Pen and Paper D&D

[Ingmar]

I'm pretty linear myself (and prefer linear). Gaming time as an adult is limited enough that I don't want to have those 8 hour sessions that consist entirely of discussions about what we should be doing anymore.

[Lantyssa]

I like options, but the GM being able to put enough breadcrumbs out there is important.  Thankfully my DM of many years fits this style.  He has a meta-plot going on in the region and lets us stumble across clues.

Our latest game is an example.  We had the cliched beginning of being caravan guards.  Kobold attacks had been happening so they hired extra muscle.  Cue one of the bridges we passed having kobolds that salted the water to let a sahaugin survive there.  Then we find out about rival trading companies.  After making the round trip, we find a similar thing happening in the sewers of the dwarven outpost we were in.  We go investigate, and find enough evidence to convince the authorities to let us enter a warehouse.  The rival company had been selling burial artifacts of a nearby culture and had tons of salt stockpiled.  We enter the sewers to find more sahaugin, a partially-submerged grow operation, and us barely stopping a ritual to summon a water elemental... only the other dwarves checking out the other sewers weren't as fast and we came out to find the town devastated.

He gave us clues, but there were any of three obvious different directions we could go from there, along with several sub-hints, or the option to do something else completely.  We ended up doing one, sending messengers in a different direction, then diverting to the third.  He had ideas for the overall scheme plotted out though, so he was able to wing it from there.

[Ratman_tf]

Gaming time as an adult is limited enough that I don't want to have those 8 hour sessions that consist entirely of discussions about what we should be doing anymore.

There's a range of options between railroad and lost in the woods. :)

I hate linearity (When I use it I feel bad) because I feel that choice and concequences is the only thing that distinguises PnP RPGs from computer ones.

[Ghambit]

If I dont go for Sandboxey then I usually lean towards pre-written plot-point campaigns if I can (Savage Worlds does this well).  But in the end, freestyle is the way to go imo.  It has the benefits of truly writing your own stories (as you go) and also, if you feel so inclined, you can sell an original module when you're done.

Though, D&D (at least 3.5-4e) isnt really designed for truly Freewheeling play imo.  This is why I scoff at those who ask me about systems before they even decide on style.

[Rendakor]

The Alexandrian has gone into some detail about adventure structures. I'm finding his stuff pretty useful.

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/prep-scenario.html

Thanks for the link, a lot of good stuff on his site.

Lantyssa, that's close to how I've been running things. There's an over-arching story, but how they choose to interact with it is all up to them. The problems I was having initially (before I started handhold a bit stronger) is that they were just ignoring everything that was going on, in favor of wandering randomly to somewhere else then complaining about random encounters (since I had nothing planned in Town_X).

[Ingmar]

But in the end, freestyle is the way to go imo.

This is entirely dependent on your players. There's no gaming experience more miserable than a freestyle- DMed game with 5 players who want to be led.

[Ghambit]

But in the end, freestyle is the way to go imo.

This is entirely dependent on your players. There's no gaming experience more miserable than a freestyle- DMed game with 5 players who want to be led.

Just because it's freestyle doesnt mean they cant be led.  All freestyle implies is that there's no pre-gen adventure to railroad them with.

[Ingmar]

I'm extremely skeptical that more than about 1% of GMs can 'freestyle' better than they can working off of prepared material.

[Rendakor]

I'm extremely skeptical that more than about 1% of GMs can 'freestyle' better than they can working off of prepared material.

This. I can't imagine trying to present an interesting, complex dungeon without at least sketching a map and prepping a few encounters, traps, secrets, etc.

[Sjofn]

I'm pretty linear myself (and prefer linear). Gaming time as an adult is limited enough that I don't want to have those 8 hour sessions that consist entirely of discussions about what we should be doing anymore.

I still think back fondly to that time where we sat around for like an hour trying to figure out the CLUES (they have to be CLUES to something COMPLEX) and proudft finally lost patience (as much as he loses it, anyway) and told us to maybe go murder the dudes we know about for further information. Like we ALWAYS DO, only for some reason THAT NIGHT and THAT NIGHT ONLY, we were sure there was a Mystery afoot.

