How much 'filler' should a campaign have?

[Necroticplague]

Thinking back on previous experiences playing some systems, i've noticed a trend with what I've found irked me about some of them: pointlessness. While the dungeon crawl might be a system classic, it always feels like to much of a waste of everyone's time when the gameplay itself isn't engaging. And, frequently, the combination of purely reactive play, non-challenging encounters, and relative linearity (or it's opposite, obtuse lack of direction) mean it isn't. Essentially, the only important parts of the dungeon can be broken down to a couple parts: The end (we accomplish whatever we set out to do, possibly actually challenging boss fight), the beggining (plot-relevant), and a poorly-planned encounter (way tougher than DM thought, forces us to think fast to survive). Most things between those are just monotonous running on wheels.

Now, with that complaint out of the way, I understand that some useless chaff is necessary for a game. After all, just as a LFD2 session can't be 100% surviving the slaughter, so too must a game have lulls to make a climax actually have impact.

The problem being that, compared to some other media, TTRPGs tend to be incredibly slow, in terms of action, so that 'lull' can drag on for two sessions of tedium, followed by the interesting boss fight. That can be roughly 75% boring. So does anyone have some thoughts on how to construct campaigns to either make use of, or avoid, the problems that come this typical interchangeability of obstacles?

[Nifft]

1/ Figure out if the other players feel the same way. Some people like puzzles, some people find them tedious. Some people like combat where they get to show off how cool their character is (a "non-challenging encounter"), some people find those pointless.

2/ Try having a proactive PC-directed goal and working towards that, with the DM playing the world reacting to your actions.

Both of those are things that require discussion with the rest of your group.

[FreddyNoNose]

There isn't an answer to that.

[RazorChain]

I'm on the opinion that there should be no fillers and apply that as a design principle for my adventures.

The problem here is what people consider "fillers". Is it the talky stuff? Or the grinding combat encounters that lead up to the showdown with the boss/villain? Is it the puzzles? Is it everything that isnt action?

[CharonsHelper]

To your dungeon crawl example - even the relatively easy fights can be interesting if they're linked to the game's resource management. Sure - this fight isn't super threatening, but if you take too much damage and/or have to pull out big spell X to beat it, you won't have those things when you REALLY need them down the line. But - that's something which varies by edition. In 3.x, past the first few levels OOC healing is so cheap that losing HP in a single fight isn't a significant resource.

[Darth Ultron]

That can be roughly 75% boring. So does anyone have some thoughts on how to construct campaigns to either make use of, or avoid, the problems that come this typical interchangeability of obstacles?

I think your describing the typical burn out for a typical game, so the answer is very easy: don't have a typical game. Sounds easy, but it's hard for a lot of people.

The first bit is the really hard part for a lot of gamers. Take a deep breath and think of all the ''social rules'' and things like ''the gentleman agreement'' and anything you'd say you ''must have or not have'' in the game. And toss all that out the window.

So then you want a fast paced game. Now the best way to to get everyone to agree to something like a five second rule to take action. Though a lot of gamers won't ''get'' this concept, so it will need a good DM to enforce it. A great way to do so is have the player loose the characters turn if they ''stumble around'' for even six seconds. A good player will figure out that after a couple dozen times of having their character ''just stand there'', that they will need to act quickly.

Now, with all that out of the way: you want a very focused action packed game. You want a game with a very simple, very direct goal. You want to avoid ''player agency''(remember you tossed that out a window, right?) and anything the players might do to slow down the game.

Then, see what kind of game experience you get...

[RazorChain]

To your dungeon crawl example - even the relatively easy fights can be interesting if they're linked to the game's resource management. Sure - this fight isn't super threatening, but if you take too much damage and/or have to pull out big spell X to beat it, you won't have those things when you REALLY need them down the line. But - that's something which varies by edition. In 3.x, past the first few levels OOC healing is so cheap that losing HP in a single fight isn't a significant resource.

