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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7371493" data-attributes="member: 29398">Just that, I guess - to work toward the goal.Nothing says the campaign has to go far enough that the PC actually becomes king, or even if it does that this whole story has to be played out.Using my own current example of my PC who eventually wants to become Empress* of [Rome], while it's a background goal I've got her slowly building up to there's no way I'd expect the other players to sit through all the non-adventuring political machinations she's likely going to have to attempt.  Hell, I might not want to sit through it myself!  In any case I expect that'll all happen after she's retired from adventuring (as in, no longer an actively-played character but still existent in the game world).* - though very recent developments have suggested there might not be much left to be Empress of, by the time we get back there...In the case of the wanna-be Empress, almost certainly.  As a player, I'd be rather surprised if there weren't. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Here and now the story is about defeating the orcs, and whatever's gone into getting to that point.  The climax, I suppose, might be the battle against the orcs' chieftain, or whatever.That doesn't sound unique to player-driven games.  In and of itself (ignoring any plot or setting or background or external considerations) this pretty much is the essence of every RPG out there; with the only exception being that sometimes the players/PCs frame themselves into conflict without the DM having to provide anything.Matter of scale, though.  You're looking for the needs-framing-action-climax-resolution cycle almost on a per-encounter scale, it seems; where I look for it on a larger scale - perhaps per-adventure - and don't worry about forcing it into each individual encounter.Which is a euphamistic (sp?) way of saying the workload of creating and maintaining the story is removed from the DM and dumped in the players' laps.If the players aren't interested in the Baron and ignore that whole element, I'd say that's player agency at work!  They've chosen to focus on something else, as is their right.If they do end up going after the Baron, particularly if the Baron a) doesn't see them coming or b) is in fact innocent, the players/PCs are very likely going to create the conflict as they go along.  There doesn't need to be a conflict to kick the story off, just a curiosity and desire to investigate.Can't speak to that one as I've never seen/read/played it; but I've seen many modules vaguely like it.  The trick is to be able to adapt away from the module to reflect what the players do to it e.g. if the PCs kill the bad guys before they get the chance to monologue* and provide the exposition, or if they decide to work with the mind flayer* - my players are great for this - as soon as there's even a hint that my villain is about to monologue they drop a Silence on him and do everything they can to kill him before it wears off!So you say, but as I've pointed out upthread this is in fact not so.The player is free to choose what to do within any given framed scene, but has no choice what to do between framed scenes.  In your feather example the player didn't get to choose how to begin the investigation, or where to start looking for information, or who else to engage for help (there's not been much mention of what the rest of the party was doing during all this).Not quite sure what you're getting at here, as DM and GM are in this case just different terms for the same thing.  For one of these did you mean to say "player-driven"?Lan-"if I'm driving, who's navigating?"-efan</blockquote>

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