Newsgroup: it.hobby.giochi.gdr.dnd
Titolo: QUARTA edizione 4th - estratti QUEST ed avventure

Informazioni sulle Quest (le cerche) e come usarle per dare xp e come
strumento per creare l'avventura
si comincia a capire anche lo stile della DMG e quanto sia indirizzato
a chi non ha mai giocato
ma anche
a chi gioca da tempo visto che spiega tutte le ragioni delle scelte
fatte, lasciando così la possibilità di valutare se si è daccordo o
meno con queste scelte
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080516b
Excerpts: The Quest’s the Thing
4th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide
Earlier, we looked at the quest rewards, but what of the quests
themselves? In today’s preview, R&D’s Stephen Radney-MacFarland
explains the philosophy behind Quest XP… and why every character will
want to earn some!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyone knows that in Dungeons & Dragons you earn experience points
to gain levels. Heck, even people who have never played D&D know this—
it’s become so ingrained in the pop-culture idea of the game and its
mechanic has replicated itself with great frequency into the realm of
digital games. But just how you gain XP has evolved since the game’s
inception, and with 4th Edition it’s continued to evolve. One of the
biggest evolutions in 4th Edition D&D is the inclusion of quest XP
rewards.
Now, I can hear the old timers quibble: “Come on, Stephen, quest XP is
nothing new, I’ve been doing it for years.” And if you quibble thusly,
you’d be right. Almost every D&D campaign out there grants a bit of
bonus XP for completing story objectives, and this has been going
since the first time a gamer lifted a d20 and stared at it in glossy-
eyed wonder. The big difference between 4th Edition and older D&D
editions is that we designed it into the game; it’s not just an
afterthought, an ad hoc idea, or a suggested house rule. We actually
took into account that people already do this, then gave better
guidelines on how to do it well, and crafted the numbers behind
character advancement with quests in mind.
Dungeons & Dragons is both a combat game and a storytelling game.
Fighting foul beasts and despicable villains is fun. The grand
majority of pages in our rulebooks give you the means and the toys you
need to play that part of the game. Storytelling by its nature is more
fluid, more natural; it has few (if any) hard and fast rules, but many
guidelines and points of advice. While D&D abounds with levels,
powers, shifts, opportunity attacks, effects that push, ongoing
damage, and grabs, it also features heroes (or, soft-hearted
scoundrels) who take chances to achieve goals that we can only dream
of doing and in ways that are only as boundless as our imagination.
It’s purely in the realm of action adventure. And when action and
story fuse perfectly, it’s gaming ambrosia—the perfect way to spend an
afternoon with friends.
Quest XP, and the idea of quests as benchmarks for rewards in a larger
sense (the story chapter ends where characters gain a pile of rewards
in the form of XP, treasure, favors, titles, castles, whatever) is a
rare, evocative, satisfying, and natural way for those two aspects of
the game to talk to one another directly.
Quests also serve as the DM’s dangling carrot. Not only do they say
“fun lies this way,” now they also point to rewards with some amount
of transparency. People like to have an idea of the rewards they will
get for tasks… or at least the minimum rewards. Your players are no
different. Quests are a way in which they’ll have a basic idea of the
minimum rewards for what they do, and they’ll appreciate it. You’ll
find this very handy if you create a more sandbox approach to quests.
Throw a few of them out there, and see which ones they bite at. Using
quests in this manner allows you to make your world seem larger than
it really is, and let your players make more choices for their
characters, encouraging them to invest themselves even further in your
creation.
XP Evolutionary Dead Ends
Quest XP is one of the newest evolutions in how PCs gain experience in
D&D, but it didn’t get to this point without some other experience
point ideas dying off. Let’s take a quick look at three XP
evolutionary dead ends that got us where we are today.
Treasure Worth = XP
Isn’t treasure supposed to be its own reward? The problem in early D&D
is that it wasn’t. In fact you couldn’t do a whole lot with treasure
except for accumulate it and gain XP from it. That’s right; you gained
XP just for picking up a gold piece. To be fair, how much you gained
was based on how much challenge the treasure’s guardian represented,
but a simpler method is to place the challenge XP fully in the
guardian (in 4th Edition, this means the monsters, traps, hazards, or
skill challenge) and let wealth be the reward wealth is by its very
nature—purchasing power.
The Teeny, Tiny, Micro Story Reward
Back in my early days of the RPGA (2nd Edition AD&D), we used to get
“story rewards” for the craziest things. Did you talk to the mayor?
Gain 10 XP! Did you pick the flower that the mayor told you not to
pick? 15 XP! Did you buy a pickle from the vendor on the Avenue of
Swords? 25 XP! These story rewards were so pointless, small, and
absolutely endemic that you would spend large chunks of the adventure
talking to everyone you could just so you would get them all. These
ideas were prevalent in a period of time where writers wanted to write
wacky guess-what-the-writer-is-thinking stories, not sword and sorcery
action stories, and pulled the PCs along a long line of encounters as
“helpful” benchmarks. The problem was that it didn’t feel like D&D.
This was especially true when you played through adventures based on
the lyrics of 70’s pop songs or adventure where you got to play
characters that were magic items, children, or furniture (I’m not
