NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AlViking" data-source="post: 9704649" data-attributes="member: 6906980">As a DM I don't have a goal of separating a party. Once we're in play I don't have any real goal other than to faithfully implement what I have planned or if I'm improvising to create content that fits.  The enemy may have many goals, think of many tactics, but as DM I'm running the enemy from their perspective not mine.If the party gets separated because a portcullis comes crashing down it's not because I'm thinking "How can I separate the party".  During my planning I set up a fortification and a gate with a portcullis made sense for the location. During play an enemy that could perceive an opportunity to block some of the characters from entering the inner courtyard also had the means and opportunity to drop the portcullis.  But it was done by taking the viewpoint of that enemy combatant and thinking about what they would consider as the best move.On the other hand I can't remember ever doing that.  Cases where the party got split was because of player decisions where they decided to approach the enemy from different directions or they thought they were safe from one of the characters got into trouble.  There could be times when what I set up leads to the party being separated such as trying to flee a chaotic situation and they failed some checks to stick together.  I think that has happened but then again, I've been running games for a long, long time.This is where I disagree.  Narrative goals are different from my goals. I'm not concerned about setting up moral dilemmas.  I don't think dangerous, I'm not going to destroy things if the characters don't intervene simply because the characters did not intervene.  I don't ask the players to fill out the fiction of the world* by asking questions and using the answers.  I run a mostly sandbox game where I provide multiple opportunities for the players to pursue but I don't have a specific goals other than creating interesting things to choose from.The end result may be superficially similar and other people likely run their D&D games with the same kind of agenda and motivation as a narrative game.  But for my game?  My approach for what happens during play is to simply have the words and actions of the characters to have direct and immediate in-world reactions without consideration of any overall story or narrative. In other words, failing to pick a lock just means that the door remains locked and that's all.  It's then up to the players to decide what to do next, not me.*There are rare cases where they can fill in minor details about their background, but anything significant I will do offline.</blockquote>

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