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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5105623" data-attributes="member: 42582">I find it depends quite a bit on player expectations. I have some players who like to be told how the gameworld is, and when I ask them to tell me (eg after a successful knowledge check, or in relation to some aspect of their backstory) they are a bit hesitant. Others like to be much more proactive in shaping those aspects of the world they care about, which (at least for my players) mainly involves their PCs and things related to their PCs.Based on my experience, I think the challenge is this: D&amp;D relies fairly heavily on a degree of structure and pre-prep - you need 8 to 10 encounters for a level, and those encounters are in danger of being boring if you don't take care in designing them (for my group, the threatened boringness isn't &quot;grind&quot; - we haven't found any grind in 4e yet - but repetition and lack of thematic power). But too much structure and pre-prep can make it tricky to give players too much flexibility. I was re-reading Chapter 1 of the DMG2 this morning, and I found it interesting that in its example of implementing the pass/fail cycle (which I see as related to co-operative storytelling) it emphasised skill challenges rather than combat encounters. Skill challenges are probably easier to improvise, and to shape on the fly in response to player input, than are combat encounters.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5105623, member: 42582"] I find it depends quite a bit on player expectations. I have some players who like to be told how the gameworld is, and when I ask them to tell me (eg after a successful knowledge check, or in relation to some aspect of their backstory) they are a bit hesitant. Others like to be much more proactive in shaping those aspects of the world they care about, which (at least for my players) mainly involves their PCs and things related to their PCs. Based on my experience, I think the challenge is this: D&D relies fairly heavily on a degree of structure and pre-prep - you need 8 to 10 encounters for a level, and those encounters are in danger of being boring if you don't take care in designing them (for my group, the threatened boringness isn't "grind" - we haven't found any grind in 4e yet - but repetition and lack of thematic power). But too much structure and pre-prep can make it tricky to give players too much flexibility. I was re-reading Chapter 1 of the DMG2 this morning, and I found it interesting that in its example of implementing the pass/fail cycle (which I see as related to co-operative storytelling) it emphasised skill challenges rather than combat encounters. Skill challenges are probably easier to improvise, and to shape on the fly in response to player input, than are combat encounters. [/QUOTE]

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