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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3511249" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think you missed the point, namely: you can improv an adventure. And a dungeon. And monsters and treasures. 3e makes this ridiculously simple, actually. And I do. All the time. If I throw a wanted poster at the PC's, I haven't probably developed anything past the fact that the town guard wants a guy enough to hire mercenaries to chase after him. Depending on my feelings at the moment and the archetype of the campaign, he might just be a guilty guy they're looking for (for a party that's a bunch of "sell-swords"), or a victim of political machinations (for a campaign that likes a bit of intrigue), or the agent of the Necromancer King (for one of those epic slay-the-deep-evil campaigns), or any one of a hundred different ideas knocking around my head. I didn't create the adventure for the wanted guy any more than I created the adventure for the thieves' guild. So in answer to your question, why can't I? The answer is I can. I do. It's not really that hard, and it's a lot of fun for me. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Archetypes don't have a background or context, though. The Necromancer King is an archetype: some sort of royalty with  a lot of undead guards. I don't need any background or context to imagine what a Necromancer King looks or acts like. He's in a throne room surrounded by ghouls and he wears a crown made of human hands and platinum. The castle is ruined.From there, I can build whatever relevant world information I need. The Necromancer King is the king of an ancient empire who never died. Call it "The Empire of Varlerin." He's a lich. He's a True Necromancer from Heroes of Horror. His main weapon is an endless army of zombies, and his more effective weapons are ghouls and wraiths. He's making motions to invade the PC's city.You don't need to limit character types because all character types are archetypes. Paladins are "Knights in Shining Armor." Druids are "Friends of Nature." Fighters are "Guys who stick the pointy end into the squishy guy." Swashbucklers are "Wannabe Errol Flynns." All those archetypes have a host of world suggestions that come along with them, that can depict how the world is. Again, the idea comes from my experience with improv. Again, it hardly requires any work outside of the game itself. I've gotta have a general idea of the archetypes and think of interesting ways for them to interact or be questioned, and it's really not hard. What if the Fighter is set upon by mind-controlled innocents? What if the Paladin has to oust corruption from his own church? What if the Druid becomes an agent of assassination for the Defenders of Nature, a shadowy organization with close ties to the Worgs (and thus the local goblins)?The crux of our argument is irrelevant because the conciet that you need to do a lot of work before an adventure for the adventure is false. You only need to do what you want to do.:shrug:You're welcome to not enjoy the playstype, but it's perfectly valid, perfectly delightful, and perfectly realized. I don't need a page of notes to help me be creative at the table. Not everyone has that talent, but it makes the game a lot more fun for me to not know what's going to happen before it does. It's false to assume that games like this lack verisimilitude and depth (not that you are saying that, just that it's a common assumption to make about more improvised games). My necromancer king has an empire, a motif, a motive, and I just spent all the time writing this post thinking that up.</blockquote>

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