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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 3044401" data-attributes="member: 9053">Okay, it seems as though I managed to not explain my point well enough for you, so let's try it again. Starting a game with a bang is an easy thing to do. Starting it off with a bang that does not have all the players making comments like those in the previous post (meaning, "why didn't X happen?" is hard. Taking all of your players abilities into account when you design this sort of a game session is important, and it can also be difficult. At low levels, it's a lot easier, but once your players have access to game changing powers: flying, teleport, mind contol and so forth, you need to take them into consideration when you decide how you're going to start the bang. If you don't you'll likely have annoyed players, such as in the example posted up thread. Annoyed players = bad GMing.Now in my example with the king's funeral, when I started the campaign, the first thing I did was get player buy-in on the campaign concept: I told them that the game was going to start with the king of this country being poisoned, and the beginning of the game was going to be about curing him and finding out what had happened to cause it in the first place. Once that bang was in place, the game would end up where the players took it. The characters that everyone gave me were made with built-in reasons to start out interested in the bang. You had characters like the king's bastard son, the head of the town guard, the prince from the neighboring country, in the same game with a paladin of an evil cult and a crazy tiger man from parts unknown (yes, that last one was really out there).Once that had started, they could (and did) go whichever way they wanted. What I did at that point was to take their backgrounds and work them into the campaign so that they had reasons to do things. If they decided not to tackle a particular problem, they didn't have to, and I simply resolved what was going to happen based on their inaction.My challenge to get the players to weave something they said to the king into the story was designed to give them more control over the story rather than less, since I was very broad in what I would let happen in order to get them to make what they said come true. It was also designed to offer some comic relief at a few key points. Oh, and the evil cultist character was not happy to be at the king's funeral at all nor did she ever become friends with him: she was merely there to continue her mission from the beginning of the game.So if you're saying "man, that sounds like a total railroady campaign that I would have hated playing in," you're right, for you. In that case, In the specific instance that I ran it, it was one of the most wildly successful games I've ever run, and the players who were in it request a follow-up every time there is an opening in our gaming calendar. Running it was very difficult, because there was an outline of what was going on in the world, and I had to constantly revise outcomes based on what the players did. The players commented that it had seemed like the game was going one way, but that they ended up making radical changes so that they had no idea what was coming next. All this says in the end that no one play style is for everyone. My current Shackled City campaign is basically a traditional adventure path, and a completely different sort of game, so I too contain multitudes. Talking about different play styles may gat someone to try something different. Just like cooking, sometimes trying a different play style results in a tasty evening's play, sometimes not so much. I may be wrong, but I see a fair amount of anger in your post about this kind of play. I agree that it's not for everyone, and that doing it every session (like the WotC article talks about) is asking for trouble, outside of an extremely episodic game. In the end, if someone has more fun at the table, isn't that what we're all looking for?--Steve</blockquote>

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