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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 6204956" data-attributes="member: 221">The answer would depend on the style of adventure one is going through. In a more classical dungeon adventure, the adventure is centered on exploration, discovery, and survival. Challenges tend to be those which test the players ingenuity, their skill in battle and their "skill" as players.  At the same time, there tends to be a cover story of character background and motivation and clues or developments germane to character growth or story advancement is interspersed among the other things.While Gygax's proffered playstyle was often focused on advice for how to deal with dungeons as dungeon explorers, I think it would be a mistake to think his characters did not have motivations or that his stories did not have plot. Many of the classic published modules were thin on plot but that is not because Gygax discounted plot, but rather because he tried to offer products easily molded to a variety of plots, as in Keep on the Borderlands or Expedition to Barrier Peaks. While it is true that the players choose the goals for the session, the DM, in Gygax's mind, has already offered goals for the adventure. The sessions are merely building blocks in which the players attempt to fulfill the greater goals developed by the DM in backstory. There has been a movement in recent years, and I mostly approve of it, to focus just a little more on plot and a little less on exploration in published adventures (a move which actually started under Gygax's supervision with other classic modules), but this does not necessarily denote a move away from Gygaxian play for some of us, just a reframing of priorities in print publications. I still present an overarching plot to my players, provide a set of possibilities and then let them (mostly) plan on making their own plans on how to deal with the rooms in the dungeon, or the characters in town, or where to go next. The framework of the game for me remains very close to what it was in 1e.</blockquote>

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