Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 6066720" data-attributes="member: 54710">I think you're conflating &quot;story&quot; with a common technique for generating story.&nbsp; If the PCs thwart the schemes of an evil count by seducing his daughter to reveal her knowledge, tracking the count's servant to diabolical ritual (that they disrupt), deliver the evidence to the king's guard, and then capture the count in a daring rooftop chase -- that's plot.&nbsp; That's story.&nbsp; And it's story whether the DM planned in ahead of time or it came purely from PC actions.&nbsp; The difference is that -- if you have great players (and you're a good DM) -- you stand a good chance of getting satisfying story by just letting your players loose.&nbsp; If you're players are closer to average, you'll still get some good story by leaving them to their own devices, but you'll probably get &quot;bigger&quot; story if the DM plans it out in advance.&nbsp; I'm not going to judge whether &quot;little&quot; story generated by pure player initiative is more or less satisfying than &quot;big&quot; story planned out in advance.&nbsp; That's more a matter of preference than anything else.&nbsp; But I think it's a mistake to label &quot;letting the PCs do what they want&quot; as &quot;not story.&quot;Or at least it's a mistake if you want to avoid misunderstanding...[sblock=My Personal Preferences]For my part, what I get from D&amp;D is PCs making interesting decisions about things that matter.&nbsp; (As an extreme example, the climax of my last campaign involved the PCs deciding whether they wanted to try to destroy their adversary and do the best they good to put their messed up world back together or to mess with the timeline, destroying the world they knew in the hopes of ending up with a better one.)&nbsp; That kind of meaningful PC agency is best served by a DM who has a pretty good idea of what the key inflection points are in the game world and steers the PCs towards those points so they have the best chance of being able to influence the game world.&nbsp; Or, if the PCs don't choose to exercise that power, it's a conscious choice on the part of the players and not just an accident of where they chose to go.I always liked the idea of the sandbox game where the players choose their destination relatively free of guidance and interference.&nbsp; But, in practice, most of the DMs I play with (including myself) just don't have enough time to make sure that there is something interesting in each plausible direction.&nbsp; So, instead, I prefer a game where the PCs have a choice of where to go, but the most interesting parts of the game are lit up in neon, so there's no question that we're playing out the game that has the most potential for fun.[/sblock]-KS</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KidSnide, post: 6066720, member: 54710"] I think you're conflating "story" with a common technique for generating story. If the PCs thwart the schemes of an evil count by seducing his daughter to reveal her knowledge, tracking the count's servant to diabolical ritual (that they disrupt), deliver the evidence to the king's guard, and then capture the count in a daring rooftop chase -- that's plot. That's story. And it's story whether the DM planned in ahead of time or it came purely from PC actions. The difference is that -- if you have great players (and you're a good DM) -- you stand a good chance of getting satisfying story by just letting your players loose. If you're players are closer to average, you'll still get [I]some[/I] good story by leaving them to their own devices, but you'll probably get "bigger" story if the DM plans it out in advance. I'm not going to judge whether "little" story generated by pure player initiative is more or less satisfying than "big" story planned out in advance. That's more a matter of preference than anything else. But I think it's a mistake to label "letting the PCs do what they want" as "not story." Or at least it's a mistake if you want to avoid misunderstanding... [sblock=My Personal Preferences]For my part, what I get from D&D is PCs making interesting decisions about things that matter. (As an extreme example, the climax of my last campaign involved the PCs deciding whether they wanted to try to destroy their adversary and do the best they good to put their messed up world back together or to mess with the timeline, destroying the world they knew in the hopes of ending up with a better one.) That kind of meaningful PC agency is best served by a DM who has a pretty good idea of what the key inflection points are in the game world and steers the PCs towards those points so they have the best chance of being able to influence the game world. Or, if the PCs don't choose to exercise that power, it's a conscious choice on the part of the players and not just an accident of where they chose to go. I always liked the idea of the sandbox game where the players choose their destination relatively free of guidance and interference. But, in practice, most of the DMs I play with (including myself) just don't have enough time to make sure that there is something interesting in each plausible direction. So, instead, I prefer a game where the PCs have a choice of where to go, but the most interesting parts of the game are lit up in neon, so there's no question that we're playing out the game that has the most potential for fun.[/sblock] -KS [/QUOTE]

Verification