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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8600187" data-attributes="member: 93670">The NPC sister <a href="https://www.enworld.org/goto/post?id=8595461" target="_blank">example</a> was not my example, it came up when something different was being discussed.  Since I do allow players limited invoke ability at the cost of NPCs pulling back on players sometimes I was able to answer Hussar's 2405 question about how a player might be able to use it & what kind of trouble it might get into <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-has-d-d-changed-over-the-decades.686433/post-8596263" target="_blank">here</a> in2412 but haven't been able to shed problems she might introduce to my campaign if I were to allow such a "boring"* NPC. I don't think the person who brought her up is even involved in things at this point so she's an especially bad example for anything in that light.Oh no, you  get the wrong impression about setting engagement.  Players can & do develop deep investment in their PCs & the world, make a mark on the world & even backfill stories,  they just do so collaboratively both with me the GM & the other players at the table through play rather than handing me a "backstory". I gave some examples of how it works both ways  at my table in the spoiler <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-has-d-d-changed-over-the-decades.686433/post-8598964" target="_blank">here</a>.  I provide a lot of the fiction yes, but a lot of that is just guiding what players bring during play & sometimes complicating things.  This works great with my regular players & players who eventually get up to speed but has the appearance of playing favorites until they do.   When dndbeyond made characters portable between campaigns some of the marketing videos mentioned terms like how it allows players to "own their characters" it raised the bar for players resisting it pretty significantly on getting players comfortable because players were being told that they own their character & it's story.When it comes to cost/benefits of advantages & disadvantages here  players give & get what they put into them because an uninvolved reactive character  is almost always going to develop less interesting story no matter how I try to drag them into it unless they fill a niche nobody else can conveniently do.  I've mostly been trying to use generic examples that don't need too much  context but my current game has a great example of this.  One of my five players just can not get out of the assassin's creed/morrowwind/etc mindset & regularly invents fanciful stories that tend to get "uhhuh... so anyways" type responses from the other players who just roll their eyes because the stories of their characters are made through deeds at the table, lets call him Bob.  In the current campaign several months in<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">One player started a church with a new faith & has done a great deal to get that rolling, a large part of that was done because the church needs villagers not in danger from monsters & such in the area but there's been other things</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A second player started a business but needed to clean up the monster infested roads leading to the area by dealing with root causes  for the monsters</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A third player is  there for beer & pretzels but is ok with the push/pull if a little bland</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A fourth player has been doing wizardstuff that would take a bit to explain how it's quite involved in the church & business.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">And then there is bob.  Almost any complication thrust at him causes anger & frustration so we just quit doing that early on & decided he was a noble with some distant monster infested land  but he was a convenient excuse for everyone else to start their goals in the same area.  Occasionally he feels important because another player says words like "we're fixing your family's land" but generally he's even less involved than the beer & pretzels third player.</li> </ul>They've killed a dragon(quite a few if you count wyrmlings).... They tracked down the ruins of an ancient civilization & made it safe to recover a "mountain" of mostly copper coins needed for other purposes even though they were worth less than the cost of recovering them from the ruins of a fallen civilization after doing some jobs (mission of the week stuff around holidays) for a trade caravan to work for them now pay later transporting a caravan of mostly copper coins across a huge distance  out to the wastelands  They subdued a tuckers kobolds type problem to open a tunnel through a mountain.   They freed some bankers who were captured by bandits by dealing with a bandit problem in a neighboring kingdom because they needed educated accountant types to count & manage a mountain of copper so the local barter economy would break  with the creation of an economy while temporarily clearing up a severe coin shortage that was causing "problems" with the second player's business since back before they tracked down the ancient city.  Oh yea, they met & interacted with a lot of NPCs but social interactuon isn't exactly a thing d&d is super well known for calling a strength so this actually improves the NPCs, some of those I created & some they created but many NPCs that one or more of the PCs themselves had already known or interacted with in the past before any of the PCs met each other.  Most of the players & their PCs are phenomenally invested by any standard & I left out a lot of the last year involving planar travel demons & magic of the old empire.Bob is there week after week telling fanciful stories everyone shrugs at, aside from being an extra PC his biggest contribution to all of that was gm: "bob this monster infested wasteland of yours has a lot of economic problems on account of being a monster infested wasteland, there's not really a shop like that in the village b<s>ut.."></s>Bob:"no it doesn't, it has a huge economy where people sell monster parts not found anywhere else in the world  it has a few shops that sell magic weapons">Player2:"Um... That gives me an idea of how we could kickstart this crummy town from a book I read involving a huge pile of copper coins & link it to my roads problem".  There have been a couple times where someone made an effort to involve his character, but it's almost always better to work around him because he offers a high cost to everyone's story & returns negative benefits  to them whenever efforts are made.  He wants a hard concrete ever growing PC story with exclusive authorship & no concern for anything not a <a href="https://fate-srd.com/odds-ends/demystifying-fate-fractal-and-nature-aspects" target="_blank">fractalized background</a> that makes the quantum ogre look positively encased in carbonite.*In the fate rules the word "boring" comes up a lot, pretty much everything is an aspect there so this should decently convey what meaning for "boring" is being used[spoiler="intro to choosing aspects"][/spoiler]In Fate a lot of this would be handled with fate points but we never really thought of good way to graft such a thing on that wouldn't be wrecked by bob trying to spend his fate points alongside his stories.  Fate very much requires a level of complete player buy in that makes the early d&d holy trinity of fighter/rogueorthief/cleric look like a mere suggestion or it falls apart.</blockquote>

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