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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8570224" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Well, I think there are degrees involved. Prior to the current GM deciding to bring Witchlight into it, the game had been entirely homebrewed, and the players were largely designating the focus of play based on the accumulating fiction.....we had made friends and rivals and there were possible threats and goals, so we were able to say something like &quot;next week I think we need to take out the Vultures&quot; or &quot;I think we need to speak to the duchess and try and get her support&quot; and that's what play would be about. The GM then had a good idea where to focus his prep or at least had a starting point to work with. So I think in that sense, the shift was a bit jarring. We went from setting our own agenda based on prior results of play to the GM having a bunch of new NPCs basically dangling hooks. At one point, one of my buddies even said something like &quot;I don't want to get bogged down with these side-quests&quot;. But then once he realized the &quot;side-quests&quot; were &quot;THE quest&quot;, he was able to get on board. It was an odd phenomenon. Across the group, there was a mix of acceptance and resignation... but I'd say acceptance won out. Out of the whole group, I'm probably the most sensitive to this and as I said above, I was willing to go along with it and I'm having fun. Not what I'd choose if I had free reign, but I'm perfectly fine with it. I don't know if I agree with you that because the players are aware that there's a structure to play that means that you can't eliminate or at least reduce the meta aspect of the way they engage with that structure. Certainly even the loosest of RPGs has some kind of structure to it.... or else it would just be collective monologuing. There are rules and processes and all of that. I don't think it's that there is a structure that's the issue, but how the players are to engage with that structure... what that structure allows or enables, or restricts, is what's the issue, I'd say.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 8570224, member: 6785785"] Well, I think there are degrees involved. Prior to the current GM deciding to bring Witchlight into it, the game had been entirely homebrewed, and the players were largely designating the focus of play based on the accumulating fiction.....we had made friends and rivals and there were possible threats and goals, so we were able to say something like "next week I think we need to take out the Vultures" or "I think we need to speak to the duchess and try and get her support" and that's what play would be about. The GM then had a good idea where to focus his prep or at least had a starting point to work with. So I think in that sense, the shift was a bit jarring. We went from setting our own agenda based on prior results of play to the GM having a bunch of new NPCs basically dangling hooks. At one point, one of my buddies even said something like "I don't want to get bogged down with these side-quests". But then once he realized the "side-quests" were "THE quest", he was able to get on board. It was an odd phenomenon. Across the group, there was a mix of acceptance and resignation... but I'd say acceptance won out. Out of the whole group, I'm probably the most sensitive to this and as I said above, I was willing to go along with it and I'm having fun. Not what I'd choose if I had free reign, but I'm perfectly fine with it. I don't know if I agree with you that because the players are aware that there's a structure to play that means that you can't eliminate or at least reduce the meta aspect of the way they engage with that structure. Certainly even the loosest of RPGs has some kind of structure to it.... or else it would just be collective monologuing. There are rules and processes and all of that. I don't think it's that there is a structure that's the issue, but how the players are to engage with that structure... what that structure allows or enables, or restricts, is what's the issue, I'd say. [/QUOTE]

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