have a gm who insists that story comes first. this had led to 1 dozen sessions without combat, followed by an announcement that we would be performing a 30 round combat against "infinite" level 1 guards. we were level 6 at the time. there was no way to stop "the story." i quit the campaign, immersion broken forever
The only thing worse than a player who thinks the story comes before the rules is a GM who thinks the story comes before the rules. This is not only obviously really severe railroading, but that scenario is also treating the game like a video game more than a TTRPG.
I actually think there is a lot that TTRPGs can learn from video games (like âyour game should ship with playable levelsâ) but a scenario like that doesnât really play to the strengths of TTRPGs as a medium.
âSurvive for a set amount of time against infinite enemiesâ is really fun for an action video game, but will usually very quickly get repetitive in turn-based combat, especially if that combat is relatively slow to play out like in most TTRPGs.
While I donât think a concept like this can never work (like for instance it could be a puzzle of some kind - infinite goons until the party figures out how to close the portal or whatever), I think that turn-based tactical combat in TTRPGs should almost always aim towards relatively low numbers of rounds, with majorly impactful tactical decisions to make each round. In one of the best dungeon crawls I have ever played through (it was in AD&D2e using an AD&D1e module, which in my opinion is the best way to play D&D), the most tense and nail-biting instance of combat in the entire thing lasted about 2.5 rounds. Every other instance of combat lasted 1 round, because the party either snuck up on the enemies, tactically surrounded their enemies and forced a surrender, or at one point just paid the dark lordâs mercenaries to jump sides after a tense stand-off.
Absolutely none of this was planned as part of âthe story.â The only planned part of the story was âthe party (mercenaries currently in the employ of the Castellan Sir Raul) are being sent to [this village] to figure out why they suddenly stopped paying taxes.â Of course the answer to that question was also already known to the GM. Itâs because the dark lordâs mercenaries had been sacking the wagons carrying the taxes, and the dark lordâs lieutenant had set up a secret forward operating base in an abandoned castle in preparation for a larger invasion. How the party finds this out, however, and if they even survive doing so, is up to their own actions.
The GM didnât adjust anything on the fly to make sure the party won, no fake dice rolls, etc.. Just playing the game straight; and it resulted in a âstoryâ that we still talk about all the time.
A lot happened that we didnât want to happen, too, but in the moment thatâs the adversity and challenge that makes the game engaging to play, and in retrospect it makes the resulting story much better. One of the characters got taken out pretty early on in a fight with the dark lordâs spies (the ACTUAL scariest fight in the adventure, but it happened nowhere near the dungeon), and another character got badly injured by a trap (technically a monster but basically a trap since it drops from the ceiling and only attacks one person) really early into exploring the abandoned castle (the dungeon). Both characters ultimately survived. The first character was dropped to 0 HP with a dagger buried hilt deep in her gut and âdiedâ mechanically but was able to be taken to a surgeon which in this campaign is just reskinned resurrection mechanics but with a much higher chance to fail. She spent the rest of the adventure on a cot being tended to around the clock and made a near miraculous recovery, though with -1 total Constitution. The second character was very very narrowly saved from going below 1HP by quick thinking and action on the part of everyone else in the room. If they had been just 1 round later she wouldâve died.
Anyway if you are going to play D&D any edition please just play normal dungeon crawls without a plot (beyond just some kind of framing device to give the PCs a good reason to go into the dungeon), itâs what the game is built to do and itll even produce a good story a lot of the time. If you donât like dungeon crawls please play something besides Dungeons & Dragons - and im not saying that to âgatekeepâ people out of D&D I am saying that because if you donât like dungeons then there are so many other games out there that you would probably enjoy so much more than D&D.
