Brian Gliechman responds to my request for examples of how Mary could
have handled her D&D module campaigns better. The response seems to
me to highlight some of the problems, but I'm having trouble
extracting the examples on doing better, so I'm mostly asking for
clarifications here.
Mary's inability to exchange D&D's reality for her own was
something of a surprise to me, but upon reflection something
I should have caught on to it before.
By "D&D's reality", are you talking about the D&D game world, or about
play of a D&D game? Based on the rest of your post, it seems like the
latter, but I'd like to make sure.
This caused her to focus too much on CR ratings, failed
logic trips due to over-thinking game mechanics (Sniper
Rifles being one example that recent came up), the
mechanical effects of Angels rather than the their
greater role in the campaign, etc.
It's not clear to me what you think she should have done instead. Do
you think her approach of "play the rules as written" was flawed, and
she should have had the gamesmaster do more fudging? Or are you just
saying she should have put less trust into things like CR ratings? Or
was her handling of all of that okay, but she should also have
considered other factors like how Angels fit into the religious
background of the campaign, and thus perhaps whether to fight them at
all?
Additonal problems were caused by the GM's failure
to review the planned adventure and tailor it to the
player(s). While some would say that a Sim focused
GM of course would never alter an adventure in that
fa****on, a Gamist one *must* taking into account the
types of encounters their players like and dislike
as well as their preferred approaches and level of
skill with the system being used.
I don't see what "sim" has to do with things here. However, it does
strike me that taking these things into account and making adjustments
for them would add back much of the work she was trying to save by
using published modules. Is what you're saying here that there isn't
really a shortcut to running a good campaign, or at least that modules
aren't it?
In that adventure review, plot elements that players
would object to on the grounds of logic or morality
need to be addressed as well as they can derail the
adventure.
How should they be addressed? For failures of logic, is the
appropriate solution to simply ignore them - "it's only a game", a
comment I've heard frequently in other contexts - or to patch them up
so things make sense?
With respect to morality, I seem to remember a case of a temple of an
evil cult off in the middle of nowhere where it didn't seem like any
of the cult members had actually done anything wrong, at least as far
as Mary could tell. What's the appropriate solution here? Accept an
artificial definition of "evil" that reflects the wearing of black or
white hats, rather than the actual doing of evil deeds? Or should we
instead assume that the cultists are evil because they have indeed
done evil deeds in the past - or do we need to go further and actually
illustrate those evil deeds, in flashback sequences or something?
I have a feeling the answers to a lot of these questions will seem
obvious to you, but I honestly don't know what the appropriate answers
are in that style of game.
Warren J. Dew
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