Gamism and Narrativism: Mutually Exclusive
Ron Edwards:
Hi everyone, and Danny, welcome to the Forge. It's nice to see another long-toothed dog.
I request a little bit of time to work up a necessary post. I'm not inclined to shut down all posting except for just me and Norm, as I did with the Frostfolk one, but at the moment, each post is actually adding complexity rather than resolving it. I'm going to have to focus on Norm's needs for a bit, and then collect various other things that have cropped up.
In order for that to work, please let me get my next post up without further posts here. After that, and after Norm's response to it, then we'll open it up again.
Many thanks, Ron
Ron Edwards:
I completed this post 12 hours ago. Then we lost the internet. Then I screamed.
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Hi Norm,
Looking over your posts, I am unsure "when" you are standing in regard to the ideas discussed here. Have you read The Provisional Forge Glossary, specifically the first two pages with a diagram - i.e., my presentation of what I call The Big Model? Because if you're working with what people called "GNS" before that article was written (2004), then you're kind of in a swamp of past debate. It may even be that you haven't read Gamism: Step On Up, given some of what you've written here. Let me know.
You wrote,
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1. What is Exploration exactly? I understand that story is part of the structure, and thus it can (or cannot, depending on play) emerge from the exploration. Here's what I am thinking. Exploration is the agreed means by which a group plans to interact with the fiction and rules to produce and support a story. This would explain its foundational placement. In effect, the group agrees (whether consciously or not) [and perhaps at a social contract level] what kinds of fiction they are working with, and a whole set of acceptable tactics, such as character choice, what characters do in the fiction. From there, the story itself can grow and be supported. If this part is off, what I say next probably will be garbled and useless.
You are very close and perhaps dead on, but since we are dealing with a text medium here on this forum, I have to do some tuning. Your phrase "the agreed means by which a group plans to interact with the fiction and rules to produce and support a story" is definitely related to the term Exploration in the Big Model. However, I think it's only part of it. Up to the word "rules," what you're saying is picture-perfect exactly what I mean by the term "System." Second, "to produce and support a story" will work only insofar as "story" means its most absolutely broadest definition, which is to say, a series of fictional events. I call tell you, with battle-scars to illustrate each point, that using the word "story" to mean that will generate astonishing amounts of confusion and pain.
All right, that said, let's move on to what exactly Exploration is. It is literally a description of what imagined components are going into play. There are characters in (or "plus") a setting, which given a little focus on them and the immediation location, gives us Situation. Let's start there. No characters are moving or talking. Nothing is happening. We have sheets, notes, prep, some pre-play discussion, and stuff like that, but at this second, characters are in the setting with enough immediate context for anyone to say, "Oh! So then ..."
As soon as that concept is introduced, then we're hitting the whole thing with System. Exactly what you said: whatever is said and done at the table which makes the imagined situation actually change and transform into fictional events. "Rules," whether stated or textual, are only Techniques within System. Exploration includes System, meaning that instead of staying with the snapshot, we're talking about a dynamic and quite likely cyclical process of everyone contributing, responding, deciding, and imagining.
I want to emphasize that the concept of Color acts as a multiplier upon this entire framework; the whole thing is Colored at any and maybe all points. Also, despite the order in which I'm presenting the components here, Color is not an afterthought and may well be the primary experiential component.
That's Exploration: Color all this - System hitting Situation - with Situation being composed of Characters in a Setting. If the group of people can get through this without degenerating into confusion ("murk"), wrangling over details to serve personal beefs (Social Contract breakdown), or wrangling or being stifled over the aesthetic purpose at hand (Creative Agenda clash, or incoherence), then the Exploration stays "up" and play continues through many events.
Does that help? You will notice that I did not use the word "story" in any part of this. You can substitute it for anything in there (or all of it) if you like. I also want to stress that I'm not talking about the fictional product at all. This is a pure process model. Creative Agenda is best understood as a shared aesthetic preference for doing the Exploration together, and continuing to do it together, just as I explained to Levi in the Frostfolk thread.
This is actually why I will continue to insist on that play example! I want to understand fully what characters in your game were, where they were, what they did, how you guys made them do it, and how things moved along. I also want to know a bit more about the social and creative circumstances in which it all occurred. With that information, I can very clearly point out to you: "This was the Exploration."