Then I'll counter that combat without any meaning other than draining the group resources sounds like a waste of time to me. If the only question the combat encounter answers is how much resources you lose then I'll consider it a filler.

[CharonsHelper]

Then I'll counter that combat without any meaning other than draining the group resources sounds like a waste of time to me. If the only question the combat encounter answers is how much resources you lose then I'll consider it a filler.

*shrug* One could then argue that the first dozen moves of Chess or several dozen moves of Go are just a waste of time because they're just setting the stage for the actual game where the victor is decided.

[Yora]

Fillers come from the instinctive understanding that adventures need to have pacing. You can't have urgent scene after urgent scene all the way from start to finish. That would feel wrong in some way.
But alternating between relevant and irrelevant scenes is not the right way to go about it. Instead what is actually needed is to have a nice rhythm of fast and slow scenes. You need to have a regular alternating switch between action scenes and talking scenes or puzzle scenes.

There's some useful thoughts on this subject in this article.

[CharonsHelper]

There's some useful thoughts on this subject in this article.

Interesting read. I definitely agree that pacing and flow are very different things.

Plus - he does a better job than I usually do explaining why just because the 'fast' scenes have most of the mechanics that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have 'slow' scenes when using the system.

[FreddyNoNose]

*shrug* One could then argue that the first dozen moves of Chess or several dozen moves of Go are just a waste of time because they're just setting the stage for the actual game where the victor is decided.

This thread is sad to me. How about they make all their dungeons one room with the endboss so you can kill it and loot. Is this because people have been trained by video games to have minimal game play? It like what happened to wow, when vanilla had lots of mobs in Instances to what they became. It's been years since I played it so perhaps they are different now.

Resource management is part of the fun. Do I use it now or keep it until later. If you are always at full everything it reduces the fun. It's those times where things were tough that become the most fun and most cherished. Like that time your high level cleric was down to two healing spells to take on the big bad and you pulled it off!

It is like having a dnd fighter whose max strength is 13. This can be a great character to play and lots of fun. It can be one of those characters you remember forever because of what you did without having to have a great strength score.

If you haven't had to play in those kinds of situations, you have been cheated out of an experience. This doesn't apply to those "we are making a story types" as you can just make up whatever you want to tell your story.

[RazorChain]

Fillers come from the instinctive understanding that adventures need to have pacing. You can't have urgent scene after urgent scene all the way from start to finish. That would feel wrong in some way.
But alternating between relevant and irrelevant scenes is not the right way to go about it. Instead what is actually needed is to have a nice rhythm of fast and slow scenes. You need to have a regular alternating switch between action scenes and talking scenes or puzzle scenes.

There's some useful thoughts on this subject in this article.

I agree with the pacing but why have fillers at all? Slow scenes arent filler if they are relevent, neither action scenes. Fillers are something used to fill gaps. Taken from wikipedia "in television and other media, material that exists outside the story arc to pad out other material." So why should I use fillers? In RPG's players have choices and some activites they choose to indulge in might seem meaningless but it isn't to them. But if a GM starts "bolstering" an adventure with irrelevant encounters just to drag out playing time then something has gone wrong.

I adhere to the thought that quality trumps quantity. I'd choose a shorter quality adventure over a mediocre longwinded one. Now the design principle that bigger is better has pervaded the computer game industry and CRPG (and other games) have added lots of fillers to bolster the game and drag out gameplay. So if you have to resort to fillers in your campaign then maybe it's just better to keep it shorter but sweeter.

If I get an idea for my campaign and I think the idea is just something to keep the PC's busy then that idea gets discarded. If I think an idea is really cool and I'm excited to use it in my game then it gets incorporated into my game.

[Necroticplague]

This thread is sad to me. How about they make all their dungeons one room with the endboss so you can kill it and loot. Is this because people have been trained by video games to have minimal game play?

