A survey for players and GM: what do you want in an adventure

Dungeonlord
Dungeonlord
edited March 2013 in General Discussion
Hi everyone

I'm a GM since a long time and i am curious to hear what players find interesting in an adventure. Is it the story? is it the fact that they can start of high level ? Moreover how do people play nowadays ? still the old fashion way or more and more taking advantage of VTT (virtual tabletop)?
Since here unfortunately it is not possible to make a poll i set it up here --> (http://rpggeek.com/thread/953104/a-small-survey-to-players) on RPGGeek (i hope that is not a problem).

I hope to learn something from it and that you will enjoy
cheers

Gabriele

Comments

  • arsheesh
    arsheesh
    Posts: 850
    Dungeonlord, one thing you may want to consider is that your poll only covers a few of the more recent iterations of D&D and its simulacra, and is pretty much limits the scope of what is important within a campaign to a linear approach to game play. I guess if that's really what you are into and don't much wish to explore other options then that's fine. But if you want to broaden the scope of your poll you could include as potentially important, things like player exploration and character agency (understood both as the capacity of the players to have a variety of choices before them, and for those choices to actually have a meaningful impact on the game). Both of these, incidentally, are hallmarks of the older versions of D&D not featured on your list. However that does not mean that they cannot or should not have a legitimate place in the newer traditions as well. Just food for thought.

    Cheers,
    -Arsheesh
  • Savannah
    Savannah
    Posts: 188
    You really need to let people pick multiple options per question. To answer your questions properly:

    I play D&D 3.5 as well as some Pathfinder. I prefer 3.5 because of the amount of splat book support, but Pathfinder is growing on me.

    I play both by forum and face-to-face, and I consider both equally important.

    The genre of the adventure is relatively low on the list of things that matter to me. While I prefer to avoid comedy, and have a slight preference towards "medieval" games without gunpowder, I will play just about anything if other factors line up. If I had to pick solely based on the genre of the module, I would probably pick more dark/horror games with a focus on investigation/survival, but as I said, genre is a minor thing for me. (What matters to me is having a group I like to play with. With that, I'll play about anything.)

    Story - 5
    Characters - 5
    Maps - 3
    Fights - 4
    Layout - 5

    Level does not matter to me (other than the fact that it's easier to build a low-level character). Also, you should include 12-20 and epic as options on that question.

    Of course I keep my PCs from adventure to adventure! The WHOLE POINT of playing (for me) is getting into their head and seeing how they change, grow, and influence the world around them.

    No, I've never bought an adventure module online, but I have downloaded free modules online.

    Things I don't like in adventures:

    Obvious railroading. I understand that, if it's a published adventure, there have to be SOME sort of rails or the players will be doing things far outside the scope of the module, but I will not even consider a module where the writer has laid out one path with no room for player ingenuity. (This goes with player exploration and character agency that arsheesh brought up.)

    Dumb names. Don't name your NPCs something stupid or that doesn't sound like a name. Just don't.

    Sexism/racism/other-isms. I expect female NPCs to exist and to cover the same range of competencies as the male NPCs without it being worthy of comment. Unless there's some geographical restriction that makes it unlikely, I expect non-white human NPCs to exist. I would super buy a module that just happened to have a homosexual couple that it treated exactly the same way it treated a heterosexual couple. Etc, etc, etc.

    Bad layout. For the love of all that's holy, think about how the DM is going to be using the module and make their job easy.
  • SqueeEGA
    SqueeEGA
    Posts: 12
    Story and well developed characters the most important to me and a few of the people I play with. A couple of those I play with really love the crunch and combat, and don't get me wrong I love a good fight, but a solid story is going to keep me coming back, and I adore writing character backgrounds and then moving them forward. I started with 2nd Ed. and am getting set in my ways as I push 30 so I'd much rather look at a book than a pdf and I'd rather roll actual dice than shake my smartphone to activate a random number generator. (though I would love some dicerings. If you're unfamiliar they're on kickstarter. they'd make playing dnd in space possible. I gotta do that...now...how do I get 3 million dollars?) I would love a microsoft surface with the d&d app, but otherwise analog all the way for me!
  • twiggyleaf
    twiggyleaf
    Posts: 2,006
    Hi Dungeonlord

    My current group and I have been playing D&D 3.5 for about 10 years, although I have been playing D&D since edition one. But we are all shifting to Pathfinder now. We like the modified and refreshed rule system and the sense that the game is "alive" is what has drawn us. (3.5 was our favourite system but it was effectively KILLED by WotC.)

    Important differences between now and early days when I used to play include players playing more collaboratively, more intelligently and more campaign oriented. We no longer kill characters off as easily as we did in the old days and there are virtually no instances in our games of EVIL characters trying to stab others in the backs. More often, it is the Lawful Good characters that suffer. (Our group "takes no prisoners"). We use minis and a grid map, and I would say that the grid map is more important these days than it used to be.

    We have also become more rules oriented. That could be down to the particular group I play with. I still have inner conflict about this, because on one hand it can slow things down a bit and can also be quite creatively stifling (less random interperetation) but on the other hand I do like the fact that we all tend to be much better at knowing the rules than we did in the past, where it was usually just the dungeon master.

    The last thing I would say is that people take more time over creating their characters these days. This is also weighed against the fact that I am a bit of a veteran so it means that the group I play with has more commitments (e.g. jobs, families, etc) than we used to have when we were students. But also, the nature of the game has tended towards more and more intricate character sheets (at least up to 3.5). I think this is a good thing but it also means that people are more precious about their characters and I find, due to the fact that so much precious time is invested, it is important to be less whimsical about character death. And TPK is a big NO-NO! for any game I run.

    twiggyleaf
    "Shimring - The Faces of Divinity":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shimring
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