A major struggle we have out our D&D campaigns is the issue of avoiding conflict. If players are correctly playing their characters, then they should not allow themselves to get sidetracked by random fights. As in, “We need to save the princess, so we don’t have time to screw around with this ettin. Just use some magic to slow it down and we can run away. ” But this isn’t a very satisfying way to play. It feels lame running away all the time, and combat is supposed to be a big part of the game. <\/p>\n
So what do you do? Play your character or have fun? This isn’t a great choice to have to make. I can aleviate this by forcing<\/i> them into combat, but then it just feels like they are on rails, and battles feel contrived. We have had several sessions with no combat, and I can feel the players getting itchy for a fight. But then a chance for combat comes along and they route around it, because even though they<\/i> want to fight, their characters<\/i> are more or less sensible guys who are focused on the job at hand. The only time they fight is when they encounter a challenge that blocks their main goals, and even then they usually try to negotiate or reason before resorting to bloodshed.<\/p>\n
This is a flaw in the nature of the game itself, really, and I’ve never found the right balance of forced combat and player choice that still keeps the action lively. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A major struggle we have out our D&D campaigns is the issue of avoiding conflict. If players are correctly playing their characters, then they should not allow themselves to get sidetracked by random fights. As in, “We need to save the princess, so we don’t have time to screw around with this ettin. Just use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}