I have no problem with extensive game play. What i find troubling is long stretches of 'game' that have little to no relevance or gameplay. I can handle being a bit mechanically uninvolved if what I'm doing is relevant, and I can tolerate my actions being pointless if performing them is intrinsically fun. When it wanders into 'why am I doing this?' territory is when the action I'm taking both doesn't really serve the plot, and isn't particularly engaging to play. The middles of most dungeons fall into this category, due to containing little of plot relevance (which is stored away at a dungeon's end, or a few rare points inside), and not particularly interesting to play (owing to be non-difficult).

And while you may dismiss one-encounter dungeons, it actually seems like a fairly good idea. Since I would know exactly what the party will be capable of when they face the boss in such a dungeon, I won't have to try and balance it for possible random levels of resources the dungeon lest them with. If they're always at full blast, then every encounter can be an actual tactical challenge they need to keep on their toes for, instead of having to waste anyone's time on a boring grind-fest.

[Thrudd]

It really depends on what you think the game is supposed to be, and what it is the players are supposed to be doing and why they're doing it.

You can design a game so that nothing is "filler". Whatever the players do, wherever their characters go, they are doing it with intent and to achieve some goal. What you do is provide them challenges along the way to the goals they are trying to reach, in the form of strategic, tactical and logistic complications and quandaries. Presumably, if they are in a dungeon, they are there for a reason, and the whole dungeon has been designed specifically to offer challenges for them to overcome in order to reach their goal. So what is the filler? The characters go places where there is stuff they want, there are problems they need to deal with, and then they succeed or fail at achieving their goals.

Even if they are just looking for one particular thing in a big dungeon complex, all the stuff they do before finding the thing isn't irrelevant filler. Why should it be? It's a dangerous place that they need to explore to get to the thing they are trying to get to - they need to check every path, because they don't know where the "thing" is, exactly. There are monsters and hazards and things they need to think about. The whole thing is the "plot" and it's all relevant. Their choices should make a difference in what happens and whether or not they succeed at whatever it is.

There should never be a "why am I doing this?" moment. Or if there is, nothing should stop them from turning around and doing something else. I mean, they are going where they want to get something they want, right? As the DM, you should make sure the stuff they want is somewhere hard to get and that adventuring will need to happen to get it. It never has to be boring or slow - only moments of respite between life-threatening dangers.

If you mean that the exploration side of the game offers less mechanical engagement than the combat part, that is true to varying degrees in different editions, and there may be solutions in homebrew or different games that can provide more engagement for things like tracking resources and non-combat scenarios.

D&D isn't really a game where you break things into "scenes", except to skip over an uneventful day's travel - or if you do, you're probably playing a set-piece encounter style where the filler thing you're talking about doesn't need to happen anyway. You just go from one set-piece to the next, with some narration in the middle describing how they got there. If players are getting bored and don't know what to do when they aren't in a set-piece, then just tell them the story that gets them to the next set-piece. Or tell the story up to the point where they have a decision to make, they make the decision (presumably to determine what encounter they will face), and then you get into the action scene.

Create a setting with built-in motives for the players, characters should be self-motivated to pursue adventure. Design locations for those adventures that the players/characters will seek out, because it has stuff they want. Make the location full of exciting things and use mechanics that challenge them, so that the players are engaged at all times, not just waiting for you to reveal a plot point to them. If they are dawdling or stuck, have stuff happen that motivates them again. Don't play out resting and traveling in real-time - make a roll to see if anything happens during the time period, then narrate it away. You don't need to ask what everyone is doing during every camp-fire and hike and stay at the inn. If they want to do something special, they'll tell you. They should tell you what they want to do, because there are things they want to get and you'll give them hints and signs pointing to how and where to get them.

[RazorChain]

I have no problem with extensive game play. What i find troubling is long stretches of 'game' that have little to no relevance or gameplay. I can handle being a bit mechanically uninvolved if what I'm doing is relevant, and I can tolerate my actions being pointless if performing them is intrinsically fun. When it wanders into 'why am I doing this?' territory is when the action I'm taking both doesn't really serve the plot, and isn't particularly engaging to play. The middles of most dungeons fall into this category, due to containing little of plot relevance (which is stored away at a dungeon's end, or a few rare points inside), and not particularly interesting to play (owing to be non-difficult).

