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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 3617587" data-attributes="member: 41">Yes, I ran my <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=31153" target="_blank">Liberation of Tenh game</a> this way-- the characters had just reached 9th level, and we were looking for a change of pace.  I took over DMing chores, and my preferred DM style is player-driven plotting.Even a player-centric game is going to need concrete goals-- difficult, time-consuming, multiple-adventure goals (i.e. a quest).  If your players are knowledgeable about the campaign world, they may be able to pull political or appropriately high-level long term goals out of the setting (i.e "Free Tenh").Otherwise, you're going to need to throw a lot of hooks at them in the form of rumors, NPCs and Big Happenings.Remember, sometimes their reactions can show you what they think of a setting/location/NPC/hook even if they don't explicitly say, "let's go kick THAT guy's a-s!"  You may have to slow-pitch them some adventures early on, until they get a sense that they really are in charge of their destinies.Big Happenings are the most critical, IMO, because they represent the campaign world as it evolves without the PCs interferance.  If a couple hundred refugees show up in your quiet little town one day, that's an adventure hook.  Who displaced them?  What does it mean for the group?  For the world?Without putting a huge monstrous conspiracy behind every event (a staple of many D&D campaigns, all the way back to the G-D-Q series), the world still has chains of political and environmental cause-and-effect, and offering the group free rein as to where they want to dive in to that cause-and-effect goodness is what the player-driven game is all about.One trick I used with quite a bit of sucess is to stat up two or three encounters appropriate to the party's level, and just keep them around for when things bog down and a fight needs to happen.  Usually, if you're careful, you can tie it into whatever plotline they are interested in at the time.  If you're quick-thinking, and can re-skin an encounter "theme" on the fly, you can also use these pre-prepared battle royales to buy yourself enough time to prepare location-based adventures (once the intrepid adventurers have finally decided, "yes, we really do need to go attack the Citadel of the Stone Raven") by filling up the remainder of a session with a couple of tough fights you'd prepped earlier.When the next sesson rolls around, you've had time to prepare your location, and everyone wins.Except the monsters.</blockquote>

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