Related Information to Bruconero's Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Player's Hub

Bruconero's Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Player's Hub - Page 31

Playing a character really takes some dedication if you want to enjoy it. If time were limited for me I would just work with one character as it shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes to read the updates to the story and give my character's response.

Hub Players Dragons and Dungeons Bruconeros

The worst part about a player that quits it the time the GM puts in to understanding what that player offers to the storyline, and customizing the storyline a round the new voice on the stage. When the voice is then gone, it is much harder to take the changes back out of the world. And, its even sadder to keep the changes in, with no one to fill the roll.

Bruconero's Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Player's Hub Archive Pathfinder / D&D

Kit, that's why you should never ever fit the story on a character. The story must be there by itself, whoever plays the game. Even encounters, should be done in a generic way: the party meet skeletons. How many? Armed with what? You decide these things only when the encounter starts, based on how many players got to the battle.
Remember when Stefflabunny asked me about her heraldic symbol, hoping to make it part of the game? I didn't refuse because I don't like her or because I'm lazy but only because I never based a quest on a single player, not even part of it. That risks to screw up the game for the Dungeon Master and for the other players as well.

Page 31 Hub Players Dragons and Dungeons Bruconeros

My characters are generally chaotic and I have fun trying to disrupt the world they're in. I love to see how the Dungeon Master takes to my character dong something spontaneous so trying to make a world fit around my character would only make it harder for the Dungeon Master from my perspective.

Hub Players Dragons and Dungeons Bruconeros

Yes, it would be hard. But if you have a scenario, no character can disrupt it. In our example, there are characters and events: none of them is necessary. You could kill Goatshearer or ignore the bandits or whatever you want. The story would change based on what you did and you would never realize.
Actually, I don't have a real "Story". I have situations. In these general situations the players have all the freedom to do whatever they want. Of course, every action have consequences, some in the short, some in the long period. But I think this is the best way so I don't need to force the players into anything. Total freedom.

Bruconero's Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Player's Hub

That's exactly how I like to run my games. In fact, I'm running an Exalted game right now where the players have the freedom to go anywhere in all of Creation (which is something like 20 times as big as Earth). Everywhere they go, they will be introduced to a different issue, but they will never be told that they have to deal with any of them. If all they want to do is go to a remote area and start recruiting the Barbarian Tribes and building a nation out of them, then there will be other beings who will take notice and try to stop them (or help, depending)...but that's all a consequence of the actions they decided to take, rather than a pre-determined story line which I have carefully planned out ahead of time.

Bruconero's Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Player's Hub - Page 31

Is very risky to run a predetermined story, unless you know exactly who the players are (not the characters) and you give a pre-made set of characters to use. Example: Kit put a lot of traps and hidden stuff but nobody played a rogue (now Krusten). On the other side, I noticed that giving total freedom in this environment can be confusing. Some players don't like to plan and prefer following the stream.

Bruconero's Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Player's Hub D&D / Pathfinder Archive - Page 31

Kittenpunk rose a very good subject with her last question. Anytime a new player was joining the game I was always asking to update marching order and camp strategies but I forgot to do that lately. So this is a good time for it.

We are only 6 now and the new composition of the party calls for a brand new marching order. I need an order for sparse formations (usually in the open, where two or three characters can march one next to the other) and another for a one-man-at-a-time row (usually in indoor locations). Would be also useful to know in which order you will organize your night shifts when camping. This is not essential, however. Is enough if I know who will set guard and who not: I can determine randomly (dice roll) who's shift is if something happens during the night.

Another subject that I consider very important, but that doesn't seem so popular, is the one about the election of a Party Leader along with the appointment of one or more spokesmen for the party (still Tomas in formal situations and Krusten when dealing with commoners? I'm asking because this old proposal never became official and now there are new players that might want to take the burden).
The absence of a Party Leader brought us to severe slowdowns in the game a couple of times already. ICon took the role spontaneusly in some occasions: do you want to make it official? Or somebody else feels like doing it?

I'm insisting on this point because I feel a party needs somebody that can become the organizer (You could go without if you used this thread to define your strategies, but nobody does it so a director is needed). If everybody just posts random actions at whim, the game will become much more difficult for you guys. This encounter is an exception, consider it the tutorial level. I'll always organize your enemies. I'll prepare tactics for them, based on their intelligence scores and hunting behaviour (if animals). An example is the first encounter with the dogs: they surrounded you before even showing themselves. Your enemies will usually attack only when they think they have the upper hand. If you don't fight like a group but only like disconnected individuals, you risk to end up like the barbarian populations that faced the organized Roman Empire two thousand years ago: not important if they had 50 men for each Roman soldier, they always ate the dust...