[D&D] Campaign Analysis

[Valamir]

Well, one guideline we followed back in AD&D days (when 9th level was considered pretty powerful.."named level" and 12th down right amazing) was to note that when WE were low level, we took great pains to avoid threats that were too powerful for us to handle.

Now that WE were the "too powerful" threat, the expectation was that most opponents would take great pains to avoid US.

Bandits, roving bands of orcs, the opportunistic hunting Griffon or Wyverns, would just give us great berth and avoid conflict with us.

That meant the only real opponents we'd ever actually fight were those who figured they had a shot at surviving us.  That generally means the Big Bads.  

At this point us "named level" PCs were busy setting up strong holds and castles and attracting followers and henchmen and calculating exactly how much gold 200' of curtain walls with batters, embrasures and hordings, and a 20x20 tower every 50' would cost including labor.

Threats to us became neighbors with armies, ravaging ork hordes, hit and run viking attacks, and the like.

Eventually the GM formed a coalition of all of the high powered Big Bads in the area (sort of like a Murder, Inc of evil) of all of the foes who individually couldn't oppose us but who were pissed at us carving out a little piece of home in the midst of their territory.

Its amazing what a good GM can come up with with a 12th level Lawful Evil Magic User, a Huge Ancient Red Dragon, a powerful Assassins Guild, the local corrupt Theocracy, and a coven of demon summoning witches working together to kill us.

The sessions became much more intrigue and machination oriented than combat sequence of the night oriented at that point.

When we wanted to get more dungeon delving we each took characters from the named henchmen of our main PCs, turned them into secondary PCs, and sent them off to do battle with our main PCs lesser enemies.

I think the last battle we ever fought with our high level party involved both Asmodeus AND the Dispater with their contingent gated in fiends, a half dozen chromatic dragons led by the H-A Red, an entire order of evil clerics and anti paladins, and an army of mundane forces from local barons who hated us.

We played that out over the course of a 3 day marathon weekend using the Battle System rules as well as individual combats with our PCs.

We won.  And swore, we'd never do that again...;-)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hal,

I wrote,

In other words, if I wed Character to System ("play the game"), I risk losing my character (or being disempowered in some tactical or emotional way). So I'll divorce them briefly and ramp up System ... which of course diminishes the innermost box [Color [System [Character + Setting = Situation]]] relationship among the components ... which in turn is the precise thing which keeps others' attention and commitment to the game going in the first place.

And you wrote,

Unfortunately, you've lost me here. I think I can follow the first sentence, but what do you mean by 'ramp up the system'?

In that paragraph, I'm translating what you describe as:

players have repeatedly expressed regret at playing their characters less heroically than they would have liked to, at least in retrospect. Time and again, characters act much more carefully in practice than the heroes they are supposed to be in theory.

Secondly, one player has been much criticised for what the others feel is 'inappropriate roleplay', i.e. violating his character concept, invariably in order to protect or increase his character's power.

... into "big-model" talk. What you're really seeing is a glimmering of Hard Core play, not much I'm sure, but enough to make the other players nervous - they know damn well that if this guy goes all the way in this direction, they'll be forced to do the same.

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hal,

I know you participated in this thread and probably remember it well, but for anyone who doesn't, this thread provides an important context for the present one: [D&D] Preventing Gamism from being "solved"?

Best,
Ron

[Halzebier]

In that paragraph, I'm translating what you describe [...] into "big-model" talk. What you're really seeing is a glimmering of Hard Core play, not much I'm sure, but enough to make the other players nervous - they know damn well that if this guy goes all the way in this direction, they'll be forced to do the same.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up!

I think you're spot-on. I believe the player in question may unconsciously do what you describe, but would neither want nor enjoy hard core play - not least because he is not very good at min-maxing. But that may of course be the crux of the matter: If he feels his character is not powerful enough, he may decide to edge into hard core territory to compensate...and possibly set off a spiral.

Incidentally, I think that D&D provides a measure of protection from this sort of arms race, because classes are good at providing niche protection: Basically, it doesn't matter whether you wring the last ounce of effectiveness out of your cleric -- as long as you're the only cleric, you will shine in some areas.

Shadowrun was more problematic for us that way, because after character creation, it is possible to pour all rewards into one area, whereas D&D just has a fixed progression for all key combat statistics (base attack bonus and whatnot). We recognized this problem and had a gentlemen's agreement not to raise combat stats except in group design sessions ('Gary gets to raise initiative and no one will intrude on that turf, Mike is still the team's best shot etc.').

Regards,

Hal