[Game Design] Will Wright on Story and Game

[buzz]

DnD, at least in my opinion, lends itself to scripted play. The stats for pc and npc are so detailed that it requires a lot of leadtime to create.

I'd agree, though I don't think that "scripted" needs to mean "plot the players follow." I think it just means, "Know what we're doing tonight."

 

[Celebrim]

You don't normally allow players to create characters?

Since that time, I don't allow players to create characters without a little more restriction on the sort of characters that they play. Prior to that time, I niavely assumed that if I allowed experienced role-players the freedom to create any sort of character that intriguied them, I'd naturally get more creative and interesting PC's. They were creative, but they weren't necessarily more interesting because of it.

This seems a natural outcome of sending players off to make PCs in isolation from each other with no idea what the campaign is going to be about. I don't think it really speaks to the issue of player input. I've played campaigns using published modules where this was just as disastrous.

I had explained to them what the campaign was to be about. What I discovered on that occassion was this wasn't in itself enough input to create protagonists that would move through the story. I also needed some prior consensus about what the protagonists in the story would be about. Leaving it up to the players, I ended up with what were realistic and interesting NPC's - not protagonists.

To be clear here, is anyone really advocating games where everyone comes to the table totally cold, starting from zero, and not having talked at all about what kind of game the group wants to play? And the GM provides no other input than, "Okay, go do something"? I'm not sure this is what Will was talking about, nor what KM is talking about.

I'm not sure either. It would be very helpful if someone arguing from Will's perspective concretely defined what was being suggested. I took it to mean that an RPG should be even more 'player driven' and less unscripted than what I would consider the 'norm' for most campaigns. I think if it only means, "The DM shouldn't railroad the players.", then its neither an interesting nor particularly informative suggestion. I thought we already knew that. If it means something more than that - which it seems to - I don't see how in practice it would actually work.

 

[Celebrim]

What counts as a good game depends on what the players want. Some groups are happy to play Dragonlance, where the play experience is mostly one of acting out someone else's story, with the thematic issues already largely resolved by the adventure's author. Such a game would preclude a character exploring the issue of treachery, for example, because any attempt to roleplay betrayal in a fundamental fashion would completely derail the game.

Which is an interesting thing to say, because the story in Dragonlance contains a notable act of betrayal by a friend, and leaves the characters uncertain if they can rely on each other.

But more to the point, few games can survive one of the PC's exploring the issue of treachery. As I said, one of the restrictions that in practice we have on tabletop games is that they are ensemble casts, where no PC can be significantly more important to the story than any other and where most often all the PC's must be on screen at the same time. From a practical standpoint, the game cannot be run if this is not true.

Besides which, the Dragonlance modules have a reputation for railroading that is only partially warranted. The difficulty with them is that the story that they want to tell is beyond the ability of a novice DM to handle without railroading, and so they include the mechanisms a novice DM would need to keep them on track. But an experienced DM with some guts and a willingness to put more effort into the modules can run them in a fashion that leaves more room for player choice.

Other groups want player input into the plot. This can be done via backstory (as KM suggests in his post).

I have no problem with backstories within limits. What I have a problem with is a player writing 'forestory'. If a DM cannot expect to have a story unfold exactly according to his designs, then players should not start with the assumption that they know exactly where thier character is going either.

Yet other groups of players want to be able to determine the thematic resolution of the game. Such a group do not want their adventure scripted at all, whether by the GM or by the players. They want the story to be determined by the choices actually made by the players during play.

Whether scripted or not, the story is always determined by the choices actually made by the players. Once again, I assume that if anyone in this thread is offering anything novel at all, it isn't merely "Don't railroad the players." If all that's being said is, "Don't railroad the players.", I've wasted my time responding to it.

The question under discussion in this thread, I think, is what role the players have in determining the content and action of the game.

