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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8570113" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I think your breakdown of different metagame categories is interesting. And your #4 is perhaps the least direct. But I don't know if it's all that uncommon.I also don't think it's a problem. For many groups, having a hook like a mage dropping his notes all over which catches their eye and then leads them to the adventure is perfectly fine. It implies at least some level of path to be followed, though, which many folks claim is unwanted, although I don't think that's always the case. Many players will sit down at a game and see the "Wild Beyond the Witchlight" book sitting there, and they'll know they're supposed to engage with that adventure.I've had a kind of interesting experience with this in my weekly D&D 5e game. We've been rotating GMs every so often, so each of us has taken a turn and kind of run an adventure or a series of scenarios, and then handed it off to the next person to take over. We play online and by theater of the mind. So far, the focus of play has been the home town of the PCs' and their efforts to defend it and their people. The most recent GM has kind of veered away from that by deciding to incorporate the Wild Beyond the Witchlight book.Many of the players aren't following current releases and so on, so they didn't realize that coming across the Witchlight Carnival was an indication that we were heading into prepped adventure territory. Because we're playing online and theater of the mind, there were no visual cues like a book or handouts or maps that indicated prepped adventure. I recognized it right away, but didn't say anything. It was interesting to see how different players struggled to engage with what was happening. They didn't realize there was a prepared adventure, and the elements were so far removed from what we were doing, that it started to bog down. Essentially, the GM was kind of throwing out hooks and the players weren't realizing they were hooks, and so things weren't really going anywhere.So I chimed in and said "This is the Wilds Beyond the Witchlight adventure, right?" and the GM confirmed. Once that happened, the players started biting the hooks. It was like they could now see the structure of play, and so they knew how to proceed. It was kind of amazing.Again, nothing wrong with that kind of play at all. But I don't think that preferring something different, or at least asking if there can be a different method, is about folks who don't want to engage with play. I was a player in this game, and although I'm not crazy about Wilds Beyond the Witchlight, I'm happy to keep going and see it through. A couple sessions after the initial rockiness, and we're now having fun.But if someone wanted to approach play from a different way, how can they do so?</blockquote>

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