u/AmongFriends

As a player, I sometimes feel disconnected from a pre-written module when my character’s goals and the party’s overall stakes aren’t closely tied to the story being told.

I understand not every system or module is designed to do this, or even needs to, but I do notice that when there isn’t a clear personal link, I can sometimes lose track of why our characters are doing what we’re doing, or what specifically makes the situation matter to us.

This is definitely a personal preference, but in games I run, I usually try to make sure the characters have at least some kind of meaningful investment in the story’s events, especially in pre-written modules.

For GMs, do you actively try to adapt modules to create that kind of personal connection for your players? If so, how do you approach it?

TLDR: Does anyone else feel a disconnect in pre-written RPG modules where the gameplay is fun but the story doesn’t feel personally meaningful or tied to the characters?

I’m currently playing the Delian Tomb pre-written module for Draw Steel. The combat system is great and the abilities are fun to use. Draw Steel is a very fun game to play and our GM is great too.

But I’ve been struggling with a narrative disconnect with the story.

The stakes exist in the fiction, but they don’t feel personally connected to my character or even the group as a whole. Because of that, even though the fights are mechanically fun and we know why we're fighting plot-wise, the fights sometimes feel more like completing encounters than the characters actually living through a meaningful story.

We still roleplay, have scenes, downtime, and character interactions, so it’s not that those moments don't exist at all. They do and we have fun doing them, but those moments feel detached from the actual module stuff.

What I’m missing is a sense of personal investment, something that makes the events feel emotionally tied to the characters rather than just the next encounter hook.

I realize this is a preference thing for me, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with an encounter-focused game like this Draw Steel module. But the longer we play the module, the more I notice a sense of detachment between me and the story we're being told.

It’s made me wonder how common this feeling actually is in RPGs that run on pre-written modules since I don't play too many of them.

Does this kind of disconnect happen to other players too?

Is this a game system issue, or a pre-written module issue, or a GM style issue, or a player expectation issue?

TLDR: Mythic Bastionland felt too disjointed and aimless for me. The weird myths and hex encounters made it hard to stay connected to the story and my character, even though I think the combat and atmosphere are great

Experience with the system as a player: 9 sessions, ~27 hours played

The Myths / Weirdness

The myths are all rather confusing. I know this is on purpose but it worked against the overall story for me. There's a weirdness to the game because of the mythical theme.

Unfortunately, this makes it hard to connect to the story. Story threads can change depending on the roll, so my group was often unsure of how to proceed with a situation. I often felt aimless in what to do next or what even a myth development meant to me or the realm. It's a real, "Huh. Yeah, that's weird..." type of feeling.

It's on brand for the game to feel this way but not exactly engrossing me with what's happening.

Hex Crawl / Character Goals

Every movement on a hex spawns a myth of some kind and adds to this disjointed feeling as well. If you're trying to get from point A to point B, you might find yourself doing something else entirely before even getting there, if you get there at all. It makes character goals feel unconnected to what's happening.

For example, I needed to get to Point B on the map to collect something my character wanted. On the way there, we ran into numerous myths that needed our attention.

Cut to a few sessions later, and we still hadn't gotten to where my character wanted to be. The answer is that we could have ignored the myths happening in each hex, but the three guiding principles of each knight kind of imply that you should follow through with what the myths are presenting you with.

Character Creation

You have to bring a lot to the character as a player to make them interesting. It's very easy in this game for your character to just be kind of a blank slate wandering around a map.

There's no real bonds between the players and there's no built-in goal your character wants besides the three main goals given to you by the game (Seek the myths, honor the seers, protect the realm). You get some tiny lines of flavor and then gotta make the best of it.

I can usually make a character work for any RPG, but with how the myths are often unrelated to what the characters are doing, the characters themselves being given very little to work with, and the three main principles that each knight has, it was very difficult to get a feel for who my character was.

Combat

The combat for Mythic Bastionland is one of its strengths. It's simple but has depth. However, the looseness of the rules sometimes makes it difficult to tell what you can and cannot do.

In the moment, combat doesn't always feel exciting, even though it plays better in retrospect when you think back on what happened during the fight.

Also, combat can feel surprisingly long considering how much of it is repetition.

