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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 4461278" data-attributes="member: 7177">I ask the players: "Your characters have the power to change the world. So just how do they plan to change the world?"This is part of the whole premise of Exalted - which I am currently GMing, and which has been a real education to me. In "saving the world" scenarios, the PCs are basically reactive - there's some huge threat, and they need to stop it somehow.But even if there is no such threat, there are still plenty of things which are wrong with the world. Slavery. Oppression of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. Serfdom. Even oppressive taxes. All of these need not be affect the PCs directly, or be a threat to them - but any PC might be motivated to do something about them. So encourage your PCs to have big, epic motivations from which to build big, epic adventures even when the fate of the world is not at stake.This kind of paradigm shift - from reactive to proactive plots - may not come easily to some players. So I suggest the following scenario:Once they have become powerful in their own right have the PCs go to some minor fiefdom or kingdom. They quickly learn that the ruler is a jerk - not the frothing Evil Overlord of other tales, but certainly unpleasant, and quite a few locals are oppressed by the authorities.Not the PCs, though - to them, the local authorities will be polite, since they have made a name for themselves as people not to be trifled with. They will accommodate the PCs reasonably well (though they will also encourage the PCs to leave quickly again), but they will also try to block any attempts of the PCs to interfere in their operation. If the PCs really insist and it looks like they become violent, they might make some compensation to their victims - but it is clear that this is a short-term reversal only and they will do more of the same once the PCs turn their backs again. Think of how Chinese or Russian authorities try to prevent interference by Western countries when they complain about those pesky "human rights", and you get the picture.Keep this up for a while, and most PCs will be itching to do something about this situation - but it should be clear that the only way of doing that is toppling the local government. So when they try exactly that, let it succeed instead of having some powerful NPC stopping them to maintain the status quo (as it happens in far too many bad adventures).So now the PCs have entered a new profession: Politics. And it's going to be vicious, but the rewards are great: If they do things right, they can create the future of an entire realm. All they have to do is figure out what they actually want, and act accordingly. When they suddenly see all sorts of NPCs popping up and asking them what they should do......then, maybe, they will come up with their own plans for the future - and thus, their own plots for adventures.</blockquote>

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