Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="delphonso" data-source="post: 7158899" data-attributes="member: 6892015">So before I get into my real question and discussion I'll give some background. I'll bold the actual question for those who don't care to read.I started playing 5E as a DM with the mission statement of being a better DM. I have always been too controlling as a GM. I railroad my players and they end up being passengers on this story I'm  telling instead of being active participants in it. That's not really what I want, so I started this campaign and have done my best to avoid this. I have given as much freedom to my players as I can, and just put in a few rigid points to keep the story going in one direction. Twice, they've gone up against mysteries which were completely controlled by me, but they discovered and searched for solutions on their own. I got really good feedback on these from the players, so I feel like I'm making progress.My usual gaming group is pretty small. It's three close friends of mine and myself as GM. The party is an interesting mix: a really well-built Monk, a devoted Paladin, and a Sorcerer (who is more of a face for the party). We played once a week for about 5 months until I took a vacation. When we returned there were some scheduling and technical issues for a while. I decided to suspend that campaign and take a break as GM. We moved on to FFG: Edge of the Empire and added another player. The Paladin is now GMing. The adventure we left off on was a natural stopping point, and I had planned to take a break after they finished it. They never finished the adventure, and I'm a bit thankful for that since it gives me time to iron out the conclusion of that adventure. I wanted it to end with a big narrative choice. The party has been helping out a lesser noble and building up their castle. They've been following a mystery which seems to be connected to the capital of the country. This country is a theocracy, but a different deity than what the Paladin follows. The current adventure has them getting rid of a monster problem in the capital. I was going to offer them the chance to be knights under the king of the country as a reward. Their favorite NPC wants to be a knight, and they invited that NPC to join them on this adventure as well. To make the choice more difficult, I was going to say they'd have to devote themselves to the god of the Theocracy - something the Paladin would definitely not do. At the end of the day, I know this isn't a choice. The party definitely will refuse. The Paladin would be against it completely and the other players are more suspicious of the country than supportive of it. I worry that I'm falling back into my habits of controlling the party too much.I really want to hand out tough decisions for my party, but I don't know what motivations to play off of. If I know what they're going to pick, it doesn't feel like much of a choice. Does anyone have any advice for planning story-propelling decisions? What aspects of my characters should I be looking at to confront them with?</blockquote>

Verification