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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6096834" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's not rules as written in B/X, nor 1st ed AD&D, nor 4e. I can't comment on 2nd ed AD&D or 3E.But I've always taken it for granted, since I started playing D&D in the early 1980s, that a player gets to decide things like the name of his/her family members, certain elements of family background and history, etc. And also the colour and style of his/her gear, horse etc.I've never GMed a game in which players can't decide what happens in the plot. At the most simple, a player can decide that his PC talks to this or that NPC - and lo and behold, the plot is now, in part, about a conversation between these two people.In other words, it seems to me that players, simply through playing their PCs, get to decide all the time "what happens in the plot".I'm sure that these are all true biographical facts about you, but how do they show that there is anything wrong with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s views about how to play D&D?Of course, there was another alternative - allow the players to expend the requisite resources for the recruitment - in a typical D&D game, that would be gold pieces - and then cut to the situation in which the players were interested and invested. It's failing to adopt this approach that is the GM's "screwing over of the players".More generally - there is no "god of GMing" or "god of RPGing" who is going to strike the participants down if the GM handwaves through those parts of the fiction that aren't of interest to the players, and focuses only on those that are. This is "say yes or roll the dice". It is obviously very different from [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]'s "proposition, fortune, resolution" approach, but it is a completely viable approach which many RPGers have been using for many years. This is very obviously not what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] was asking for. He doesn't want worship - he wants an interesting, engaging game.That also doesn't seem to be what Hussar is asking for. He doesn't want to cut-scene through the key challenge: he wants to resolve it.What you are describing here is the sort of "start of game" trainwreck that various techniques invented at The Forge and elsewhere are intended to avoid.I'm pretty sure that in Hussar's games, the participants agree in advance what the basic theme of the game will be, more-or-less what the point is, probably what sorts of PCs would or wouldn't fit it in. The game probably doesn't just start, out of the blue, in the way you describe.In my own 4e game, for instance, at the start of the campaign I direct the players that each PC must (i) have something or someone to whom s/he is loyal, and (ii) must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins. Hence when the opening scene involves the PCs being recruited to guard against goblins, the problem you describe doesn't arise - answers and ways forward have already been built into the PCs.Another example: when one of the PCs died at 2nd level, I asked the player if he wanted to keep playing that PC. He said that he did. It was already established (i) that the PC in question had been a worshipper of the Raven Queen, and (ii) that the place where he had died was a ruin of a fallen civilisation. I asked the player, "Why would the Raven Queen send you back into the mortal world?" He answered "Because there is something hidden in the ruins that I have to recover, something connected to the fate of that fallen civilisation, and its possible restoration." And this was in a context where it had already been established, in virtue of my instructions at PC build time, that this particular PC had loyalty to his former home city, which had been attacked and destroyed by humanoid hordes.And so when I told the player that, as his spirit appears in the Raven Queen's court, he sees the god of civilisation intervene, and explain that the PC must be sent back to recover a fragment of the Sceptre of Law, I didn't have any concerns that the player would not be interested in the quest, or that it would not fit with the PC's backstory or personality. And in fact that particular character motivation, and the resulting plotline, continues to be one of the main drivers of the campaign 4 years and 18 levels later.I don't think Hussar is saying that no one should ever enjoy this sort of play. But why is he obliged to?Hussar has not said that anyone else's game is badwrongfun. He has just been explaining why he wouldn't want to play in a game like the one you are describing. What's wrong with that? And what's objectionable about him running and playing in games that he wants to?</blockquote>

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