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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bastoche" data-source="post: 2744159" data-attributes="member: 306">I currently play in a campaign where the DM does exactly what you want to suggest.My conclusion: it just plain does not work. Maybe some GM can pull it off but in such instance, it implies MANY wasted hours of preperation time.Here's my take on it:If you want to have an "open ended" game, you MUST not have a plot line. You MUST let the player do what they want to do and fill in from there. Impossible to pull off in a "canon" setting IMO, unless ALL the players are VERY well versed in the setting already.Sometimes, the players wil talk among themselves (in or out game) about what they think is happening. Often, they come up with things you haven't though of. Make it happen.What we have is a campaign where the whole "story" is "imposed" by the DM. The conclusion of the campaign is written, so to speak, but not in details. The DM then provides a "situation" and/or "environment" to players hoping/wishing the players will "follow" the hook "volontarly". It just don't work.If the DM wants absolutly to write HIS story with the players improvising the "lines" it must be accepted up front by all the players in which case the more or less are consiously "railroaded". If you want them to all total freedom, writting a "story" up front is a sure way to meltdown and frustrations.So what's the DM's job in an open ended format? Provide challenges that is of the proper CR "on the fly".For example:A NPC is dominated by a wizard. He tries to convince the PCs to do action X. They find this suspicious and for some reason assume it's a doppleganger trying to pull their legs.In the case of a "story" written by the DM, the dominated NPC is still a dominated NPC and if the DM do not provides hints or a "suggested" solution (opposite to "letting the players do whatever") to find out what happen, you end up with very frustrated players.On the open ended format, the NPC "becomes" a doppleganger (to the DM only, to the PC he would've been a doppleganger all along!!!) and then the DM pulls out a pre-generated doppleganger and the story ends. Next session, the DM prepares a story for the what why and how the doppleganger was there (most probably salvaging the wizard plot but now with a doppleganger or a doppleganger wizard...).Some game systems better allow that open ended thing with a better technique for DMs to prepare for such campaigns. Like the game Donjon for example <a href="http://www.anvilwerks.com/?Donjon" target="_blank">http://www.anvilwerks.com/?Donjon</a></blockquote>

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