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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7073365" data-attributes="member: 42582">According to what principles? For what reasons? Until we answer those questions, how can we know whether the game is GM- or player-driven?But in a player-driven game as I understand it, that's all there is. There is a sequence of events, in which the PC(s) are at the centre.And it's not just a case of one thing leading to another. I think that to describe it that way is to miss the point.There is no inevitability to my (i) narrating that the magistrate decides they are to be imprisoned indefinitely, and (ii) connecting this, in the fiction, to the PC's past (mostly unhappy) dealings with the leader of his sorcerous cabal.That is a choice - a judgement call, to use the language of the OP. Other choices were, in principle, available, but I didn't make them because those other choices would have taken the game away from its focus on the matters that the player has put into play via his choices in playing the game.The analogue, in your example of a player having his PC go to the mercenaries' guild and the militia HQ, might be something like this:The player has written into his PC backstory, "I will be avenged upon the lizardmen for their destruction of my farm." The PC goes to the mercenaries' guild, and learns (via the GM's narration) that the lizardmen are readying an attack on Dumont tower - if you sign up now to join the defenders, you'll be handsomely paid. The PC goes to the HQ, and learns (via the GM's narration) that the orcs are attacking the farms, and we need every able body we can get to help in defence. In putting these two scenarios on the table, the GM forces the player to make a choice: do I seek vengeance upon the lizardmen? or do I postpone, even abandon, my quest for vengeance in order to help other defend their farms against a different threat?That would be the GM putting the player at the centre of things. And thereby creating the space for the game to be player-driven in the sense I've tried to get at.Rather than the GM putting his/her desires for the content of the fiction, and the trajectory of things, at the centre.Which is why simply noting that the GM manages the backstory doesn't tell us who is driving the game. Because it depends crucially on the reasons for narrating one thing rather than another, and the way that that narrated stuff then speaks to the players one way rather than another.If everything the PCs care about has been resolved, then the campaign is over.As for "what's wrong"? Nothing's wrong if that's the sort of RPGing you enjoy. It just happens to not really be my thing.See, this is is pretty much the opposite of the answer I just gave. The player has to stop playing the PC - ie as far as that PC is concerned, it's "campaign over" - if the "logical" play of the PC takes that character away from the GM's hooks. Whereas my answer, above, is that the campaign is over when the players, via their PCs, no longer have any "hooks" to offer the GM.The PCs in the game mentioned in the OP spent 18 months in the ruined tower, trying to eke out enough of a living to buy food from the locals (mechanically, this involves the game's Resources sub-system) while also training and, in one case, healing from a near-mortal wound.But during that time the PCs (and their players) weren't at a loss for things to do. They made a choice to postpone their pursuit of the thing they cared about so they could spend that time that way.</blockquote>

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