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[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...
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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5836474" data-attributes="member: 5143"><p>It's nice when you can get it. I like my games to keep going, and my players hate low levels. I was told by one of my players once that if I started a game at less than 5th level, he wouldn't be playing. They like having cool powers, and you only get those at higher levels. Of course, the cool powers are exactly the problem.</p><p></p><p>Almost every game I've run has taken place in a world where most people don't understand magic. Sure, there's Wizards but you don't go an hire a Wizard to enchant your gate, even if you are the King. Wizards are too powerful for most people to demand anything from. They are also mysterious and tend to live transitory lives or live in seclusion in the middle of nowhere.</p><p></p><p>Even when Wizards are found, they don't have the power to permanently enchant something unless they are extremely powerful. Exactly the kind of Wizard you don't want to mess with. And the type of Wizard who won't just do what you ask since he's got much more important things he's interested in than some stupid King.</p><p></p><p>And when I come at it from that point of view, I tend to view even the hardest to get places as places that won't be protected by magic.</p><p></p><p>I'm too lazy to do that. I like to be prepared, but I generally don't write anything down. Too much work. I just want to make sure I have the enemies planned out for the battles and the general flow of encounters(including non-combat ones) for the session.</p><p></p><p>And I've tried to do that in my most recent campaign. I told them all to pick themes from the Neverwinter Campaign Guide and each of the themes has a tie in to some of the villains throughout town. Between adventures, I've given them time to pursue their own goals. I figured a bunch of them would start investigating the city to find evidence of their particular villains. So far, I believe one of them got drunk for a week straight. One of them found an empty house to squat in and started stealing furniture from other abandoned houses to furnish his new place. The rest of the players are just staying in the inn. One of them started attempting to bluff their way into people's houses to prove he was a better liar than one of the other PCs. One of them is helping out in a temple. But the temple has nothing to do with any of the plots in the city, so it won't go anywhere.</p><p></p><p>So, after a week of them giving me no hooks to plan an adventure off of, I just come up with a hook and hand it to them. I don't have any huge problem doing that...but a number of other people keep telling me about the nirvana that is "Player Driven Campaigns" where the PCs are the ones telling YOU what they want to do. I've just never seen it.</p><p></p><p>And I did that one time, but they made it perfectly clear that they didn't want to play that adventure and would be leaving every chance they got, continually running away from the plot if I kept having it interfere with their ideas. So, I told them I wasn't running the game anymore.</p><p></p><p>At the time we had about 20 different games running at once(I was younger and we had a game running nearly every day of the week). So, we just dropped that game and played the other ones instead.</p><p></p><p>If it happened these days, it would likely cause our group to stop meeting weekly.</p><p></p><p>I like the PCs to be at least somewhat epic. I almost always start the adventurers off as "adventurers". They are professionally employed to do the impossible like killing monsters and finding rare and exotic items.</p><p></p><p>Which is why I like to yadda yadda over the parts where they sit in bars drinking and hand waive them until they get to the dragon slaying and treasure finding. That's why I almost always have to hit the players over the head with a plot, since they'd never get to that point on their own.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 5836474, member: 5143"] It's nice when you can get it. I like my games to keep going, and my players hate low levels. I was told by one of my players once that if I started a game at less than 5th level, he wouldn't be playing. They like having cool powers, and you only get those at higher levels. Of course, the cool powers are exactly the problem. Almost every game I've run has taken place in a world where most people don't understand magic. Sure, there's Wizards but you don't go an hire a Wizard to enchant your gate, even if you are the King. Wizards are too powerful for most people to demand anything from. They are also mysterious and tend to live transitory lives or live in seclusion in the middle of nowhere. Even when Wizards are found, they don't have the power to permanently enchant something unless they are extremely powerful. Exactly the kind of Wizard you don't want to mess with. And the type of Wizard who won't just do what you ask since he's got much more important things he's interested in than some stupid King. And when I come at it from that point of view, I tend to view even the hardest to get places as places that won't be protected by magic. I'm too lazy to do that. I like to be prepared, but I generally don't write anything down. Too much work. I just want to make sure I have the enemies planned out for the battles and the general flow of encounters(including non-combat ones) for the session. And I've tried to do that in my most recent campaign. I told them all to pick themes from the Neverwinter Campaign Guide and each of the themes has a tie in to some of the villains throughout town. Between adventures, I've given them time to pursue their own goals. I figured a bunch of them would start investigating the city to find evidence of their particular villains. So far, I believe one of them got drunk for a week straight. One of them found an empty house to squat in and started stealing furniture from other abandoned houses to furnish his new place. The rest of the players are just staying in the inn. One of them started attempting to bluff their way into people's houses to prove he was a better liar than one of the other PCs. One of them is helping out in a temple. But the temple has nothing to do with any of the plots in the city, so it won't go anywhere. So, after a week of them giving me no hooks to plan an adventure off of, I just come up with a hook and hand it to them. I don't have any huge problem doing that...but a number of other people keep telling me about the nirvana that is "Player Driven Campaigns" where the PCs are the ones telling YOU what they want to do. I've just never seen it. And I did that one time, but they made it perfectly clear that they didn't want to play that adventure and would be leaving every chance they got, continually running away from the plot if I kept having it interfere with their ideas. So, I told them I wasn't running the game anymore. At the time we had about 20 different games running at once(I was younger and we had a game running nearly every day of the week). So, we just dropped that game and played the other ones instead. If it happened these days, it would likely cause our group to stop meeting weekly. I like the PCs to be at least somewhat epic. I almost always start the adventurers off as "adventurers". They are professionally employed to do the impossible like killing monsters and finding rare and exotic items. Which is why I like to yadda yadda over the parts where they sit in bars drinking and hand waive them until they get to the dragon slaying and treasure finding. That's why I almost always have to hit the players over the head with a plot, since they'd never get to that point on their own. [/QUOTE]
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[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...
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