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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7087429" data-attributes="member: 29398">Let's clear one thing up: the DM is not a player, in the sense that the players are.  The DM is more a living breathing reactive (and sometimes proactive) gameboard, along with being the referee when needed.Well, the DM hopes that Z will happen 'cause otherwise all the planning and prep for AA to FF go out the window.  Again, though, a DM isn't playing to find out what will happen; she's (ideally) setting things up so the players through their characters can find out what will happen which may or may not be what the DM had in mind in the first place.That's down to the player to make those things relevant, not the DM; and to realize that not everything is necessarily going to be or become relevant at all.  Someone playing a Dwarf, for example, might write pages of history of his clan and family and personal biography etc. etc., but if all the adventuring takes place hundreds or thousands of miles away from the Dwarf's home town the chances are close to unity that little to none of this will ever become relevant.  As for the complex psychological personae, that should be easy to bring out in the day to day roleplaying of the character...and here it falls to the DM to allow time for such; I've known DMs who insist on jumping from one encounter or adventure to the next with no time for anything in between such as sitting around the campfire or spending some downtime in town shopping. (and some game systems seem to encourage this jump-to-the-action in their design)Day-to-day stuff like getting into the King's Gardens is simply a part of the adventuring life.  It's the bigger goals that hold my interest here, in this case healing the planet.For my part, I know that something told to me now about a character's goals won't be remembered (likely by either me or the player) in four years when I'm trying to build a scene. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Careful - the anti-DM-driven crowd will be on to you for this. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Where I posit that you as DM not only should have at least a vague idea of how things will go, you need to have such so as to be able to prep* for what comes afterwards.* - as far as your prep may go, it's different for every DM.As a player, I play to find out what happens at least in the big picture; I want to learn the overarching plot, connect the dots, and then decide what to do about it...or to it.  I don't want to do what I see as the DM's job and tell her about the NPC we just met; I expect her to tell me what I know about said NPC if anything as said NPC is a part of the setting - the DM's purview.As a DM I'm there to help the players play to find out, and enjoy for myself what happens along the way.And that's not to say my game is a hard railroad.  Yes I had a storyboard going in; I'm now on V.11 of said storyboard and it bears very little resemblance to what I started with and may or may not be a good indicator of what will actually get played.  That said, there's multiple parties in the campaign and one place I will sometimes put my foot down as DM is to say which one gets played next, usually so as to keep the parties vaguely parallel in game-world time.Not all the players.  I'd know as a player what I put in as my own storyboard ideas but not what anyone else put in; nor would I know what the DM had done once she had all the storyboards in hand.  Obviously the DM would have an idea where things would (or might) go, but as far as I'm concerned that should be the case anyway - no problem there.The benefits I can see of doing this would be to a) integrate the players' interests better, and b) give the DM ideas she can mine for stories or adventures that she might not have otherwise thought of.Lan-"always willing to steal a good idea from wherever it may be found"-efan</blockquote>

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