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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7073742" data-attributes="member: 57112">One thing I'll add to my previous discussion; I see my role as the DM in creating the most enjoyable play experience for everyone at the table. That doesn't mean "everyone always wins" so much as it means "I provide challenges appropriate to the party." It means I don't provide challenges for the party that they don't have the ability to overcome. This is not to say they always overcome said challenges; just that they have a chance at doing it. It means if, say, my players (and their characters) struggle with social challenges, I use them sparingly (I don't avoid them entirely), and I consciously hide alternative solutions to the problem when I do. Of course, my players might just surprise me by rising to the challenge as presented; or maybe they'll discover that alternative I've hidden (a piece of blackmail here, a mutual contact there); or maybe they'll find some other way to overcome the challenge I hadn't even considered. Like I said, players are by nature full of surprises.But challenge is only one aesthetic out of eight; and so I also have a responsibility to "read the room" so to speak, and design my adventures and campaigns around the aesthetics of my players. I have several players who emphasize the Fellowship aesthetic; they show up every game because they enjoy the social aspect and teamwork involved. So I purposefully design my adventures to avoid intraparty friction and I explicitly disallow "PvP" actions at my table. My players are also generally more into Expression than Fantasy, so I allow them some creative control over the content of the setting from time to time (like when they head-canon-changed House Orien to be gnomes in my Eberron game for reasons I still don't fully comprehend). Or look at genre; I love writing horror scenarios, to the extent that my players began to notice signs that they were in the obligatory "horror adventure" of the campaign. I eventually discovered that my players cared little for these scenarios, so I chucked them.I also wonder how the "never consider the characters" style works PC backstory into their campaigns. Do they at all? I have to think there at least has to be a middle ground there... the characters themselves are just as much elements of the game world as anything else, so their backstory elements should be incorporated into the campaign at some point, don't they? They're not just birthed into the world fully formed from Talos's forehead.</blockquote>

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