On the difficulties of rpgs

[beccaelizabeth]

I read another part of the Adventure Path
and am pondering if it's really the sort of thing I would like doing.

I love that there's big sweeping Plot and Characters and things escalating smoothly until you're Saving The World and there are consequences all over the place. This is not a dungeon crawl. There are people. The world is created and impacted by players actions.

But the rails are bugging me.

There are times I'd want to do something different and set up, say, an orphanage, or help rebuild after a disaster, really contribute to the community
and because the adventure keeps adventuring bigger
you've got to move on.

The kind of building that's my first thought wouldn't contribute to solving later situations.

You can make friends and influence people but by the time you need them you'll be the other side of the region.

It all makes sense, but it feels like being dragged away sometimes?

And of course because I can see the adventure all set up in advance it doesn't feel very responsive.

Also there's so many things I can think of to do that the Adventure Path hasn't got a contingency for. It would be up to the GM if they worked. And most of those things are ways to talk people into things. Like, if you want to do an armed assault somewhere, it'll tell you in great detail the combat tactics in every room. But in the (feels like few and far between) events where you could try to Bluff, con, or otherwise trick your way through? Mostly nada. And diplomacy? Trying to sort things out in everyone's best interests? Veeeeeery limited opportunities for that here.

Mostly there are bad things trying to eat you and you stop them or you don't. Letting people go means you fight them again later, fully healed up and with more allies.

So you can change the world, but by killing it.

Not recruiting it, which would be my prefferred method.




I like the idea of rpgs because I feel powerless and lo, there are books and books full of power.

But the power fantasies of the writers are not mine own. And their Adventure Path leads you in some very specific directions, obvs. So then I start feeling powerless?

Which isn't fun.



And I'm just reading the book here, so it's taking me days to figure this.
If I was actual facts playing it would take much, much longer.



And the GM could adjust a lot more on the fly. They could roleplay things. Turn things into social encounters. Make it so you're not just reading about how evil creatures resent and manipulate each other, you can in fact stick the levers in and help them form a union and/or democracy.

There are some characters with some excellent conflicts I'm sure I could use to recruit them, but if that doesn't result in everyone being dead at the end, I don't know what you're meant to do with the xp or the future of the scenario.


And sometimes it describes stuff and I don't see how it gives you opportunities to tell your players? They'd have to be mind readers or something. ... which actually, there are spells for, but.



Sometimes I don't see quite how the Path turns into play, and sometimes I see it but it feels like it drags me away from the fun stuff.



But I'm also seeing what a lot of spells and feats and stuff are good at, reading monster tactics, so that's interesting.

Also the story does successfully make me angry enough to want to cast mean spells, but, then I am also angry at the story.



Like I keep on wanting to retool every instance of Evil Is Ugly. Why do I care if something is ugly to look at? What they're doing matters a whole lot more.

... what they're doing is also often bad to look at. evil is not subtle here.



So there's lots of bits and stuff that don't work quite like books, or have the same appeals or goals as straight storytelling, and I'm thinking there's a lot of ways I haven't got the hang of even reading the scenarios.

Like sure it looks like you fight everything, but that's just one of the options it must cover. You could sneaky it a lot more often.



I am learning things about me and what I want from storytelling.



But I am still sitting here alone reading rulebooks, which isn't how to experience them at their best. That part is frustrating.

oh well.



onwards to more learning.



tell you what though, I am Very Impressed at how much story it takes to put a scenario together, let alone a whole sustained adventure path like this. So many things happen, they all need a hook to get the players involved, they need flex for when the player manages to walk backwards into them in a different order. There's places where travel between locations is included because your players might be behind on levels compared to what the next section assumes so rather than retooling every encounter you just wandering monster the PCs until they level up. There's Story Awards of xp, for the times they do the math for you on not just wiping out every encounter. There's treasure in interesting combinations, and improbable problematic weights. There's specific items dropped that are going to make players lives so much easier in just a little while. ... presumably if they don't just sell them all first. There's clues and handouts and little pictures and towns with different shops in. And at every turn there's multiple options on how to gently herd your bag of cats player characters back towards the Path.

There is so much work. TV season doesn't have to do this much maths. So much work.

I am impressed.




... I'm just not entirely sure I like it...

:eyeroll:



Getting more of an idea how to design one I would like though.



Also, whenever Big Finish left something out, I end up liking what they did better than what they didn't, so far as I've noticed. Pretty good.

It is not simple adapting these. Got to make linear tidy small something designed all the other ways.



I like reading this.