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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 1056462" data-attributes="member: 1106">Uh...why on earth not?  CRPGs don't expect you to rewrite large chunks of them or fill in huge voids, but PnP RPGs do.Oh yeah, the reasons as I assume them to be/they appear to be - status quo, tradition, static state of D&D designer culture, laziness in design, lack of page count to follow through etc.When a mega-adventure is the campaign, there's no need to be generic anymore in the way you need to make smaller modules generic.  For the most part, people don't think they're running a Greyhawk campaign when they're running RttToEE; they're running a RttToEE campaign.Not what he's referring to.  "Connecting the module to the campaign world" doesn't cure miles of braindead megadungeon hack'n'slashery without significant work.  Here's the criticism Ragnar raised:When I come to the tabletop RPGs, I want character development, immersive storylines, and plot development. The problem is, I got more character development and a better storyline out of the Baldur's Gate CRPG than any published RPG module or series of modules."Connecting the module to the campaign world" has little to do with that.  In fact, I think sometimes that DMs are so obsessed with settings that they can't see the trees (the adventures) for the forest (all the macro-level abstract setting stuff which is fun to create but does little for the game)."Make it a living part"?  Mega-adventures often are the campaign, and IMO, one of the more questionable assumptions of module designers is that they're doing you a favour by leaving things incomplete.  If you wanted to design your own material, you wouldn't be using a module.YMMV.  The Dragonlance Classics series had the epic vibe and sprawling scope, but was a rail-road-a-thon supreme, and so fundamentally flawed.  The Dark Sun adventure arc beginning with Freedom was perhaps the best series of published modules I've played in this vein out there, which a lot of variety and a good deal of depth.  But for the most part, as he said, Baldur's Gate CRPG series trumps them all (especially from 2 onwards), and no-one's given a good reason why this crazy state of affairs exists.  All I see are apologists and weak justifications.  To paraphrase someone from another thread, if your average DM produced a gaming experience as good as Planescape: Torment, PnP RPGs would be a lot more popular than they are.  The funny thing is, the PnP world has nothing published to answer that level of quality and depth.</blockquote>

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