Actually, if you'll read the beginning again, I think you'll see that the question is actually what role the DM has in determining the action and content of the game. Player choices are assumed to play a large role in the determining the course of the game. The question was, should (or even can) the DM's role in story crafting be relegated to merely responding to player desires to grant them the story that the players suggest that they want?

Is it possible to have a DM so good at doing this that he only responds to what the PC party asks of him? In other words, the DM doesn't create a world and allow the players to play in it: the players give the DM instructions on how to create the world, the DM runs them through his own ringer, and out pops the entirety of a D&D campaign.

My answer to this is basically, "Sure, it could be done, but it will necessarily be an inferior game to one in which the DM creates a world and allows them the PC's to play in it." That sort of 'wish fulfillment' gaming becomes very unsatisfying to most people about the time that they turn 12 (at the latest), and interestingly, before they are age 12 most people are least equipped to take the initiative in story creation without prompting. If I was running a game for 7 year olds, then I might work more along those lines since your average 7 year old is not well equipped (emotionally at least) for challenges with real possibilities of failure. The stories would probably resemble something more like 'Dragontales' or 'Dora the Explorer' in the setting of the players choice, and they'd probably be very rules light. But those are more imagintive toys than actual games, which is what I feel with regard to Will Wright's games as well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And what I'm saying is that allowing a player to script the rails that his train runs on is no more interesting than a DM scripting the rails that a train runs on. In the later case, the players end up wondering why they are their since nothing that they do can change the predetermined outcome, and in the former case the DM (and maybe even the other players) wonder why they are there since some player no matter how he steers the wheel is allowed to get where he's going anyway.

No, in the former case, the players provide the impetus for the DM to present them with challenges, rather than the DM scripting out which challenges can occur. No one player gets to steer the ship more than the others, and no player has a cakewalk. And in the latter case, the players make small, localized choices within a framework.

Neither one inherently leads to a bad game.

The default assumption of any D&D setting I'm aware of is if you work for it, a big thematic or dramatic payoff is available. It's not like adding that as a possibility adds anything new.

The new idea is, though, that the big thematic payoff isn't just sitting there waiting to be discovered -- that you, as a player, can help create your own dramatic payoff by informing the DM of what you want (through character actions and character choices), and that it comes out naturally from your actions, rather than waiting for you to search the right 5' square.

Likewise, its a pretty bizarre DM that needs to identify a players needs for a players to have villains and plots to foil. I thought we all already did that. It's not like I've ever once been in the middle of DMing and thought to myself, "You know, these players seem to have a need to face down villains and foil thier diabolical plots. Perhaps I should add villains and diabolical plots to my game setting, since they didn't exist thier before."

Most DMs really are already on this path, at least lightly. What this new idea would seem to encourage is that *all* you are to do, as a DM, is add things that the players need, and add nothing else. If the players need a villain/plot, you insert it. If the players need a lighthearted dungeon crawl, you insert it. If the players need to play a PC beholder, you insert it. A DM always adds their own and the campaign's unique flavor and style to what they add, so it's not like you have no control, merely that you control what the players tell you to control.

As for motivating a character, I once started a campaign in which I'd allowed players to create characters. Once I started playing I realized that all of them had created radical introverts that had no internal motivation to actually go out and have adventures, and whose personal preferences gave them no reason to actually associate with each other (and actually reasons to actively dislike each other).

Running with this idea of game design, you'd still have a few interesting options here. #1 is to force the introverts to get along anyway -- force them into an unavoidable social scenario with some sort of tragic action: a sinking ship, an erupting volcano, an invading force of evil, some sort of massive-scale hardship that they can't avoid. Circumstances throw them together, and now they have to work together or die. #2 might be to run it competitively: if they actively dislike each other, you can almost do a PvP style game where each person has to accrue their own allies and resources from the other players. #3 might be a typical "you are hired by a wizard to fight monsters" kind of campaign where the characters only work together out of self-interest.

