|
So I'm writing a campaign and have no idea what I'm doing. I'm trying to break myself out of a "video game" mindset and so I have some questions. -Is it a problem if the campaign is fairly linear? The plot will have the party on the move most of the time, heading from place to place driving off invading forces trying to steal magical macguffins. I figure there will be a little breathing room at time, like an NPC says "the next assault will be at [CITY] in ten days, make sure you're there" and so the party has a day or two of in-game time to pursue sidequests or whatever. Otherwise though the campaign will be on-rails and I'd like to know if this is an issue. Obviously I can make the journey not be empty with road encounters and such, I'm just asking from a freedom of movement perspective. -Am I crazy for thinking milestone XP seems way simpler? Counting monster XP for levels feels like I'd have to make sure there were enough mobs directly in the party's path to get them to the right level at certain big-banner encounters; it sounds like a lot of mathing it out and at the same time balancing any sidequests to not put the group too far ahead of the curve at the same time. With milestones I could just give certain parts of the campaign XP values appropriate to their length and/or difficulty- finishing a big storyline chapter is a solid half level whereas a one to two session sidequest is only a fourth, for example. I like the idea but at the same time I want to make sure the leveling process feels organic for the players. -Tying into that last point, and most importantly, how do I make sure I have enough content, like what's a good rule of thumb for measuring this stuff? The level range I'm planning for is around 2-12(the 2-5 section will be fairly quick and is intended to sort of be a prologue and also to get the party to a level where they can really feel their characters' strengths), and if I went with milestone XP like I said nothing would really stop things from zooming along and ending up super short if I don't make sure to have enough meat on the bone that the whole thing isn't done in a dozen or so sessions. I'd really like to just read through something pre-written to get a framework in my head but I also don't want to pay $35 just for that purpose, and I'm currently in a Starter Box campaign(allegedly...) so grabbing that on the cheap to flip through is out as well. Planning for a dungeon to carry a six hour session only to see the group clear it out in three would be a real bummer. I'm sure I have other concerns but those are what's on my mind at the moment. Edit: Yeah this is for 5e, sorry for not clarifying Baller Ina fucked around with this message at 05:58 on May 17, 2019 |
#
¿
May 17, 2019 04:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Jun 1, 2024 00:41 |
|
|
Whybird posted:My approach when writing settings is to write the characters and the setting as it is and try not to anticipate what the players will do. The whole point of having a GM and not playing a video game is that the GM can respond intelligently to the things players do, they're not tied down to a prewritten story. This is fair, but at the same time if my group suddenly just nope'd out of helping the NPCs with no good reason why(like, say it's more the commonfolk needing assistance than some snooty nobles) I'd be a little annoyed. Now if the NPCs were played as a little standoffish and disrespectful, the party souring on them would be expected and I'd be ready for that. It reminds me of when people say they want to play a reluctant PC, the answer usually is "the party isn't obligated to twist your arm, they'll just leave without you". By the same token if I the DM set up a pretty normal scenario and the party wants to struggle against the plot as hard as they can the solution seems to be to just try something else because they clearly don't like the adventure. I guess that's where an open dialogue would come into play. Also for the folks recommending building more of a world with factions and hubs of activity, woof, that sounds even harder. Part of a pre-written campaign is it sort of takes place in an isolated bubble-you visit the cities involved in the story, and the DM can fill in the rest of the world's activity at their leisure. Although that is somewhat what the whole thing would have resembled, I suppose; getting to the three different temples to repel assaults can't really carry 100% of the campaign's content and I already had a couple side adventures planned. The various advice has made me rethink stuff a bit and I'm already thinking of a way or two to add some player agency so that's cool.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2019 02:32
|
|
|
