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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8633636" data-attributes="member: 7025508">This reminds me why I have come to dislike overarching 'threat to the world' storylines. They wrap everything around themselves. Hard to have fun player initiated heists, hard to even worry about your insignificant personal woes; the world is at stake, man, whatcha gonna do?Though I have a funny story regarding an unusual course such a scenario took from years ago. Perhaps it was accidentally very Story Now in a sense? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f914.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":unsure:" title="Unsure    :unsure:"  data-smilie="24"data-shortname=":unsure:" /> It was an Exalted campaign I was running and a Deathlord was trying to blow up the world. The motive of the Deathlords is basically to end suffering by euthanising the entire world. The PCs somewhat unsurprisingly were not going to let this happen. So one of the player characters had dragged her wife (who was originally just a random NPC but the player decided their character madly falls in love with her) into the 'final battle' with the Deathlord. In the ensuing battle the wife gets killed (I don't remember how, probably due random. The wife was a competent warrior, but not nearly as tough as the PCs.) So at the crucial moment where the characters are just about to stop the bad guy from activating his doomsday thing, he makes some sort of classic villain speech, addressing the character whose wife was killed. "Now you know my pain, join me and we can end all the suffering forever!" (Or to that effect.) So the character, who is utterly heartbroken, actually agrees, joins the bad guy, the world gets blown up, the end.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> On the one hand it was pretty cool, but the other players weren't terribly pleased. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" />(I have a bad habit of accidentally making weirdly convincing bad guys. This is not the only time when the PCs have gone during a villain monologue: "You know what, he actually has a point!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" />)In any case, what we were talking about? I think I lost the plot... But yes, the GM introduces the situations for the PCs to react. Then again, in Story Now GM frames the scenes too (though there tends to be some more limitations about how they should do it there.) And the framing of course always contextualises and informs the direction the play will take. It also matters how much the play revolves around the PCs reacting to things the GM frames and how much around the things PCs just initiate. Like can the PCs just randomly decide to rob a Baron's treasure vault or buy a ship and become pirates (Why both my examples are about crime?) Sure, in D&D these both still would be contingent on the GM having put rich barons and ships in the world, but at this point we can hardly call things "GM directed." And I don't think it is unusual for game to contain both more plothooky and more self-initiated situations. This is the same thing Campbell was referring to? Yes, dramatic need could be linked to a 'plothook.' But they don't need to be. Perhaps some are and some aren't. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937.png" title="Person shrugging    :person_shrugging:" data-shortname=":person_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />Sure. I just feel that 5e play doesn't need to be, and often isn't, nearly as constrained than implied.</blockquote>

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