Monday 6 April 2015

Fear of Disruption - Guilty!


I was reading through The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children, and in the introduction Raggi writes:

"This year we’ve got a dungeon that’ll work as a totally mental one-shot just as well as a completely disruptive part of an ongoing campaign. And if you’re not wanting disruptive, then what’s the point? “Oh let’s have an adventure that doesn’t look like it’ll rock the boat, I’m sure that’ll have a better chance of getting the players excited and of being something we all remember later on with fondness.” Pffft. You want carefully considered, scientifically tested, carefully balanced adventures that are constructed to have beginnings, middles, and ends, all of which can be slotted into your pre-plotted campaign without changing it? I call those types of adventures ‘fillers’ and once a regular progression of events becomes evident, once the outcomes of an adventure are discovered and known, that adventure becomes boring, and I’d never publish what I’d come to think of as boring."

I'm guilty. All GMs probably are, and a great many adventure designers are too - but that can be seen as necessity, they are writing material for campaigns unknown. But I hope I remember this passage more often than I forget it, and make sure that, as a GM, I'm not afraid of an adventure being 'disruptive' - and that I keep clear in my mind that if the campaign is more or less unchanged after the PCs have had an adventure then yes, Raggi is right; what's the point?


You don't prefer the Status Quo, do you?

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