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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 1203150" data-attributes="member: 2">Your frustrations are at least partially unnecessary. The secret is that you don't need to give your players free choice, as long as they think they have free choice.  You're striving for a Platonic ideal that you really don't need.It's like what I do for a living. I specialize in a fairly obscure field; I don't know everything, but I know more than the people I'm talking to. That's the secret to being an expert in something, and DMing works the same way.In gaming, I usually have a handful of interesting NPCs and gripping fight scenes thought out, but they're modular; they can be moved where needed. Then I have two to four different plot lines that the PCs can choose. They'll pick the one they want, and my modular encounters will then be fitted into that plot line.Mind you, you need to separate consequences and encounters. The consequences will probably be different if the group goes down path A instead of path B, but they'll still meet this cool NPC and fight these cool monsters. They didn't know that those encounters had been originally intended for path B and had gotten moved! If you know physics, it's like Shrodinger's Cat; until they choose their actions, your encounters exist in a limbo and can be moved wherever needed. This balancing act allows you to provide fun fights and cool NPCs, but still let the PCs roam where they will. It works really well for me, and I seldom have more than an hour or two of prep time per week.</blockquote>

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