NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7065852" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Perhaps that's what you were trying to argue, but since you only pointed out the negatives, I felt obliged to say that a blended approach has positive factors. I think you're probably right by saying such an approach is its own thing, and also that most games are likely such a blend. I disagree that they are mutually exclusive. I use both elements in my game. I think @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=29398" target="_blank">Lanefan</a>'s reply about the macro versus micro scale of the game is one reason. The other is the frequency of usage. Every game has some sort of restriction on player action. We could say that a heavily plot focused, linear game has more restrictions than other games. Such a game may even accurately be called a railroad. But even very open, player-driven sandbox style games still have restrictions. It's unavoidable that there are at least some. If your game is a post-apocalyptic setting of some sort, then the player's aren't necessarily free to abandon their search for fuel and safety in the badlands and instead examine suburban life in contemporary times. So it's a sliding scale, with opposite extremes. Most games would be somewhere in the middle. My game certainly contains DM-authored content in the form of a main plot. But I still leave the players a good amount of leeway in how they engage that plot, and in what other plots are incorporated. Perhaps it works for me because when the characters are created, we work together to incorporate them into the existing world. So my players are constantly driving the story in the ways that I hoped they would. Sure there are some detours here and there, but that's fine. We go where the play takes us, but it inevitably goes back to the main plot. That plot is much more open then you likely expect. It's very loose because I want the players to come up with their own ideas on how to engage the story. I don't really need to steer events in order for the players to interact with the main story. So I see no reason that player-driven material and DM-driven material cannot be in alignment at times, and how they cannot dovetail nicely together at other times. Sure, it is easy to imagine them being at odds...but it is not something that must be so.</blockquote>

Verification