twofalls said:
>>Originally Posted by jim pinto
i HONESTLY expected people to read at least some of the
dungeon before running it, but in hindsight, that was a bad
call since we designed it exactly the opposite.<<
I don't understand this statement Jim, are you being incredulous? It rather sounds more like you had expected GM's to read the WHOLE thing rather than "at least some of" it. I've read Regions A and B and have prepped A for gaming. It was you who brought up refrences to Region N. Between work, family, and sleeping... I have time to squeeze in a little bit of my hobby and it seems unlikly that my situation is atypical for the demographic likely to be able to afford this product. My interest in material like this to save time...
Section N is just about the end of this huge book, and it's stated in the front that it was designed to be modular... so yeah people aren't likely to think that reading the entire manusript to run it is going to be nessesary, I sure didn't. Plainspeaking, if it were needed then it wouldn't have been worth the investment to me as I'd not have been able to complete it in a reasonable ammount of time. As it is, I'm enjoying the book a great deal and personalizing it to meet my group's expectations.
I've been running games for a long time (yes that is grey in my beard) and have seen a HUGE ammount of material (my shelves are larger than any of the FLS in my area) and I've recommended this book to other friends of mine who are GM's. There is no higher compliment I can pay to a game designer than that.
wow.
you said a mouth full.
let me tackle this, point by point
i'm being a little incredulous, if nothing else, because i'm letting
you see into my psyche. 95% of the pre-design of this book came
out of my head and helped to structure HOW we would tackle it.
making it modular, placing the monsters, designing the template for
each Room, etc.
the introduction (with a few key exceptions) was written BEFORE
a single writer was hired.
during the creation process we tried to stay as close to our design
principles as we could. but good ideas, like Room N223 that develop
during the 11th hour of editing, can't be shuffled away simply because
the DM won't or can't read ahead to see what the dungeon has to offer.
yes, i'm sorry i didn't do a better job of tying that room to the WHOLE
of the dungeon. it was unlikely during design that the PCs would find
it. but i kept thinking of all those really bad RPGA puzzles at conventions
that never made sense, when i made it, and i thought.... here's an instance
where if people are paying attention to the clues in this room, they'll realize
that something is afoot and these scrolls are not what they appear to be.
sadly, this too is illogical and as much as i like the room, its not as
cool now in print as it was when i dreamed it up.
but...
at the end of the day, if the DM doesn't like the puzzle i've presented,
he's free to ignore it.
as i stated, my original concept was for the book to be modular.
however, if the DM wants to surprise the PCs with well-placed
foreshadowing, it wouldn't be a bad idea to read 1 or 2 regions
ahead. foreshadowing needs to be tailored to the style of the
group and we really can't do that for you ahead of time.
a fortune teller that says, "Agar will die at the hands of his own death."
is great if the DM can assure the PCs will enter a room with a mirror
of opposition. AEG, however, can't make sure that happens without
a really big hammer.
the real problem is that there are 5 unique paths through the dungeon
and unless the PCs hit EVERY room, it won't matter what's in Room
N223 and all those clues have gone to waste.
luckily, i'm online every day and i hope i can guide people to some
really, really cool adventures .... with a little help from the DMs, i guess.
thanks for the kind words, twofalls
i hope your game goes well