Dungeonlord
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
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
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.
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
"Campaign of the Month - August 2012":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shimring-augusts-cotm/
Campaign in Planning: "Mysteria":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/mysteria - set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
"I met a traveller from an antique land....."
CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.
Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign
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