Forgotten Realms, remembered

After discussing a bit with my players I decided to give D&D/Pathfinder another shot and we're playing in Forgotten Realms. I'm trying to rediscover what I found exciting and fun about the game and it has worked, to a degree.

I also remembered another thing.


I want to take your character sheets and tear them up.


I needed to sleep it over. I've thought about it, and here's the short of it:
There was a point where I felt the game was liberated. The party stood against a monster far too powerful for them to face. I described what the monster did, they said what they did. Not a single attack roll was made, not a single hit point loss marked (well, ok, I'm lying, there was, in the beginning), initiative was not rolled. They used what was at hand: furniture, potions from the alchemist's lab, the architecture. It the end they walked away, the monster defeated, a formidable treasure in hand. I felt good, they felt good. [there's the issue of one party member being out for the whole exchange, but I'll do my best to avoid that in the future, live and learn]

And here I hit the bedrock of my problem with D&D: I'm having the most fun when I'm ignoring all the rules(*). So, y'know... why am I using them at all? The rules are getting in the way, they're not helping me run the game and they're making me miserable.

It doesn't feel fair to my players, because they've got these characters with all these numbers and powers and tricks and gear. And I couldn't care less about that.

I want to run this game. It's a challenge I want to take on.


(*it's not that simple, that's just a generalized statement that expresses a whole plethora of problems)

Comments

  1. Where in the Realms is the game set?

    I have been playing in a Burning Wheel game set in the realms for some months now and we're really digging the Sword Coast.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, Judd. The party is formed around an Oracle of Oghma who wants to make an encyclopaedia of the flora and fauna of Faerun (we pretend that hasn't been done before by Elminster and a bunch of other dudes), so they're not bound to a location but are making a trek across the realms. We started in Candlekeep and they're in Amn now. Calimshan in the next session, probably. Then Chult.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment