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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7055182" data-attributes="member: 42582">If the players are free to depart from what has been planned, then where does the tightness/cohesion come from?Conversely, if the players are expected to, or for whatever reason do, go along with the planning, such that the pre-scripted tightnes/cohesiveness is realised in play, then it seems a case of the GM determining the principal events of the campaign.Why would any of this matter? Only, as far as I can tell, if it somehow bears upon the PCs (and thereby the players in their engagement with the game). In which case it can be handled either as an element of framing or as a consequence of resolution.I mentioned an example of framing upthread: the death of Torog allows the tarrasque to reawaken.As far as a successor is concerned: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470791-Session-report-the-party-comes-close-to-a-split-but-not-quite" target="_blank">one of the PCs took on that mantle</a>, when I offered it to him in the context of a difficult fight with Kas.This is either more framing (and mostly colour in the context of that framing), or else is open to the same analysis as the assassination of the Marquis: if the players, via their PCs, are invested in the nation or the church then just changing them like this is a form of offscreen failure.Which is not to say that it wouldn't be a potentially appropriate consequence of a failed attempt by the PCs to stop the tarrasque.</blockquote>

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