Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="bloodtide" data-source="post: 9088720" data-attributes="member: 6684958">So three of my summer games are the same adventure.  I want to give some details, and see where people would point to Lack of Player Agency or Railroading.  I just want to see what other people will say.Set up: A short, direct adventure to fill the summer.  The players all picked "slay a dragon" for an adventure: only a couple players have ever had a character fight a dragon in a game and wanted to do it.  Everyone made 'generic' wanderer characters so they could all "wander into the adventure": that is town puts out a call for heroes and a bunch of random characters (the player characters) show up and form a group.  As a Traditional game the players can never create anything in the game world  after creation or alter game world reality.  They can only take actions in the game though the direct action of their character.  Adventure Background: Young red dragon shows up at a isolated mountain town and clams the town is now part of his domain.  The dragon demands a tribute and will return in 100 days to collect, or will destroy the town.  The town calls out for dragonslayers.Adventure Setting: Isolated independent mountain town.  The town is all noncombatants, other then a small militia.  There are no obvious high level NPCs anywhere in town or nearby just waiting for a PC to ask them to help.   No easy button things like an dragonslaying artifact just sitting on top of  towns folk mantle.  There is no Alchemist shop with twenty thousand gallons of acid on a shelf.  There is no obvious Broken "Lance of Dragon Slaying", that the PCs can just "find" and "recombine" to Easy Button end the adventure.Roughly half of the town and area is detailed, with the other half under a vague outline.  There are well over a hundred less then obvious or hidden things for players to find and potentiality use.  We have three groups  Group A (5E) made up of mostly good player, Group B (3.5E) made of a mix of neutral and bad players, and Group Z(5E) a group of bad players.There is not much "adventure worthy" or "fun" in town.  The tavern is just locals.  There are no obvious 'cool' monsters in town.  In any case I come down hard on any player that tries to do anything non adventure related.  Group A:  Being the good group of players they come to town and plan to slay the dragon.  They do research, role play and gather information about the town and area.  Group B: Came to town a bit unfocused, but then got a bit more focus and role played doing something about the dragon with a bunch of half baked random ideas all that went nowhere.  They fought the local kobolds a lot.Group Z: breezed through town and went right out to find the dragon.  They had plenty of encounters, but could not find the dragons lair.  For the first couple sessions I did just let the groups do whatever they wanted.  They were all forced to meet the baron ruler and the local dragon sage.    And they did encounter lots of set ups for people, places and things...no matter what they did.  Then they all met the local dwarf druid who told them that the dragon likes to drink at some local hot springs early in the morning once a week.Group A is sure this is a trap, and have chosen to ignore it.  There plan is to attack the dragon when it comes back on day 100.Group B thinks it's a trap too, but are planning to make the trap a trap for the dragon.Group Z rushed out to the hot springs lead by the helpful dwarf.  Waited.  Made close to no effort to hide until they saw the dragon flying towards the area.  Then attacked the dragon as six independent "Lone Wolf" like attackers and ignored each other.  The dragon had loads of fun with the characters, and killed three of them.  With the nedded players making new characters, they are planning to "try again".And this is where things left off last weekend.</blockquote>

Verification