Couple rudimentary questions here. 5e, if that's important. 1. Last session the party cleared out the majority of an underground dungeon, leaving two rooms unexplored, one of which has the boss in it. They went topside and said they were going to do a long rest in the ruins above the dungeon. The thugs inhabiting the dungeon have been abducting children and bringing them to the place. How much "motion" is fair for the monsters to undergo during the rest? I'm thinking a pair of thugs might show up to the dungeon at the end of the rest and the party has to deal with them before heading back down, but what about the boss and other alive monsters inside? Is it too immersion-breaking to just have those last two rooms be on 'pause' and therefore have no activity from those monsters? Seems kind of silly the boss and her henchmen would just chill in their room for eight hours and not move about the place, finding the bodies and being alerted and such. At the same time, though, I don't want to punish the party just because they ran out of steam and couldn't clear the place. Also personally it sounds annoying to figure out. 2. How obscure should puzzles be in general, and how heavy-handed should I be with hints? There's a nearby town where everyone is aging and is likely the party's next destination. Obviously there's something magical going on here, and a simple Detect Magic will give them a lead, but if my players are either not catching on or, worse, too stingy with their spells to cast it, do I just let them get the info from local chitchat, some "blah blah nearby forest"? On one hand one solution for things is obviously bad, but on the other if they never think to do other things and just question people(because this is not a very creative party, based on combat) then one solution is what we're at anyway, which is pretty dull on my end. On a similar note the druid they find at the end of this will, if she gets an action at low life, will cast Meld Into Stone and jump into the wall screaming about how she'll get them next time. Considering this bluff relies on me knowing my players don't know what that spell is AND me not naming it when she casts it, is this a bad idea? I thought it sounded kind of neat that they could figure out her trick and hack at the wall and pop her back out, foiling her recurring villain potential and getting some bonus xp at the same time. I guess my frustration here is I'm not sure if I can rely on my players to sufficiently question things enough. I want to have intrigue and secret stuff going on in the campaign but I don't want to just get away with it. The players would probably be satisfied with a hack n slash no frills scenario but that's no fun for me.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2019 23:34
|
|
|
Dameius posted:They gotta deal with the Pepper Gang. They are the local hot headed rabble rousers, lead by Jalapeño. They even have their version of a prat fall guy, Bell. As well as their real boss, Carolina Dan, the "Reaper".
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2019 22:44
|
|
|
Two birds, one stone: they come back and are instantly recognized as the local nobility, shown to their keep, etc. Gives them their headquarters while making them go "uh, wait a second, this isn't our stuff." Obviously you'd have to build pretty heavily from there but it's a start.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2019 07:16
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:One or both sides in the great war are gathering up plague sufferers and using them as berserker shock troops. This is what I immediately thought of. They could have been sent as a gift, or maybe they were purchased. This only really works if someone in charge in dwarfland is evil, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2019 20:14
|
|
|
I want to have an upcoming magic item curse the user with a degree of paranoia, but nothing too punishing. Any off-the-cuff ideas for something mild enough to offset a Weapon of Warning, thread?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2019 21:14
|
|
|
Reveilled posted:Perhaps the item lets you cast detect thoughts twice per day, but the item's curse is that it always reports stuff like the following as the target's thoughts: I like this and I think I can make it work by letting the weapon grow in power over time. The "curse" will probably be a malevolent spirit or something inside the weapon that gets more aware over time; that way I can ramp to the thought reading. Thanks for the suggestions, folks.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2019 07:29
|
|
|
Make the one requirement that they aren't surprised and it sounds fine to me. I'd honestly even give the free shot some sort of little bonus, like having a chance to knock the enemy prone or something, just to signify it's special nature.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2019 20:58
|
|
|
Kind of a bare-bones question here, but I'm gonna do my first online session tomorrow(5e) and I'm wondering what sort of subscriptions/services everyone likes or deems necessary. I was looking at both Roll20's and DnDBeyond's and they seem like they'd have a lot of overlap and just Roll20 would be plenty. Is there any other resources people use to streamline things and/or make their job easier? I was also looking at something like WorldAnvil to hold a map of the world and congregate all the lore and stuff(I'm using a homebrew continent), but I don't love the idea of paying for it. Smaller question: is there a good resource for monster and character tokens/art someone can point me to? I don't mind paying as long as it's not too expensive and the art is decent.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2020 04:31
|
|
|
Thanks for the words, folks. I should note that this is a group that's converting to online so it's not quite my first ever session, though it's pretty close. Definitely sounds like I can avoid DnDBeyond and I agree that WorldAnvil is super confusing to navigate. If I have a sub to Roll20 and buy the PHB from their store, does that let my players search their spells by name and drag n drop them onto their sheets? From my poking around the character sheet it looks like you need to otherwise write out every part of every spell manually and I know that's gonna leave several of my players lost and overwhelmed, especially since I have four "full list" casters.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2020 19:37