Narrativism
I am pretty convinced at this point that not only was there no imaginable shred of Narrativist priorities in the game you're describing, there isn't any in what you're talking about, either. You keep saying "the story." I would like to add to my request for actual play accounts: what is the single best and most enjoyable example of "the story" in role-playing you've experienced? Who was playing, what system was being used, who were the characters, what did they do, and how did all of you make that happen?
I need this to understand what in the world you mean by this term. Abstract descriptions will simply not help me understand.
Exclusivity
(also applies to Danny's post, although it's not a full answer)
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The thing I am worried about is that though I am more aware of what Gamism and Narrativism look like, I am still shaky on the idea that they are mutually exclusive. If the group as a whole were aware of what they were doing (esteem as a point and premise as a point) I think it could co-exist. This could be more because I am passive enough to not let gamism take control of my actions as it does for others (or so it seems).
Whoa - if I don't "let gamism take control of my actions," then I'm not playing Gamist. Gamist play is in fact letting the Gamist "point of play" be why I play and therefore it's the enthusiastic linchpin for what I do. That doesn't necessarily mean jumping wholly into what I call The Hard Core. It does mean that Exploration is being conducted for the point of playing Gamist.
That said, then I think what you've written provides its own refutation of your desired or at least proposed goal. You've literally written that you want "story" to happen, with anything that might become Gamist being kept on a short leash so that it isn't the point of play. If I take "story" at its broadest definition, a series of fictional events, then what you've written is actually a powerful "anything but Gamist" proposal.
Please note that I said "what you've written." It, or how I'm reading it, may not be what you are saying, so if it seems to you that I've caricatured and ripped the spine out of what you are saying, try a re-phrase and see if I get it this time.
For instance, you might be saying the opposite: that you want the Gamism in there no matter what, but not in a way which "ruins things" for you, which you haven't specified. If so, there are two relevant sections in Gamism: Step On Up. One part talks about what Gamist play is like without the escalation I call The Hard Core. A lot of people confuse that subset with Gamism itself. Another part is called "The bitterest gamer in the world." It describes people who do want to play Gamist but want its manifestation to be very, very muted and never openly acknowledged, letting the vast majority of attention in play to be involved in the details of the Exploration, and why I think they often have a terrible time getting this sort of play into actual experience.
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... Perhaps the game would have to encourage competition to create a story between the players, with rules encouraging the players to simultaneously confront some issue or premise (perhaps this would be gamist play with narrativist support, effectively making the address of premise as a means to win narration rights for the story?)
All I can say here is, design as you see fit toward this goal, and enjoy ... but you might examine some tries from the past. I do not mean commercial failure, but the observed and easily-understood failure to see the ideal occur. One good example is the card game Once Upon a Time, which is wonderful in many ways, but in practice must become either "about winning" or "about a Premise-addressing conclusion," among everyone, or the final phase of play is a rather bumbling and anti-climactic experience. What I'm saying is that you might be describing a cruel trap for people who do want Narrativist play, when they discover that they can get a little tease about what they want to be the real point of play, and then end up having to fight about (or over) it instead.
I am still interested in someone posting about Capes in these terms, because as far as I can tell, Capes does not promote Narrativist play at all regardless of a certain amount of promotional rhetoric suggesting it does. It is simply and flatly competing for story control, which seems a little bit like what you are talking about here. "Story control" is actually the last imaginable, and quite likely the most disruptive technique possible for Narrativist goals; it's basically railroading, and a game which competes for railroading privileges is just as un-designed for Narrativist goals as a game which grants them to one person throughout play.
Best, Ron
edited to fix paragraph spacing - RE
Ayyavazi:
Hi Ron,
I have read all of your essays. I think I have read all of the essays posted on this site. The thing is, your essays run around 20+ pages each. Though I certainly read them carefully (and in the case of narrativism and gamism, twice) keeping all of the information in my head and understanding it is proving challenging, especially since many of the terms are charged with meaning for me that is apparently not the same meaning they have in the essay. Short of investing several consecutive hours pulling apart the glossary and individual articles, and making sure everything matches up with everything in a coherent way, I fear I may be unable to grasp the full thrust of everything you have written for quite some time, and only then with several discussions, of which this one is surely a big part.
That said, I did mean a series of fictional events when I used the word story initially, when discussing exploration. And your description of exploration really cleared up a good deal of confusion for me. Namely, the confusion of system and techniques. If rules are a technique, but the actual taking of action by player and character (whether interacting with mechanical rules or not) is considered system as well as the mechanics, then I understand fully why you say "System matters" Ultimately, I was equating system with mechanics, and to me, almost any mechanics I have encountered can be fit into any of the creative agendas (though admittedly, certain ones fit certain agendas better than others).
