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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8135437" data-attributes="member: 29398">In fairness, in large part due to the influence of Dragonlance and similar ventures, players and DMs in 1989 were a different breed of rabbits from 1982.  Couple that with external pressures e.g. the Satanic panic and it's easy to see how and why 2e went the way it did.And in all of this the story (or more likely a series of only-sometimes-related stories all at once) more or less creates itself as the campaign goes along and the DM and-or the players start tying previously-seen elements into current adventuring.For example, the party goes into White Plume Mountain, brings out the three weapons, and dutifully returns them to their owners.  During downtime a few months later the party hears tell of some noble having recently gone crazy and started killing his people; the PCs investigate and find it's the same guy to whom they returned Blackrazor and that the weapon has since cursed him.  So here the DM is able to tie a past element into current adventuring; and while she could just as easily have the noble be someone previously unknown, why do that when the opportunity exists to tie some things together?Or, the party wander around the hexes and by sheer random chance happen to meet Goblins at every turn.  The players in-character start wondering why there's so damn many Goblins out here and maybe even come up with some conspiracy theories...and the DM takes one of those theories and runs with it.  Suddenly what were initially a bunch of random events have germinated into the beginnings of a previously-unforeseen storyline, which will either go somewhere or it won't depending on what the players/PCs decide to do as the campaign goes on.Trying to make high-level play work well in 1e is something of a lost cause IMO. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  That said, by the time they get to high level there should in theory be all kinds of established elements the DM (or players!) can draw on to provide continuity of story if such is desired.And sometimes some DM force (or outright hard-railroading) can be a good thing.  Other times not, and the challenge often lies in figuring out which is which.</blockquote>

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