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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harr" data-source="post: 4226838" data-attributes="member: 47190">More integration of player choice. Examples of situations that could fall several different ways with very varied results depending on what the party is actually interested in.I've done the Mad-Libs adventure a lot and sometimes it goes really well, most of the time it's just around average. It's always asking for players to sabotage it and to try to jump from the rails. Do them enough and you'll start to see your players gradually realize they're going to be led around on another random sequence of stuff again.Through the school of hard knocks (so to speak) I've discovered that the way to get these games to sizzle is to incorporate player choice into the mix. It's not 'You must find a baby' then later 'The baby was sold to a cult' then after that 'The cult is trying to resurrect a dragon' and then later on 'The dragon has an army!'It's 'a baby has been kidnapped and sold to an evil cult who is trying to resurrect a dragon who leads an orc army prepared to raze the city..... what are you going to do about it?? Will you go save the baby for the reward? Will you ignore the baby and try to eliminate the orc army before they are prepared instead? Will you sneak into the temple and sabotage the cult's ritual?? Will you ignore all that and try to destroy the dragon's soul before it can be brought back at all?' that gets players invested and rearing to go.So yeah, if you're going for the random generator thing I'd suggest that instead of a 'random sequence of events ro run through', you do something more like 'random factors that come together to form a very sticky starting situation, that the PCs are all aware of from the start,  that can degrade or improve in a few different ways but that does not have any fixed path already established.'This might sound like it amounts to the same thing either way, but trust me, it makes a big difference in actual play. If I had some sort of system of tables or cards I could run through in 15 mins and come out with a great 'what are you going to do about it??' situation, well, that would make me a happy-camper DM for sure.Edit -> BTW, I noticed you made no response to my previous two suggestions for what to read, please trust me that if you skip over them you will be missing out big time. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=192201" target="_blank">Here is the thread for the TRAP method</a>. Also you should give the "In A Wicked Age" game a look, it has a cool random-story-generation system which is narrative, but which works fantastically well and can easily be twisted to a more D&D type of thing.Hope some of this helps.</blockquote>

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