|
|
|
Is giving my group of level five players the chance to acquire an item that can cast passwall once a day, with the catch that it makes a loud noise when it does so(it'll be a big two-handed pickaxe) going to be a move I regret? It would also only work on stone and most likely be permanent, rather than the passageway closing back up. I'm trying to stock a magic item shop and making sure nothing in there is too good or too big a cheat code.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2020 03:36
|
|
|
Thanks for the responses, everyone. I agree that throwing caution to the wind and seeing if my players surprise me is the way to go, so the pickaxe is a go. I'll probably price fairly high, since they're rolling in thousands of gold already(kind of my fault, I guess) but it'll be exciting to see if they go for it and come up with something interesting.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2020 05:55
|
|
|
Got a puzzle I'm trying to finish and I'm stumped. There's four pedestals, each in one of the four cardinal directions(and the pedestals will have N S E W written on them to make it obvious). Four animal statues are spread around the room, as well as four plaques that each have a word on them. The idea is to place a statue and a plaque on one of the pedestals, associating those two things with the cardinal direction. So far I've got: Rooster&dawn=east(rooster crows at the sunrise, which rises in the east) Bear&stars=north(referring to the constellation Ursa Major, which involves the Northern Star) Duck&snow=south(ducks fly south for the winter, snow seems like an awkward word but I figure other options are too easy) And here's where I'm stuck: I can't think of a good animal and word to relate to west. Currently I have squid and deep, as a reference to the Mariana Trench, but that seems super weak and I'm not a fan of it. If anyone's got a better idea I'd be incredibly grateful. Of course if there's a better direction to take this whole thing I'd be willing to do that as well; this is one of the bigger setpieces of the dungeon(the statues initially grow to Large size and attack the party so it's a big ole brawl) so I'd like there to be some sort of puzzle here.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2020 04:42
|
|
|
Regarding the bear&stars, I just figured most people would know the whole Ursa Major/North Star from osmosis, and my players are pretty smart and well-educated, but I can see that it's a tad vague. The statues were going to each be made out of solid, monocolor gemstones, so signaling it as a polar bear would be hard, but I can just change them to revert to figurines with more detail after being defeated. That would stop them from thinking the color of each statue is a clue, too, which it isn't. The game isn't set in North America, but I was just going to mention the puzzle being based on real-life stuff at the start of it, as the world we're playing in is still pretty light on lore. My players don't care about that kind of thing anyway; they can't even remember city names. Though since you mentioned making the west animal something in-world, I do have a massive desert in the west, so pairing something like a scorpion with the word sand could work. I've given them a world map to peruse so this could be a nudge to open it up. Taking a look at it myself I've got a desert in the west, snow in the north, and a massive ocean in the south. I'm thinking a reorg of the puzzle to be terrain-based, using: Bear&snow:north Scorpion&desert:west Chicken&plains:east Octopus&ocean:south It dumbs the puzzle down, as its now obvious what word goes with which animal, but at least it gets the job done, and encourages them to engage with things a little more(I've dropped breadcrumbs into a lot of the descriptions of places on the world map and none have been mentioned so I know no one's reading the thing). Thanks for the brainstorming, it was a huge help!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2020 06:34
|
|
|
Fred Jones, human artificer. Ghosts aren't real, and you're out to catch one and prove it to the world, using your collection of gadgets and spells(Grease and Catapult come to mind). Go Artillerist and theme the character as half-Ghostbuster, or go Battle Smith and build yourself a robo-Scooby.TooMuchAbstraction posted:Make your favorite Scooby-Doo character. Build doesn't really matter but the important thing is that you either don't believe anything is supernatural, or believe that everything is supernatural, depending on which character you're imitating. And at the end you try to find out who the real villain is by ripping the villain's head off. Right, what he said.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2020 03:40
|
|
|
