LogFAQs > #883304103

Lightning Bolt posted...

As for getting the players to do what you want, you usually handle that at the buy-in. "This adventure involves you escaping from prison, joining a cult, and working to destroy the government in evil ways. Bring a character that would do that." That's half done right there.

I'm very much behind the idea of "controlled creation", where you basically set limits for players during character creation. "Don't make any Evil characters", "Try to make a character who isn't a moody loner, you sort of need justification for staying together as a group", or even "Your characters all met before the adventure began and swore vengeance on an evil organization, work that motivation into your backstory" are all fine. I could even see something like "You should all make morally questionable Rogue-type characters" or "You're all apprentice wizards" or "Make vampires from one of the Camarilla Clans because we're playing a Camarilla game."

What I'm objecting to is when it happens organically in play. Where you basically get something like this:

Player: "Ok, we go left."
GM: "Well, you can't go left, because the plot is off to the right."
Player: "Yeah, but we want to go left."
GM: "Actually, upon reconsidering, your character decides they want to go right."
Player: "No, fuck you, we're going left."
GM: "At this point the police show up to arrest you, but you can escape by going right!"
Player: "Fuck this game."

That's obviously an extreme (and very generalized) sort of example, but it's the sort of railroading you tend to get with modules and pre-generated adventures, because they usually have a singular plot path that doesn't allow for much branching (some good ones do, though).

If the plot of your story says the heroes have to stay in the haunted mansion until morning and try to outwit the vampire, but they decide they don't give a crap and figure out a way to escape at 7pm, you're either left completely scrapping the entire module or having to keep coming up with ways to force them back into the established plot.

Though to be honest, I'd have a lot of respect for a GM who decided they wanted to run the Tomb of Horrors adventure, but then willingly scrapped the whole thing the moment the PCs decided they didn't want to go in, headed back to town, and started up a gold-investment scheme that spirals off into a weird economic/political game where they all wind up becoming merchant lords.



shadowsword87 posted...

Eh, modules are great for oneshots, I should run a few for you PO, you can see that they are pretty damn good for what they do.

I've both run and played in modules before, you know. It's part of why I formed the opinions I have of them.

And again, I freely admit they're not terrible, and can work fine if they mesh with what the players want (ie, if you want to run Curse of Strahd, and I want to play Curse of Strahd, I will probably enjoy it if you run Curse of Strahd), but I think a GM is better off mostly avoiding them (or potentially just reading them for ideas but not trying to run them exactly as written).


---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family