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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 5797850" data-attributes="member: 10479">Indeed.  I can further add that while even the GM might have no knowledge of any given situation prior to designing or winging it, when necessary, because they know the tune they can make up the dance as they go.Without sounding too highfalutin, I like to refer back to something I learned regarding literary writing, because I am a big fan of creating interesting characters adding in some conflict, and seeing where things go without a predetermined plot, which is essentially Sandbox Theory 101.  There's a practice known as a story web, and for our purposes an Adventure Web, that helps keep things on track from the world view side of the equation.  As long as every NPC and creature has some sort of motivation of their own, what can potentially happen in any given situation is not too much of a mystery for the GM and can bring a level of verisimilitude to the world for the players and their PCs even when entirely in unknown lands.  While they might not know these motivations from the outset, when they are discovered, it makes sense to them.  Likewise, that consistency helps them divine those motivations.  Of course, it might be as simple as a creature being hungry but it could also be as guarded as an NPC being one of only a few who knows he is the bastard child of the king.  A brief note during creation/design keeps you on track, even if it is an NPC you come up with on the fly.If you want an even more immersive experience for the players, try to think in terms of the Adventure Web and how these various disparate motivations overlap and converge, each one a tug on a strand that is felt through the Adventure Web.  If the PCs wound the aforementioned creature and drive it toward the cabin in the woods where the bastard is hiding out, how mad is he going to be if he finds out who drove it there?  Is he angry because that creature was the ersatz guardian of his western flank?  Will he think enough of the PCs to seek them out to help with his Machiavellian plans to overthrow the government?  It all feeds the same design beast for you.  And, because you know the PCs triggers, there's no reason you cannot happen to have the bastard couch his plans in a reward that would appeal to the PCs.  It's not railroading as long as they have a choice and there are others meaningful things for them to choose as alternatives.  I like to think of this approach as Schrödinger's Plot.  No one, even the GM, knows if there's a plot until the PCs decide to open the box and set things in motion, and the plot is never complete until the PCs have finished with the business at hand and moved on to further adventures, which might also be pinged much further out on an ever-widening Adventure Web.</blockquote>

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