I'm not a person who starts new campaigns at the drop of a hat. And my new campaigns tend to be in a world that I've already used, so I can explore it further. There are places in the World of Greyhawk I've never visited - and I've been DMing there for over 20 years.
So my reaction on seeing a new setting book is "Oh, that's not for me" (with a few exceptions). And I know I'm old and have way too many D&D books... but I do wonder that, even for newer players, when comes the point when a new setting is "meh"?
I prefer a world where you have a choice of settings, where D&D gives explicit choice for more than just the Forgotten Realms. But where does saturation come?
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Although G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is not the very first adventure published for Dungeons & Dragons, it's close enough. :) And it is fascinating.
The framing of the adventure is simple: Giants have attacked the lands of men, you must explain to them that such is a bad idea. With as much force as you can.
To make things simpler, when you get to the steading, the giants are engaged in a drunken feast! They're all gathered together, and many fireballs will prove useful. :)
"In the Beginning", Dungeons & Dragons was a game about delving into dungeons, overcoming monsters, and getting treasure.
Except when it wasn't.
But the rules were written mostly for that playstyle.
Except where they weren't. :)
I was listening to an old episode of the Tome Show where @BrandesStoddard and @DMSamuel talked about XP in the early editions. And one of the things that is hard about discussing the playstyle that XP served is that the game could be so regionally diverse!
If many DMs find themselves struggling with particular high level abilities, does that mean the abilities were a mistake, or that the game needs more advice about running games with those abilities in it?
One thing that we’ve seen over the years is that D&D does dungeons quite well at lower levels. Dungeons may not be the answer at higher levels, but do DMs have skills to handle them? Do adventure designers?
There is one glorious feature about dungeons. They’re self constraining, giving predictable paths. That starts falling apart later. How good is the DM at handling non predictable approaches to an adventure?
Monsters do not need innovative mechanics to be interesting. The difference in the statistics between kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls, bugbears and ogres in original D&D (and AD&D) is minimal. What makes them different? Culture, organisation, and story.
With any monster, when you're designing a story, you'd like to say "this is the only monster that fits that role." That they're identifiable and iconic enough in both your and your players' minds that it makes sense that they're there.
Dungeons & Dragons delights in having lots and lots of different monsters, but do you need them all in your campaign? You likely don't. Especially when you are building up the cultures and settlements in your world.
If you have an ability in a game that has a chance of eliminating you from the game if you use it, what does that then do to the game?
What does it do to the enjoyment of the other participants?
Older board games were very fond of player elimination - where you could stop playing the game when your position was overrun. And these could be LONG games. Consider Diplomacy, which could be an 8 hour game where players were progressively eliminated.
And that meant that a person might set aside their afternoon and evening for playing this game, but then WASN'T playing for hours.
In previous adventures (about 15+ years ago), the characters failed to stop the necromancer in Feast of Goblyns, and another player character became an important person in the Great Kingdom. #greyhawk#dnd
(I placed Feast of Goblyns in a west county of the Great Kingdom).
It's about 30 years later in the campaign world, and the current characters are about to visit the Court of the Overking. Some of the players played those previous adventures.