And while you may dismiss one-encounter dungeons, it actually seems like a fairly good idea. Since I would know exactly what the party will be capable of when they face the boss in such a dungeon, I won't have to try and balance it for possible random levels of resources the dungeon lest them with. If they're always at full blast, then every encounter can be an actual tactical challenge they need to keep on their toes for, instead of having to waste anyone's time on a boring grind-fest.

I agree. Sometimes GM's draw out things, you just want to get to the Tomb of the Lizard King. The GM wants to play out the 2 week journey where we have to keep track of our supplies, how many mosquitos have bitten us, health checks to see if we caught malaria, random roll to tell me that a bug has laid eggs in my ear. Survival rolls for each day. A crocodile ate the oar of our boat. Spend time making a new oar, finding the right tree, who has the carving knife! A random monster jumped us, how are our watch routines...rolls for encounters all nights and all days.

Now this might be the meat and bone for a group that wants a game focused on exploration and survival but for me it's a filler before I get to the Tomb of the Lizard King.

The problem I've had with the newer versions of D&D is the train of thought that you have to go through X many (combat) encounters to drain your resources. The fights are given, they don't pose any dramatic question other than how many resources do I lose. I might as well just narrate it.
GM "You kick down the door and see 5 goblins, what do you do?
Players "We fight"
GM "You easily dispatch the Goblins, roll 1d6 for how many resources you lose"

Now If the Tomb of the Lizard King has 2-3 fight scenes where my character feels threatened and couple of clever puzzles and add a fiendish trap then I'm satisfied. I don't want to count my footsteps in the Mines of Moria, I want the highlights, the puzzle to get in, what idiot alerted the goblins, the discovery what happened to the dwarves, the fight scene, the balrog, the escape.

Of course just like some like to focus on exploration and survival others like to focus on combat, so to them the combat minigame is the most important aspect of the game, trudging through the dungeon is just a filler until the next combat encounter.

I guess we are all playing the same game but playing it differently. What is a filler to one player might be the highlights to another.

[Yora]

I agree with the pacing but why have fillers at all? Slow scenes arent filler if they are relevent, neither action scenes. Fillers are something used to fill gaps.

Yes, as I said, fillers exist because of a real problem but are a very poorly executed attempt at a solution. Adventures need pacing, but all scenes should be relevant.

[EccentricCircle]

In general I would aim to have no filler whatsoever.
There will of course be fast paced sections and slow paced sections of the game, and a campaign shouldn't be wall to wall action. However every scene should advance the plot or the character development in some way, and every game session, should be "the one where x, y or z happened".

There will be weeks when the DM doesn't get much prep time, and so wants to drag out some ready planned encounters over two weeks, however i'd argue that this doesn't have to be filler if those scenes are important. RPGs tend to run long rather than run short, so there's rarely a need to spin out more material to fill a lull, instead just make an episode into a two-parter, and what is filler for you will seem like an epic part of the story to the players.

What I'm absolutely not saying is that there shouldn't be sub plots or red herrings. Those are important components of the game. However i've played in some campaigns, particularly the pre-published sort, where the author has thrown loads of ideas at the page, or spun out the story to fill more of the book etc. As a DM writing your own material you can avoid falling into that sort of trap, as you don't have to sell any books, but rather entertain your players.

What I tend to do is divide the story elements into three categories:

The Main Plot: This is what I think the story is ultimately about. It will have its seeds at the very start of the game, and gradually develop so that by about the middle "tipping point" it is clear to the players what their objectives are and how the stuff they've been doing ties into larger events, the history of the world, or the villains schemes.

