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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 6024514" data-attributes="member: 23240">1. If you want players to focus less on mechanical effectiveness, run a simple, rules-light game. When rules are simple, there is much less space for optimization - and, on the other hand, one does not have to be so careful with mechanics to have a viable character.2. If you want players to focus more on NPCs, not only on their own characters, make your game more about relations and less about quests. It does not mean you need to get rid of combat - but the combat should always be against someone significant or for someone significant. "Why" should be as much, or more important than "how". 3. If you want players to focus more on your story, make it about the PCs and their choices. Don't ask players about backgrounds - ask them about their characters as they are now and build up on it. "What is your main goal, what do you want to achieve?", "What gives you strength to keep going?", "What do you fear the most and why?", "Who is important to you?". Then give them opportunities to achieve their goals, endanger the people they care for, make them face their fears. Prepare your setting, but don't prepare a story in advance. Actively create situations where PCs have to choose, and then shape the story based on how they answer. Is money more important than discovering a secret from ones own past? How much freedom will one sacrifice in exchange for power? What do you do when two of your friends become each others' enemies?4. Last but not least - make sure that your players are really interested in a game you want to run. If not, it's better to find another group than to try to force them into a style they don't like. On the other hand, people can't fairly judge something they don't really know. So let your players know you're experimenting, run a few sessions in different styles and ask what they like.</blockquote>

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