And along the way, it might morph into something completely different. The idea is that the players, even by making these sort of characters, are informing the DM on what kind of game they want to play.

Quite often, a player has no really good idea what he wants to happen, or else has a good idea only of an end goal but no idea whatsoever how to get there. Not pulling players along with a hook has some serious drawbacks to it as well, and not pulling players along with a hook does not necessarily gaurantee that the players will have a good time.

You don't need a hook for a plot, you just need to inject something they have to react to, and how they react will inform if there is a real plot involved or if it's just background dressing for something else. You don't need a pre-existing storyline, you can create one along with the players as you go.

Most of all, no game does not have restrictions on player action. It's the restrictions on player action that make a game interesting and meanful. If players could actually do anything, then thier wouldn't be a game. It's a game because the players have to make choices within the limited sphere of possible action that is permitted.

That doesn't mesh up with any dictionary definition of "game" I can find. One must adhere to the rules of the game, but the rules of D&D specifically tell you to change them if they don't work. Run with that. That makes it's potential unlimited, that makes it possible to truly let a player play rather than just lead a player in one direction or another. Again, this gives a player a greater feeling of control over the entire game, not just their character. If their decision to make a character who can walk through walls made the game world slightly different, that's empowering, that's giving them agency and making sure that the consequences of that (the character might really be a ghost! The character may be trapped between two planes! The campaign may mostly take place on the Ethereal!) are directly felt by the player, rather than simply a context.

That means that players can't just walk through walls just because they want to (unless that ability gets explicitly added to thier list of permissable actions), or can't instantly arrive hundreds of miles away (unless that ability gets explicitly added to thier list of permissable actions), and so forth. It also means that a character who has an end goal state in mind, "I want to be the most feared pirate lord in the nine seas!", must get thier one step at a time and if they take thier first step as, "I go down to the naval yards and steal the biggest man-o'-war in the port." they are likely to have very short careers if they insist on that course of action.

It would seem to be a DMs job to lead players to their goals (and to challenge them to make those goals). If someone wants to be a feared pirate lord, heck, what's wrong with having them *start* as a feared pirate lord with a fleet of ships at their beck and call. If someone wants to *become* a feared pirate lord, obviously you'll have a very naval campaign where personal power and charisma are very important. The characters might have Reputation scores and you might use some variant light armor rules and maybe have a lot of aquatic villains.

There are additional restrictions that we must take into account in practice. The story being told is by necessity an ensemble one. The players don't have to be all on the screen at the same time all the time, but it helps if they are all on the screen at the same time a goodly portion of the time.

Nothing in this idea of campaign design is at odds with any of that.

The game world cannot be painted at infinite speed by even the most creative and extemporaneously talented DM without something being sacrificed. This 'game engine' you are talking about is a talented one, but its still only human. Player choice has to be constrained by what the DM can manage to create.

It really doesn't, though. You've got an entire imagination at your disposal and all it has to do is grab a hold of whatever hooks the players give you, and, if they give you nothing, to be able to tease something out of them. Everything else falls into place pretty easily.

All the best times I've ever had as a player were in sessions where the DM had heavily invested in perparation because thier is a certain depth and interconnectivity and mystery and surprise that only comes with that, and if all of your sessions that you enjoyed were completely spontaneous I'm inclined to think that its because you've had alot of boring campaigns and something 'wierd' was needed to shake them up (I know I've been there, "My character goes over and pulls down the villages sacred statue...").

You're being too judgmental, man. Yes, a story is enjoyable, but a story isn't much of a game, it's not up to the players to do anything but make minor decisions in a limited sphere that can't affect the outcome. I don't "play" Star Wars, I watch it. I barely "play" Final Fantasy X, too. I push buttons to continue a story where I have some limited control. That's not really a dig at either. I love Star Wars, and of course, I adore Final Fantasy, but they are basically stories. I don't feel like I'm making Luke save the death star, or that I'm choosing to destroy Sin, I feel like I'm watching great characters do that.

