tihor (06/12/82)
D&D has held my interest and much of my spare time for over eight years. In this time several different approaches to playing in a Fantasy Role Playing game have come to my attention, in addition to several approaches to running a campaign. In regards to playing in an FRP, some personal traits are obviously notable from one player to the next. There are those players who are "never say 'DIE'" types, who upon losing a character that they play go into screaming fits. Once these limp-wits have been weeded out there are also those players who play characters by the rules but don't really play characters. They become vanilla flavoured people that collect gold, jewels, gems, magick and a certain amount of power without a great deal of ingenuity. The best and most enjoyable play I have seen is more a performance of a character by a player who has determined in advance the background of the character. Remember that characters, like real people, can change with time and experience. Setting specific goals for a character (marrying the Amazon Princess who hates men, buying a castle in Hartsdale, conquering the local Petty Dark Lord, etc) make this a bit simpler. With respect to running a campaign I have seen some interesting variances. There are several systems, all of which have their good points, but I have my preferences. Listed in ascending order of preference (to me) some short descriptions (mostly to stimulate viscous cutthroat discussion): Hack & Slash- a campaign in which magick plays a very small role role and fighting/violence a great and influential role. Gold and magicked weapons become goals people tend to pursue. Magick & Zap- a campaign in which magick only is of importance. Artifacts grow almost literally out of thin air and everything is capable of being some unknown lost magick item from the distant past with power over anything. Ta da- (not a favourite) SuperHero- a campaign in which everybody rises to high levels, resurrection commonplace, magick is everywhere, and gold flows like water. The Games Master eventually will become hard pressed to produce bigger and better treasures/magick and meaner/nastier monsters (Gygax AD&D). Eventually the GM becomes more or less paranoid. Mystery/play- really a mixture of hack&slash-SuperHero which the GM leads the players by the hand through a series of history and clews, encounters with interested citizens to conclusively solve some mystery posed by the GM. I enjoy this but find that essentially players are the characters and there is little need for players to do anything they might not do in real life. After all, this is Fantasy. Magick/Hack/Mystery- a low level campaign wherein if you've a character around 8th level you do not go adventuring into most dungeons because you can stomp most anything stupid enough to get your attention. Magick and Fighting are separate to the distinction when an encounter arises that one individual cannot do both without lengthy preparation. GM provides list of Mysteries/Quests. Players can also develope interest in side information to force quests to be developed by GM. I've left some themes out for lack of personal interest. I do enjoy campaigns where Magick is passive as opposed to aggressive. Subtle use of Magick, such as the development of Dragon Launched Cruise Goblins, is more entertaining than Blasting explosive one shot spells. Dragon launched cruise goblins are accomplished by strapping explosively flamable oil drums to a goblin, equipping him with a torch, throwing a Fly spell on him, (hard part) talking a dragon into carrying him within range of the target, point goblin at target and release. Results can be Pyrotechnic. Go ye and find a way to torch a Balrog. G. Christiansen ( c/o floyd!cmcl2!tihor)