When Player Driven Adventures Don't Pan Out

[zarionofarabel]

I find the assertion that most characters in media are reactive. I have watched and read numerous stories about protagonists that are very proactive. Heck, basically the entirety of the "heist" genre is not just proactive on the motivation front, but on the particular minutiae of every step of said heist. If you think that protagonists in media are almost always reactive your sources must come from a very narrow and curated subset of media in general.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I find the assertion that most characters in media are reactive. I have watched and read numerous stories about protagonists that are very proactive. Heck, basically the entirety of the "heist" genre is not just proactive on the motivation front, but on the particular minutiae of every step of said heist. If you think that protagonists in media are almost always reactive your sources must come from a very narrow and curated subset of media in general.

The heist genre is a pretty narrow slice of "all media" though, you have to admit.

 

[zakael19]

So here's how the Monster bundles work. There's a theme. The book has the following examples: Age of Giants, Arch-Devil's Retribution, Confrontation of Titans, Cult of Rot, and 12 more. Each bundle has monsters that go together and there's a frame story around what they are doing. Then it says, if your group is Tier 1 when you stumble into this plot - these are the enemies you face. If you're Tier 2, THESE are the enemies you face. Up to Tier 4. But here's where things get AWESOME. As the GM you pick 3 bundles. The players can only deal with one at a time. So if they pick bundle A, bundles B and C proceed to their Tier 2 plots. (it's a living world! You didn't deal with some threats so now they're bigger!!). You repeat that again - the players can deal with B or C. C goes to the Tier 3 plot. So there are consequences to their choices. It's player driven, but there's always some bad guys doing bad guy stuff to motivate them to action.

Sounds like they took good notes from the best 4e (and one of the best monster books of all time) book MV: Threats to the Nentir Vale, and added their own spin! Very cool. I noticed a lot of forward-porting of 4e high notes into ToV in general.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Trying to force player-driven is a recipe for frustration. Player driven is still, in my experience, facilitated by the GM laying out at least a faint outline and options of some rough trails that the players can drive their UTVs over rather than just literally anything goes.

While I agree with you that trying to force a game to be player-driven can be disastrous, I disagree that actual player-driven play needs a “GM laying out at least a faint outline and options of some rough trails”.

It’s absolutely possible for the players to actually drive play.

 

[zakael19]

While I agree with you that trying to force a game to be player-driven can be disastrous, I disagree that actual player-driven play needs a “GM laying out at least a faint outline and options of some rough trails”.

It’s absolutely possible for the players to actually drive play.

Can you provide some examples of flat player-drive play where the GM is not providing some sort of outline / actualizing a premise that spurs action / fronting opportunities?

All the "player-driven" games I run still start with the GM fronting something (even if its based on/in reaction to session 0 style setup from the players).