What I'm trying to speak up about (and what Wright's article had me realize) is the ability of D&D to become basically a game, to open up the structure to be driven by what a player does rather than a story the DM wants to tell, so that the character, the avatar, and the world, can be more distinctly personal to the players.

What I find particularly interesting about this is that Will Wright games don't actually have big dramatic payoffs. In fact, the average Will Wright game features artificial awards (say monuments in Sim City) just to demarcate that you've actually made some progress. Otherwise they are just one small incremental change after the other which have no goals except for arbitrary ones that the player may (or may not) set for themselves. But I've never once had dramatic payoffs from one the way I've had from games that had a better blend of scripting and player choice - like say Half-Life, Grim Fandango, Homeworld, Fallout, Planescape: Torment, etc.

Your opinion is pretty darkly colored by your low enjoyment of his previous games. Most people (judging by the long-running, outside-gamer success of the Sims, for instance) have no problem projecting interpersonal drama and conflict onto babbling avatara. They have no problem playing with the rules and the game to manufacture their own dramatic stories. Everyone playing the Sims is kind of like their very own DM, the architect of their world and their stories.

That's part of why Wright is a very unique game designer, and part of the power of that speech. He's saying most games don't realize the potential of player-created gaming. I can enjoy the story of PS:T, but it's one story I'll enjoy, not an endless field for pleasure.

D&D has the distinct ability to take advantage of player-created gaming because of the open-ended nature of its rules. To a certain extent, it has embraced a bit of this, but many DMs appear to be stuck in story mode, where they have to create Star Wars or Final Fantasy or PS:T in their worlds. Rather, Wright would seem to advocate that the players will create all those things. All you need to do as a DM is react to them as they go about creating those things. Have the players tell you a story, rather than telling one to them.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Alright. I have to dissent here. And it's not a SMALL amout of dissent either.

First - what the hell does Will Wright know about story telling and story telling in games? Show me a game he's done that tells a story. Just one.

Hint: you'll be looking a long time. There aren't any.

Second, what the hell does Will Wright know about RPG games in general and D&D in particular? Has he worked on one? Mobygames says "no", and I'm not aware of any either.

So what we have here is a clever game designer who got lucky with the Sims - the Reiner Knizia of a handful of light simulation software games - purport to give a lecture on game design and story telling at GDC - and people eat it up because of his name?

But this is Will Wright - so people eat it up. With a fork and knife.

In the summer of 2002 at Sigraph, this guy was on a panel where he was absolutely DISMISSIVE of the ability of players to tell stories or make their own modules or 3d content for a D&D CRPG. He believed that the quantity and quality of player modules for any game was limited and that people wanted a game experience created by pros and that's that.

But now that he has this overly hyped idea for a new game - found Jesus after all the player created content came out for the Sims and NWN - and suddenly you guys are eating this stuff up?

If Will Wright's name was not behind Spore - there isn't a single publisher in gaming that would have funded that game. Not one.

As for story telling, there are 1,000 people on these forums who know more about games and story telling than Will Wright.

Gimme a break.

 

[I'm A Banana]

First - what the hell does Will Wright know about story telling and story telling in games? Show me a game he's done that tells a story. Just one.

#1 point should be the understanding that Will Wright isn't telling stories, he's giving people platforms on which they can tell their own stories.

#2 point should be that people do create their own stories, and in droves. You see the videos posted about the Sims? The way it lures in even non-gamers? Take a look at Linden Labs and Second Life, too...people create their own stories if given the right platform and impetus.

#3 point is that D&D already does this for DMs. And it could do it for players, too. And that's where the interesting design, for me, comes into play: how a player can take their hand at creating the environment they play in, informing the DM on how to make a fun game for them, in a very active way.

 

[Steel_Wind]

#1 point should be the understanding that Will Wright isn't telling stories, he's giving people platforms on which they can tell their own stories.

