This is an entirely different thing than the idea you introduce next.
Yup. But they're two different examples of the same basic response - the GM taking player feedback and incorporating it into a game.
Here's the basic thesis: if your players are commenting about something in game, they are speculating. They are taking the information provided them, and coming up with results. Now, if you have a planned adventure, by all means follow those plans. But if you're winging it (and I often do) than taking those player plans and running with them are a good idea - and they often make more sense than whatever screwball idea you had originally cooked up.
If I as a DM planned for the party to go right, but not left, I ought not say, "No" when they decide to go left. If I planned to have a door that could only be breached by answering a riddle, I shouldn't stop a clever idea to bypass the door in some other fasion just because it short cuts what I thought was a particularly clever riddle or puzzle. But what you are suggesting is that which ever way the player goes it ought to hold whatever the player expects.
No, I am not. If my players go left instead of right, I jump at the chance. I like to wing it, as I've already said. What I AM saying is that if players are speculating upon the world you provided, they are providing feedback and insight into the game that you can use... and often SHOULD use because it will result in a more enjoyable game for the players. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it's a good thing to think of.
Steadfastly sticking to your notes when your players say "oh, god, I hope it's not another set of orcs behind that door!" is a completely different style of play (and one I would suggest is a bit more 'selfish', for lack of a better word) than a game where the GM on the fly changes his notes and brings in that gelatinous cube steve had been talking about wanting to fight "for a long time" instead.
And frankly, that isn't what the player wants. What the player wants is to be surprised. What the player wants is to actually be clever and figure it out and have a real victory, not to have a victory handed to them based on the first wild idea that they threw out there.
I like how you know what this player wants more than I do. Especially considering how he's my brother, I've known him for his entire life, and he has a playing style very close to my own. He came up with the idea, and he's pursuing it. And I'm changing my pre-set plans regarding the campaign secession to make his stated goal a POSSIBILITY. Exactly how I'm handing this goal to him kind of confuses me.
I would say that a GM who sticks to his pre-set plans or situations without allowing the players a chance to intervene needs to loosen up a bit. But I know that's not what you're saying. What you are saying is that a GM who breaks his plans on player suggestions is ruining his game. I'm just syaing that a GM who sticks to his guns in SPITE OF player suggestions/actions is in a danger zone.
Where in the heck are we getting the idea that making the world morphic based on player conjecture is making it 'more real'? Isn't that by definition making it less real? I don't know, maybe most players are wildly different than I am, but I suspect most players will suss out your subterfuge in a hurry and be rather disappointed to find you've been practicing this degree of illusionism. Players hate to have their victories stolen from them, and one way or the other this destroys the believablility of the victory as well as the believability of the narrative.
Again. I wing my games. I often say "hey, there's an owlbear in here" and then start making up the dungeon on the fly. My players start exploring the dungeon, notice the statues I've (carelessly and without thought) placed and decided there's a monster with a petrifying gaze. They make that observation, and work within the confines of that - it makes more sense than an owlbear in a world sense, and i have no specific connection to the owlbear. It's better for the believability of the world, it makes the players feel rewarded for their plans, and it makes the game more fun. Players do like to have their victories, and they also like to feel smart.
To have their observations met with "well, you were wrong" even though they had worked out a halfway decent reasoning to get there just encourages (in my experience) PCs willing to follow the railroad thoughtlessly.
But then, we play differently. If I see my players are bored, I throw in a fight even though one wasn't planned. If the rogue isn't doing much, that door is suddenly trapped. I'm very much a reactive GM, and run on relatively few notes. It's my preferred style, and one that my players are usually pretty big fans of.
Different strokes, and all that.
So? Maybe. I try hard to make the answers cooler than the players can imagine. If I don't succeed every time, well, that's the breaks. The alternative is for the players to not be surprised.
And I fully agree. And trust me, my players are often surprised, even by things that seem so obvious on my end. That medusa in the statue-haunted ruins? If I start running with that theme, I will throw stuff on a whim that is often very confusing and weird to the PCs... because that's how I run games. And the ideas/observations my players throw are often a bit more involved than that.
The alternative is for every tired trope, every simplistic meme, every most obvious alternative to become the exact thing that is there. "There are statues, ergo there must be a creature that turns things to stone around here.", is one of the most tired ideas in dungeon crawling. If some other player spoke up and said, "Gee.. look at all these statues, there must be a medusa around here." and a 'turn to stone' creature came into being because of that, I'd want to brain the player, not because I was 'scared' of the medua, but because its so bloody trite.
First, I was using the medusa example BECAUSE it is so widely known, not as an actual example of play. Second, I'm mostly referring to the idea where players are trying to make sense of the plot/events of the game, and come up with an explanation of things that is MUCH better than originally planned.
When you run by the seat of your pants, this is definitely a possibility. Rather than some nameless villain, the PCs figure out the villain is El-Tor the Tribal Chief (and why!). You hear that, realize that NPC has stuck out in their minds, and roll with it. When the encounter happens, they feel smart, and no one is the wiser. And, since they had already worked out the reasons WHY, it makes the world feel more believable than your original plan.
Once more, I'm not suggesting that if the PCs say "hey, I wish we were fighting gnolls" you should suddenly throw gnolls at them. I AM saying that if they come up with a reason why a gnoll is the beast that ate that corpse you found (and you aren't connected to your original idea), you should consider the possibility of changing what was already established in your notes and roll with it.
I have no desire to turn every scenario with statues into something that turns things to stone. I have no desire to be that predictable. Some times statues are just statues.
Again, agreed. But you're taking a simplified example and using it to describe a much more complex beast.
Sometimes some else entirely is going on. I have no desire to reward players for jumping to really dumb conclusions based on the the most shallow of conjectures.
I have no desire to play in that sort of game either.
Fair enough. But then, who says you'd know you were in that type of game? If the GM does his job and picks up on your feedback, he's providing you what you're looking for, usually without being too obvious about it. To me, that's nearly ideal.