As for narrativist priorities being present or not, I can understand why you would say there was no shred of it. What I mean by story in this context is probably better described as premise. Each of us wanted a different level of importance for premise. (I am using premise here as sort of a confrontation with moral quandary, like in dust devil's can a cowboy give up the gun, kind of way. I don't really know how to put it into words, which is frustrating for all involved, but if you get what I mean, then I won't have to articulate as much. If not, I'll try harder at a future time).
I, for one, wanted a healthy level of premise. I wanted to explore more than just the fiction (encompassing all the lovely bits of color and such) and I wanted more than just social esteem (though I certainly wanted to get those pats on the back for all of my contributions, whether it was winning a fight, contributing something cool to the series of fictional events, or what have you), I wanted to ask hard questions of the characters and ultimately the players. The thing was, in play, these hard questions could never come up, because they simply weren't present in the story the GM had designed. If we tried to interject them, it would inevitably run the plot off the rails, which would infuriate the gm, stress him out (and thus everyone at the table) and potentially end in a group time-out (which has happened several times). So, instead of addressing the hard questions, we would give up, little by little, not even noticing we were, until we were playing in an obviously gamist fashion and not understanding fully just why we were so frustrated with how things were going.
I don't have time for a play example right now (I know its pissing you off, but I promise I'll provide one soon), but I will get one up as soon as I have time to write it. I want to make sure I pick a good couple of sessions to demonstrate what I believe I am saying and also to answer your question about my most enjoyable game.
As for narrativism and Gamism co-existing, I think that what you described is spot-on. I don't want esteem to be the only point of play. I want esteem to be an important factor, in addition to the addressing of what I call the hard questions, and what I suspect is premise. When I have time, I will re-read the glossary, looking for all links to premise.
For now, it seems I want Narrativist play with subservient Gamism and a dash of Simulationism (Which I probably have as much understanding of as I do of rocket science, which is to say, Rockets go up, most of the time, and there's this fuel propulsion thing going on).
Also, I fear I may be on of the bitterest gamers in the world, since that sounds like a great way to play to me, as long as the hard questions are present.
Thanks again, and I will work on an actual play example post-haste,
Cheers,
--Norm
P.S. I am deeply sorry you had to go through the classic re-typing due to internet loss event. I hate those. Thanks for sticking with it.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Norm,
I hope to make a series of points in the form of editing some of your phrases in significant ways. With any luck this can serve to tune your understanding, but I am not entirely sure it works, so let me know what you think.
1. I want to distinguish between the desire for a given Creative Agenda vs. its expression and realization in play itself. A given desire, such as you describe, is perfectly capable of being present and unrealized, which is to say, it cannot be said to be "your CA." It's not a Creative Agenda unless it actually happens; what you're describing is a frustrated desire.
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As for narrativist priorities being present or not, I can understand why you would say there was no shred of it. What I mean by story in this context is probably better described as premise. Each of us wanted a different level of importance for premise. (I am using premise here as sort of a confrontation with moral quandary, like in dust devil's can a cowboy give up the gun, kind of way. I don't really know how to put it into words, which is frustrating for all involved, but if you get what I mean, then I won't have to articulate as much. If not, I'll try harder at a future time).
I do get what you mean; you are talking about your desire for Narrativist play, for which your phrases "healthy level of premise" defined as "sort of confrontation with moral quandary, like in dust devil's can a cowboy give up the gun kind of way" are an absolute synonym - even a definition. (Note: I had not worked through this point very well in my "GNS and other matters" essay; it didn't get rigorously articulated until "Story Now.")
2. Techniques and Creative Agenda. Here, what you're saying is a central feature of the Big Model.
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... to me, almost any mechanics I have encountered can be fit into any of the creative agendas (though admittedly, certain ones fit certain agendas better than others).
A better way to put it, though, is that no single mechanic (technique) can be equated with a CA. However, a set of techniques in combination may well facilitate a given CA. Sometimes this effect is so unequivocal that it's easy to forget that no single one of them is "doing it," especially since one of those techniques is often extremely obvious and experientially powerful.