Red Herrings: These are clues which are intended to mislead the characters, and take them down a different path. They should be used very sparingly in RPGs, because players can very easily pick up on the wrong details, and get drawn into long side quests that are ultimately irrelevant. Frankly players make their own red herrings all the time, so the DM should only include them if they are part of setting up a dramatic twist which will ultimately change the way the players relate to the events of the red herring.

Subplots: These are sections of the game which aren't directly part of the main plot. However they shouldn't be filler per se. At the end of the game the Players should be able to look back and see what they did and how it all fit together, but there should be no point at which they think "do we want to go straight to Mordor, or would it be worth doing the Osgiliath subplot first?

I try to use subplots for two purposes, to establish the world, and context of the main story, and to provide more space for character development.
Each subplot should have a link to the main arc of the campaign, and to one of the factions of characters represented in the party. If it can be relevant to multiple characters that is even better. It should also show them more of how the world works.

Thus there could be a religious subplot, which is mainly for the Cleric in the party, but which will provide more context for religion throughout the campaign. It could related to some of the factions in play, the villains motivation, if not directly their plan, or the state of the world. The more players in the group that have a reason to invest in the subplot the better, that way it won't feel like filler, but rather like a natural extension of their interests.

The best sub plots are the ones you write once the game has begun, to build on ideas the PCs themselves introduce. You can use this along with the red herring. If the players think that a side detail is important, then make it important to one or more of their backgrounds or character arcs. It might not ultimately advance the main plot, but if the players don't know that at the time then it will still feel like an essential part of the story.

I'd argue that for the first story arc or two the main plot shouldn't be obvious. The campaign could go in several directions, so that the players won't necessarily be able to tell what is a side plot and what is the main plot. Its only when the reach the tipping point, and see what was connected and what was their own personal journey that they should be able to, retroactively, say that one story line or another was a side quest.

Clearly all of this takes a lot of practice to reliably put into effect, but when it works well it makes for a very compelling campaign.

[NichG]

I think it helps if you consider that each scene or segment of play in a dungeon is there to provide some kind of opportunity to the PCs, rather than just to test the PCs or ask 'will they succeed?'. So dangers and drains on resources and things like that are there as the cost of opportunity rather than just something you have to push through.

Sometimes that opportunity is 'do I engage or skip?' - there's some extra treasure behind a challenging encounter, there's some kind of sub-plot going on in the dungeon that you could explore but you could also choose not to.
Sometimes that opportunity is 'out of a set of options, which do we prefer?' - you can fight through or sneak through a trapped side-passage, you can burn one kind of resource or another, etc.
Sometimes that opportunity isn't even something that you pay a cost for, but is just a chance for something useful or interesting to the PCs to be introduced - if we read the mural here, we can figure out who actually took over this dungeon and is pulling the strings behind the scenes; if we collect a bit of this interdimensional fungus, we can make a bunch of cheap Ghost Touch weapons, etc.

Basically that gives the players some reason why they should proactively engage the scene - its saying 'hey, look at me, you want to care about this!'.

On the other hand, things which are pro-forma or can be assumed don't provide that. The aforementioned 'we lost an oar, what are we going to do now?' really has only one answer: 'we keep answering the DM's questions until the problem goes away'.

In terms of overall pacing considerations, rather than add delays or make things take longer than they need to, I prefer creating situations where the PCs need to proactively do certain things to be in a position to actually start directly addressing the situation, but leave those things wide open. For example, you could say 'alright, you guys are tough enough to get through this dungeon without us playing it out, now face the boss, who would be a challenging encounter'. Or you could say 'alright, you guys get information about the abilities of the boss - you could perhaps beat him, but you find from your sources that he has an AoE save or die that fires off every round, an artifact that lets him time-travel back from the moment of his defeat once every month in order to try again, and in the past when he's needed that he just tends to planeshift away and passes the month in hiding; now its up to you to figure out what legwork you feel you need to do in order to be in a position to counter that'.

