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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7340563" data-attributes="member: 37579">And I claim that you're wrong.You admit later to using a Monster Manual. So you admit that you don't make up monsters on the fly and tailor them for your games, to the tone of your game and world. That’s the exact same thing as an NPC or a location or an adventuring site. If you can use the statblocks of an orc you can pull the description of a tower, a tavern with innkeeper, a city, or even an entire nation. You can pull a dungeon out of Dungeon Delves. You can use the Village of Hommlet.As I say this in an earlier post:So… which is which? Which did I create just for this thread and which are pre-authored? Points will be counted. Go. With 400 hours of show there’s a lot driven by the DM, Matthew Mercer, but a lot driven by the players. (We're also seeing the show as presented at the table. He has conversations with the players away from the table and sets up stuff in conjunction with them. Last week's session is a great example of that.)Mercer does a lot of prep, but he is very reactive to the players, and created a campaign and a world that progresses. The villain doesn't sit around and cease acting when the players are elsewhere. The longer they take, the more things change. But the point was that when the DM is reacting and improvising, it's not immediately apparent. If your players can tell when you're improvising and using a script, that's a reflection of you.First off, you don't need to be so dismissive, by suggesting that people running a game with a story is "fetch quests" and isn't player driven. Secondly, how exactly does the story change for your players if they're going to their sister's warehouse rather than the brother's tower?  How does changing the gender change the motivation? How does altering the type of location dramatically change the tone?The important bits remain the same. The urgency is the same. They're not going to rush slower to save their sister or have an easier time getting to a warehouse.Yeah, if the players wanted a tower for their character, then, yeah, there should *probably* be a tower. If they don't specify, then why not grab an interesting location from a published source? Even if they do have a firmer idea, why not punch it up with a few idea, combining what they have with other concepts?The investment is the important bit. The motivation. The tie to the character. The original source of story element is irrelevant, because once it enters your game it ceases to be what it was and becomes something new. And because, when done correctly, the players won't know that you pulled the description of the tower from a novel/ sourcebook/ movie/ DeviantArt sketch/ napkin. A book of locations is also a preparation book. A campaign setting is a preparation book. Having a setting prepared doesn't prevent you from telling the types of stories you want. That's just the background. The painted sets at the back of the stage. Just because a stagehand prepared a few backdrops before the improv show doesn't mean the show suddenly becomes scripted.Why can't you tell a player focused shared fiction campaign in the Forgotten Realms? Or New York? Why does it matter if you create the pub at the moment or pull it from a book penned by Ed Greenwood or from a travelogue of Manhattan? Once the players decide to make that their base of operations that's what's important. Lore for D&D exists in a quantum state. It both exists and doesn't exist. If the players (or you) think up better lore it overwrites the book's lore. If the players are uninterested and the you can't think of anything then what the book says works just fine. That's what worldbuilding is for. Creating the backdrop ahead of time so you can spend time at the table managing the pace of the story, running the encounters, and wrangling the players. To save the brain power and time for what matters. So when the players are sneaking into the orc warband's territory and ask if there's a totem to an orc god they can set fire to as a distraction you don't need to create a pantheon on the spot. You can just say "Sure. There's a hideous fetish idol to Gruumsh, with its one eye being a large glass lense." (Or roll to see if the idol exists before saying that.)If I established the duergar stronghold and presented it to the players as a location to go to, then it’s part of the world. If the players don't get involved, then whatever the duergar were planning continues. If the players leave that plot then that's fine, but it continues without them. Which means things happen. As a result of the player's actions, and as a consequence of their choices. To do otherwise would be to diminish their actions and reduce the impact of their characters in the world. Yes, yes. Mixing those up is a common slip (who hasn't accidentally commented on "a player dying" instead of "a character"?) Pointing that out just seems petty and pedantic. By "some" you probably mean "most". While I think almost all players like to have a choice in how the plot unfolds, I think most are quite happy to have the DM tell a story they really want to tell. Because when the GM is excited about a story, they're going to put more energy into the game and the excitement will be contagious.(Plus, the GM is a player too. So they should have some say in how the story goes, just like the other players.)I'm pretty much referring to running pre-published adventures and comparin how your group did compared to others. A tradition that goes back to the old Tournament mods of the mid-70s. Because when a bunch of gamers sit around a table they can't talk about their characters, but they can compare notes about how each did in the Tomb of Horrors or how they handled the kobolds in the Caves of ChaosThat sure sounds like you used a heck of a lot of D&D lore. Aka… worldbuilding.If you feel comfortable including Bane and Levistus, the Rod of Seven Parts and the Abyss, why not the town of Daggerdale? A dungeon adapted from Hoard of the Dragon Queen where the motives of the NPCs are changed? An NPC from a PDF of NPCs sold on the DMsGuild?That's not what you said in the first page.Quite the opposite really. I have a big prewritten campaign setting but I write the adventure based on the players and their choices. And their actions and choices shape the world: for their characters, for their next characters, and the characters of future parties playing in the world. The players in my 4e game impacted the world by their successes and failures, which *might* impact the players of the current campaign, if they choose to go to that location. The catch is, half my players don't really have characters with strong motivations. They just want to play. So the story becomes all about the other players who do have strong motivations and character desires. So, as a good GM, I need to invent stories for the other players to keep them involved and prevent them from just being sidekicks to the more extroverted players. The stories are still focused on the PCs, but I'm more active in initiating and doing the backstory. My 5e game is just going on a break so I can do some Star Wars and then another DM can take over to tell a story he really wants to tell. After that I'm working the Tomb of Annihilation adventure into the campaign, moving the location to a place in my world and tying a PCs' quest to the Tomb. Do they have a choice? Sure. Walking away and going elsewhere is totally a choice. It will just kill a couple PCs. But then the campaign will shift to adventures set wherever they head towards.</blockquote>

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