No question falls more near and dear to my role-playing heart than this one: What are the best adventures made of? Some may choose to answer this question by answering the question What is the best role-playing system? Is it D&D, RuneQuest, Shadowrun or Cyberpunk, White Wolf or Cathulu, maybe its GURPS or some crackpot home brew system you've been trying to get people to play for decades. Is it D20 or Perts? With Figs or without? Do you use Props? Costumes? Accents? (OK maybe we can rule accents our right now). Others may try to answer this question by answering, what the best traps, dungeons, plots, worlds, maps, twists, turns and nobby things might be. Is it the highlydetailed world from Shadowrun with enough back story to push any campaign, is it the Temple of Elemental Evil with its sadistic traps and horrifying monsters? Or maybe its the cozy familiarity of D&D and its lore that every knows at least a little of. Others still might even try to answer this question by answering the question: what is the best role-playing style? Are the best adventures made of massive wads of carnage, or constant near death experiences? Maybe the best adventures come from hours of in character dialog or mind bending challenges and brain twisting codes. Maybe is a combination or many of these things.

Or maybe is the group. Yeah, yeah. I hear the gagging sounds, but before you click away and pray my blog falls into green slime, hear me out. I've been playing a long time and I think I've worked this one out pretty well. So in honor of V-Day this month, here it goes. The best gaming adventures and created when the right group of people, who want similar things from their role-playing experiences come together and gel. That's it. It's that simple. With the right group, the best adventure can be walking into a bar to find the next adventure. Or trying to get home after defeating the ultimate evil. The best adventures are all group dynamic.

How many times have you played in the latest greatest game system and had it fall flat? Or had the GM create a novel full of back story and plan an entire campaign down to thepaper clips in the desk on the third floor of the R&D lab only to have the most fun come from someone get caught shoplifting at StufferShack (tm) and derail the whole night? If you've been playing long enough (and with the right group of people), you probably had one of those nights where nothing goes right for the DM and some tiny detail added just for color takes the group in an entirely different direction than anyone could have anticipated. These are the best adventures and they require a group and GM that can capitalize on them.

At GenCon last year, I was lucky enough to play in a private game run by Keith Baker. It was not Eberon and I'm pretty sure Keith was making up the rules as he went, but the group was made up of flexible gamers, who were able to use the idea of their characters to drive the action and the story. The game system itself was highly unstructured, or at least no one was given any rules. Our character sheets were descriptions and our abilities came from interpreting those descriptions. In short this could have gone horrible wrong. But it didn't. It was one of the most fun gaming experiences I had at GenCon. Compare that to Shadowrun game I played it later in the week. Shadowrun, I'll confess, is my favorite game system and genre, I love me some Shadowrun and basically majored in it in college. This particular Shadowrun game however was dismal and boring. With so much going for it, I was expecting it to be the best gaming of the week, but the group didn't gel. The GM was green, some of the players knew the storyline too well, some of the players didn't know the game system very well. Some people didn't want to engage in the story at all. The group was a mix of role-players and hack'n slashers. Character detail varied from pages of description to photocopied archetypes. OK so my character was a photocopy, but I've played Shadowrun enough to pull it off. Long story short (I know I know) the entire experience fell flat and I literally put on my sun glasses to hide tears of boredom.

But wait! If the shadowrun is my favorite game system and I'm playing shadowrun, shouldn't the game be awesome? It would if the game system mattered, so we can rule that out. Later that week I played 4E in the Mythic game. I have been saying this since the 80's and I keep saying to this day, "I hate D&D. Give me anything else!" Well, a few hours after Mythic I was still grinning ear to ear and still trying to pull my foot out of my mouth. I had such an amazing time. The game system didn't get in the way once. The story flowed and I got to attack a giant black dragon with a smoking hot vampire. She wasn't evil, she was just drawn that way. What I mean to say is, I had an amazing time. It was my style of play and group that really gelled. Even though it was D&D, I loved it.

In an equally telling series of anecdotes, I can rule out all the other answers as well, leaving me with the only answer that makes any sense to me. What makes the best adventures? The best gaming group. So, I've come up with another one of my silly formulas: Adventure Greatness = (Group + Dynamic)² Or in simple terms, great groups make great for adventures.

For more on this topic, check out this months blog Carival http://nevermetpress.com/things-to-love-things-to-hate-february-rpg-blog-carnival#.TzHYWHjKme4