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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thia Halmades" data-source="post: 2721528" data-attributes="member: 35863">Sorry, I'll extrapolate.When I run games (please note: I'm writing this from the "I" perspective, and it's not meant as either a general assumption of how anyone else does it, nor how I feel anyone else SHOULD do it; just how I do it) I sit down and get a general plot outline.  I build a world, throw some people on it, generate an overplot (see: Campbell, Hero Myth) and then, with that living, breathing world intact, throw the players in it.In that process, I've written a hook.  The hook is the launching point of the story, and tells you (from character gen) why you care.  If you don't care about your character, or the story, odds are you (again, 'you' is any player in my game, not 'you', The Shaman) shouldn't be in one of my games, as they massively story & character driven.  Let's say in this case we're talking about the Ravenloft game I'm running; the hook is that after you were kicked out of the ancestral mansion, just before the Requiem, you went out to learn what you could, seek your fortune, choose who you would become.You receive a letter from a lawyer, via messenger, which tells you to return to the ancestral manor.  Your uncle has been murdered.  Back up a second; I set this up during character gen, so everyone has already done two things: cooperatively written their backgrounds to include child-hood memories of their uncle, and in so doing created a family "we care" sibling dynamic.  Within that dynamic, killing the person you just spent an evening writing about makes you (the player) care, and want justice.Now we get into the plot as crafted; it's a murder mystery on the surface, with deeper implications.  Choices made by the characters affect the direction and resolution (and creation, and continuation) of plot lines.  Most people at first blush, as you did, think I'm all "story me, sheep you."  Not the case.  My over-arcs contain a few key events (must happens to keep the story clear) and then the rest occurs behind the scenes.  The PCs are free to make their own decisions, but those decisions occur in a persistent, believable world with persistent characters & events.If you quit your job, it has consequences.  If you fail to appear in court, it has consequences.  If you don't kill the Ghasts in your cellar, there are consequences.  Only from a solid frame work of 'reality' (and this is what I mean when I talk about realism, as well - World Persistance) can we derive choice & consequence, and tell a convincing story about these characters (the players) as they exist in their world, and encounter all of those carefully crafted NPCs, have reasons to rescue people, hunt down other people, make & break deals, etc.The agreement which is struck between me and my players is pretty straight forward: I'm going to write a story.  It's an open ended story which, really, is only the beginning.  There's a history, and we being in media res - in the middle.  That's where the players become involved and start affecting change.  My half of the agreement is to be a flexible DM, who isn't just writing the next dungeon to see how many players he can kill, and who isn't holding 'the story' over thier heads as some sort of axe.  The players then agree to, within reason, play their characters as people who comprehend a persistant world.  They won't just abandon the main quest to open a cheese shop in Bermuda.  That doesn't make sense.  I write plot about them and involving them so they continue caring, directly, and as they resolve those plot lines more information about the overplot is revealed.True cooperative story telling.  The DM is an author; he's written a story he wants to tell, that's his character, the world and the NPCs driving that story.  That's the other key component to understanding how I run: PCs affect change.  They can alter events, save (or kill) a key NPC, foil plots and inadvertantly create new ones.  PCs are the outside forces which act on the plotline.  Otherwise, much as Newton told us, the plot doesn't move.  It follows the same rules, really:- A plot in motion will stay in motion, unless acted upon by a PC- A plot at rest will remain at rest, unless acted upon by a PC- Every action that affects the plot has an equal & opposite reaction (it intelligently responds to change; it fills power vaccums, creates new plot twists, generates new dangers conversely to the rewards gained by the PCs).Hope that helps.</blockquote>

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