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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7346820" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I’m just asking if it’s possible for framing to limit player agency. I didn’t want to give a specific example because I was speaking generally. Is it possible? If you’d like, we can use the example you gave of framing a scene where the PCs have been captured. The 5E adventure Out of the Abyss is a recent example of this. Now, I want to make it clear that I have no real problem with this kind of start. I think it’s a perfectly valid approach to a game. But I would have to describe this framing as being pretty GM driven. It certainly puts pressure on the players to do things...but it also forces the story down a certain path, at least for a bit.Would you agree? I’m sure that ideally the GM would have the captors be antagonists that at least one player has indicated would be interesting and incorporated them into his character’s goals, and so on. But what if that’s not the case? About the second item quoted above...how can players do that? Or how can they do that at all times? Surely if Tim’s warlock has the spotlight and the story has become about a struggle between Tim’s patron and another entity, how can Bob the fighter seek revenge for the death if his brother? Wouldn’t Bob’s attempts to bring that up distract from Tim’s story? Are they supposed to take turns? Or perhaps as you indicate in the third item, perhaps Bob’s brother was killed by followers of the rival of Tim’s patron. Nice and convenoent....I do tend to try to do this where I see such connections. But...isn’t that potentially an example of GM force? Let me take these two stories and make them one. Or, if it’s not, isn’t such an approach prone to overuse? Won’t the players start to expect all their problems to dovetail into one another? If so, must that be bad? These questions are all the kinds I think about for my game. And ultimately, I’m not afraid of the story being GM driven from time to time because I know my players really well and what they are interested in seeing come up in the game. I add some other elements beyond those things because I think that helps balance things out and keeps things from being predoctable. But honestly, I’m not seeing how my use of “worldbuilding” or backstory is doing what you claim it does.</blockquote>

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