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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 3405692" data-attributes="member: 467">Freedom and responsibility are inextricably linked, even in the fun but fruitless past time that is RPGs.  If players desire a great deal of freedom to tell their own stories -- that is, control not just what their characters do in a situation, but also those situations themselves -- to some degree, they have to accept the responsibility of doing so with an agreed upon framework.  This requires a good deal of pre-play communication and planning, and part of the resultant social contract must include an agreement between the players and the DM regarding how each person and the whole group is going to get where everyone wants to be, game wise.Assuming we are still talking about D&D in something resembling the tradiitonal sense, with its basic assumptions and genre tropes, them that might mean the players say, "We want to be wandering adventurers to loot tombs for lost riches."  Assuming the Dm agrees that is good idea for a campaign he'd like to run, and as a group they have all decided in a milieu in which to do this, the DM can say, "Give me a couple weeks to put build a sandbox while you guys make your characters."When the group gets together the next time, some things will have had to happen for the contract to work.  The players will have had to create a group of wandering adventurers.  That is harder than it may sound.  lone wolves, old sages and blind-mute-cripple beggars just won't fit, and the player that creates one is breaking the contract.  The DM will have had to create a setting, even a lightly sketched out one, with tombs to loot and riches inside, not a notebook full of intricately detailed plots and counter-plots.  The DM is breaking his end of the contract if he doesn't throw a map down on the table and say, "This is where you live, this is where the tombs can be found.  Where do you want to go today?"Obviously, this is a simplistic example but it illustrates the point.  Whatever it is the group decides upon needs to be understood and approved by everyone involved.  otherwise, there's no group and there's no game.  the more control over the game and its events the players want to wrest from the DM, the more responsibility they have in making the game run smoothly and provide an extertaining experience for everyone at the table -- not just the DM, but the other players as well, including the casual gamer that just wants to roll some dice.IME, most players that say they want freedom don't want the responsibility that goes with it.  Most just want to do the thing that is cool to them and have the kind of fun they prefer and aren't that concerned with whether the other people at the table are having the same level of fun.  it is a psychological thing, I think, based largbely on the traditional division of power and responsibility in RPGs: those that regularly DM are used to concerning themselves with others' fun and watching over a broad scope of characters and events; those that are players more often than not only have themselves and their character to worry about.And, finally, I'd like to point out that, IMO, the "story" in an RPG comes after the game is done and the last die is rolled.  you tell the "story" of Sir Nobwood the Paladin because he died at the end of scorpion tipped kobold spear or because he killed the dragon, married the princess and became king od the land.  Deciding that either of those things is the "story" before they happen kills the Game in RPG and turns it into a very poor version of improvisational theater.</blockquote>

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