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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7066427" data-attributes="member: 6785785">It's interesting. I think it's a pretty cool idea in general. I don't agree with all of it, but I don't have a problem with it. It seems to imply that any example of "story discovered through play" must be better than any example of "story designed ahead of play", which is of course ludicrous. Again, I am not advocating the opposite extreme. I don't think that a railroad is the best form of game. That's just my opinion, others may love them...but I do like to have a good deal of player driven material in my game. I like for their decisions to matter and to help shape events. My stance is that the GM can also shape events. Not to invalidate player choice or anything like that, but in order to craft a story. To add resonance to the events in play, and help form a narrative of some sort. Again, control is too strong a term for what I am advocating.  Some of that may come up a bit....I don't tend to take it too easy on PCs or feel so attached to any one of them in particular that they have the equivalent of "plot armor". But I could see, when a judgment call may be needed to adjudicate the results of failure, that I don't automatically assume the worst consequence of failure and inflict that on the party. For a really basic example, perhaps a PC is taken captive rather than killed. Is that an egregious use of GM Force? I don't think so....not if there is any plausibility to the villains doing so. As for the series of crits example or the set piece battle.....I tend not to worry about that stuff, and let it play out as needed. I will adjust some items at times if I feel that it was my initial judgment that was in error. Or if I think that there is some compelling reason to do so at the time of play that I was not privy to at the design stage, then I may make such changes. But these are not done without consideration, and are not done to preserve the outcome I am hoping for. I think it is the outcome that is the sticking point. I don't necessarily have a preferred outcome. I have a few possible outcomes in mind, and which will happen depends on what the players do. Then, once an outcome to a certain encounter or action is determined, then I determine the impact on the world. The consequences of the outcome. Sure. Hold on loosely is a decent philosophy in general. It is not absent from my game, I don't think. As for your style of play, this is where you start to sound a little one-true-wayish. Your style takes discipline and commitment....implying that other styles are undisciplined and lack commitment? I don't really think that is what you mean, but it's pushing that way. It's just a tool to use or not use. Brevity? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Again, this is nothing that I think is absent from my game. I am perfectly comfortable (most of the time) when my plans are dashed by the PCs in some way. I like that it forces me to adapt on the fly...I find some really strong elements of our game come from those moments. It's just that no matter what the players do, eventually, things will steer back to the "main story", for lack of a better term. My predetermined elements are more at the macro level....the campaign level...rather than at the micro level of actions or encounters. They are elements of the story, so I think they do relate to the GM as storyteller. But I do see your distinction that this is likely discussed ahead of time. But perhaps so is the main story of the campaign? Or perhaps character goals are determined at the time of character creation, and those are incorporated into the game....baked in right from the start. This means that it isn't very difficult to keep the characters motivated to engage in the main story that the GM has prepared. Having those kind of agreement prior to play inherently limits the players to some degree. To go back to the Tolkien example, the PCs have been given a quest...this is the GM determined content. They must destroy the One Ring, and they know of only one way to do that. How they reach that goal is ultimately up to them....they have many paths to choose from, and many choices to make in how they engage with that "main story". But to simply abandon the quest seems to be a violation of the agreement made at the start of the game. This is of course assuming that the players have agreed to the game as described. Perhaps some of my comments in this post have clarified. I am talking more at the high level....the general flow of the "main story". I use that term because I am not sure how else to describe it. The point of the campaign. In the specific case of my campaign, there is quite a lot to it, but ultimately it boils down to opposing a specific group of enemies and their goals. That goal, which all the players understand and have agreed to, is never far from playing a part of the action taking place. However, it is loose and broad enough that I don't need to undermine player agency to keep them along that general path. Hopefully that helps. Let me know if I need to elaborate further. I mean the ultimate goal. The sequence of events is largely undetermined because the players can change things, but I do have a general outline in mind. But I don't do much more than sketch things because they can and do change. Again, to lean on Tolkien...the players may never become embroiled in the machinations of Saruman at Isengard. Their decisions have kept the Fellowship together and they never go that way. That does not mean that I do not then introduce Saruman later on as a sever threat that needs to be dealt with. So I know Saruman is up to something....but when that comes into play, and how, is largely up to the actions of the PCs.I actually used a good deal of the Dead Gods adventure in my campaign. This was one story arc. I used the main plot of that adventure, but I didn't force the players down any particular path. I also removed certain elements that I felt were the most arbitrary....moments where they only know how to proceed because of X. I introduced several means of reaching each part of the adventure, and allowed the players to go their way, and find the path. It also helped that I knew I would be using elements from that adventure, and worked some of them into things at the start of this campaign. So a lot of it was information that I made available to one or more players as elements of backstory. Well, I don't know if either of those methods are required. I try to avoid the first in most cases, and the second I try to use with care and with far less force than implied in the examples. But again, I am talking more high level. So in your example of the mage's towere and the beheading, and the lugging of bodies....did you have no sense of where things would go after that? Obviously, the PCs actions helped shape where things went....but did you have no idea? For me, I would have a few possibilities sketched out....then the PCs do what they do, and it takes things in an unexpected direction (they get caught by the watch lugging dead bodies around town)....I don't feel the need to simply handwave or otherwise invalidate these events. I let them play out....and then I decide how they affect where things were going after that. So if the PCs are thrown in jail or if they are coerced by the captain of the guard to perform some task for him or what have you, I proceed with that to see what happens. But once that plays out, things are going to head back in some direction I had previously expected. I look at such instances as sidetracks...noting wrong with them at all. But once they've played out, it's back to the main story, with any possible consequences of the sidetrack taken into consideration. Yes, precisely. But it need not be "all about" the GM conceived items. It can be about that, and the PC's father's killer plot can be woven in so taht they are two elements of the same story. This is the approach that I am talking about. The GM having a metaplot if that's what you want to call it, but incorporating player authored material, whether it be at the inception of the game or as consequence of in game player choice. Again, I am not arguing in favor of the opposite extreme. "All roads leading to what the GM cares about" is not really what I am talking about, and it's as negative a way to look at it as possible. Let me ask you....do you think that the GM and the players could actually want the same things in play?</blockquote>

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