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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CandyLaser" data-source="post: 9358866" data-attributes="member: 7029413">That is a good point, and I'm afraid my last post was reacting to that trend rather than furthering the topic. On the subject of what I like about this style of play: as someone who almost entirely GMs, I appreciate how it encourages player buy-in and gets them involved. We're playing out their story, collectively, in a way that lets all of us be surprised by how it goes. This adds resonance to the important moments, I find.I've mentioned before that I'm currently running Fellowship as my main game. The last big campaign before that was a 5e Eberron, and we were playing in what I suspect is a more neo-trad style than most 5e tables. I pitched it as a pulp adventure story, going up against the Emerald Claw. One player had picked the hermit background and, as their discovery background feature, wanted to be able to hear the voice of the Silver Flame, while another wanted to be a shulassakar venerating and serving the couatl whose essences made up the Flame itself. Those two backstory elements ended up being central to the plot, and because they were player-chosen, there was immediate interest from the players and emotional impact as we collectively discovered how the story unfolded.My overall "prep" consisted in me putting together about a page of brainstorming about plot elements I wanted, over and above what my players had told me they wanted, either explicitly or implicitly. Everything else was stuff that grew organically in play, often as a result of plot elements the PCs had introduced (one had a twin brother, another was experimented on by House Vadalis, a third was a drug-smuggling kobold with underworld contacts everywhere). I think it's safe to say my players would put it in the top 3 of the campaign's I've run with them over the course of the last dozen years or so. The fact that the plot that emerged was so tightly tied into the characters' backstories as well as the relationships that developed during play made it genuinely stunning when an NPC the players had all grown to love and trust betrayed them (something I'd wanted to do from the moment I introduced the NPC) and genuinely touching when, at the climax of the game, the two players above (along with a third) sacrificed themselves to reignite the Silver Flame and bind the demon lord they'd inadvertently released. Basically, by giving the players more ability to author the story, they became more involved in its creation, and thus more invested in its quality and how it played out.</blockquote>

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