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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5007789" data-attributes="member: 8835">Bingo!To start a campaign in the style I employ (and have experienced any time I've ever played), you gotta prime the pump.  That means set some stuff up to be happening that the players will be impacted by.  Basically make them cross paths with the BBEG's plan.  The BBEG may not even be that big, he's just bigger than the PCs.This triggers a reaction from the players.  To which the DM reacts.  And so on in a chain of reactions.At some point, the BBEG gets beat.  In the process, the players learn more about the world, and start setting up their own side goals.  Once the BBEG is dealt with, they tend to turn these side goals into primary goals.  Now they're the ones setting up the initial action.The chain reaction system is how they get locked in, because for the most part, they are going to stick with their goal.  The probability of them getting off is low.The key then, is the initiating action.  At the start of the campaign, it's almost always the DM.  If the DM doesn't the party tends to sit around the bar, waiting for a hook, or they start causing trouble, just to start something moving.At later stages of the campaign, when the players get some breathing room, they start initiating their own actions (and plot lines).  Like deciding to run for sheriff, since they've been saving it every week.  Or taking over the kingdom.  Or upgrading some magic item. Or finishing out that vengeance oath.My initiating event, as a GM, tends to be small.  I'm really only looking to get this session going, so I make up a small event, enough to trigger a session's worth of activity.  The village is threatened and needs your help right now is a decent enough hook.  The idea, is to get the party moving together towards a common threat that they can beat in one session.  By doing a short adventure, they get motivated and learn to work together and get used to the new setting.  By making it short, I'm not getting them stuck in some mega-plot that they may or may not be interested in (since I don't know their characters that well yet either).  Plots should have a scope equal to the PCs level.Once that first session is done, there's usually some outstanding business and PC goals start getting revealed.  That's where the next session tries to incorporate that stuff.  I don't want to have to make up yet another unrelated problem for the village.  I'd rather have thing stuff grow organically based on what the PCs goals or what they've done (or left undone).  What happens in the next session should be a logical progression from the last session and incorporate the player's general intent.If the players say, we're going to infiltrate the BBEG's staff when we get to ThereVille, then my next session will give them opportunities to observe and infiltrate and avoid detection on the BBEG's staff.  It will not focus on a frontal assault.  Why does this matter?  Because an infiltration mission requires material for the GM that he may not fairly or realistically on the fly.  Plus, I may not have even thought of that had they not told me ahead of time, thus increasing the chance of a DM blockade because it was out of scope (i.e. railroad behavior happens when the PCs try to do stuff the DM doesn't want or didn't anticipate fairly).That's generally how games flow, for me as a player, and as a DM.One thing to note, this behavior of PC lock-in is something that I see in Good aligned characters.  In a way, they lose freedom of choice, because their alignment generally indicates their response to plot hooks or encounters.  Whereas, an evil PC has no constraints on what he may do, and may be entirely random or inconsistent.  This may be a topic for a new thread...</blockquote>

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