RPG Talk

MattLoter wrote: I get the appeal of playing mods, but I much prefer the sandbox vibe to being given clearly defined "quests" to complete.

For me there's kind of two general categories:

1. Prewritten stuff, modules or campaigns or whatever. If it's good, the railroady nature isn't too apparent and there's also flexibility written into the modules. Viz. Masks of Nyarlathotep; 8 sprawling chapters full of globetrotting pulp goodness, but the PCs can do them in any order they like. Each chapter has clues that lead to each other chapter, so they can follow their noses and it all hangs together and feels organic.

2. Improvised or barely-structured, light- or no-GM. This is what I really like, because to me it's the fullest realization of the improvised storytelling part of the hobby. I can make #1 fun, but it's not as personally satisfying because the PCs' choices don't matter as much. And it can very easily turn into primadonna GMs presenting their epic world/plot to PCs to the sound of much public fappery. I don't really care about their world because interesting worlds are a dime a dozen; if you want to tell me a story then you should write a novel and stop pretending my decisions really matter to the ultimate outcome.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that, like many of us, I'm (a) busy and (b) lazy, and don't want to spend a bunch of out-of-game time prepping for a hobby. The big survey WOTC did before releasing D&D 3rd ed. found that (IIRC) on average, DMs spend 2 hours prepping for every 1 hour of play. 2:1!! That's what's killing the hobby. By following one of the above two, I keep my sanity and get to still enjoy playing. Win-win.

dysjunct wrote: The big survey WOTC did before releasing D&D 3rd ed. found that (IIRC) on average, DMs spend 2 hours prepping for every 1 hour of play. 2:1!!

That's because the average DM sucks at his job and wastes time on material that never gets used.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote:

dysjunct wrote: The big survey WOTC did before releasing D&D 3rd ed. found that (IIRC) on average, DMs spend 2 hours prepping for every 1 hour of play. 2:1!!

That's because the average DM sucks at his job and wastes time on material that never gets used.

S.

That is absolutely true. Unfortunately, I am a very average DM.Also, a very good DM is a rare and beautiful creature. I haven't played with one for years. I fear they may be extinct, at least in my neck of the woods.

wdgrant wrote: My son has been pestering me to play some D&D, but I run into the same problems mentioned here. I don't have time to write adventures. Does anyone know of some good one-player adventures for D&D 3.x or of another RPG that has a good store of them? I would love to encourage his desire and spend some time doing something we both enjoy, but I just can't write adventures.

www.rpgnow.com/index.php?cPath=225_4044

D&D 3.5, and relatively well written. There's at least a dozen of them.

dysjunct wrote:

Jeff White wrote: I figure we've moved beyond that D&D 4e thread.

Two things:

1) I hear that Goodman Games only plans on releasing _one_ DCC RPG sourcebook a year, but tons of adventures. Yes! This is what I always want companies to do. I'm not interested in world building and I don't want to buy a book about some made up country. Just give me the adventures. It does sound like they are going to release DCC to the OGL so that 3rd parties can make sourcebooks for those that want them.

I think that's one of the (many) reasons for the high regard held by Call of Cthulhu. Most of the output is campaigns or books of scenarios. Very little "here's some setting information, have fun."

There are two extreme ways to approach running an adventure. Tell a tightly-scripted story that forces the player characters along for the ride. Or just set up a big sandbox setting for them to play in, and let the players freely choose what they will get into. Neither extreme works well, I think. Most players will get rebellious if they only are only allowed choices during combat. And if you don't have a story and just a setting, player groups will tend to fall quickly into a rut and the game gets boring.

So I like an rpg product line that gives me both well-written adventures and more general campaign material. The campaign material is helpful when the characters jump off the rails of the scripted adventures, and the scripted adventures help keep the campaign from stagnating.

That said, my longest campaign was for Legend of the Five Rings, which had great campaign sourcebooks but very few adventures. I got a lot of mileage out of the City of Lies setting, for which there was just one pre-made adventure, and that didn't even come with the set. We played for 3.5 years, and we even had to split the group into two in the final year, because it's cumbersome running a regular game for 12 players.

That prep stat that you mentioned elsewhere surprised me. So the average DM was spending, say, 12 hours for a 6 hour session? I guess that I'm lazy, or else just really good, because I typically spend less than 2 hours prepping for a 6 hour game.

I agree Shellhead, My rpg sessions are about 2-3 times as long as it takes me to prep them. When I did do my own thing, usually a riff on some works I read or saw, I'd just note down some key encounters and a few key stats required and shoot from the hip from there. I'm sure most DMs with any kind of a social life did the same.

