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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8347563" data-attributes="member: 6790260">[USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] Given some of the things you've just said, I'm going to describe one final thing. If this fails to pass muster, I give up; the thread is already elevating my heart rate as it is, and anything further will be wasted effort.One of my former players played a Wizard, part of the Waziri mage order (the collegiate wizards I invented during the first group's session 0, who also run many libraries, museums, and non-magic schools in the city). Said Wizard, upon returning from a particular mission, came back to his apartment (something the player invented) to pay a big fat sum for his future rent to his landlady (whom the player invented), and check back in with his grad student (who was the price negotiated by a spontaneously-invented Waziri bureaucrat meddling in the party's affairs, but ended up being a really nice person, in response to player investigation of her backstory, which I did not prepare in advance). In inventing the grad-student off the cuff, I'd said her area of focus was golemancy, which was considered reasonably close to the PC's graduate work (incantations) for him to act as her mentor. While there, I asked if there were any goals he wanted to fulfill, because he didn't really have much to do while the others were checking up with their friends/loved ones/etc. or investigating troubling information they'd learned on their last adventure (the ad-libbed result of a failed Discern Realities roll). Player thought for a moment, then said he wanted to build a golem.I hadn't considered the first thing about golem construction or usage, so I started asking more questions. Did he want a special-purpose one, or something programmable, or perhaps modular? (He requested more time to think, focusing on getting the basics first.) What materials did he want to use? (Wood--something that could have magic woven into it to repair itself.) Based on these answers, and based on the fact that the Waziri are notorious for having fairly specialized libraries (part of my original-group Session 0 ideas), I said he knew  he could find information on the subject by visiting a particular library, the name of which I apparently forgot to write down but which I'm certain I invented on the spot. (He could also consult his grad student and have her assist him with its creation.) At the library, he met with an old woman working as the receptionist and research assistant for this particular library. She directed him to a book, printed on bark-like paper and bound in wood, written by the late, eccentric Abdelmajid al-Buzidi on the creation of golems from natural materials.After I waxed a little poetic on various woods and their applications (coincidentally something I happen to know a little about IRL), the player settled on fine acacia wood, which grows naturally in the region where they live. (The climate is heavily inspired by Morocco, and thus prior adventures had established the existence of acacia trees, wild and cultivated citrus trees, and cork forests in various places within the region.) The player then spent some money to acquire the wood from the markets, and began cooperating with his grad student to get it shaped into a golem. At other points when the party visited the city, I further delved into how the golem construction was going, either just asking questions and letting the player decide the current status of the thing, within what I hoped were reasonable limits, or requesting a Spout Lore, Defy Danger, or other roll as needed to resolve ambiguous situations one way or another.This is far from the only time I have done things like this. This is just a relatively neat, minimal-context example that doesn't require explaining seven different adventures and multiple ways the players directly created, or by their requests directly inspired, multiple real, enduring, incredibly important parts of the game world we play in. I've invented many parts of this game, but it absolutely, positively could not exist as it does without dozens if not hundreds of ideas contributed directly by my players, with little more than a, "Ooh, I like that" or "wow, that sounds awesome!" from me.Sadly, this particular story also never reached a solid conclusion, as the player left the game before that could happen (disengaging from all social activity online, actually--even with family members). But several other things, such as the Bard learning from the Druid how to shapeshift into small animals (sparrows, lizards, fish, etc.), the Druid collecting interesting stones or materials for his "charm bracelet," or some of the other things I've already mentioned (the Ranger and his extended family/clan, the Battlemaster and him engaging with both current and historical traditions of martial scholarship), all arose purely out of players expressing, through the words of their characters, things they thought were interesting or worth pursuing, and which I supported as much as possible.I'd say such things make up no less than a third of all the activities we've ever done. And even with things I have prepared (like the "Bad Guy" factions, which are Fronts in DW terms, including Grim Portents which are literally described as "your way to codify the plans and machinations of your dangers"), I go out of my way to include things my players have brought into the story as part of this, and their behavior shifts and changes directly in response to the PCs' actions and effects on the world. E.g., the Raven-Shadows are having a (completely unplanned, by them or me) civil war over whether the party Bard is their prophesied messiah or a deceiver who is just in the right places at the right times, for a variety of reasons both supported by previous concepts and driven by the player's interest in religious topics in this game. (The player was raised without any religious affiliation, so this character is a way for him to safely explore religious topics with minimal risk of giving offense or bungling a relationship, and being put on the spot for a conflict of this nature is both interesting and challenging to the player, as he has personally told me when we discussed it after the conflict became known to the character.)If you add the stuff in the preceding paragraph to the kinds of things I described above that, then no less than half, and probably more like three-quarters or more, of the things that happen in the game happen because the players make choices and the world changes around them as a result, or because the players directly describe elements of the world that had previously not been known before they did so.But if, after hearing all that, you still think I'm just another railroad-adjacent DM merely dictating a plot to my players whose only participation is to select which prompts they wish to follow until they see the theme-park set-piece I planned for them, then there is no hope of further conversation. I'm already teetering on the brink of thinking this entire conversation, as enlightening as it was, will have been on the net much more trouble and emotional upheaval than it was worth, sadly.</blockquote>

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