This concept raises a couple of nuances.
i) Such phenomena lead to the common short-hand in my writings of identifying a given game (rules-set, text-set) with a CA. This isn't really identifying the game as such in a definitional sense, nor saying that anyone/everyone who's played it did so with a given CA, nor in any way is it talking about the motivations of the author. It is, however, a defensible position about what the mechanics of the game can be "led toward" by people inclined toward a particular CA, and more importantly, how difficult it might be to play other CAs using that rules/text set without modification.
ii) When thinking in these terms, I recommend considering mechanics which change characters to be central. This includes damage, death, so-called "advancement," social positions, behavioral rules, and others.
3. I suggest giving up all talk about combined Creative Agendas and one being subservient to another. I worked hard in my essays to accomodate such possibilities, but the years of discussion and debate, plus the remarkable clarification of Simulationism as a CA, have shown me that CA is a "one or none" proposition. Either the group has a single CA in action (rocket-firing, haltingly, or anywhere in between), or it jumbles about with clashing desires regarding CA, or it can't even get the basic Exploration or SIS together in the first place in order to sustain a CA anyway.
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For now, it seems I want Narrativist play with subservient Gamism and a dash of Simulationism
I don't think you do. I think you want Narrativist play with strong tactical considerations in the nitty-gritty moments of play, including real consequences, and that you don't want the Explorative chassis/platform to be stupid. You don't have to wrack your brain and try to fit multiple CAs together in order to talk about what you want. You say those hard questions are most important to you. OK - at this point, your desire is Narrativist, and you're done!
That also leads me toward specific rules and texts as discussed in #1, about twenty games which could serve those purposes right off the top of my head, including a slightly-Drifted form of The Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Whispering Vault, and many more. But probably not The Pool, Primetime Adventures, Universalis, Polaris, or a bunch of others often (wrongly) tagged as the uber-ultimate Narrativist games.
4. Bitterest - not.
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Also, I fear I may be on of the bitterest gamers in the world, since that sounds like a great way to play to me, as long as the hard questions are present.
Boy, do you twist and turn on the impaling spike of desiring tactics with consequences. Again: enjoying and desiring those techniques is not a Creative Agenda issue. Your qualifier, "as long as the hard questions [as specified by you, kind-of moral quandaries] are present," instantly removes any possibility of being one of those bitterest guys I described. For them, by definition and without fail, the qualifier would be, "... as long as the hard decisions of play require genuine competence at the tactics and strategy, genuinely tested in the eyes of everyone present." That's not what you qualified. You're not in that zone. I think the only reason you found my description attractive is that you are so hungry for a decent Explorative/SIS platform of some kind.
Frustration at the Creative Agenda level is a blinding thing. It makes a person seize at any aspect of functional play, at all levels (Social Contract, solid and compelling Exploration components, specific resolution methods), and mistake those aspects for the Creative Agenda itself, perhaps based on associations from past history. That is, I think, at the core of every semi-desperate cry for combined Creative Agendas that I've seen since I first posted System Does Matter in early 1999.
Best, Ron
Ayyavazi:
Hey Ron,
Thanks for your replies. I appreciate that you recognize what's going on in my head, even if I can't.
The only thing I look at skeptically (this is an understatement. I am an eternal skeptic sometimes), is the idea that I'm narrativist and done. What about wanting esteem for success in conflict or for coming up with good story ideas? I definitely want that too, just not as much as I want those hard questions. Simulationism only ever appeals to me when I am playing within a constrained setting in which I have no control, such as many published adventures for DnD or the campaign settings they publish. I like them well enough, but I like them more as sping-boards for my own imagination than as creative constraints.
So if I seek this esteem, is that a shred of gamism creeping into my narrativist desires, or is it just the general human need for appreciation and recognition?
Also, I don't believe you told me where I can get a copy of the Exchange. It seems like an interesting system, and I would love to have a look at it and maybe play a few sessions, once I get a group together.
And now, my actual play example. I decided to give you this because you asked a very good question that has been congealing within me for a short time now. I wanted to evaluate my most fun play experience. The problem is that since all of my DnD play experiences are firmly rooted in the past (at least four months ago, many of them years), I fear I may have retroactively changed the memory to accord with my new views, even though they may not have been before. Either way, I find that out of all the DMs I have had, none have satisfied me as much as I would have liked, but one did so better than the others. Oddly, I had more fun in his game than I did running my own, though I blame the players (and my bad DMing) for that.
