Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5619061" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, my feeling with SCs is that there's just no real way you can have a one-size-fits-all mechanic. I've designed plenty of really good ones, and had other ones go utterly crazy wrong or have the mechanics just not be applicable at all. I think they've polished the concept a fair amount over the last couple years, but it is inherently limited. OTOH I also find that the best SCs I've done were mostly just made up on the spot, so it can be a great tool to just pull out of your back pocket when you need something. I mostly agree about encounters. The funny thing is if you stick quite close to the DMG1 encounter templates and use MM3 monsters/damage expressions things usually work OK, but that covers only a very small subset of the tools you want to bring to bear on encounter design. A whole book could easily be written on the subject, maybe several! I say break the 'rules' liberally, but also study them and experiment with them a bit to get a feel for why the advice the DMG gives is there. It is not at all bad advice, just a starting point. 4e really does seem to work out to a pretty consistent baseline, so you do apparently have to actually think about &quot;OK, now, for my group...&quot; which certainly has been true of previous editions, but less in terms of how things are set up and more in terms of how they played out. I think writing adventures for 4e can be tough, ideally they should really be tailored a decent amount to the group.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5619061, member: 82106"] Yeah, my feeling with SCs is that there's just no real way you can have a one-size-fits-all mechanic. I've designed plenty of really good ones, and had other ones go utterly crazy wrong or have the mechanics just not be applicable at all. I think they've polished the concept a fair amount over the last couple years, but it is inherently limited. OTOH I also find that the best SCs I've done were mostly just made up on the spot, so it can be a great tool to just pull out of your back pocket when you need something. I mostly agree about encounters. The funny thing is if you stick quite close to the DMG1 encounter templates and use MM3 monsters/damage expressions things usually work OK, but that covers only a very small subset of the tools you want to bring to bear on encounter design. A whole book could easily be written on the subject, maybe several! I say break the 'rules' liberally, but also study them and experiment with them a bit to get a feel for why the advice the DMG gives is there. It is not at all bad advice, just a starting point. 4e really does seem to work out to a pretty consistent baseline, so you do apparently have to actually think about "OK, now, for my group..." which certainly has been true of previous editions, but less in terms of how things are set up and more in terms of how they played out. I think writing adventures for 4e can be tough, ideally they should really be tailored a decent amount to the group. [/QUOTE]

Verification