Jophiel wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
After 13 years I learn you are a web developer, Jophiel?
Boy, am I clueless.
Imagine how I felt.
Architect. Web Designer. It's all the same, right? ;)
I enjoyed The Witcher as well. The jumps weren't that bad to me. I actually liked that the Witcher stories were basically one-shot episodes while a couple of story arcs following other characters occurred along the way, knowing they would eventually connect (which they did). I've never read any of the books, but my understanding is that they were originally just collections of single shot short stories, so this fits. There were a couple time issues though. Like with the Grandmother/Queen who didn't appear to age despite somewhere around 25-30 years passing from first encounter to last. The other one that was strange was the bard, who it was unclear how long he was traveling with the Witcher, but it at least appeared to be a significant amount of time, yet he never appeared to age either.
Oh. As to the DMing thing. It does get easier/faster as you gain more experience. The key is to break things up into logical chunks. I tend to write a broad storyarc for an adventure, listing chapters and an outline of what will happen in each to make the story complete. Then I write each of the chapters, again giving an arc for that part, and listing separate key encounters, travel, interactions, etc that will occur (again with an eye towards moving the story along). The beauty of this method is that you don't have to sit down and write a huge adventure up front. As long as you have the outline for the whole thing, and an outline for the chapter you're in, you can just fill in each section as you go. I'm usually not more than 2-3 sessions ahead of what my players are currently doing at any given time, but the end result is a consistent story and plot, that makes sense to the players, and hopefully is fun along the way.
Just don't forget treasure. Players want rewards for their time.
Edited, Feb 10th 2020 2:30pm by gbaji