So, the system is D&D 3.5. The DM is named Dave. He has his own world-setting he has created loosely, but encouraged us to make things up to help flesh it out. To sum up, its the colonial expansion, DnD style. The Orcs (and goblins and kobolds) are the native americans, the elves are the canadians, dwarves are mexicans (rumored to exist, but nobody knows for sure) and Humans are the colonists from a far off land. The humans follow a national deity (Serin) who mandates Divine Expansion, telling humans it is their duty to rule this new land for the betterment of all races. The deity is Lawful Evil, but everyone believes he is Lawful Good.
He wanted a low-magic setting (in the sense that he wanted to control certain aspects of the campaign), so he flat out denied flight magic of any sort, along with resurrection magic. People could theoretically still be ressurrected, but it was extremely tough, and definitely high level stuff. Since we all started at level 1 (and never got higher than 5 or 6) we knew that if we died, it was time to introduce a new character. Also, any magic item technically belonged to the human government (as far as they were concerned), but they only pursued things with a bonus of +3 or higher.
So, I played a human War-Mage (an arcane character based around extremely damaging spells in combat, but almost no subtlety. this helped him since it removed the chance that I would do all those annoying wizard things like scrying and such) His name was Ptolemy, and other than being min-maxed for damage, he was a racist. He was a devout follower of Serin (in his lawful good side, heavy emphasis on the Lawful) and believed Humans deserved to rule over all of the races. His family was killed by a plague, and their (large) life savings were used to buy him a comfortable life at the war-mage academy. He was out adventuring as a way to gain recognition and recruit people for the war-mage academy.
Gerald played Luthor, a human ranger with a dog for a pet (and future animal companion). He was impulsive, and paid lip-service to Serin and the government, but mostly just went his own way. I don't remember much about his family or life before adventuring.
Jenn played Valenathia, an Elven Paladin of Law. She was very stern and disdained the human ways, but it was her duty to inspect and ascertain our threat to the elven nation, and determine whether we humans were good or bad on the whole.
Mike played Thamior, a Human Druid. Mike didn't care much for the fictional elements of D&D, and only played a druid because we all bugged him not to play an elven ranger like he always did, min-maxed for damage. (in retrospect, I think we should have embraced his love of the class, and encouraged him to play whatever he liked so long as it enhanced everyone's enjoyment of the game. But, we were too selfish).
I don't honestly remember how we met. I know Luthor and I were traveling together already, and Thamior and Valenathia were traveling together. Our first adventure was a cattle theft. We investigated and found out a corrupt sheriff had killed the old sheriff and "sold" the land to a bunch of goblins nearby. They were just taking what was rightfully theirs. After raiding the goblin lair only to discover this fact (we left them with no warriors), we went in search of said corrupt sheriff. We ran the bastard out of town, and made a deal between the goblins and ranchers so that they could share resources and work to each other's benefit. I took one of the goblins (Kra) under my wing. Maybe I was trying to make up for what I had done to his tribe, maybe I just wanted to prove Serin could impact the other races. At the time, I had no idea, I just thought it would be cool to teach a goblin all about the human way of life. A growing dislike began between Ptolemy and Valenathia. The two world-views were just too different.
As for what was going on at the table, there was plenty. My war-mage was being nerfed so that I didn't do too much damage, and thus kill Dave's monsters too quickly. Everyone in the party loved my character's damage output and ability to control situations (especially since Luthor and Thamior weren't big damage dealers, and Jenn had horrible luck with her dice). He kept on saying it was going to make the other players feel inadequate and ruin their fun, but it was obvious that it really ruined the challenge from his point of view. He wasn't trying to win (though at the time I thought he was) he was just trying to make sure things were difficult for us. This was becoming frustrated because I was making mince-meat of most of his encounters.
The next adventure saw us investigating a plague in a nearby town at the behest of the local government. This was a fairly charged adventure,emotionally speaking, for my character, and I played it that way. Consequently, the other characters did not much like my constant reports to the government about our doings. Either way, we took the job and investigated. Through stupidity, I got Luthor killed. He and I got trapped on the side of a pit trap (he had jumped over to save me) and we got ambushed by some kobolds. Valenathia and Thamior weren't able to get to us very quickly, but they ran the kobolds off and retrieved our unconscious bodies. By the time we got back to town, Luthor was too plague-ridden to survive, and died. At this point Gerald introduced Aiden, a Cleric of Serin (very mild-mannered, focusing much more on the good than the lawful), but just as impulsive as Luthor. As a result, throughout the campaign, this character would run off alone to investigate things. It got us into a fair amount of trouble. He also had a bad philosophy on healing, only using it once we fell unconscious, which would inevitably make it easier for us to fall unconscious again due to the attacks of opportunity involved with standing up. We always had to brow-beat him into healing us before that point.
