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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6617220" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Here's my thoughts:I had a DM who wanted to provide that kind of experience to his players. It drove the campaign in directions that were a real turnoff for me and I ended up leaving. In my opinion, D&amp;D works best when it's about empowering the players to make decisions and suffer the consequences, and not about conveying awesome experiences that the DM wanted you to have. I do occasionally give my players weird and interesting things to see like a hole that goes right through the planet, but I don't try to emphasize the awesomeness of them, I'm pretty offhand about it and I let the players decide for themselves what is awesome. And usually what is awesome for them is something they did, like use a monk's Stunning Strike to stuff a CR 12 Chain Worm's leg into a cursed Bag of Devouring so that the Bag of Devouring eats the Chain Worm (it was way too tough to fight normally).So as far as enabling awesome experiences, the only advice I have to give you is the Rule of Yes: make it an official house rule that the first time they try something new and crazy, it works. Even if you're not sure it should work exactly that way, it works, as long as no one has ever done it before in this campaign. The second time you'll figure out rules for it and make it realistic, but for example the first time they try to grapple the enemy wizard and cover his mouth so he can't cast spells, it just works (i.e. normal grapple attempt must be made but if it works, silencing is automatic). That won't create awesome experiences in and of itself, but it does pretty much guarantee that you won't miss out on any potentially awesome plans that the players are mulling over in their heads.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6617220, member: 6787650"] Here's my thoughts: I had a DM who wanted to provide that kind of experience to his players. It drove the campaign in directions that were a real turnoff for me and I ended up leaving. In my opinion, D&D works best when it's about empowering the players to make decisions and suffer the consequences, and not about conveying awesome experiences that the DM wanted you to have. I do occasionally give my players weird and interesting things to see like a hole that goes right through the planet, but I don't try to emphasize the awesomeness of them, I'm pretty offhand about it and I let the players decide for themselves what is awesome. And usually what is awesome for them is something they [I]did[/I], like use a monk's Stunning Strike to stuff a CR 12 Chain Worm's leg into a cursed Bag of Devouring so that the Bag of Devouring eats the Chain Worm (it was way too tough to fight normally). So as far as enabling awesome experiences, the only advice I have to give you is the Rule of Yes: make it an official house rule that the first time they try something new and crazy, it works. Even if you're not sure it should work exactly that way, it works, as long as no one has ever done it before in this campaign. The [I]second[/I] time you'll figure out rules for it and make it realistic, but for example the first time they try to grapple the enemy wizard and cover his mouth so he can't cast spells, it just works (i.e. normal grapple attempt must be made but if it works, silencing is automatic). That won't create awesome experiences in and of itself, but it does pretty much guarantee that you won't miss out on any potentially awesome plans that the players are mulling over in their heads. [/QUOTE]

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