[Lantyssa]

Lantyssa, that's close to how I've been running things. There's an over-arching story, but how they choose to interact with it is all up to them. The problems I was having initially (before I started handhold a bit stronger) is that they were just ignoring everything that was going on, in favor of wandering randomly to somewhere else then complaining about random encounters (since I had nothing planned in Town_X).

As a player I'm going to do my DM the honor of trying to at least touch on the stuff he prepared.  If my character has a good reason to go in a completely different direction then I'll let the GM know, but I won't do it randomly out of respect for the work he puts into preparing the game for us.

That doesn't mean we'll make his life easy, because what we do enjoy, is tackling adventures in unconventional means.  The GM has it a little harder since he wants to keep things entertaining without outright killing us, but we all enjoy trying to outwit one another.  If we can beat an encounter in a way he didn't foresee, or he surprises us with a twist we didn't expect, then we all have a great time.

Working with your GM despite being on opposing sides of the plot is important to an enjoyable game.

[Morat20]

Our DM said that, when pressed, he'll "freestyle" using the Bioware model. One introductory adventure with multiple hooks, three or four modules that can be done "in any order" (he has to fudge some of the levels and futz a bit with the plot to tie them all together" and then one or two "ending modules" that finish that arc.

Then again, he habitually uses the maps and detail from AD&D and 2.0 modules in 3.5, so he's kinda used to altering things on the fly and combining storylines. Gives us a bit more of a feel of choice.

[RhyssaFireheart]

So this coming Saturday is our first session in the new "world" our campaign group has popped into.  The entire campaign moves the group around via portals and sometimes, those portals move us to an entirely different world, which means the DM is going to change the ruleset on us.  We started out playing 3e and in the last session, found this red portal that the barbarian decided to run into without talking about it first (carrying my dead body, I might add) and so everyone else followed along.  This resulted in the two of us who'd recently died suddenly being alive again and now we're in a 4e world.

I'm actually kind of looking forward to seeing how this all plays out with the new rules and if the whining from a few of the other members doesn't die down, then a smaller party isn't a bad thing (we've got 10 PCs as it is).  DM has already said that there is at least one more world with a different ruleset to come and that we'll be moving from world to world throughout the campaign.  It's an interesting twist.

[Strazos]

Finally got some of my friends to play again, with me Skyping in. We just genned characters last night, so hopefully this works out alright when we start in earnest next week. Hopefully my Invoker works out - I purposely tried to build a character that minimizes necessary movement and calculating of precise AE attacks or tracking summons. I thought some of that would be doubly difficult to handle over Skype.

[Ingmar]

Man, there aren't very many invoker powers left (and I suspect even fewer good ones) once you remove the AE and summons. Should be interesting!

[JWIV]

Finally got some of my friends to play again, with me Skyping in. We just genned characters last night, so hopefully this works out alright when we start in earnest next week. Hopefully my Invoker works out - I purposely tried to build a character that minimizes necessary movement and calculating of precise AE attacks or tracking summons. I thought some of that would be doubly difficult to handle over Skype.

I'm definitely curious how this goes.  It's one of the things that the google+ hangout seems to scream to take advantage of.   

[Strazos]

Man, there aren't very many invoker powers left (and I suspect even fewer good ones) once you remove the AE and summons. Should be interesting!

*Precise* AE placement...I still took some AE stuff, though hopefully I can fudge the target squares and just declare which guys I want covered. I didn't take any persistent AE powers. We'll see how it works out.

I'm definitely curious how this goes.  It's one of the things that the google+ hangout seems to scream to take advantage of.   

Well, we have a cam pointed at the board, and luckily the mic is good enough for me to pick up everyone speaking at the table (set next to the DM). I'll keep ya'll informed.

[Strazos]

So we got our first session in tonight. Was a bit slow, due in large-part to folks re-learning how to play 4e. Wish they had a better cam/mic, but I'll live.

There were some dull spots due to things getting bogged down a bit in a large fight...however, with my 24" widescreen, I can have Skype and Firefox running side-by-side, so I was able to play on f13 and facebook between my turns. Only minor difficulty involved in aiming my AE spells.

Hopefully it continues to work out alright. Using a ranged character and keeping movement to a minimum definitely helped.