D&D nights of story and D&D nights of hack and slash
So I've experienced something that I'm wondering if it's just me, just guys, or across the RPG community. In my D&D group of late, we've mostly spent almost entire evenings trying to figure out what's going on. But every once in a while, I just want to roll some dice and go all RIASTA.
We've been playing this campaign for about 4 or 5 years starting at level one and working up to level 18 currently. We are all playing dwarves who worship the Norse god Heimdall in a setting of the DM's design. For the last six months, we've been hitting this issue of being pawns in a scheme by beings more powerful than the gods to destroy the connection our cosmos has to the rest of the cosmos.
To the DM's credit, we spend hours trying to connect the dots and fill in the gaps so that we can do the right thing. However, sometimes I just want to roll the dice and kill stuff to disengage my brain a bit, and on nights like last night there was never an opportunity to do that. It was a bit disappointing because it was the first game night I was able to get to since May.
Does anyone else ever get these hack-n-slash cravings in the course of their playing?
I generally have the
I generally have the opposite problem ... a game that is mostly focused on hack n slash, with little character story building in between. Generally, I can live with this because I like to beat things up
I had a game where the GM ran things like your example above ... there was so much scoobydoo detective work going on, we often didn't fight anything. Then on top of that, his plotlines were so complicated and so formulated in his own mind already, that we often felt like we were just observers in his own personal adventure. When we didn't get his "obvious" clues (in retrospect, 98% of his clues were never obvious), he'd get frustrated and then spend a chunk of time explaining things to us. Apparently, an item we came across in our first session was the cornerstone of his entire game, and given his clues and response to our trying to explore it ... we ran like hell from it and never thought twice about it (His description of it was just that scary to us, plus we were only level 1), and as we approached the end of the campaign, he was upset because he had to spell it out to us. That particular campaign ended, and he started a new game. I figured I'd stick around and try the new game, but he ran it pretty much the same way. So I left.
Of all the games that I play in, the ones I look forward with the most anticipation are the ones where there's a balance. I get to kick butt, while roleplaying her personality and quirks. Granted, we do more butt kicking most of the time, but we get just enough role playing in to have definite personalities and impressions of each other's characters.
Oh god yes. The problem with
Oh god yes.
The problem with the group we have a very bad habit of goofing off a little 'too' much. We hack-and-slash and then we goof around which pisses the DM off so he punishes us by taking his good sweet time until we can kill something else.
My group's goofing off is
My group's goofing off is talking about the funny video we saw on YouTube or the latest political news. Our DM owes us for a bit since we just made it through the storyline we've been working on for the last 3 years of playing time. We actually feel a little lost without that hanging over our heads.