Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Creamsteak" data-source="post: 396258" data-attributes="member: 552">I'm a young DM who never quite got the opportunity to lead by the nose. I instantly told my players, "look, if your not willing to push your own character to go do something, and your going to complain about it when you get caught up riding another player's tail, leave."If a player can provide his own motivation to interact with the world (the ONLY thing I provide), then he can do just that. If a player doesn't say a word the entire session (accept maybe joking with whoever his friend that brought him was), I'd like to say, "don't come back."The problem with creating a character motivated game (the only kind of game I can fully enjoy playing/running), is actually 95% player responsibility to take it upon themselves to write the plot. That IS the way this game should be played (IMHO). Player motivated plots are actually quite a bit easier to please people with, as long as you (DM) are careful enough to "weave" everyone's threads together.Step 1) Character concepts: I use different methods every time, but basically I require the players to dig DEEP into thier characters motivations till the come out with the whole emotional state of thier character. Once a player has his emotional state that his mind needs to be in when playing his character available, he can call it at whim. It's like going from first level to third level, all of a sudden you have the power to cast a totally new spell and do something completely different.Step 2) Stat blocks. Simple enough... Players who really followed step 1 probably have more diverse skills than players who start right here.Step 3) Get them to write it down. You need a hard copy and a week as a DM to do step 3. Your job here is to take every single "hook" and weave together a web. The web should overlap multiple times, with NPCs that multiple players know, locations that multiple players have visited, adventures that could have similar themes (the NPC from one background, and the treasure horde from another background). This step is awesome to look at when you get a final copy.Step 4) You, as the person that knows everything in step 3, need to figure out how the party gets together best. They can't really find that motivation on thier own, it's difficult to do for them till after you get this done.Step 5) Your finally ready (or should be) for that first session. Until either the characters die, or the characters retire, you should be able to play through.I've done this multiple times. I only manipulate the steps 3 and 4, and have nothing to do with 1 and 2. The players write the story, not me.</blockquote>

Verification