#2 point should be that people do create their own stories, and in droves. You see the videos posted about the Sims? The way it lures in even non-gamers? Take a look at Linden Labs and Second Life, too...people create their own stories if given the right platform and impetus.

Meh.

Will Wright didn't give people in the Sims something where people could tell their own stories. He gave people in general - and women in particular - a platform where they could shop and decorate their virtual home.

If that's the story telling Will Wright purports to comment on - we need less of it - not more.

Do you roleplay bathroom breaks in your game session and call it sorry telling? I'm guessing "no".

#3 point is that D&D already does this for DMs. And it could do it for players, too. And that's where the interesting design, for me, comes into play: how a player can take their hand at creating the environment they play in, informing the DM on how to make a fun game for them, in a very active way.

See my comment above about Will Wright finding Jesus and becoming a convert 5 years after he absolutely DISMISSED the entire idea, because it is convenient now to say so as Spore nears time for its release.

I know hucksterism when I see it.

 

[Celebrim]

No, in the former case, the players provide the impetus for the DM to present them with challenges, rather than the DM scripting out which challenges can occur...And in the latter case, the players make small, localized choices within a framework.

You've not shown me anything that suggests that there is a qualitative difference between the two. The DM is always going to be scripting out the challenges that occur. Players will always make small localized choices within a framework. Maybe its a failure of my imagination, but I can't imagine what the difference you are seeing actually is.

The new idea is, though, that the big thematic payoff isn't just sitting there waiting to be discovered -- that you, as a player, can help create your own dramatic payoff by informing the DM of what you want (through character actions and character choices), and that it comes out naturally from your actions, rather than waiting for you to search the right 5' square.

And again, I don't see it. Player actions might tell me which 'side' they wish to take in a conflict, what setting intrigues them, whether they are motivated primarily by personal gain or whether they are looking to serve some larger cause, and each of those choices can be met with big thematic payoffs in the context of any number of conflicts I could introduce to a setting. But each of those thematic payoffs might involve at some point searching for a wonderous widget hidden in some 5' square, and in each case if that thematic payoff is to truly be a big time payoff it has to happen in ways that the players don't expect, that involve a good deal of planning, and some sort of creative twist that creates that all important moment in a story where the seemingly minor story points come together into something larger and more glorious than you thought they were. The big thematic payoff has to be thier waiting to be discovered. Else, it just won't be a really big payoff.

Most DMs really are already on this path, at least lightly. What this new idea would seem to encourage is that *all* you are to do, as a DM, is add things that the players need, and add nothing else.

In which case, you end up with a really light story. I'm reminded of the scene in 'The Sixth Sense', where Bruce Willis's character tries to tell a story, and it is a story in the strict sense, but it has no plan to it, no rising action, no epiphany, and no satisfying conclusion. Haley Joel Osmet's character replies (paraphrasing from memory), "You don't know how to tell a story do you? A story has to have a twist."

If the players need a villain/plot, you insert it.

Oh good grief, so now the game needs a villain and a plot only if I think the player's 'need' one?

If the players need to play a PC beholder, you insert it.

Don't you even see where that goes? A player tells you, "Heh, I need to play a 11HD aberration with disentigrate at will and the ability to generate an anti-magic field.", and I'm supposed to toss out my notes and say, "Ok Mike. Hold on while I think out a Epic planescape/spelljammer campaign that involves Joe as a feared pirate lord. Shouldn't take me more than 10 minutes. Bob, could you please tear up your character sheet and create something more suitable in the 21st level character range, and Sue you can still play your Shaman, but I think you'll have to rewrite your character background as well or at least add some more pages to it. Karen, it doesn't look like this is going to be very low magic afterall. Sorry."

Can you handle that? Do you think you can keep all the players happy if you give any of them that much freedom of choice? How do you think the other players are going to respond to one players declaration that he wants to play a PC beholder?

