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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4732682" data-attributes="member: 15538">1. Why do you play D&D? (DMing or as a player)To obtain dramaturgical experiences imbedded in a game of incomplete information, with the benefit of seeing psychology in action.2. Would you say that D&D is an outlet for your creativity or are you creative for the sake of playing D&D?An outlet.3. Follow-up: Why create through D&D? Why not write a story? Or create through some other outlet? What does D&D offer that appeals to you or is unique to itself?Uncertainty. Meaningful choice. RPG characters are different from other characters; right before a player makes a choice, there is a real chance they could decide one thing or the other, and so a character who is capable of making such a choice is necessarily more psychological and contextual than one who has made such a choice.Throw in also in interest in codifying and analyzing things about characters, worlds, and ideas.4. In your opinion, who owns your past campaigns / adventures that you’ve DMed?follow-up: Would whether or not you ran a published adventure affect your answer?We do. Running a published adventure is just a jumping off point; we own our games just as much as Shakespeare owned his version of Macbeth.5. In your opinion, who owns your past PCs?follow-up: Would whether or not you were run through a published adventure affect your answer?I own my PCs. Even if it's pre-gen, even if it's a character from a book, I take ownership of the characters and their lives.6. When playing (DM or PC) are you more impressed with originality or familiarity in the story? Why? (something you’ve never seen before or a clever reference to other stories, mythology, popular culture, etc.)Neither. I am interested in a compelling story with real choices. Some mixture of originality and familiarity is necessary to do this, and the ratio varies from game to game, session to session.7. Granted that D&D is a game with rules and so on, how do you win? (good storytelling? killing the monsters? getting phat lewt?)You have an inner experience.8. In your view, what is the point of a game system’s rules?To resolve storytelling questions that cannot be answered by a character's choice to do one thing or another, and to constrain character choices within what is conceived, in that game, to be the possible.9. What is the best moment in a session and (more importantly) why?Moments of pure, total surprise.10. What is your favourite D&D memory and (more importantly) why? (Though I’m interested in creativity and storytelling, don’t feel limited to that. I’m interested in the reasoning as much as I’m interested in the moment)When I was a fairly young child, there was a player on the block, an older teenager, who ran killer games and was always bragging about his character, an immortal wizard of very high level. He boasted his character was unbeatable, and I and my neighbor challenged him to prove it in a killer dungeon of our own design. While my partner came up with some interesting idea, in truth, we shut him down in the first two rooms. In the first room, I came up with an elaborate trap that involved a collapsing staircase. The wizard's player easily detected the trap and sent his familar forward to scout, unaware that the whole point of the exercise was to separate him from his familiar. He noticed the illusory wall at the end of the hallway, and ordered his familiar through it. However, the illusion was also meant to be found; directly behind the wall was a tremendously long fall, onto spikes. At this point, the player was enraged at the loss of his beloved ferret.He proceeded into the next room, and found, I think, a dracolich. Dispatching the beast and scooping up its treasure, he found a secret door. Opening it, he came face to face with a Mirror of Opposition. His nearly unstoppable PC was now faced with a doppelganger of identical powers. He attempted to kill his double, forgetting that he was virtually immune to most spells. His double then lured him into an anti-magic zone, whereupon he was crushed with a giant block of stone. As he was technically still alive, his double then sealed the room off and left him trapped there for eternity.Apart from the poetic justice of the whole thing, I think it was an excellent demonstration of the futilty of powergaming a PC and trying to "win" against the DM. I felt very satisfied with having both killed the damned familiar, hitting him where it hurts, followed by turning a deific character into an absolutely powerless captive. I think it was an excellent lesson in hubris for the wizard's player, and to me an excellent exercise in creativity. My co-DM learned, I think, the value of cutting to the chase when you want to screw somebody over. It also put my Grimtooth-honed trap skills to work.</blockquote>

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