Have your players ever made a decision that, while valid and mostly reasonable, just really didn't sit right with you? This is probably half vent, half advice seeking. To provide some context to the situation I'll say up front this is a family group, playing 5th ed DnD. The lineup is: DM, me Wizard, dad Artificer, uncle Druid, cousin(my uncle's son) Ranger, other cousin Fighter, brother We're playing through the Dragon of Icespire Peak to give me time to do more of the groundwork for my homebrew campaign, which is on an original continent with all the effort that implies-cities, pantheon, etc. About midway through the campaign, the Fighter told me he was not loving his character and kind of getting bored of the game in general, so stepped away from the game, while saying he might come back to this campaign at some point, or he might just wait until its finished and jump back in when we return to my homebrew campaign(we have already begun that game and the group completed the first "arc" or so before we paused it). Since there was the possibility of him returning, instead of just writing his character out completely I had an idea-while the group was deep in the woods tackling an objective, the Fighter would return to town, take the next mission off of the bounty board, and round up a couple of allies to complete it. He and two others would ride out to an abandoned fortress deep in the mountains with the intent to clear it of danger in case the townsfolk needed it as a place to retreat to in an emergency(there's a dragon in the area as well as a pack of goblins in possession of a nasty artifact). When they arrived, however, they would find a powerful banshee taking residence in the fortress, who defeats the party and takes the Fighter captive as an enthralled minion. The PCs would return to town, learn that the Fighter had left over a week ago with no word since, then decide to follow after him when the Fighter's trail guide stumbles back into town mumbling about monsters and a terrifying ghost. I figured it would be a fun little way to keep the Fighter in the narrative, while also giving the party an additional incentive to go to the fortress. Two notes before I get to the problem: One, the party headed into the forest with multiple stops and missions to complete, and the Fighter, when returning to town ahead of them, claimed the smaller of the two rewards, much to the party's chagrin. This is a group that has shown no desire to spend a single gold coin they've earned so far so their annoyance at this caught me a little off-guard. Two, the Fighter was carrying a dragon-slaying longsword on him when he left, and with him missing, the party now had to recover it from the fortress along with him. I stressed to the players out of character they would absolutely get the sword back and that it being "lost" so to speak was just a matter of coincidence-the player who left the game just happened to be the character wielding it. So they go to the fortress, find the path the Fighter and his companions took to get inside, and over the course of fighting through they discover that at least one of the people he brought along is dead. This is an NPC I didn't even name, created solely to flesh out the group who went to the fortress. Nobody reacted to the news when they heard it. They encounter the banshee, the enthralled Fighter at her side, and she starts the fight by possessing him and, since he's an Echo Knight, manipulating his powers so that his echo resembles her instead, allowing her to simultaneously control him and fight as herself, using her banshee abilities. I figured the party would focus the banshee more, especially after I had the echo disappear from taking one solid hit, but they instead almost exclusively target the Fighter, who has an AC of 20 and a solid chunk of hitpoints to back it up. The Fighter is wailing on the Artificer(who wasn't at the session) every round, connecting at least one hit each time. Finally, the banshee uses her Wail, casting it both from the Fighter and from the echo. I changed the mechanics of it to not necessarily drop people to 0 if they failed the save, instead dealing 10 damage for each number they missed the DC by. After this, the echo vanishes and the banshee exits the Fighter and flees into a nearby room. The Fighter drops to the floor unconscious, drained from the whole ordeal. The Wizard goes next, backs up a bit, and hurls a Fireball at the doorway, close enough that it will spill into the room and catch the banshee. As an Evocation wizard he can save four people from the blast, and he says he's leaving out the three other PCs and the Artificer's pet. I pause a bit, and mention a little bewildered that this will hit the Fighter, and since he can't save it might kill him. The Wizard angrily says that the Fighter stole money from the party, ran off with the magic sword, and got a member of their company killed(the frame story is all the PCs are members of a mercenary group, so the two people who accompanied the Fighter were members as well). That he got sloppy and took a mission he shouldn't have, without them, and so he didn't care what happened to him anymore. Not knowing what to do, I rule that the Fireball drains the Fighter's HP and gives him a failed saving throw, so he's dying but not yet dead. The spell obliterates the banshee and the fight is over, and the three players have a debate about whether to stabilize the Fighter, heal him and ask him questions, or just straight up let him die. The whole time I'm flabbergasted at how my plan to add a bit of a personal hook to this mission has backfired so insanely and completely puzzled at how they're seriously this mad at the situation. They finally decide to stabilize him and leave him slumped against the wall and they'll swing back for him when they're done with the dungeon(they haven't found the sword and a miniboss escaped earlier). After the session, the Ranger, who I chat with for a couple hours after most sessions, tells me he was surprised at the Wizard's reaction as well, but hearing his reasoning thought he had something of a case. He then admits to me that he sent the Wizard a PM saying he was onboard with sneaking away from the other party members at some point and silently killing off the Fighter before they left. My ultimate question is: I loving hate this and it's not what I had planned for this scenario at all. I'm already going to have the Fighter conscious when they come back for him so they're forced to hear his side of the story, as well as make the decision to kill him to his face, if it still comes to that. If they let up and really force a confrontation, am I allowed to bring up how displeased I am with the whole thing? I know the Wizard isn't going to back down or soften his rhetoric at all. The whole thing has left me demoralized and I'd love some opinions about all of it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2021 05:51
