I ran a game a couple of years back where I named the adventuring group "The Proud Companions!"

That way, when they'd come into a town, or whatever, people would proclaim in hushed voices, "Beware! Here come the PCs!"

Quote from: Old Geezer;760749You are mistaken, good sir.  The session ended with everyone in a safe place.  About half an hour before the end Gary would say "Time to head back home."

On outdoor adventures, it would be "Tom's cleric got a summons from his temple and rode away" or whatever.

There was no such thing as "story" other than "what happened."  The players present that night were the characters that played.

OK. The immediate questions that come to my mind are "what happened if the characters *didn't* get to a safe place? Or if Tom's cleric was in a place where he couldn't ride away? (Like Isle of Dread or something)."

I don't see the desire to maintain continuity-of-happening as an attempt to impose "story". I do the same thing in non-RPGs, like wargames. When we ran wargame campaigns at West Point we had continuity.

If I'm running a 1941 North African WWII wargame campaign using, say, Spearhead or Command Decision (neither is an RPG), and in the first session Rommel and the Afrika Korps end up encircled in Sidi Rezegh, then next session, Rommel and the Afrika Korp will start encircled in Sidi Rezegh regardless of whether the player who was Rommel the prior session is there or not. To allow the Desert Fox and his panzers to escape to safety because the player controlling Rommel wasn't available would seem wrong and not in the spirit of an ongoing wargame campaign - it would encourage strategic absenteeism, among other things. Someone else runs Rommel and the game goes on.

How do other GMs handle this?

Quote from: amacris;761151OK. The immediate questions that come to my mind are "what happened if the characters *didn't* get to a safe place? Or if Tom's cleric was in a place where he couldn't ride away? (Like Isle of Dread or something)."

I don't see the desire to maintain continuity-of-happening as an attempt to impose "story". I do the same thing in non-RPGs, like wargames. When we ran wargame campaigns at West Point we had continuity.

If I'm running a 1941 North African WWII wargame campaign using, say, Spearhead or Command Decision (neither is an RPG), and in the first session Rommel and the Afrika Korps end up encircled in Sidi Rezegh, then next session, Rommel and the Afrika Korp will start encircled in Sidi Rezegh regardless of whether the player who was Rommel the prior session is there or not. To allow the Desert Fox and his panzers to escape to safety because the player controlling Rommel wasn't available would seem wrong and not in the spirit of an ongoing wargame campaign - it would encourage strategic absenteeism, among other things. Someone else runs Rommel and the game goes on.

How do other GMs handle this?

We never did not get to a safe place.  It simply wasn't permitted.

And I've played wargame campaigns too.  I've even played Command Decision, thank you nicely.  I do know how they work.

Quote from: Old Geezer;760751Right, but WHO is the head of the Free Company?  By that logic, every PC would have their own.

And as I stated above, no matter what the intent was, the way the text reads to a cold reader is that this is, in fact, a mandatory thing.

Way to be like a 4e player or system wonk and read every word seperately out of context and setting. I'm actually shocked to see this from you.


Edit: Someone explain to me stopping at a safe place or my temple is calling me? Uh wut? Being a cleric doesn't mean you and your God are on Sprint's framily plan. That is just as arbitrary as any chapter break to a story.

Quote from: Grey Wanderer;760760I ran a game a couple of years back where I named the adventuring group "The Proud Companions!"

That way, when they'd come into a town, or whatever, people would proclaim in hushed voices, "Beware! Here come the PCs!"

Our current adventuring group acquired its name when the halfling, on the very first adventure, having met the other members of the group in the back of a wagon traveling to the outpost that has become their base town said, sorta offhand, "We're wagon buddies!"

So, now, when someone asks, "Who are you people?" one of us has to step forward and say, "WE'RE THE...(lowers voice), um, Wagon Buddies..."

Quote from: Old Geezer;761156We never did not get to a safe place.  It simply wasn't permitted.

If that's the case it's really like imposing some kind of anti-story, as opposed to a lack of story. Not to say that's bad (it's important for an open table), but it's as much a meta decision as following some kind of story is. Allowing the PCs to end up someplace uncomfortable at the end of the session can simply stem from following the logic of their actions and/or the setting to its natural conclusion, and then maintaining continuity, without any requirement for "story", or anti-story (i.e. you all end up back in town).

Quote from: Old Geezer;760751Right, but WHO is the head of the Free Company?  By that logic, every PC would have their own.

More importantly, who cares? It's worth noting that lots of groups don't have a revolving door for players, and whether or not you do has a large impact on one's play assumptions (or, if it doesn't, you end up hand-waving lots of weirdness). Does it matter that a group of loosely associated tomb-robbers/world-conquerors call themselves the Bloody Band for laughs? Or does doing so automatically make them story-gaming swine?

Quote from: amacris;761151How do other GMs handle this?

In my experience it's entirely dependent on the type of game and makeup of the players. I've done everything from having characters vanish in a puff of logic (a solution I hate), to NPC'ing them, to enforcing the "you're all safe back in town" thing for an open table group. There's never been just one solution, and it has always depended on the in-game circumstances, reasons for absence, and state of the player-roster.

