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I have no mouth and I must scream.
Jul. 17th, 2003 12:30 amOur Wednesday night campaign is definitely gamist. I know this. I accept it, for the most part (or am resigned to it, occasionally). But every now and again, my simulationist nature stands up and howls like a whipped puppy.
The party is in this little town in a forest, which is having problems. The local wild elves, which have never been a problem before (both groups studiously avoiding each other), started killing off the villagers a few months ago. The town mayor tried to go out and talk to them to find out WTF, and was found massacred a few days later. Slightly after that, a ghostly horseman appeared and killed any villagers who tried to leave the area. We appear and must Fix These Problems.
So, here I am, roleplaying. Drea's logic is, the horseman only kills people who try to leave, whereas the elves are randomly shooting people in town (from the cover of the trees), and in fact tried to do so the first day we were there. Therefore, the elves are the clear and present danger. So we should try and find out what their problem is, as we are a lot harder to kill than a town mayor.
We spent the entire evening trying to find the elves. At the end of it, the DM broke down and said "you won't be able to find them now. There's a reason for it, but you will not be able to talk to them at this time." Okay. So it's a module. It makes me crazy, but that's the way it goes...
But WHY did we have to spend an entire night shitting around with this, if that was a foregone conclusion? Why did he make it super-hard to track (which I succeeded at anyways for the first bit), and after we lost the trail, did he still make us able to follow the general direction? It's like we're getting the worst of both the simulationist and the gamist models: things will behave like they would in the real world until the point where it might actually solve the problem in a non-module-approved way. Gaaaah.
If you have no idea what I'm bibbling about, click here.
[Edit: I actually have a big chunk of dramatist in me (quelle surprise), but our game often doesn't even register on the dramatist axis, so I didn't bring that up.]
The party is in this little town in a forest, which is having problems. The local wild elves, which have never been a problem before (both groups studiously avoiding each other), started killing off the villagers a few months ago. The town mayor tried to go out and talk to them to find out WTF, and was found massacred a few days later. Slightly after that, a ghostly horseman appeared and killed any villagers who tried to leave the area. We appear and must Fix These Problems.
So, here I am, roleplaying. Drea's logic is, the horseman only kills people who try to leave, whereas the elves are randomly shooting people in town (from the cover of the trees), and in fact tried to do so the first day we were there. Therefore, the elves are the clear and present danger. So we should try and find out what their problem is, as we are a lot harder to kill than a town mayor.
We spent the entire evening trying to find the elves. At the end of it, the DM broke down and said "you won't be able to find them now. There's a reason for it, but you will not be able to talk to them at this time." Okay. So it's a module. It makes me crazy, but that's the way it goes...
But WHY did we have to spend an entire night shitting around with this, if that was a foregone conclusion? Why did he make it super-hard to track (which I succeeded at anyways for the first bit), and after we lost the trail, did he still make us able to follow the general direction? It's like we're getting the worst of both the simulationist and the gamist models: things will behave like they would in the real world until the point where it might actually solve the problem in a non-module-approved way. Gaaaah.
If you have no idea what I'm bibbling about, click here.
[Edit: I actually have a big chunk of dramatist in me (quelle surprise), but our game often doesn't even register on the dramatist axis, so I didn't bring that up.]