|
|
|
The mind control was pretty explicit, yeah; the fighter was dead-eyed and wordless in every encounter and the banshee made it clear he was her thrall. I'm definitely going to bring up the miscommunication at tonights session (maybe at the beginning so they might get my perspective before we jump into the game) about how I didn't intend for the Fighters actions to be malicious-he was just trying to get some more work done for the town while the rest of the party was in the forest. I'm hoping having a talk before the session clears the air and everyone can just admit we misread the situation and not have any bad blood or anything from it. I'll report back tonight on how things go.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2021 19:49
|
|
|
Went alright. I said my piece, basically apologizing for not seeing the player side of the Fighter's actions. The Ranger and Wizard didn't really have anything to say in response, but they didn't kill the Fighter and just grumpily told him to go wait in the cart while they cleared the dungeon, so I'll take it. Thanks for the responses everyone and helping me get some perspective on the ordeal.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2021 06:51
|
|
|
I think this might be a breaking point for our group and I am going to have a real conversation with them, so I'm aware of the old "talk to your group" adage, I just need to share the session's contents with fellow players. So my group, which is down to three people at this point, has been making their way through The Dragon of Icespire Peak module, and they're at Icespire Hold, the final dungeon where you take out the white dragon Cryovain for good. I added a subplot to the campaign about a group of goblins doing some nasty magic stuff with an unspecified artifact, and at the party's final encounter with them Cryovain swooped down and snatched the artifact post-battle, cackling about how he'll use its powers to get tough and kill the party(who whooped his rear end once before) and destroy the town, evil villain stuff. Anyway, the wizard's hawk tails the dragon to find the way to his lair and the next morning they set off. They get to the hold and they're moving through breach and clear style, stopping only to make sure a room is empty of monsters before moving on, not even stopping to search for loot or anything, to my mild surprise. They get to the roof, the staircase to which leads to a large room that then exits onto the open-air rooftop. They stage an ambush(which took like ten minutes despite being really basic) and the wizard and the ranger launch attacks from a pair of arrow slits while the artificer is on the roof around a corner. Their plan was to hunker down in the building and the dragon would come to the doorway where the artificer could easily tank it and the other two could safely attack from range. Dragon pretty much loses initiative and the wizard gets to lob another Lightning Bolt and the ranger another round of arrows. With his health already dipping, I have Cryovain fly forward, blast his breath weapon into the room through the arrow slit, and then fly up and onto the roof of the building to break line of sight with the players and gain the high ground. I figured if they stayed in the building he'd try to collapse the roof; otherwise he would fly back down and get into melee. The wizard and artificer immediately considered the fight basically lost. Wizard was apparently unaware you could move both before and after your action, and says the dragon will simply retreat to the roof after every attack, and if they went outside Cryovain would have his pick of targets, which uh, yeah. Artificer, despite having 19 AC and resistance to all damage(he drank a potion that the wizard would NOT accept for some reason), sullenly mumbles "well, I can't fly, so" and walks back inside the room and, to my shock, down the stairs back to the first floor. The wizard follows on his turn, saying some jumbled stuff about trying to lure the dragon downstairs; in retrospect he was just rattled by the cold breath hitting him and wasn't willing to risk even hitting 0, much less dying(his spell choices make it clear ever taking damage isn't something he plans for). Verbatim: "I came here to kill a dragon, not die heroically." Ranger is stunned by his companions' actions but, being alone, has no choice to follow them. They stand around with no plan other than to shout insults at Cryovain, which he ignores, returns to the artifact, and has a breakthrough, animating a pack of snow golems and taking off from the roof in flight, laughing as he flies away. This module has been a lot of bland fights with not much more than "walk up, attack" style monsters, so I was relishing the opportunity to control a somewhat intelligent creature, but with my first use of rudimentary tactics provoking such a complete surrender from two of my players, it bodes ill for our future, as we were going to head back to playing a homebrew after this where I was planning to spice up the combat quite a bit. My main dilemma is how to resolve this, since it was supposed to be the end of the whole thing. I've come up with two options: 1. Cryovain heads back to the north, which he had been chased out of by bigger, stronger creatures, using the artifact to try and reclaim his territory. The dragon is gone, so the town is safe, but he could easily return in the future, so not exactly a victory. 