[Yora]

The first thing to establish is what is the focus of the campaign. Not everything in the campaign needs to be about that focus, but it all needs to be in support of the focus.

A megadungeon campaign still can has a town. In fact it should have one. But the things that players are doing in the town should have a meaningful impact on what they will be doing later in the megadungeon, All content should in some way bring the players closer to their goal. Be it gaining useful knowiledge or preparing for upcoming challenges. However, becoming stronger so that they can fight the monsters ahead is not making progress. That's just plain filler. If the players are in a position where their characters are not powerful enough to progress further, then it's the monsters that need to be made weaker. Not the characters who have to go doing busywork to get stronger.
Progress has to be narrative progress, not mechanical one.

[Darth Ultron]

I have no problem with extensive game play. What i find troubling is long stretches of 'game' that have little to no relevance or gameplay.

This sounds like you just want a game with more focus.

Way too often rpg get very sandbox-like, where the DM just sits back and ''reacts'' and the players just do their own thing. And this type of game can work, if you have very, very, very, very active and immersed and good players. AAnd if the players are anything less then that and the game will wander and meander and drag and be dull and boring.

And this is on top of the typical problems of ''the players just want to have a gameplay where they auto win and they just want to ''have fun'' seeing ''how'' they will win'' and then even more dreaded ''we are just here to 'play a game', just like a board game, for a couple hours''.

However, a focused game is not like that. The DM is much more active and keeps the focus on the game tight and narrow...like a laser beam.

[Necroticplague]

This sounds like you just want a game with more focus.

Way too often rpg get very sandbox-like, where the DM just sits back and ''reacts'' and the players just do their own thing. And this type of game can work, if you have very, very, very, very active and immersed and good players. AAnd if the players are anything less then that and the game will wander and meander and drag and be dull and boring.

And this is on top of the typical problems of ''the players just want to have a gameplay where they auto win and they just want to ''have fun'' seeing ''how'' they will win'' and then even more dreaded ''we are just here to 'play a game', just like a board game, for a couple hours''.

However, a focused game is not like that. The DM is much more active and keeps the focus on the game tight and narrow...like a laser beam.

Focus has nothing to do with it. As I pointed out in an earlier post, both incredibly linear and incredibly undirected can both have this problem. In a strongly linear experience, my options are restricted, so my best course of action is relatively obvious from the outset, so the actual execution of them is not engaging.

[NichG]

The first thing to establish is what is the focus of the campaign. Not everything in the campaign needs to be about that focus, but it all needs to be in support of the focus.

A megadungeon campaign still can has a town. In fact it should have one. But the things that players are doing in the town should have a meaningful impact on what they will be doing later in the megadungeon, All content should in some way bring the players closer to their goal. Be it gaining useful knowiledge or preparing for upcoming challenges. However, becoming stronger so that they can fight the monsters ahead is not making progress. That's just plain filler. If the players are in a position where their characters are not powerful enough to progress further, then it's the monsters that need to be made weaker. Not the characters who have to go doing busywork to get stronger.
Progress has to be narrative progress, not mechanical one.

I think getting stronger doesn't have to be busywork, if there's a narrative meaning to it. Yes, if it's just 'grind out some XP until you can roflstomp the encounter' that's no good. But if there are specific in-character ways that certain avenues of power can be made available, those are then steps in a larger plan that the players can design and attempt to execute. Though, that's perhaps something that works best when that's the only way advancement happens - otherwise the passive slow advancement might be taken to be what the GM is asking for.

[Yora]

That's what I meant with narrative progress. Something has changed and not just stats from levelup.

[Deophaun]

The problem here is what people consider "fillers". Is it the talky stuff? Or the grinding combat encounters that lead up to the showdown with the boss/villain? Is it the puzzles? Is it everything that isnt action?

"Filler" is that which does not advance the campaign. "Talky stuff" is filler if you have to roleplay negotiations with an artificer just to get your +1 sword turned into a flaming sword while another is roleplaying with an alchemist for some acid flasks. "Grinding combat" is filler if it's an encounter with random orc raiding party #572 on day 1d30 of your 30-day trip.

