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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8022834" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Sure, some amount of buy-in is always needed. But I mean buy in specifically to the GM's idea of what the game will be. Maybe the Gm has an idea for a campaign that's much like an adventure path. Or maybe the GM has bought the latest published adventure, and so he's going to run that. If a GM purchases "Curse of Strahd" and the players decide to play it....sure, they need to buy into some gothic themes and some vampire hunting. But a GM could also take ideas from his players, and then construct a game around those ideas. The GM can be the one to buy into what the players may want, too. Or some mix of those two approaches.I think having a detailed setting helps. If there is a framework, then you've got most of what you need already. The rest is just reacting the the PCs. I don't know if exploration of the setting is what I have in mind, though. When I play, what I want to explore is my PC's place in the setting. I'm not necessarily interested in what's over the next hill so much as I am in why my character is going over that hill. That's what I want to explore. Because this is my preference when I play, it's how I approach GMing. I want to have players who are engaged because their characters are invested in the story and what's going on.Sure, I can see that. I mix all kinds of things into my 5E campaign. I've run a few of WotC's published adventures (or parts of them, at least) as part of our campaign. I refigured a lot of them to fit what we had going on, but some of the ideas are very present. Our 5E campaign is very much about celebrating all of D&D lore, so it works for that campaign. Although I think I am done running published adventures based on how the last one went. I try to lean on my players for story hooks and ideas more than introducing my own, although I still do introduce some. D&D can only be so player driven......the DM has to have some stuff prepared, or some ideas in play about what may happen next.But this is my point.....the more specific the GM's prep, the more likely I think it is to happen. Sure, there may be some folks out there who can prep a ton of potential material only to watch the bulk of it not wind up in play. I don't know if this is typical or not....my guess would be no.....but I'm sure it happens. I think most folks have time limits on the amount of prep that they do, and so they need to choose how they spend that time. I recently experienced this in preparing for online play. I had our next session prepped. I do very loose prep.....pretty much just some bullet points and maybe a list of relevant NPCs, all largely based on past sessions. Then the pandemic hit, and we moved our game online. I found it nearly impossible to prep online D&D the way I like to because so much has to be done ahead of time in programs like Roll20.....you need a map and it really should be loaded with tokens and statblocks and so on for the antagonists. It requires a GM to be more specifically prepared prior to play. I did that next session, and then I placed our 5E campaign on hold until we can play face to face again.I found that it was basically me deciding what the coming session would consist of ahead of time, and designing that. The format did not allow for the more freeform approach that I prefer. Not without going pure theater of the mind....but my players don't prefer that for D&D (despite being fine with it in other games). And I think that this is generally a trend.....most GMs prep ahead of time, and then the session consists of the things they've prepped. I don't think that's all that surprising or controversial. The less specific the prep, the less likely the GM is forcing a specific path for the game. I want to be clear that I don't think that this is a problem, and that even games that are prepped by the GM ahead of time can still be fun, and can still allow for plenty of significant player choice and so on. I just prefer not to commit so strongly to what the game "will be".</blockquote>

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