2. Cryovain flies to Phandalin(the town in question) to get petty revenge against the party and shred it to bits. He'll have at least a day on the party travel-wise, so a lot of lives will be lost, but they get a second chance to end him. I'm less a fan of this one, mostly because I don't want to roleplay the townspeople asking how Cryovain got past the party in the first place. Also, it's not like they lost a tough fight, they ran away; why do they get a second chance? So that's a lot. Just needed to get this off my chest as I'm still amazed that a loving roof defeated the "heroes". Anybody else have such a reaction from either your players or other party members that felt like such a flop?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2022 01:38
|
|
|
A chat is unavoidable before even starting the next session for sure, I'm just dreading because on top of everything the wizard has anger issues which have come up a couple times. Can't wait to have to tell my own father to take a chill pill when discussing proper nerdgame tactics. Also wizard and artificer are not roleplayers at all so if the fights are dull as well I don't know where I'm supposed to get MY fun.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2022 02:45
|
|
|
Discount Dracula posted:I am a 1st time GM also running the Icespire campaign. Two of my players were so worried about getting their fictional characters hurt that the warrior fled when two orcs advanced at the end of the dwarven mine quest. My solution was to have them roll perception or history or nature or whatever checks to help them assess their relative strength against hostile creatures. For example, they were freaked out seeing twig blights for the first time. With a decent nature roll, the Druid remembered that twig blights were no more than a nuisance to farmers. Having the knowledge that they were likely to survive bolstered their confidence. I think I'm going with a combination of these two things; there was a mercenary group squatting at the hold they convinced to take a hike, so Cryovain will pass them on his way out of the mountains and end up in combat with them. If the party pursues him immediately, they can run across the battle, otherwise the mercs beat Cryovain and get the glory...as well as the artifact, which is now in unknown hands. I played Don Jon similarly, with a smaller ego but still coming off as experienced. The party barely talked to him, told him to stay out of the way, and when he somewhat saved their lives at the tail end of a massive fight(what the gently caress is with the balance in that location? This module is a shitshow, ugh), brushed him off and didn't thank him at all. Sorry for not responding to everyone's thoughts on everything, I've just been trying to keep DnD out of my mind for a bit. We're having our session tonight and I hope to have our serious conversation at the end of it to find out what the future holds.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2022 00:05
|
|
|
Discount Dracula posted:Hope your game and conversation went well. Some delays have actually pushed that conversation to tonight, but it'll definitely happen. Last session was pleasant and smooth so maybe things are on the upswing? I'll know by tomorrow.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2022 17:37
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Jun 1, 2024 00:41 |
|
|
Baller Ina posted:Some delays have actually pushed that conversation to tonight, but it'll definitely happen. Last session was pleasant and smooth so maybe things are on the upswing? I'll know by tomorrow. So after wrapping up the campaign with a brief epilogue I chatted with my three players about everything that happened in the campaign and we eventually got to the dragon fight. The TLDR of it is my uncle and dad don't want to play heroes, they want to play adventurers. If a fight turns and the enemy gains the upper hand, they have no qualms about retreating and trying to regroup and re-engage later. From my perspective, most fights with stakes in D&D won't really allow you to do this, as you're likely fighting to stop the enemy from getting or doing something. Basically they said their characters' self-preservation comes first and while I'm not going to be forcing grand sacrifices of characters' lives on them to win battles them being unwilling to ever put themselves at a disadvantage for the sake of the "mission" seems incompatible to not only my preferred type of game but role-playing games in general. I never popped the actual ultimatum of "I don't think this is gonna work" but I'm leaning that way. I suppose I could be way off-base in my feelings here and I'd love the thread to tell me if that's the case. I don't want to write a giant post right now but I'll probably add some bullet points tomorrow of other stuff that jumped out at me.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2022 05:21
|
|