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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MostlyHarmless42" data-source="post: 8085757" data-attributes="member: 6845520">Exactly this. I feel a lot of the people who tend to have the "gardening" approach to storytelling (those who create characters and books and only care what emerges from the players) seem to sometimes have a fundamental misunderstanding about the benefits of "planned" storytelling approach. Yes, a bad DM can be overly attached to telling they story they want and robbing the players of agency, but the hooks and natural emergence style approach HAS downsides too. For one, it completely disallows truly longterm narrative foreshadowing, something I regularly use at great length to the enjoyment of my players. Currently what one of them enjoys the most about their current game is that I keep dropping breadcrumbs about the heritage of one of their PCs and it is something I'd not be able to do as effectively if I did not have at least a vague plot structure planned out ahead of time.Second, the other real downside of the natural growth sort of play is that it can easily result in the game just feeling...boring to some. It's the age old debate of whether serial content (one long overarching story) ir episodic content (smaller independent stories) are better. The answer is both are good for different people. I for one VASTLY prefer serialized content because a mediocre or problematic moment in a story with a longer scale just feels like a moment I have to push through to get to the good stuff, while a mediocre episodic show I just instantly stop caring or watching. After all, why bother sticking around?More relevant to tabletop games, the trick to doing a longer storied/structured game is to a) not pull a bait and switch on the players and give them clear themes and expectations to work with so they can make characters that actually give a damn about the plot (i.e. don't tell them they will be pirates and then have the game be all "surprise! This is a drow game! cough Pathfinder was bad about this cough) and b) be vigilant as the DM that you don't get too attached to a preset story outcome and try to force it at the expense of player agency.I run heavily structured and planned out games, but one thing I am always doing is revising said plan constantly. I always plan at least two or three options for every major event that I expect to happen and am quite often still forced to think on the fly when players often create their own choice that I didn't forsee. Frankly having to field those random moments is WHY I enjoy DMing instead of just writing a book. It's where I derive fun. Or when players are constantly guessing in or out of character about what they think will be where the story will be heading. The thing is, unlike a book, I'm not set in stone. Often my players in their musings give me better ideas for how to make things work than I can come up with. I always listen for their input, even if they don't realize they are providing it.</blockquote>

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