joking).
The Roleplaying Reward
I’ve seen a lot of games (both in early RPGA and home games) that gave
XP for good roleplaying. By good roleplaying do I mean the quality of
your character acting? The problem with the roleplaying reward is
this: You’re almost always going to give out the maximum to everyone
at the table. Why? Because telling someone that they didn’t do a good
job of roleplaying in a game where everyone is there to have fun seems
overly judgmental, can create hurt feelings, and is… well… just
downright crappy. It’s also so very meta and arbitrary that it begs
questions about other forms of bonus XP. Why not give similar bonus XP
for rule knowledge? Playing well with others? Bringing the most
snacks?
--Stephen Radney-MacFarland
[size=18]QUESTS[/size]
Quests are the fundamental story framework of an adventure—the reason
the characters want to participate in it. They’re the reason an
adventure exists, and they indicate what the characters need to do to
solve the situation the adventure presents.
The simplest adventures revolve around a single quest, usually one
that gives everyone in the party a motivation to pursue it. More
complex adventures involve multiple quests, including quests related
to individual characters’ goals or quests that conflict with each
other, presenting characters with interesting choices about which
goals to pursue.
Using Basic Quest Seeds
When you’re devising a simple adventure, one to three basic seeds are
enough to get you started. A classic dungeon adventure uses three: The
characters set out to explore a dangerous place, defeat the monsters
inside, and take the treasure they find. One simple quest can be
enough, such as a quest to slay a dragon.
You can combine any number of basic seeds to create a more
multifaceted adventure. The more seeds you throw in the mix, the more
intricate your adventure will be. You might add timing elements to one
or more of the seeds to create more depth in your adventure.
Once you have your seed or seeds, you can start getting specific. Go
back and answer the questions in “Components of an Adventure” on page
100, keeping your quest seeds in mind. Again, you don’t need to follow
any particular order. You might come up with a set of monsters you
want to use first, you might invent a cool place or item, or you might
choose a seed or three. You can then use Chapter 4 and the “Adventure
Setting” section of this chapter to help flesh out your adventure.
Major Quests
Major quests define the fundamental reasons that characters are
involved. They are the central goals of an adventure. A single major
quest is enough to define an adventure, but a complex adventure might
involve a number of different quests. A major quest should be
important to every member of the party, and completing it should
define success in the adventure. Achieving a major quest usually means
either that the adventure is over, or that the characters have
successfully completed a major chapter in the unfolding plot.
Don’t be shy about letting the players know what their quests are.
Give the players an obvious goal, possibly a known villain to go
after, and a clear course to get to their destination. That avoids
searching for the fun—aimless wandering, arguing about trivial
choices, and staring across the table because the players don’t know
what to do next. You can fiddle with using another secret villain or
other less obvious courses, but one obvious path for adventure that is
not wrong or fake should exist. You can count on the unpredictability
of player actions to keep things interesting even in the simplest of
adventure plots.
Thinking in terms of quests helps focus the adventure solidly where it
belongs: on the player characters. An adventure isn’t something that
can unfold without their involvement. A plot or an event can unfold
without the characters’ involvement, but not an adventure. An
adventure begins when the characters get involved, when they have a
reason to participate and a goal to accomplish. Quests give them that.
Minor Quests
Minor quests are the subplots of an adventure, complications or
wrinkles in the overall story. The characters might complete them
along the way toward finishing a major quest, or they might tie up the
loose ends of minor quests after they’ve finished the major quest.
Often, minor quests matter primarily to a particular character or
perhaps a subset of the party. Such quests might be related to a
character’s background, a player goal, or the ongoing events in the
campaign relevant to one or more characters. These quests still matter
to the party overall. This game is a cooperative game, and everyone
shares the rewards for completing a quest. Just make sure that the
whole group has fun completing minor quests tied to a single
character.
Sometimes minor quests come up as sidelines to the main plot of the
adventure. For example, say the characters learn in town that a
prisoner has escaped from the local jail. That has nothing to do with
the main quest. It pales in importance next to the hobgoblin raids
that have been plundering caravans and seizing people for slaves.
However, when the characters find and free some of the hobgoblins’
slaves, the escaped prisoner is among them. Do they make sure he gets
back to the jail? Do they accept his promise to go straight—and his
offer of a treasure map—and let him go free? Do they believe his
protestations of innocence and try to help him find the real criminal?
Any of these goals can launch a side quest, but clearly the characters
can’t pursue all of them. This situation gives them the opportunity to
roleplay and make interesting choices, adding richness and depth to
the game.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Be sure to return Monday for a look at minions!
©1995-2008 Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
--
Fabio