It's not the action that defines filler, it's the purpose.

[FreddyNoNose]

I agree with the pacing but why have fillers at all? .

This is why I kind of HATE threads like this. You try to give an honest answer to a question then the philosophy majors come in to ponder things. Look, simply don't call it filler and play the game.

If someone said turn left would you bring up, why should we turn left? Why not turn right? It was an honest question.

[goto124]

IIRC, fillers in TV shows are to pad time to fulfill TV requirements when the plot has to be spaced out between a certain number of episodes. Fillers in other mediums are similar.

There're no such requirements in tabletop games. As far as I know, DMs don't need to pad sessions to be 2 hours 10 minutes long each. So why have any filler, which by definition don't add anything to the plot? DMs aren't getting paid to have longer sessions.

Well... unless they are?

There's also the definition of 'filler'. The very term implies a more plot-based, or linear type of campaign with a main plot and some need to stay on track most of the time. In a more open world where the players could do anything they liked, what is 'filler'?

[Deophaun]

IIRC, fillers in TV shows are to pad time to fulfill TV requirements when the plot has to be spaced out between a certain number of episodes. Fillers in other mediums are similar.

There're no such requirements in tabletop games. As far as I know, DMs don't need to pad sessions to be 2 hours 10 minutes long each. So why have any filler, which by definition don't add anything to the plot?

Because of the same thing TV shows have to contend with: deadlines. You have a session starting at 2:00 pm every Saturday, you need something. You might not be able to whip up a meaningful contribution to your campaign in time, so hey, here's a one-shot out of Dungeon. While ideally there would be no filler, just meat, practically it's sometimes filler or nothing.

There's also the definition of 'filler'. The very term implies a more plot-based, or linear type of campaign with a main plot and some need to stay on track most of the time. In a more open world where the players could do anything they liked, what is 'filler'?

Anything that's a distraction from the players doing what they liked. Anything where one player plays for an hour or two while the rest of the group gets to check Facebook.

[Darth Ultron]

Focus has nothing to do with it. As I pointed out in an earlier post, both incredibly linear and incredibly undirected can both have this problem. In a strongly linear experience, my options are restricted, so my best course of action is relatively obvious from the outset, so the actual execution of them is not engaging.

Yes, and I pointed out in my earlier post the problem is the ''type'' of game play. So it's true that if you have the ''classic modern idea of the special star character in a fair and balanced just a casual game'', then really no matter what you will have that sort of game.

This is why I kind of HATE threads like this. You try to give an honest answer to a question then the philosophy majors come in to ponder things. Look, simply don't call it filler and play the game.

This is so true.

[Necroticplague]

Yes, and I pointed out in my earlier post the problem is the ''type'' of game play. So it's true that if you have the ''classic modern idea of the special star character in a fair and balanced just a casual game'', then really no matter what you will have that sort of game.

Er, can you explain what you mean a bit more clearly? This comes out as being a bit of an indecipherable word salad.

[Nifft]

IIRC, fillers in TV shows are to pad time to fulfill TV requirements when the plot has to be spaced out between a certain number of episodes. Fillers in other mediums are similar.

There're no such requirements in tabletop games. As far as I know, DMs don't need to pad sessions to be 2 hours 10 minutes long each. So why have any filler, which by definition don't add anything to the plot? DMs aren't getting paid to have longer sessions.

Well... unless they are?

There's also the definition of 'filler'. The very term implies a more plot-based, or linear type of campaign with a main plot and some need to stay on track most of the time. In a more open world where the players could do anything they liked, what is 'filler'?

Yeah good point about "filler" being a plot-centric term.

A related point that I want make: a challenge which does not advance the plot may still advance characterization.

In a role-playing game, characterization can be a worthy thing to spend time building: either the characterization of a PC, or something out in the world.