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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tav_Behemoth" data-source="post: 5085147" data-attributes="member: 18017">Thanks for the example of a great DM with a different style, Piratecat!I think it's useful to say "let's look at the best possible examples of different GM approaches." As GMs one of the things we choose is who to model ourselves after; likewise as players it can be helpful to have an idealized image of your ideal GM as a yardstick for judging whether a given group will work for you. (We can also learn from terrible GMs - "gee, I sure don't want that!" - but that thread would be even more rancorous).It's unavoidable to have some terminology drift. For example, it's interesting that people who identify themselves as storyteller GMs tend to be happy with newer editions of D&D, while those who prefer to let the players determine the story tend to prefer older ones. Avoiding any discussion of "old-school" would prevent analysis of this trend.Instead of getting hung up on terms, though, I think it's helpful to try to figure out what people do and don't mean by things without making assumptions. Giving players choice is something that everyone in this thread puts a high value on: what are the different ways they achieve this? What are the implications of those different approaches?For example, storytelling techniques certainly lend something to a game. It seems to me that every approach comes at a cost, though. The lean-forward GM increases excitement but sends the message that the story comes from him; the lean-back GM sends the message that the story is up to the players (but don't blame me if you get bored!). Even the GMs who know what approach they like can benefit from being aware of the costs associated with their style and learning what other GMs do to mitigate those costs.Foreshadowing is a great dramatic device but implies that the story is known ahead of time; how do you reconcile this with player choice? To walk the talk, and pick up something that was said earlier about a GM's job being to create adversity for the players, here's how I'm approaching prep for a session of city adventuring this weekend.Social environment: The group is big (8-10 players on average) and variable, so that I can't plan around any particular characters being in the mix (some folks are regulars, but I don't want to give them more mojo than first-time players whose PCs I haven't met yet). Expectations: There's a mandate for me to provide action; it's tempting to just say "here's a big city, go wherever you like" but I know from past experience that this won't work well with this group unless only <4 people show up. Some of what happens in the session needs to involve life-or-death crisis for all or most PCs at once.Player choice: We use the New York Red Box forums and email to discuss what the plan for each sessions' adventure is before hand. Not everyone is active in that discussion, but the group feels it's a good compromise between letting the players choose their goals and not spending a lot of valuable in-person time talking it over, esp. since people who just show up are likely not to have a stake in what the party does as long as it's exciting.    So, from that discussion, I know what the players want to do is to find a buyer for a scroll. And I know (spoiler for my players) it's got explosive runes that are likely to kill whoever they sell it to; I think that's too good a visual to let happen off-stage, so whoever buys it will want to try it out while the PCs are still there to witness it (or, from the NPC's POV, to be punished if they sold a fake) (/end spoiler).    My first inclination is to have an NPC point them to just one buyer for the scroll, and prep in detail for an action sequence following up on the consequences of the sale. But it doesn't feel realistic for a city this big to have just one buyer, and it robs the possibility of the players shopping around and comparing offers.    So my next inclination is to say "there are three buyers" but run the same prepped encounter wherever they go. This makes me feel guilty about illusionism, and prepping in detail for one situation will make more trouble if they do shop it around to all three. Inside I decide to set up a structure that I can apply to all three buyers - in each manse there are the personal allies of the buyer, who are loyal to him; a force of guards who just do what they're paid to; and a rival who would be glad to see the buyer removed from the scene. Having this structure lets me think about how the scene might play out in an exciting way, with lots of handles for the players to put on, but drop different specific individuals into the faction slots for each scene so that it'll play out differently depending on the players' choice.     Now I have to prep for the possibility that either the players will do something entirely other than I expect, or somehow cause the scene at the scroll-buyers' not to create action (or at least not enough action to fill the session). So I create a tool-kit of adversaries I can drop in as wandering monsters, all of which are tailored to make trouble for a small street-gang of PCs at once. (More spoilers). One is a press gang authorized to force people to dig sewers; the PCs could bribe or fight. One is a racist rabble-rouser who hates elves. One is a religious cult who thinks yellow clothing is a sin, and then there's two groups of pickpockets, one that will escape by sewer, one by rooftop. (/end spoilers). Having these on hand lets me feel more secure in giving the players freedom to wander, because I have some ways to make trouble for them wherever they go. In theory these are random encounters - I'll let the dice determine when they happen, and which one comes along - but in practice I call for random checks as a way of controlling the pace of the group, and won't pull out these big set-piece encounters if there's already enough action on the boil.To tie this back to GM techniques that happen at the table, rather than in the planning, I see rolling in the open for wandering monster checks as an important message. It demonstrates "I'm not fully in charge of what happens", and gives the players some game-level information of the kind howandwhy99 identifies as essential: "moving through the streets is dangerous, and we can gauge how much so by watching the dice and seeing what rolls create an encounter." Note that in the city, I expect to moderate that approach some in favor of story; here some of what a very acute player might learn by watching the frequency of my random encounter checks is "Tavis is bending the rules in order to create the kind of stuff he wants this session to include," which I don't do in a dungeon (where the dungeon design takes care of that for me at a different level). I think that's OK because some of the players do complain if the pacing lags or there's not enough action. If I were running for a different group (e.g., one that always had the same PCs present) I'd likely change parts of my approach to match.</blockquote>

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