Running with this idea of game design, you'd still have a few interesting options here. #1 is to force the introverts to get along anyway -- force them into an unavoidable social scenario with some sort of tragic action: a sinking ship, an erupting volcano, an invading force of evil, some sort of massive-scale hardship that they can't avoid. Circumstances throw them together, and now they have to work together or die. #2 might be to run it competitively: if they actively dislike each other, you can almost do a PvP style game where each person has to accrue their own allies and resources from the other players. #3 might be a typical "you are hired by a wizard to fight monsters" kind of campaign where the characters only work together out of self-interest.

I really hate it when people treat me as stupid. I might not get something, and I'll freely admit I don't get it. But I don't need basic lessons in how to DM. Conscripted against thier will into a military unit to try to save the world from immenent alien invasion? Does that sound like something that can throw people together? It wasn't that I couldn't drag the story along, it was that without adequate PC involvement, it was boring for me to do so. And it wasn't satisfying for them as it could have been, because they were being dragged along. Unfortunately, dragging them along was the only option because otherwise the players wishes for the story pulled them in opposite directions along separate and mutually exclusive paths.

Anyway, I'm tired of responding to you point by point. We are talking past each other. So I'll be brief.

Most people (judging by the long-running, outside-gamer success of the Sims, for instance)...

I continue to think that 'outside-gamer success' bolsters my points rather than detracts from them. The Sims are to me a wonderful example of why this approach doesn't work for RPG's - no story, no challenges, no real failure, no real success, and no broad appeal within the actual gaming community.

And I've played RPG's long enough that I now expect my player's to entertain me by "projecting interpersonal drama and conflict onto babbling avatara.", and I tend to get a bit bored if they don't. There is nothing worse than having to carry on conversations between two or NPC's while the PC's just look on like they are an audience instead of players.

 

[Celebrim]

See my comment above about Will Wright finding Jesus and becoming a convert 5 years after he absolutely DISMISSED the entire idea, because it is convenient now to say so as Spore nears time for its release.

As far as Spore goes, I don't even find Spore all that innovative. It's simply taking some of the technology from games like Black & White and applying it to the Civilization/Ascendancy paradigm rather than the settlers paradigm. They are still 'god games', and the basic technology is as old as NetHack and Elite.

How successful Spore is going to be is going to depend entirely on how good each subgame actually is. Unless each phase is rewarding in its own right compared to similar games, the entire game will likely fail. My basic feeling is that there is way too much sim-ant in the game play as described, and sim-ant was a very poor game. Likewise, the remaining phases are way to 'sim' like as well, meaning that they are likely to turn off strategic micromanagers looking for a broader version of Ascendancy or Civilization, RTS fanatics looking for AoE with more diverse more player customizable game play, and well - just about every other gaming subgroup.

And the success of Sims was that it was a pretty looking chat room with collectible toys, so don't expect this to attract the non-gamer crowd either, so the whole game is going to hinge on whether the galactic game is as rich as Elite or Master of Orion II. Don't bet on it.

Finally, 'Massively Single-Player' is a gimic, since the whole advantage of multiplayer is competition or cooperation (or simply hanging out) and Spore provides none of these things.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If that's the story telling Will Wright purports to comment on - we need less of it - not more.

How do you figure? It's immensely popular, and very rewarding for those who do it. It doesn't discount the way things are done today, it just gives another possible way to do things. Why is it so threatening?

See my comment above about Will Wright finding Jesus and becoming a convert 5 years after he absolutely DISMISSED the entire idea, because it is convenient now to say so as Spore nears time for its release.

The comment is completely irrelevant to discussing this particular idea's possible iteration in D&D. Your personal dislike of Wright doesn't say anything about this specific idea. I'm hardly holding the man up on a pedestal, here, merely discussing his ideas.

The DM is always going to be scripting out the challenges that occur. Players will always make small localized choices within a framework. Maybe its a failure of my imagination, but I can't imagine what the difference you are seeing actually is.