TLDR: Mythic Bastionland felt too disjointed and aimless for me. The weird myths and hex encounters made it hard to stay connected to the story and my character, even though I think the combat and atmosphere are great

Experience with the system as a player: 9 sessions, ~27 hours played

The Myths / Weirdness

The myths are all rather confusing. I know this is on purpose but it worked against the overall story for me. There's a weirdness to the game because of the mythical theme.

Unfortunately, this makes it hard to connect to the story. Story threads can change depending on the roll, so my group was often unsure of how to proceed with a myth. I often felt aimless in what to do next or what even a myth development meant to me or the realm. It's a real, "Huh. Yeah, that's weird..." type of feeling.

It's on brand for the game to feel this way but it's not exactly engrossing me with what's happening.

Hex Crawl / Character Goals

Every movement on a hex spawns a myth of some kind and adds to this disjointed feeling as well. If you're trying to get from point A to point B, you might find yourself doing something else entirely before even getting there, if you get there at all. It makes character goals feel unconnected to what's happening.

For example, I needed to get to Point B on the map to collect something my character wanted. On the way there, we ran into numerous myths that needed our attention.

Cut to a few sessions later, and we still hadn't gotten to where my character wanted to be. The answer is that we could have ignored the myths happening in each hex, but the three guiding principles of each knight kind of imply that you should follow through with what the myths are presenting you with.

Character Creation

You have to bring a lot to the character as a player to make them interesting. It's very easy in this game for your character to just be kind of a blank slate wandering around a map.

There's no real bonds between the players and there's no built-in goal your character wants besides the three main goals given to you by the game (Seek the myths, honor the seers, protect the realm). You get some tiny lines of flavor and then gotta make the best of it.

I can usually make a character work for any RPG, but with how the myths are often unrelated to what the characters are doing or what they want, the characters themselves being given very little to work with, and the three main principles that each knight holds, it was very difficult to get a feel for who my character was.

Combat

The combat for Mythic Bastionland is one of its strengths. It's simple but has depth. However, the looseness of the rules sometimes makes it difficult to tell what you can and cannot do.

In the moment, combat doesn't always feel exciting, even though it plays better in retrospect when you think back on what happened during the fight.

Also, combat can feel surprisingly long considering how much of it is repetition.

Base Game - Push Yourself

>Push Yourself (Core Book): You can use stress to push yourself for greater performance. For each bonus you choose below, take 2 stress (each can be chosen once for a given action):
- Add +1d to your roll
- Add +1 level to your effect.

Deep Cuts' Push Yourself

>Push Yourself (Deep Cuts): When you suffer a consequence, you can choose to push yourself to avoid or reduce it.

>When you push yourself, make a roll using the attribute that corresponds to the type of consequence you’re suffering, just like a resistance roll in standard Blades:

>- 66: No Stress
- 6: 1 Stress
- 4-5: 2 Stress
- 1-3: 3 Stress

Also, something to note for Deep Cuts' Push Yourself:

>The push yourself mechanic in Deep Cuts and the resistance roll in Core Book are combined in this module. When you push yourself, you make an attribute roll and suffer 0-3 Stress, depending on the result.

My question:

Instead of the Core Book Resistance Roll to reduce consequences, I use the Push Yourself mechanic from Deep Cuts as a Resistance Roll. I like that, at most, you're losing 3 Stress from a Resistance Roll. I'm confident that this is perfectly fine to implement into Blades.

What I'm questioning though is that in Core Book Push Yourself, you take 2 Stress if you want a bonus die/increased effect. That's just a flat 2 Stress you take. No rolling for anything. 2 stress = bonus die/increase effect.

If I'm using the Deep Cuts Push Yourself module, when the players want an bonus die/increased effect, should I be having the players roll to see how much stress they take, as per the Deep Cuts Push Yourself rules?

Or should it still just be a flat 2 Stress to gain a bonus die/increase effect, since the Deep Cuts Push Yourself mechanic is only a replacement for the Resistance Roll?

1. Anybody have experience making a big, badass NPC who can solo fight the entire crew? If so, how did you do that?
2. As a GM, have you played out a scene of NPCs where the players were not in the scene? Think of bad guy scenes where they are plotting something but the PCs aren't there to hear it or see it