I actually found that not having the script so tightly wound, it was fun for me to game as well because I _didn't_ know everything that was going to happen. A new story was unfolding in front of me as well.

Now, in regards to currently wanting to only run modules. I don't expect the players to ever be railroaded. I've improvised enough over the years that if the players ever do want to look into undocumented corners of the game I'll be fine going there.

I'm sure many of y'all read this when it came out, but if not a fun little essay on old school gaming. I might have my group read it for fun prior to any DCC gaming we do.

www.lulu.com/product/file-download/quick...chool-gaming/3159558

Well now you got me interested in some DCC. So Jeff, would you be interested in coming up north if I run a few sessions this fall?

Interested, but this fall is going to be pretty busy. I'll see what I can work out.

Are you thinking of running stuff out of that Beta or waiting til after the final rules drop?

I have always traditionally run from prewritten modules. But you have to choose the module well. The classic Call of Cthulhu / Warhammer model which describes details of places, people, events and a line of possible reactions is perfect. It kind of give syou something to fall back on, and a basis for shooting from the hip.

If anything has destroyed D&D 4e in my eyes, it is the new adventure structure that has been festering since 3.5, and taken full front stage with 4e. It is more of a list of encounters and skill encounters which include specifics of die rolls and outcomes without context of the underlying situations and context to really let you run it other than a bland rolling exercise.

One of the things I was also VERY glad to see in DCC is monster morale rules. Something that kind of vanished from D&D a long time ago.

moofrank wrote: If anything has destroyed D&D 4e in my eyes, it is the new adventure structure that has been festering since 3.5, and taken full front stage with 4e. It is more of a list of encounters and skill encounters which include specifics of die rolls and outcomes without context of the underlying situations and context to really let you run it other than a bland rolling exercise.

I've heard that ever since 3.X, D&D encounters are engineered to have a predetermined difficulty. By that I mean an encounter should whittle away about 25% of a party's resources. So, a party needs to rest/heal about every 3rd or 4th encounter. Can anyone vouch for this?

moofrank wrote: If anything has destroyed D&D 4e in my eyes . . . it is more of a list of encounters and skill encounters which include specifics of die rolls and outcomes without context of the underlying situations and context to really let you run it other than a bland rolling exercise.

Amen brother. I'll push it all the way back to 2nd edition, and even some of the material there was superfluous. The less dice rolling the more role playing, and very likely that means the DM is doing more of the work in-situ. Scenario and character trump the technicalities in good role-playing.

Jeff White wrote: I've heard that ever since 3.X, D&D encounters are engineered to have a predetermined difficulty. By that I mean an encounter should whittle away about 25% of a party's resources.

Who's doing the engineering?


S.

Jeff White wrote: Interested, but this fall is going to be pretty busy. I'll see what I can work out.

Are you thinking of running stuff out of that Beta or waiting til after the final rules drop?

I'd do it earlier, but my summer has become way packed with family stuff, vacations, and other gaming commitments. Fall is always my best gaming times.

P.S. Still want to do a Game Campout in the fall as well(The fall for that because it's too damn hot!)

Jeff White wrote:
I've heard that ever since 3.X, D&D encounters are engineered to have a predetermined difficulty. By that I mean an encounter should whittle away about 25% of a party's resources. So, a party needs to rest/heal about every 3rd or 4th encounter. Can anyone vouch for this?

This is definitely true is 4th edition. The modules are sticking to this fairly religiously. Even when they try and get cutesy and link encounters so that the party needs to run 3 encounters in a row to provide some story tension. Does the acronym TPK mean anything to you?

That and the whole fun of wildly unbalanced and easy encounters or "we're screwed. Run!" is just gone from anything D&D.

moofrank wrote: That and the whole fun of wildly unbalanced and easy encounters or "we're screwed. Run!" is just gone from anything D&D.

So let me get this straight (I haven't played 4th Edition) -- the GM doesn't decide what shows up when and where? The game system is running all that now?

S.

Sagrilarus wrote:

moofrank wrote: That and the whole fun of wildly unbalanced and easy encounters or "we're screwed. Run!" is just gone from anything D&D.

So let me get this straight (I haven't played 4th Edition) -- the GM doesn't decide what shows up when and where? The game system is running all that now?

S.

No, that's not the case. The DM can make encounters as balanced or unbalanced as he wants. Starting from 3rd on, the math (and the assumptions that drive it) behind the system has been getting progressively better understood, and addressed directly. So it is much easier to build encounters that are the power level you, as DM, want. Maybe that's balanced, maybe that's easy, maybe that's TPK level.

But there is absolutely nothing that says the DM must make everything balanced. That's still driven by story, and by whatever the group thinks is fun.