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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1138731" data-attributes="member: 3146">When I run a game, my players have plenty of free will. Every round of combat they can choose one move action, one standard action, and as many free actions as they can think of. They can move, they can full attack, they can cast spells, they can sunder, they can even try talking the other side out of fighting. If that's not free will, what is?I'm only joking.A year ago, when I was running a campaign, I tried giving the players absolute free will. They could take the hooks I'd built into the world and run with them. Lift the curse of the cursed lands? Go for it. Root out the cult of the devourer in Hightower? Go for it. Whatever. Unfortunately, "whatever" was my players' reaction. They wandered around helpless and confused until they bumped into an NPC with the "Plot hook" icon on him (a paladin saying "I'm looking for someone to accompany me on a quest, a horde of skeletons led by an evil priest, or something equally obvious).As a player in a wide open campaign, I found myself in a similar situation. Unless the DM provides detailed information about the world, it's hard to come up with a motivation. And, the more specific your motivation is, the less likely it is to be shared by the rest of your companions. In general, I find that characters develop and interact most believably when they are created with similar goals in mind (either because the campaign is one where characters' goals are determined by their environment (little freedom) or because they were created with ties to each other). The more freedom that is available in game, the less freedom is proper in character creation. And vise versa.As far as modules go, I actually find that straight up no-holds barred dungeon crawls actually seem to offer the most freedom of action. In RttToEE, it felt like my characters were more in charge of their destiny than in any "role-playing" mod I've played. So, maybe there's something to my joke at the beginning after all.</blockquote>

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