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<blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9340607" data-attributes="member: 6915329"><p>See, I'm not saying you're wrong for your <em>emotions</em>. I'm saying you would very likely be happier if you tried to move away from the idea that a game must complete to be fun.</p><p></p><p>Or, as others have suggested (here and on that other thread of yours), you need to switch to an episodic format rather than an overarching campaign. Since your long campaigns never work out for you, shorter ones might.</p><p></p><p></p><p>OK, <em>this </em>is where you're wrong: How do you know that what you're doing, while you're doing it, isn't taking you any closer to the actual plot?</p><p></p><p>Example: In one of my games, we reached a new city and were heading for the inn so we could then go to the next step, which was heading to a specific temple, which was a necessary point in the overall quest. We're getting the town's flavor text, as per usual, and, well, I can't remember the exact order of things but one Perception check later my character spots a fortune teller's stand. My character has had some interesting experiences with fortune tellers before and I was usually on the lookout for one. And after a brief argument with the other players (one of the players... well, you know how never splitting the party leads to jokes about everyone going to the bathroom together? He's that kind of player), I slipped away and went to see the fortune teller. Thank goodness for a high Stealth score.</p><p></p><p>A big waste of time, I'm sure you'd say. The fortune teller had nothing to do with the temple, after all, or with what we knew the plot to be at that point. Strip it out; the game's better without it, right?</p><p></p><p>WRONG!</p><p></p><p>The fortune teller had legitimate info. <em>Because </em>I decided to ignore the "actual" plot and do something purely for roleplay reasons, I learned information that was both very useful for personal reasons <em>and </em>information about an upcoming major event that could have taken us by surprise otherwise. We may have learned that same information later on, if I hadn't chosen to go to the fortune teller--but now we had advanced knowledge.</p><p></p><p>And this keeps happening in our game. We shop or go to the inn, talk to the shopkeeper or smith or barkeep, and learn something important, either for a personal goal for the campaign's goal <em>and </em>we gain allies and/or useful equipment that will help us in the long run. I'm pretty sure that every single magic item I have (other than consumables) is something I've gotten by doing something you would consider a waste of time--but every one of those items has been either very important or very useful.</p><p></p><p>So that's my question. How do you know that the events you are going through aren't actually important?</p><p></p><p>If the answer is "experience," that you've never had those events actually be important in your games, then the <em>answer </em>is that when you DM, <em>make </em>those events be important. Pre-written adventures rarely take these things into consideration, if only because that would end up making the book too long, so you need to add them in. There's probably dozens of generators online that can help if you don't have the time. Heck, depending on how you feel about AI, you could even use ChatGPT or something similar to help.</p><p></p><p></p><p>This is a completely different thing, though. Whether the DM has something major happen to them or they just ghost because they're a jerk or a flake, that has nothing to do with spending time doing "unimportant" things in the game itself. Even if you had stripped out every single option until you had the most linear, railroaded adventure possible<em>, </em>the DM <em>still </em>would have left, with the only difference being that you might have been one session away from the end instead of ten sessions.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Faolyn, post: 9340607, member: 6915329"] See, I'm not saying you're wrong for your [I]emotions[/I]. I'm saying you would very likely be happier if you tried to move away from the idea that a game must complete to be fun. Or, as others have suggested (here and on that other thread of yours), you need to switch to an episodic format rather than an overarching campaign. Since your long campaigns never work out for you, shorter ones might. OK, [I]this [/I]is where you're wrong: How do you know that what you're doing, while you're doing it, isn't taking you any closer to the actual plot? Example: In one of my games, we reached a new city and were heading for the inn so we could then go to the next step, which was heading to a specific temple, which was a necessary point in the overall quest. We're getting the town's flavor text, as per usual, and, well, I can't remember the exact order of things but one Perception check later my character spots a fortune teller's stand. My character has had some interesting experiences with fortune tellers before and I was usually on the lookout for one. And after a brief argument with the other players (one of the players... well, you know how never splitting the party leads to jokes about everyone going to the bathroom together? He's that kind of player), I slipped away and went to see the fortune teller. Thank goodness for a high Stealth score. A big waste of time, I'm sure you'd say. The fortune teller had nothing to do with the temple, after all, or with what we knew the plot to be at that point. Strip it out; the game's better without it, right? WRONG! The fortune teller had legitimate info. [I]Because [/I]I decided to ignore the "actual" plot and do something purely for roleplay reasons, I learned information that was both very useful for personal reasons [I]and [/I]information about an upcoming major event that could have taken us by surprise otherwise. We may have learned that same information later on, if I hadn't chosen to go to the fortune teller--but now we had advanced knowledge. [I][/I] And this keeps happening in our game. We shop or go to the inn, talk to the shopkeeper or smith or barkeep, and learn something important, either for a personal goal for the campaign's goal [I]and [/I]we gain allies and/or useful equipment that will help us in the long run. I'm pretty sure that every single magic item I have (other than consumables) is something I've gotten by doing something you would consider a waste of time--but every one of those items has been either very important or very useful. So that's my question. How do you know that the events you are going through aren't actually important? If the answer is "experience," that you've never had those events actually be important in your games, then the [I]answer [/I]is that when you DM, [I]make [/I]those events be important. Pre-written adventures rarely take these things into consideration, if only because that would end up making the book too long, so you need to add them in. There's probably dozens of generators online that can help if you don't have the time. Heck, depending on how you feel about AI, you could even use ChatGPT or something similar to help. This is a completely different thing, though. Whether the DM has something major happen to them or they just ghost because they're a jerk or a flake, that has nothing to do with spending time doing "unimportant" things in the game itself. Even if you had stripped out every single option until you had the most linear, railroaded adventure possible[I], [/I]the DM [I]still [/I]would have left, with the only difference being that you might have been one session away from the end instead of ten sessions. [/QUOTE]
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