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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9113293" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Perhaps you didn’t run them very differently. But my point is that the success of Dragonlance pushed things more toward a focus on story than had existed previously. AD&D by Gygax was mostly site based scenarios. Dungeon crawls. Wilderness exploration. Scenarios where there was some kind of status quo and then the PCs arrive. Modules were 16 to 32 pages, generally speaking. A main map, the key, a description of the scenario, treasure, and statblocks. Look at 2e. Look at the shift away from site based adventures to more story based adventures. The Time of Troubles and the trilogy if adventures based on that. The Great Modron March and Dead Gods for Planescape. The metaplot of the Prism Pentad in Dark Sun. And so on.All kinds of elements that include sequential events rather than just a starting scenario.Again, perhaps this escaped your notice, but it’s very true. Right. But that means you have a strong idea of what the story of the whole campaign will be. You're loosely plotting 18 levels of play before the game starts. Granted, you’re keeping it loose and you seem willing to allow things to change, but I think it’s a good indicator of who is the primary driver of the fiction in the game. And that’s not a criticism. I ran plenty of games that do this, and I still do. It can be a lot of fun if that’s what the group is into. If that works for you guys, that’s awesome. I’d feel like it was very likely to potentially leave everyone unenthused if you’re left with a campaign consisting of everyone’s third favorite thing. But that’s just me. Right, but was it really all that different? I mean, in this instance you kind of came up with the theme or premise yourself and then crafted some stuff for that. But typically you’d take the theme and premise selected by your voting process and then craft some stuff for that. So you had a starting point and basically made them travel from there to the pirate area and used that travel time to buy some time to have piratey stuff ready to go by the time the characters made it there? Why not just abandon the stuff if the players weren’t interested? I don’t see how that’s possible. You’re in charge. You can make something matter and bring it into focus or you can allow it to fade away. The world doesn’t have a will of it’s own. I mean, if it wasn’t something you desired and the players had already indicated they weren’t interested, why have it continue to be an element in the game? One of the advantages of a DM led game is that it gives considerable control to the DM.</blockquote>

Verification