 an afternoon with friends.
Traduzione: D&D e' sia un gioco di combattimento che un gioco in cui si
raccontano delle storie. Combattere grandi malvagi e bestie immonde e'
divertente. Il grosso delle regole che presentiamo offre opzioni per
gestire quella parte del gioco. Raccontare delle storie e' qualcosa di
piu' fluido e naturale: ha poche regole fisse, e si basa piu' che altro
su linee guida. [...] E quando l'azione e la storia si fondono
completamente, il gioco diventa un modo perfetto per pasare un
pomeriggio con gli amici.
Commento: un gioco impostato su questi criteri, mi fa venire voglia di
giocarlo. Non so voi, ma per me D&D e' sempre stato questo.
Parvati V
-- "Cosa e' celvello? Pai non ha cosa del genele" - Pai, 3x3 occhi
UnaMoleDiDadi (TreEmme Torino): 
http://umdd.altervista.org/
http://parvatiquinta.blogspot.com/

 Parvati V
Sono molto in accordo con te.
A molti ipercritici a priori della 4ed (accaniti sostenitori della 3°
che a suo tempo avevano criticato allo stesso modo, perlopiù) ripeto
sempre: non è un sistema di regole che fa roleplaying ma il loro uso.
Il combattimento invece è un perfetto gioco da tavolo con un mix di 
interpretazione, deve essere avvincente e scorrevole (limite imho della 
terza... troppe regole troppo complesse, la maggior parte dei giocatori
che ho incontrato non si sono rivelati in grado di dominarle appieno)

 uso.
Su questo punto per la verita' non sono d'accordo con te, anzi, sposo la
teoria opposta secondo cui "System Does Matter" (il sistema ha
importanza, eccome!).
E' indubbio che l'interpretazione dipenda dai giocatori che la mettono
in atto piu' o meno, a seconda di quanto la gradiscono. Ma il sistema ha
la sua influenza, prima di tutto per i suggerimenti che fornisce, e poi
per lo spazio che offre e l'attenzione a questo elemento nel delineare
le varie regole da seguire - insomma, per il modo stesso in cui e'
costruito colora il risultato finale di una propria sfumatura, distinta
da quella dell'ambientazione (che ovviamente e' presente).
Personalmente trovo che il sistema della 3.X abbia un che di freddo e
asettico a leggerla, e che questo tenda a propagarsi al gioco. Il
sistema macchinoso poi per me finisce per risultare una distrazione (su
questo sono d'accordo con te, non sono mai riuscita a raggiungere la
posizione di "dominarlo appieno", probabilmente anche perche' non
risponde ai miei schemi mentali).
Della quarta e' presto per dare un giudizio definitivo, penso solo che
abbiano dato dei buoni segnali (almeno dal mio punto di vista).
Io non penso che le persone critiche sulla quarta "si sbaglino"
necessariamente, anzi, possono avere gusti diversi dai miei oppure
cercare in D&D qualcos'altro rispetto a me. Io infatti non vedo in D&D
un "gioco serio" (nel senso di profonda introspezione psicologica,
ricostruzione storica verosimile, o cose del genere).


 ricostruzione storica verosimile, o cose del genere).
Io credo che criticare a priori un sistema che ancora non sia conosce 
sia un errore di per sé. Sul fatto che d&d non sia serio mi pare 
abbastanza evidente ^^


sia un errore di per sé.
Sulle critiche a priori sono d'accordo con te (anzi, secondo me un
sistema per essere compreso appieno va giocato per un po'). Pero'
d'altro canto sono ormai uscite parecchie anteprime che spaziano su
diversi argomenti, ivi compresi personaggi giocabili e regole di
fast-play per giocarli, per cui un'idea, sia pure vaga, e certamente
imprecisa, secondo me ce la si puo' fare.
Poi capisco anche chi era soddisfatto della 3.X e si sente in qualche
modo "costretto" a buttarla via, e allora tende a reagire
negativamente. Io accolgo con piacere qualcosa di nuovo perche' la
casa vecchia non mi piaceva, pero' c'e' a chi piace, e a queste
persone onestamente non consiglierei di cambiare tanto per cambiare.


abbastanza evidente ^^
quello che ma da fastidio sono i motivi. si criticano cose
trivialissime, senza nemmeno vederle nel contesto completo, oppure
cose che erano uguali nei precedenti dnd...
-- 
 Domon

 ricostruzione storica verosimile, o cose del genere).
Retro - Stupid
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-got-your-threefold-model-right-here.html
e fiero di esserlo!
ps: e non solo io.... si dichiara fieramente retro-stupid anche mike
mearls ;)
--
Fabio

 mearls ;)
Anch'io preferisco giocare retro-stupid per le campagne lunghe, quelle
settimanali. La sera dopo il lavoro e' quello che ci vuole. Il gioco
serio lo posso lasciare alle convention :D
