|
Good morning everyone.
I have always been fond of, and occasionally dabble in, the idea of progressive spells. The genesis of the idea was the monster summoning type spells. It nagged at me that a caster who took three levels in everything but summoning spells would suddenly take Summon Monster IV. I know it is an odd issue to take, but I constantly ponder things, and this one was taking the abuse at the time.
My attempt at developing a "bonus" system for casters that took spell that were related, i.e. Image and Summons was ripped from the Wu-jen (Nowadays I would give the Extend Spell feat for free for related spells). This worked nicely, and gave the casters a little ownership to the type of spell they have followed.
During that era I also introduced a few new chains to that list, notably Animate Dead, and I totally hijacked the Wu-jen elemental concept. For the Animate Dead, which was tooled for a PC’s necromancer, I started at 0lvl with Animate Dead Pet, which the progressed to, 1st-Least Undead, and 2nd-Lesser Undead. I also tossed in a few fluff 0lvl’s for flavor, Animate Dead Mouse Minion, Watchful Mouse Minion, Literate Mouse Minion, and the 1st level Mouse Minion Missile, and Mouse Minion Messenger (My hope was to catch the players imagination and have him pursue, but it failed... I'm not saying that players are inherently lazy, but they are =).
Overall, I would say the houserules were a success and addressed my irritation nicely. So nicely in fact, that after that campaign I just let them fade into the homerules ether =).
Todays pondering led me down the thought of DMing style. Everyone has their own style, most are adapted to fit the various players needs and their own views on the game. My style tends to be inclusionary, descriptive, and entertaining. I have never used a screen, everyone sees my rolls, I freely mix in and out of game dialog, I give my PC’s free reign in their method of crafting characters, have a set list of homerules, and mainly focus on entertaining the players through creative storylines, NPC’s and situations. Note that entertaining does not imply they are always happy =).
The point I was pondering was this, I always run a campaign style of adventures. The stories are individually complete but always tie into a greater story, I use reoccurring NPC’s and areas, and generally give it the novel treatment. I have run one shot games and tournament style games for public venues, but even then I find a way to link the stories to “reward” returning players. I know this style is not uncommon, mainly because there are few other choices, but on average, what is the main style of playing? Campaign Style? One shot adventures with a fine thread of linkage? Stand alone one shot adventures?