Quote from: Marleycat;761172Way to be like a 4e player or system wonk and read every word seperately out of context and setting. I'm actually shocked to see this from you.

Shrug.  That's just the way it read to me.  That's how it came across.

Quote from: Marleycat;761172Edit: Someone explain to me stopping at a safe place or my temple is calling me? Uh wut? Being a cleric doesn't mean you and your God are on Sprint's framily plan. That is just as arbitrary as any chapter break to a story.

Sure.  But there never was any "story" other than "this is what happened."  If Tom couldn't be there tonight, Gary would say "Tom got a summons from the Temple and rode back home."  Or if we were in town he'd say "You haven't seen Tom."

The people who played were the people who were present, period.

And as I said, about half an hour or so before he wanted to quit for the night, Gary would say "It's time to head to the surface/find a town with an inn."

D&D was, first and foremost, a game.

And Amacris said,

"Sure. I know Tavis ran that way, too, for his Red Box campaign. But he handled it by insisting that everyone be out of the dungeon by the end of the session and I always had the sense that the old-school guys didn't do that. But maybe I'm wrong?..."

And I'm saying explicitly that Dave and Gary DID do that very thing; I am directly answering the question he asked.  Although maybe that's not who me meant by "the old-school guys".

Quote from: Bobloblah;761174If that's the case it's really like imposing some kind of anti-story, as opposed to a lack of story. Not to say that's bad (it's important for an open table), but it's as much a meta decision as following some kind of story is.

Well, sure.  But I'm answering questions about what actually happened in the early days of Blackmoor and Greyhawk; what did Dave and Gary actually do, how did they handle this situation.

At least that's what I thought I was doing.

O

Quote from: Old Geezer;761180Shrug.  That's just the way it read to me.  That's how it came across.



Sure.  But there never was any "story" other than "this is what happened."  If Tom couldn't be there tonight, Gary would say "Tom got a summons from the Temple and rode back home."  Or if we were in town he'd say "You haven't seen Tom."

The people who played were the people who were present, period.

And as I said, about half an hour or so before he wanted to quit for the night, Gary would say "It's time to head to the surface/find a town with an inn."

D&D was, first and foremost, a game.

And Amacris said,

"Sure. I know Tavis ran that way, too, for his Red Box campaign. But he handled it by insisting that everyone be out of the dungeon by the end of the session and I always had the sense that the old-school guys didn't do that. But maybe I'm wrong?..."

And I'm saying explicitly that Dave and Gary DID do that very thing; I am directly answering the question he asked.  Although maybe that's not who me meant by "the old-school guys".

Thanks OG, you answered with context because that was my actual confusion with your prior response. It didn't make sense to me.

Glad to help.

I thought we were talking about how the issue was handled in the early days of D&D, but maybe I'm the only person who thought that.

Quote from: Old Geezer;761194Glad to help.

I thought we were talking about how the issue was handled in the early days of D&D, but maybe I'm the only person who thought that.

Probably but that's okay by me because that's what I expect and I enjoy learning about it anyway, because as you know I'm just a 2e storygame girl. And your sense of humour is like mine also.

Quote from: Marleycat;761202And your sense of humour is like mine also.

Primarily centered on farting, blowjobs, and tits?

Quote from: Old Geezer;761209Primarily centered on farting, blowjobs, and tits?

Beer, you silly man.

Quote from: Old Geezer;761180D&D was, first and foremost, a game.

And I'm saying explicitly that Dave and Gary DID do that very thing; I am directly answering the question he asked.  Although maybe that's not who me meant by "the old-school guys".

Thanks for answering the question. Dave, Gary, you, et. Al, are definitely who I meant by old-school guys.

I didn't mean to offend you by suggesting you didn't know what a wargame was. I think we be sure that most people today have never played a Command Decision campaign, though, so it seemed worthwhile to clarify a bit.

In any event, it was necessary to make the point that ACKS is designed for a type of campaign which is not story-based but which has a higher level of continuity than what Gary ran. There are not just 2 types of campaigns, "open table" and "story game".

ACKS could certainly run the type of game you describe but a lot of the additional material in Chapter 7 (Campaigns) only becomes valuable when you are running it with the continuity of a wargame campaign.

Quote from: amacris;761294ACKS could certainly run the type of game you describe but a lot of the additional material in Chapter 7 (Campaigns) only becomes valuable when you are running it with the continuity of a wargame campaign.

At that point I would posit that it would, in fact, be a wargame campaign.  And that is very much in line with Dave and Gary's original visions, since all their players were wargamers.

Not everyone in an "open table" campaign would desire to go to that length, of course.  But all you need is three or four wargamers with their own strongholds and the wars, they make themselves.

And the other occasional players are being recruited for various factions.  At which point, their potential unreliability adds to the game.

"Sorry, squire, your expensive and paid-in-advance mercenaries didn't show."