Fluff vs crunch: Do you need crunch to play certain flavor?

[Quark Blast]

thejeff wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

wraithstrike wrote:

Aranna wrote:

<snip> ... I was in a group that once played three whole sessions simply interacting with vendors and sponsors during a resupply trip before the actual adventure started.

I could not have done it. I don't mind RP'ing, and planning, but it should not take 3 sessions. It should not even take one full session, but some people do like to play like that.

I am the "get it over with" guy. I feel the same way about shopping for magic items. If a GM tries to have a shopkeeper haggle with me about the price I tend to just pay them to get it out of the way.

Had a similar ongoing experience about four years back. OMG it was boooring! One example:

After twenty minutes (player time) the result: Why yes, the party Paladin, with an 18 CHA and 15 ranks in Diplomacy, rolled a Nat20 to haggle and received... wait for it ...nearly a 5% discount.

I too just payed full price no matter what PC I played in that campaign. The aggravation wasn't worth all the "savings" (and, as we all know, using the swingy D20 System you would roll a Nat1 as often as a Nat20 and so Shop Keeper B would eat up any savings you might have wheedled from Shop Keeper A anyway).

I'll give Aranna credit for... o_O ...something. Because the first 12-hour RP haggle session would've been my last right about hour 3.0.

Different preferences. As long as everyone is enjoying the RP, why not continue? I assume it wasn't all about making diplomacy rolls, but the actual fun of the RP.

Indeed, why not? And for that matter you might not even need character sheets or dice...

thejeff wrote:

Now, you might not have enjoyed it, but you weren't there. A good GM will pay attention to when players don't seem to be having fun and adjust the pace as needed.

To the first part - thankfully. To the second part - truer words have never been set to type.

In that particular case (mentioned above), it was for me the fact that the party Paladin exceeded the DC (30) for a "Heroic" Diplomacy skill check, and was in fact within 1 of it being a "Nearly Impossible" (DC=40) achievement, yet we saved less than 5% on a 300 gp item. Oh, and PL=6. Stuff like that happened repeatedly.

Assuming it was there to begin with, the GMs actions undeniably sucked the fun right out of RP.

[Aranna]

As thejeff says it was RP not just haggling.

There was a circus in town with all manner of exotic fun. There were three potential sponsors for our expedition to meet with and vendors to buy equipment from. And this was our first time together as PCs, so TONS of interactive role play all around.

[Digitalelf]

phantom1592 wrote:

I've only played in one game that used training, and for us it was the exact opposite. It was 2E 'sandbox' boxed set. Can't recall which one it was, but it started with someone's daughter being kidnapped then we spent the rest of the game following clues and such to eventually deep underground...

That sounds like the "Night Below" boxed set... Not hearing anything about the girl, following a long list of clues, and going on a few "side quests" was how the adventure was written. It's almost like you find yourselves about 3/4 of the way through the adventure, and someone says: "Hey, weren't we supposed to find some kid?". Overall, I think it is a decent adventures however...

[phantom1592]

Digitalelf wrote:

phantom1592 wrote:

I've only played in one game that used training, and for us it was the exact opposite. It was 2E 'sandbox' boxed set. Can't recall which one it was, but it started with someone's daughter being kidnapped then we spent the rest of the game following clues and such to eventually deep underground...

That sounds like the "Night Below" boxed set... Not hearing anything about the girl, following a long list of clues, and going on a few "side quests" was how the adventure was written. It's almost like you find yourselves about 3/4 of the way through the adventure, and someone says: "Hey, weren't we supposed to find some kid?". Overall, I think it is a decent adventures however...

Sounds right. I was gonna say 'Night' something... but couldn't find it listed anywhere. Our game had a lot of issues. Training and plot progression was a major one... but we also had like 10 players with massive conflicts and eventually the DM had work issues, so it's one of the rare games we didn't finish.