Do you like plots?

[rogueattorney]

Free will isn't as important as the illusion of free will.

This is absolutely true, and a good thing to establish especially early in a campaign. Even if the choices being made aren't really meaningful (Whether they follow the hermit on his quest for treasure, agree to try to rescue the princess, or hire on as caravan guards, they're still going to end up in the Lost Caverns of Whosywatsis), it's good to give the players that sense of autonomy so they don't look like deer in headlights when the time comes to make the real choices. "You mean I can do whatever I want?"

I realize there are all sorts of reasons to funnel the pc's a certain direction. Outside the game reasons especially. ("It's all I had time to prepare!") There's just a right and wrong way to do it.

And having a bunch of old-school site-based modules lying around is never a bad thing, just in case they go competely in a direction you weren't expecting. ("So they're on a boat! What am I supposed to do now?" <pulls out X1 Isle of Dread> "Heh.")

R.A.

 

[DonTadow]

I disagree. Again, I think it depends on the skills of the DM, and the willingness of the players to start in the "right place." I've both run and played in campaigns where I/the DM had a story in mind from the beginning. This does not limit the PCs in any meaningful way, so long as the DM is willing to go with the flow, not to assume the PCs will move through the story on any specific pathway, and isn't afraid to ad-lib and change things at the drop of a hat.

In other words, a skilled DM can take PCs from Point A to Point G to Point M to Point S to Point Z, regardless of whether the PCs go from A to B or A to F (and so forth).

Or, to put it another way by quoting someone--I just wish I could remember who, to give proepr credit:

"Plot is what happens if the PCs aren't around to stop it."

Sure, this sort of campaign falls apart if the DM sets up a "save the world" campaign, and the players are make characters that are cold-blooded mercenaries who skewer toddlers for profit. But frankly, any game with such a dichotomy of views between DM and players is going to fail, overarching plot or not. So long as the players and DMs know what they're getting into together from the beginning, and are both interested in working together, it works.

I'd have to go out and agree with you on this one. A good DM can make a great plot and still make sure that his players are building it. After every session I go back to my overall plot and look at how the pcs changed things then adjust it based on what's going on. I started my campaign as a good campaign and it was a "save the world type thing" . but after several sessions and watching the pcs decisions i realized that these guys might somewhat care about the world but honestly need personal reasons why they do the thnigs they do. so i went and reworked the plot so that the neutraility of the pcs became the focus. The overall plot continued and the pcs sometimes chose to side with good sometimes with bad and their decisions are always analyzed and the plot reworked so that they see their impact no matter how small.

I recently just finished one of the biggest reworkings of the campaign. THe pcs went back in time. ONe of them managed to get away from the party and set in place things that will eventually change their history. A non flexable dm would probably try to railroad the pc from doing it but i took a couple of days to analyze his decisions, made him write me the letters that he was going to send, and then reworked the plot so that his changes made impacts both dire and good.

 

[T. Foster]

I don't deny that it's possible to create a good plot-based adventure that isn't a railroad -- I've played in several, I've run more than a few, I've even written some (in my pre-enlightment days ). (ASIDE: probably my all-time favorite plot-based rpg adventure is "Lords of Thunder" by William H. Keith, published in The MegaTraveller Journal #4 in 1993 -- a plot every bit as good as most movies or novels (not surprisingly, since WHK is a successful novelist) and remarkably railroad-free). But even so, given the choice between a really good plot-based adventure run by a really good DM and a really good non-plot adventure run by an equally good DM I'm likely to prefer the latter because it'll have less distratcions from what I'm really interested in. Yeah, it's nice seeing disparate plot-strands and characters come together and all the pieces finally click into place and I can appreciate all the work the DM put into it, but in a game-play situation I just don't get the same level of 'emotional kick' from that as I do from being faced with a really tough challenge/obstacle and figuring out how to overcome/circumvent it. That's what I play games for, and it's entirely different than the emotional kick I get out of reading a good book or watching a good movie (in which case I love exploring characters and watching complex plots come together, honest, I do!).