Either way, we found out the plague was caused by an orc trying to bring vengeance on us because humans ran his tribe out. We killed him and stopped the plague. During this whole little adventure Thamior also died. He and I decided we wanted to investigate a crypt in the dungeon, across another spiked pit. Aiden and Valenathia wanted nothing to do with it, so they stayed on the other side. Well, there was an undead monstrosity in the crypt. Aiden and Valenathia provided archery support (yeah, clerics and paladins do great with archery), and Thamior got knocked out. This beast was fairly evil, so instead of coming after me, it just ripped him in half. This caused Valenathia to blame me for two deaths, her best friend Thamior, and her friend Luthor (because she was befriending him). Things never really got better between the two. So, Mike started making a new character, Sir Richard of the order of the Rose, a Knight. He didn't finish making the character until our next adventure. By the time we saw daylight again, Kra had run away, and I thought I had lost him for good. So much for the teachings of Serin. All around it wasn't a total loss though, because the kobolds that killed Luthor had died, except for a pair of very young ones (due to plague, not us). Aiden adopted these as his sons, and they were a source of endless entertainment for the group, with Aiden trying to shield them from my harsh teachings and my military training, and me always trying to rip the soft velvety illusion Aiden spun about the world and Serin.
I don't remember much to do with the next adventure, but it involved rival kobold tribes and a kobold I now know to be very popular in D&D called Meepo, and a very young white dragon. We got the dragon back to its rightful owners, and discovered Sir Richard. We freed him by agreeing to solve their problem, and so we did. Mike didn't like it too much when Dave told him to erase all of his possessions when we found him. Dave thought this rather funny, but Dave and Mike never really got along, so it only made things worse between them. After some whining on Mike's part, (and some support from Gerald and I) Dave agreed to return some of the possessions when we found them in the dungeon. This amounted to a sword and shield, but hey, I guess you can't have it all.
This all leads up to the next adventure, which is the one I had the most fun with, and where I suspect we hit the premise, at least for my character.
In the next adventure we were exploring a cult. (Dave had been gradually ramping up the otherworldy horror in the world, so things were becoming more desperate from a charactr standpoint. Also, the government seemed to have mixed feelings about our little group). That, and a Goblin threat had been investigated by the government, and they were going to move to wipe it out. As it turns out, Kra had gathered up his old tribe and taught them everything I taught him, which turned out to be a very peaceful message that caused the community to prosper together. The government saw it as a threat, so my character lied to the government to protect his friend, even if his friend wasn't firing on all cylinders about Serin. In the process of eliminating the cult, I had the chance to use a couple of action points (Dave gave us some as the campaign got harder, and they could be used to "cool story things we normally couldn't" in addition to the standard 1d6 added to a d20 roll. I brought down the mine by turning my fists to stone with one of my spells (normally you can only turn one fist) and knocking out support structures as we ran from a blob monster that we could not kill. This trapped it beneath the city, but made the government declare us fugitives, even though they knew we had eradicated a cult. Turns out some agents of the government were in cults too! My character had to run from the government, and come to grips with the fact that everything he thought was stable was not, including the divine rule of his god. This is where we took a break from the campaign, but it sadly never restarted.
What did people enjoy the most? I know Mike and I enjoyed killing things left and right. We loved giving each other high fives for the critical hits and marveling at the sheer destruction we could wreak. Jenn, myself and Gerald loved the depth of the fiction and the world Dave had created, and I think (key word) that Everyone enjoyed watching me grapple with personal loyalty and my loyalty to the state. The damage-dealing is fun I can have in any campaign. What made this one stick in my mind is that it was so customized to the characters that I actually felt like my decisions had more consequences than just success or failure. Killing something wasn't always a path to victory, and it always complicated things. And between the plague-ridden town, accidentally getting Luthor killed, and maybe even Thamior, not to mention the big BANG at the end of being forced to choose between myself and the government, made this stick in my mind as the most fun I had ever had in D&D.
So, what do you think?
P.S. for those who care, we ended the campaign around level 5 after maybe 6 months of playing. Only mike really cared that it was so slow, and it just made me anticipate the levels more, waiting on the edge of my seat for the chance to get new ways to kill things and make things ever more complicated.
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