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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fieari" data-source="post: 3455729" data-attributes="member: 16221">I feel that Shamus Young's blog entry "<a href="http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=945" target="_blank">The Plot Driven Door</a>" is extremely relevant to both the OP, and the CRPG tangent.One of my problems with WoW is that nothing anyone does in WoW has any impact on the world at large.  You can never, ever, ever, be THE hero.  Impossible.  While I don't play myself, some of my former roommates were addicts (and I mean that in the "destroying your life" sense, in that they'd play to their detriment physically, relationally, financially, and so forth) so I've seen a lot of it.Despite the ability to form raids, you can't raid anywhere the game doesn't want you to.  You can't raise an army, march into the enemy territory, and burn their cities to the ground.  You can't kill rulers and leaders and have them be dead dead.  Even in the context of raids, you kill the big guy, and he's back again next week.  There's no real persistence in the plot.  A tabletop game is inherently superior in this respect.In games where you are the hero, they're always single player games.  No problem with that, except that you inevitably run into the plot driven door, above.  And the subject of the OP.  To reiterate what others have said, this is a matter of GM skill in a large degree.  A GM -can- make the game be as limited as NWN2.  But the GM, if he's any good, can also avoid this trap, and even improve on the fly.The situation in the OP specifically could have been handled well, as has been described.  Clues and such could be given.  The players have a responsibility to actually play, after all, and if they won't play with the GM, they won't have a game for long, because the GM will get bored and go home if nothing he does gives the players a hook.  The situation, on the other hand, could be as bas as is assumed, in which it is the GMs fault.  To which I say to that GM, now is the best time to learn how to do it better.  People have given good advice here.Almost any situation can be done well, or not well.</blockquote>

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