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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 4690537" data-attributes="member: 54846">I was running a detective game once. I gave the impression that the PCs were being followed, or at least watched, by some Organization. An NPC was going to lead the players from their current location to a new location, where they would arrive just in time to see an ally get blown up. The players spent five minutes actually devising a way to shake off any tails that might be following them, casting a spell to do it, establishing a code word for "Stuff be goin' down!", and even planned a meeting place in case they were attacked or things went south. I then handwaved the entire trip, just "you leave, you get there, dude get blown up." After the session, one of the players said, "You wanted us to feel tense; we bought into that, and came up with this plan. But then you basically just put a TV screen in front of us. You should've prolonged the trip, made us roll a few stealth and bluff rolls, make some rolls behind the screen to make us think we were being followed, let us execute our plan, and then use that big reveal. It would have had more of an impact if you had played up the tension we had created." After that, I came up with a rule of thumb for handling situations like the above and the Water Pipe, and situations where PCs want to really investigate something that the DM originally had marked a dead end:The amount of attention, time and energy PCs pay to something unrelated should be proportionate to the amount of narrative payoff they should receive. Because the more time, attention and energy a player puts on something, the more expectation they place on the activity. To have a large expectation squashed is a disappointment. If a player, on a whim, just says, "I open that door," when you have nothing behind it? It's just a bathroom. But, if a player spends a lot of attention rolling to hear what's in the room, gauge the temperature of the doorknob, find some sort of vantage point to see into the room, shakes down every guard in the place for the key to that room, then by god something interesting should be in that room.But yes, what you are suggesting is essentially a philosophical point. The two extremes are "I have my story, my map, and the PCs are to find my story, follow my map, and that's the game. Anything else really isn't important and I'm sticking to it" or "I have no story in mind; the world just reacts to what he PCs do, and no matter what they do, something is going to happen."A middle ground (which is very controversial around here) is to have what's going to happen all ready prepped, but the path the PCs take is just "The way to get there". Let's say that the PCs want to reach the Hermit's House, but you want the PCs to walk into the Lair of the Big Bad Lich first. The PCs come to a fork in the road. If they pick left, they wind up in the Lair of the Big Bad Lich. If they pick right, they wind up in the Lair of the Big Bad Lich; it doesn't matter which they picked, that way is to what you want. You merely offer the illusion that their choice lead to where it was going. After the PCs fight the Big Bad LIch, they walk out of the lair, and take the other fork, and that path is the path to The Hermit's House.There are variations of this, but the notion is to "draw the map" around the players actions, rather than "draw the map" ahead of time and let them just wander around until they find the right way.I do think that one key to situations similar to this, is to have several situations planned ahead of time, just sitting in your pocket. It could be an RP encounter, a detail of your campaign setting, or anything. But, let's say, you just want a stand-alone encounter of PCs getting ambushed by goblins. You prep the scene, but don't put it in your adventure. When the PCs don't take the hint "Go to the Ugly Cave" and instead go somewhere you're not prepared, spring the goblin ambush on them. The ambush happens where you need to drop it.</blockquote>

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