The players tell the DM what challenges they want, rather than the DM telling the players what challenges exist. It's a different kind of social contract: rather than the DM asking "what do you do?", the players say "What happens next?" The flow of world-building then flows from the PC's to the DM and back, as a cycle, rather than from a DM to the PC's alone.

Rather than setting out to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, you let players determine which part is which, give them a field to create their character's world rather than telling them the constraints in which they must exist.

But each of those thematic payoffs might involve at some point searching for a wonderous widget hidden in some 5' square, and in each case if that thematic payoff is to truly be a big time payoff it has to happen in ways that the players don't expect, that involve a good deal of planning, and some sort of creative twist that creates that all important moment in a story where the seemingly minor story points come together into something larger and more glorious than you thought they were. The big thematic payoff has to be thier waiting to be discovered. Else, it just won't be a really big payoff.

Assuming that's true, that's only true for a story, however, and if the players want a story, then that's how you can give it to them. It's not true that this requires a good deal of planning. It actually requires very little planning, just an ability to notice patterns.

In which case, you end up with a really light story. I'm reminded of the scene in 'The Sixth Sense', where Bruce Willis's character tries to tell a story, and it is a story in the strict sense, but it has no plan to it, no rising action, no epiphany, and no satisfying conclusion. Haley Joel Osmet's character replies (paraphrasing from memory), "You don't know how to tell a story do you? A story has to have a twist."

If you want a story with a twist, go for it. A twist doesn't need in-deapth planning, though. You just see a pattern, and guess about what ELSE could cause that pattern.

"The great evil witch is marshaling forces to the north! But the REAL threat is that it's a distraction from the quiet doppelganger revolution happening in the capital city."

If you know the basic principles of storytelling you can apply them in countless iterations of slightly different stories. Shalayman proved this, by twisting slightly different stories over the course of a handful of movies.

Again, you can let the players determine the twist. If they pursue political scheming instead, you can reverse the twist on the fly so that the primary villain is actually a decoy.

Oh good grief, so now the game needs a villain and a plot only if I think the player's 'need' one?

Yes. There's never been a problem with dungeon crawls, barroom brawls, player-on-player contests, simple exploration...not every D&D game needs a story, and, in fact, sometimes the game could be better served by ignoring the story if the players don't really care about it.

Don't you even see where that goes? A player tells you, "Heh, I need to play a 11HD aberration with disentigrate at will and the ability to generate an anti-magic field.", and I'm supposed to toss out my notes and say, "Ok Mike. Hold on while I think out a Epic planescape/spelljammer campaign that involves Joe as a feared pirate lord. Shouldn't take me more than 10 minutes. Bob, could you please tear up your character sheet and create something more suitable in the 21st level character range, and Sue you can still play your Shaman, but I think you'll have to rewrite your character background as well or at least add some more pages to it. Karen, it doesn't look like this is going to be very low magic afterall. Sorry."

Can you handle that? Do you think you can keep all the players happy if you give any of them that much freedom of choice? How do you think the other players are going to respond to one players declaration that he wants to play a PC beholder?

#1: You just did it.

#2: These concepts don't have to run at cross-purposes. A bit of creative thinking and rules-nudging can enable a low-magic low-level tribal magic beholder just as easily as it could make a 21st level space shaman. The DM must always balance player spotlight time, analyzing what the players want to play and how they'll work together. He's not doing anything new here.

#3: Well, since you just did it, it can't be as tough as all that.

I continue to think that 'outside-gamer success' bolsters my points rather than detracts from them. The Sims are to me a wonderful example of why this approach doesn't work for RPG's - no story, no challenges, no real failure, no real success, and no broad appeal within the actual gaming community.

So...the approach doesn't work for RPG's....because...the approach attracts those who are interested in creating their own stories?

I'm not following your logic on this at all.