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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bastoche" data-source="post: 2759690" data-attributes="member: 306">First:I'm not talking about campaign plot. I'm talking about that plot the players stumbled upon a t that time. For ex. the Al-Tizim thing. Something was prepared, they passed right by. So be it! If not, there would have NPCs and "scripts" of "what happens when the PC do X?"Second: I have a good DMing experience. I just happen to be player right now. I've been RPGing for about 15 year and in all those years I've run quite a few campaigns. And I just happen to have realized a lot of things during this campaign because it's the first time I've ever felt so "awkward" during play. Something was "wrong" from the start that I couldn't put my finger on until I went on the Forge forum and tried to diagnose our problem. I've played and DM great, nice and sucky campaigns. But never sucky because of a clash of styles. Third: be careful here that I'm not talking of "open-ended" playing in general. I'm talking about a very specific type of open gaming. Open gaming many suggested here is possible be requires a tremendous effort of prep time. The specific type I'm talking about here is one that maximize optimization time AFAIK.For the rest. Who did the murder, who was murdered is irrelevant to the players. It's an excuse to have them face critical choices. And the encounters are not designed to allow them to find who did the murder at the proper challenge rating and then face the murderer. It's an excuse to have the players question themselves about the values of their character. The murderer is my lover should I turn her/him over or escape with her/him to redeem her/himself? And such choices possibilities are what you are looking for in the background. In Lost Soul's example of open ended gamist play, there is one possible problem (I've personnally encountered it). It's lacking the dimension of purpose. If the player wants to play a ranger because of a certain feature or concept concerning the class. that's what the DM should build the campaign around. If the Fav enemy: orc was chosen as an afterthought, he might very well not feel attracted to the idea of campaigning against orcs.So the important part is character creation and in that part, not only must the background allow for plot hooks to be created but they have to be there on purpose. An example of easy going open ended gamist gaming is having the 4 players suggesting a common background feature to their character and one that MUST be critically important to all of them. It could be a common hatred for orcs or undeads or they may be part of an army (and dutyful and loyal to it). They have to feel compelled to accomplished their common goal. With that in mind, you can either have a very closed (voluntarily railroaded by character design) and plan a campaign for which the player will voluntarily follow any lead you throw at them. Or you can have open ended gaming and have them suggest whatever they figure would further their own ends. The problem with the later is that if the players do not agree that the "common goal" is an excuse to engage in a "test our commitment to the cause" game or something similar, you will be unable to predict their every moves. However if the goal of the game is solely to test the commitment, then you can throw encounters at them that will test such commitment and then you never know where you'll end up, but you do know that the perparation is used. An example of the orc slaying commitment. Suppose the players face an encounter is which they could let a mountain crumble over thousands of orcs but on the other hand, there is X innocent people that might be rescued from the horde. They could decide to let the mountain fall (which would require then certain actions to be performed and that would be the gaming session of the day) or they could face the horde and save the 5 people... but letting thousands of orcs roam free! You know they will not say "Hum... Let's scratch that and return to the nearest village".So in other words, what is missing in your argument is the fact that the players are commited to the encounters up from character creation. So "world" is not built on one side and the characters on the other and then a mix is made. The world is made for the characters concedering what they offer in terms of purpose and commitment (rather than generic "plot hooks").The problem with D&D 3E for such a play style is that from a mechanics point of view, there's no reward for "commiting" nor is there any penalities for not commiting (beyond the in-game conscquences it can cause). That's why games like the riddle of steel or dogs in the vineyard are much better suited for such a play. The reward system is such that no matter what you choose (value 1 or value 2), you gain "XP" and you do not (or lose) if you pick "the 3rd option" so players ALWAYS choose something among the offered choices and don't come up with "something new". And yet depending on the game, they could. If so, then they must get commited to something else for long enough. If not, other players around the table will get frustrated and blame the "shapechanger" of being a "bad roleplayer".And to return to the open ended gamist suggestion, I gave one very early in the thread, stupid me, Donjon from anvilwreks press.</blockquote>

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