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<blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5007809" data-attributes="member: 18280">And your players never choose to go look at the spooky ruined castle on the hill?&nbsp; That was the confusing part for me, because I find that, once I have mentioned enough spots like that, sooner or later the PCs are going to want to look into one of them.Time has shown me that what seem to be rational choices from one side of the screen are not always what seem to be rational choices from the other side.&nbsp; <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing&nbsp; &nbsp; :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />&nbsp; But I agree with you in the general case.@SkidAce:&nbsp; When I am setting up a milieu, there is not always a single &quot;villian&quot; promoting a social problem.&nbsp; Sometimes issues are larger, and take more work to deal with, often in between other adventures.&nbsp; It is important for the players to be able to track their characters' progress with this sort of problem, but instant solutions (kill the villian and take his stuff!) don't always make for the most satisfying outcomes.I really enjoy games that can hold a distorted mirror to our own world, that can help us &quot;get&quot; another point of view, that broaden our horizons.&nbsp; For example, I had a cool play experience a couple of years back where the PCs discussed religion and ethics with a priest of the evil Spider Goddess in the campaign world (this was in a modified Caves of Chaos using modified 3.x rules).&nbsp; A pivotal moment came when the players realized that the spider cultists were using a nominally &quot;good&quot; scripture to justify sacrificing children.&nbsp; It was a lot of fun, and a bit frustrating, and made the players have to rethink the &quot;good&quot; cult just a bit.&nbsp; Likewise, imagine a problem like that of the American Civil War:&nbsp; One side has built its economy on slavery, the other has not.&nbsp; Meanwhile, outside interested parties condemn slavery while making a fortune on the byproducts of slavery (rum and sugar, for example).&nbsp; Everyone might know what the right thing to do is, but doing the right thing is hard, and has serious economic consequences.&nbsp; Begining a campaign before the (fantasy world) Civil War, playing out the Civil War, and continuing far into the aftermath is more satisfying (to me, and YMM really V here) than simply stopping Blastemall as part of a single adventure.RC</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Raven Crowking, post: 5007809, member: 18280"] And your players [i][b]never[/b][/i][b][/b] choose to go look at the spooky ruined castle on the hill? That was the confusing part for me, because I find that, once I have mentioned enough spots like that, sooner or later the PCs are going to want to look into one of them. Time has shown me that what seem to be rational choices from one side of the screen are not always what seem to be rational choices from the other side. :lol: But I agree with you in the general case. @SkidAce: When I am setting up a milieu, there is not always a single "villian" promoting a social problem. Sometimes issues are larger, and take more work to deal with, often in between other adventures. It is important for the players to be able to track their characters' progress with this sort of problem, but instant solutions (kill the villian and take his stuff!) don't always make for the most satisfying outcomes. I really enjoy games that can hold a distorted mirror to our own world, that can help us "get" another point of view, that broaden our horizons. For example, I had a cool play experience a couple of years back where the PCs discussed religion and ethics with a priest of the evil Spider Goddess in the campaign world (this was in a modified Caves of Chaos using modified 3.x rules). A pivotal moment came when the players realized that the spider cultists were using a nominally "good" scripture to justify sacrificing children. It was a lot of fun, and a bit frustrating, and made the players have to rethink the "good" cult just a bit. Likewise, imagine a problem like that of the American Civil War: One side has built its economy on slavery, the other has not. Meanwhile, outside interested parties condemn slavery while making a fortune on the byproducts of slavery (rum and sugar, for example). Everyone might know what the right thing to do is, but doing the right thing is hard, and has serious economic consequences. Begining a campaign before the (fantasy world) Civil War, playing out the Civil War, and continuing far into the aftermath is more satisfying (to me, and YMM really V here) than simply stopping Blastemall as part of a single adventure. RC [/QUOTE]

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