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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 7651555" data-attributes="member: 8835">This part of the conversation (my fault) is more of a tangent to when you start planning stages of story progression and character advancement toward their goal.Let's stick to the example of a PC who's goal is Wealth.  And for the sake of argument, let's say the GM has set the time lime to get him to the Legacy stage by level 10.  Partly, because as the other part of your response, there's other player's goals being pursued as well.Let's also assume that the GM certainly will let the PCs fail if the player screws up, to cover those who think we're deliberately talking about railroading the player through this rags to riches storyline.  if the PC dies, or does stupid things, or has bad luck, then he will not get the happy ending.  let's call that part of the discussion settled, as it bogs the conversation down.What I'm therefore talking about is that the GM can assume that if there's 5 stages (origin, in debt, solvent, wealthy, legacy) for this PC to experience, that he can therefore bring in continous problems in the in-debt stage to keep the player down, until such time as he sees fit to ALLOW the player's latest mission to be unsullied.  When the PC breaks into the vault, is the money there?  All the best intel in the world can still be defeated by an NPC adversary who got there first.  And that kind of "bad luck" can only happen because the GM decided to invent an NPC who would thwart the PC's latest haul in order to keep him down.To my eye, your PC is nothing, without some assistance from the GM. That's not because he's gracious or malicious.  it simply is a factor of the game that the GM is making up what happens next, which can invalidate or neutralize the best efforts of the PC.So here's what I like about your 5 stages to reach Legacy for a Goal.  Good storytelling inherently has obstacles for the PC to overcome.  By defining the 5 stages (and my suggestion that the GM view it as an approximate time table on the level progression) is that it reminds the GM when to stop jacking with the PC and let their next success move them to the next stage.  This is the kernel of adapting storytelling techniques to GMing a D&D campaign, as CR was a metric for the GM to know how tough his encounter was relative to the PCs.Again, I don't think KM is confusing having a plan for what the successful path of a PC pursuing his chosen goal looks like with deliberately letting them succeed regardless.  But somebody else will, because that's where this part of the discussion tends to lead when we talk about story telling.</blockquote>

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