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Message: <blockquote data-quote="green slime" data-source="post: 5326357" data-attributes="member: 1325">Right Doug. But it is also possible to tell the DM before the session about things you would like your character to do, or be involved in.I get kind of bored with players that just turn up, and expect a great adventure plot to fall on top of them, and be spoon-fed everything, every step of the way. And let's face it, the amount of effort required to turn up and play, is far less than that required to run a good game.It is possible to create more open-ended threads, in the overarching background plot and see which direction the players head for, i.e. what interests the players. Far too often, many players expect the motivation to come from the DM, rather their own characters, and then complain about feeling railroaded... "We have to get this, do that, and then..." In my latest campaign, I interviewed the players about what kind of characters (archetypes and motivations) they would like to play, then created the characters for the players (the players got to choose from a slection of 4 characters) That is, each player had a selection of 4 different unique characters from which to choose. Each character had very different goals associated with them (for example one had captain a ship, command a fleet, free his native isles from the empire, defeat the imperial navy in a battle, another had convert as many as possible to his faith, defeat a demon, expose heretics, etc). Achieving a personal goal provides a certain amount of XP.With the creation of the characters, there are also conflicting goals between the various characters, and it was obvious that some goals could only be achieved by co-operating with other players, whereas others were in direct conflict with other players. Every character is member of some faction, either overtly or covertly. So a healthy dose of paranoia was added with lots of different factions, agendas and power groups, and suddenly the game became far more interesting, as players sought to ally themselves with other players and NPCs, gain influence, without revealing their own private agendas. I have found this game to be more interesting (but I have known the players for many years), as they drive many of the events happening, with the NPcs just trying to keep up. I have added in a newsletter which describes the happenings going on in the wider world as well, providing more paranoia and metaplots/plots should they wish to persue further information.</blockquote>

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