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Contrivance in story dynamics
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8828937" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Right. I would say that even 'back in the day' a lot of what I did was pretty heavily aimed at engaging what the players wanted to do, but there was also this heavy element of "the GM's story" in there. Like, the ORIGINAL campaign when I constructed all the locations and a lot of the NPCs and whatnot that my first 4e game used was back in the early 90's and used 2e. It was a 'grand meta-plot' setup. Honestly, it reminds me a bit painfully of Dragon Lance in a sense, except I was SLIGHTLY smarter, there were not some other group of super hero NPCs driving the 'real' plot and relegating the PCs to bit parts. Still, it featured a 'course of events' that was somewhat outside the PC's control and which I envisaged long before the players decided what they wanted to do.</p><p></p><p>In the end that 90's campaign got bent into a shape that suited what everyone wanted, and a lot of the meta-plot kind of just faded into irrelevance or was made obsolete by the stuff the PCs actually did. I certainly learned to stop wasting time on that level of prep! lol. But in any case, the 4e game just sort of picked up background and now and then I'd add in a plot thread that the original campaign had left dangling or something. At some point though, interestingly, the 4e Cleric character evolved and basically reinterpreted the whole backstory completely! That was, however, more surprising for me than those players, as only one of them had been involved in the older games. Her character was Eldar (Eledrin) though and was highly confused because she had of course been alive during the previous events, and kept saying "but that isn't the way it happened!" lol.</p><p></p><p>I guess, relating it to 'contrivance', I mean, all the PCs were contrivances! The '90s ones turned into big heroes, and the 4e '10s ones actually turned out to be legendary heroes and cultural icons reborn into a new age. That's pretty contrived! Lol.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8828937, member: 82106"] Right. I would say that even 'back in the day' a lot of what I did was pretty heavily aimed at engaging what the players wanted to do, but there was also this heavy element of "the GM's story" in there. Like, the ORIGINAL campaign when I constructed all the locations and a lot of the NPCs and whatnot that my first 4e game used was back in the early 90's and used 2e. It was a 'grand meta-plot' setup. Honestly, it reminds me a bit painfully of Dragon Lance in a sense, except I was SLIGHTLY smarter, there were not some other group of super hero NPCs driving the 'real' plot and relegating the PCs to bit parts. Still, it featured a 'course of events' that was somewhat outside the PC's control and which I envisaged long before the players decided what they wanted to do. In the end that 90's campaign got bent into a shape that suited what everyone wanted, and a lot of the meta-plot kind of just faded into irrelevance or was made obsolete by the stuff the PCs actually did. I certainly learned to stop wasting time on that level of prep! lol. But in any case, the 4e game just sort of picked up background and now and then I'd add in a plot thread that the original campaign had left dangling or something. At some point though, interestingly, the 4e Cleric character evolved and basically reinterpreted the whole backstory completely! That was, however, more surprising for me than those players, as only one of them had been involved in the older games. Her character was Eldar (Eledrin) though and was highly confused because she had of course been alive during the previous events, and kept saying "but that isn't the way it happened!" lol. I guess, relating it to 'contrivance', I mean, all the PCs were contrivances! The '90s ones turned into big heroes, and the 4e '10s ones actually turned out to be legendary heroes and cultural icons reborn into a new age. That's pretty contrived! Lol. [/QUOTE]
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