NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="uzirath" data-source="post: 7939828" data-attributes="member: 8495">I tend to be in a hybrid space myself. I consider the characters as protagonists and use them to develop the central stories of the campaign. This doesn't necessarily mean that the world revolves around them. That depends on the genre and the types of stories the group wants to engage in. I've run LOTR-style avert-the-apocalypse campaigns and others where the PCs are involved in smaller stories that are significant to them but have little impact on the broader world. I also enjoy tinkering with the fictional world—thinking up histories and religions, geography and architecture, magic and monsters—and am still quite fond of dungeon maps with hidden traps and things of that sort. I don't overdo it, though, and I no longer see the background work as essential to a satisfying game. I like to have enough compelling NPCs and scenery to make the world feel like it exists beyond the PCs. I'm not comfortable with zero prep, but it is not the obsessive endeavor that it once was.I also leave lots of room for player authorship. If a player has a backstory element that is important to their character, I'm happy to let them flesh it out. I'll do my best to integrate it with my preexisting material. This was a significant and not-entirely-comfortable step for me as a GM. I used to be very particular about my world; now, I like to think of it as our world. I am, perhaps, the lead author of an excellent creative team.</blockquote>

Verification