DM'ing

[deadly7]

I don't understand. How do you conduct fights if you don't have a map? You can't say "There's some monsters somewhere the room, fight them". Distance between units matters. Spacing and separation of your team matters. The environment all matters. Or is your D&D more of a story telling? For example, "You open the door. You see five monsters. What do you do?" "Fight." "*roll roll roll* You kill them all and take 20, 10, 15 damage apiece."

[Blaze]

The entire dungeon floods, rocks fall from above, and you are struck by blue light from the sky.  Roll to see how painfully you die!

[iago]

We don't do fights very often. When we do, we occasionally use a map, if it's complex, but normally don't bother.

[deadly7]

The entire dungeon floods, rocks fall from above, and you are struck by blue light from the sky.  Roll to see how painfully you die!

I roll 20 and a magic genie comes and saves us.

We don't do fights very often. When we do, we occasionally use a map, if it's complex, but normally don't bother.

This sounds rather dull. What do your campaigns consist of? Walking around and talking to the townspeople etc? A fight a day (plus any monster creepings if resting in an open area at night) is about what I like. Keeps the story moving, adds some excitement, and lets the people level up for the fun fights I have planned later.

[iago]

We don't do fights very often. When we do, we occasionally use a map, if it's complex, but normally don't bother.

This sounds rather dull. What do your campaigns consist of? Walking around and talking to the townspeople etc? A fight a day (plus any monster creepings if resting in an open area at night) is about what I like. Keeps the story moving, adds some excitement, and lets the people level up for the fun fights I have planned later.

It depends. It's a mixture of fighting, exploring, politics, mystery, horror, and more. Especially at higher levels, we generally do one or two fights each game, and then a lot of other non-combat stuff.

We've had a once/week campaign going for over 2 years with the same players, so I assure you it isn't dull. Combat is pretty dull, most of the time, so we don't focus on combat.

In other news, we started a Pathfinder campaign on Friday to fill in the days when not everybody can make it to our usual 3.5 session. So far, I like it.

[Blaze]

The entire dungeon floods, rocks fall from above, and you are struck by blue light from the sky.  Roll to see how painfully you die!

I roll 20 and a magic genie comes and saves us.

The genie turns out to be evil and instead burries you in sand where you suffocate and die.  The end.

[Sidoh]

I've not RPed a lot, but I generally find combat far less interesting than a storyline. Dungeon crawls or anything close bore me to death and make me wish I was doing something else.

[iago]

On a related note, this is from last week's Pathfinder session. You find a locked door with the following configuration of tiles:
https://yfrog.com/odnyrpbj

and 20 buttons labeled 1 - 20. Which do you press?

[deadly7]

I've not RPed a lot, but I generally find combat far less interesting than a storyline. Dungeon crawls or anything close bore me to death and make me wish I was doing something else.

I find this to be a false dichotomy. I fully agree with you and iago that a hack-and-slash D&D campaign would be boring as all hell. But why does that immediately translate to "There should be as little fighting as possible"? A storyline can require a "dungeon" (ie: some place where multiple fights might be necessary) or the occasional fight. Like I said, when I was a DM, I tried to average one fight a day.

I'm not saying one way is right and one way is wrong, but I'm genuinely having a hard time understanding a campaign where all you do is talk and make decisions about certain things ("Do we go in this room? Do we back? Do we accept this quest? Which door?").

[Sidoh]

I've not RPed a lot, but I generally find combat far less interesting than a storyline. Dungeon crawls or anything close bore me to death and make me wish I was doing something else.

I find this to be a false dichotomy. I fully agree with you and iago that a hack-and-slash D&D campaign would be boring as all hell. But why does that immediately translate to "There should be as little fighting as possible"? A storyline can require a "dungeon" (ie: some place where multiple fights might be necessary) or the occasional fight. Like I said, when I was a DM, I tried to average one fight a day.

I'm not saying one way is right and one way is wrong, but I'm genuinely having a hard time understanding a campaign where all you do is talk and make decisions about certain things ("Do we go in this room? Do we back? Do we accept this quest? Which door?").

It's not a false dichotomy. You have fighting and not fighting. If you spend your time in battles, you can't spend that time doing other stuff. You spend X% of your time in battles, and 100 - X% of your time in not battles. I find RPing more enjoyable if X is pretty small (no larger than 10).

common mister deadly... that's not what 'false dichotomy' means. This some other logical misstep. Arguing that there are two categories, and one category is generally less desirable than the other, and therefore that category should be minimized as much as possible isn't a false dichotomy.

At any rate, that's not what I said. Some combat (or challenge, etc.) is necessary to make it feel like a game and not a story.

[Blaze]

On a related note, this is from last week's Pathfinder session. You find a locked door with the following configuration of tiles:
https://yfrog.com/odnyrpbj

and 20 buttons labeled 1 - 20. Which do you press?

I would either push all of them, or the last one.

[iago]

On a related note, this is from last week's Pathfinder session. You find a locked door with the following configuration of tiles:
https://yfrog.com/odnyrpbj

and 20 buttons labeled 1 - 20. Which do you press?

I would either push all of them, or the last one.

That'd both be wrong.

FWIW, I'm the one who figured out which button to press during the game, and I was right.

[deadly7]

It's not a false dichotomy. You have fighting and not fighting. If you spend your time in battles, you can't spend that time doing other stuff. You spend X% of your time in battles, and 100 - X% of your time in not battles. I find RPing more enjoyable if X is pretty small (no larger than 10).

common mister deadly... that's not what 'false dichotomy' means. This some other logical misstep. Arguing that there are two categories, and one category is generally less desirable than the other, and therefore that category should be minimized as much as possible isn't a false dichotomy.

At any rate, that's not what I said. Some combat (or challenge, etc.) is necessary to make it feel like a game and not a story.

Not going to respond to the rest, since the bolded explains why I said what I did, and why I found it a false dichotomy. You can have 0% fighting and 100% fighting, or any number in between.

That'd both be wrong.

FWIW, I'm the one who figured out which button to press during the game, and I was right.

Glad you found a campaign you enjoy. Puzzles like that sound completely boring, though. An hour spent "No wait, push 3!" "No wait, push 1 and 3!!" Did bad things happen if you pushed the wrong buttons?

[Blaze]

On a related note, this is from last week's Pathfinder session. You find a locked door with the following configuration of tiles:
https://yfrog.com/odnyrpbj

and 20 buttons labeled 1 - 20. Which do you press?

I would either push all of them, or the last one.

That'd both be wrong.

FWIW, I'm the one who figured out which button to press during the game, and I was right.

How about 9?

[Sidoh]

Not going to respond to the rest, since the bolded explains why I said what I did, and why I found it a false dichotomy. You can have 0% fighting and 100% fighting, or any number in between.

This was, of course, what I meant, if it wasn't obvious already. I never meant to (nor does it seem I did...) say that you can either have 0 fighting or lots of fighting. I'd like to think I deserve more credit than that.

On a related note, this is from last week's Pathfinder session. You find a locked door with the following configuration of tiles:
https://yfrog.com/odnyrpbj

and 20 buttons labeled 1 - 20. Which do you press?

I would either push all of them, or the last one.

That'd both be wrong.

FWIW, I'm the one who figured out which button to press during the game, and I was right.

It seems like there could be some nerdy cellular automata reference in there. If that's the case, you're a nerd.