Re: Things I'd like to see more of in fantasy gaming
Gosh i am really surprised this conversation has gone on as long as it has....
i can't imagine running a roleplay campaign without ANY scripting... whats the friggin point, there wouldnt be anything to do!
A great GM/DM/Storyteller/WHATEVER can effectively lead his party by the nose without them even realizing it. Part of it is knowing your players... Part of it is knowing the world you are playing in well enough to make the things you *want* to happen fit the way things *actually* could happen...
Just as an example... in a wheel of time d20 game i was gming for a while (we are on hiatus unfortunately) some characters had to spend 4 days climbing/hiking down out of the mountains of mist, in perpetual cloud cover and on-again/off-again rain showers... they found random wild animal tracks..enough food to live off of (they had almost no supplies at the time) but no human settlements or signs of civilization apart from an occaisional rock that seemed 'a little too squarish' to be naturally formed...
So as the session wore on, just as the party was getting a *little bit* tired of the trudging hike in to civilization...."suddenly' a storm broke out... clouds rolled in, the sky turned black in about 15 minutes, and it began to pour on them...
the party ran in every direction trying to find some cover and found a cave!
hoorah! a cave, we wont get soaked! ...
only, once they got inside there were 4 bear cubs in the cave...
and...something roared at the entrance...oh dear....
lol
it was great and it was the first in a series of events that developed a somewhat strong dislike for the word 'suddenly' when used in our campaign...inevitably it meant something the characters didnt expect had happened...
the characters loved it..hit themselves in the head for not even checking for animal tracks and narrowly survived the attack of an enormous cavebear... they won...and they left. luckily.
if they hadnt we had the bear's 'mate' ready to arrive a few minutes after they dispatched the first...also based on the amount of party-damage...
anyway. it was a 'scripted' encounter. the storm was a plot-hook which was ENTIRELY plausable in the universe and current location, and it *worked*
the players got led exactly where i wanted them and didnt feel led at all.
~llewin