lazy crap, I'd be disappointed. But my teenage daughter would probably love that game if she could find a peer to run it. And I think we're expecting kids these days to learn to run before they can crawl. [/QUOTE]
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