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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sadras" data-source="post: 7079615" data-attributes="member: 6688277">@<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=42582" target="_blank">pemerton</a> how do you surprise your players with cool twists if all the cool twists, appear to come from content generated by the players? Even as player I enjoy the exploration of content/ideas which are generated by the DM's storytelling - similar to the enjoyment of a movie. It brings me no joy to explore my character's inner law/good/natural vs chaos/evil/technology philosophical theories to drive the adventure.   Our most recent adventure involved the PCs agreeing to assist some lizardmen led by Snapjaw (HotDQ) to a temple which the lizard-folk held inside a gift from the 'Divine' which would assist them against the Bullywogs and Cultists which latter two groups were abusing/enslaving them.In truth, what the lizard-folk interpreted as divine gifts were really the regional effects (5e MM) of the unnatural presence of the beholder in the area which was trapped within the temple (disintegrate stalk was damaged).So the adventure was really their journey through the Mere of the Dead, the swamp, to the temple. They faced obstacles, monsters and these temporary unnatural phenomena (floating pebbles, a whistle..etc - beholder regional effects). Throughout the adventure either the lizard folk would say something strange, or a character would hear a phrase or see a line etched against a tree...this was all a riddle (6 lines) delivered in jumbled fashion. The characters eventually arrived at the temple and I revealed the remaining line of the riddle. One of the character's guessed correctly, the answer being a dream. That particular player's character awoke inside the temple. Scattered bodies of lizard-folk were everywhere, one of the characters was lying on the floor, wounds all over his body, another was on the other side of the room busy interrogating Snapjaw (the lizard-folk leader) and next to the character floated a large bulbous mass with stalks (the PCs was obviously under a charm spell), the last remaining character was nowhere to be seen and that is how the session ended.So the whole journey to the temple more or less happened the way it was roleplayed. The setup was if they solved the riddle early, they would have had more resources with which to face the beholder but fewer XP earned, the longer it took them to solve the riddle the greater the amount of XP due to all the encounters, but with less resources available.The one who solved the riddle would have his character wake up (from the Sleep spell) and I as DM would roll randomly to see who would be affected by the Charm, Cause Wounds and Fear spell.The character affected by the Sleep spell would get to roll the die as per the Sleep spell to determine his maximum number of hit points before the spell affected him (per 5e Sleep spell)Was the session railroaded: Sure. Was there much story content generated by players: No. The player's enjoyed the twist of having a backstory of having initially lost against the beholder and that the session was a dream which did in fact occur and played in similar fashion to how it was role-played by them. They enjoyed discovering the riddle, piecing it in the correct order and eventually solving it.And they are looking forward to how they will resolve this encounter with the beholder given that they are at a disadvantage. Obviously not all my session are this rail-roady but the above certainly wasn't a 'crap game' for our table.</blockquote>

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