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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6117602" data-attributes="member: 42582">But not necessarily in the same way. In pre-play planning, for instance, what my PC should be concerned with - eg, what makes for a good goal - is in part a matter of group discussion. (Eg the classic "No, I don't think an assassin-for-hire will fit into this game - what about a Punisher-style agent of vengeance instead?")In play, though, my PC's goal is something I start with, not something that's up for negotiation. I encounter limits to my PC's goal not through collaborative negotiation with my fellow players, but by meeting ingame resistance to my PC's achievement of it.Perhaps, although that's going beyond what I said. "Having a reason to be ready to fight goblins" doesn't entail goblins as major enemies (though in my game that happened to be how it turned out). It doesn't even entail actually fighting the goblins when they turn up - that reason might change in the course of play, for instance.The actual situation I was committed to running in the game in question was the PCs being in a stockade defending it from goblin attack. In my own experience with my players, it would be pretty unusual for them to join with the goblins in attacking the stockade. But it wouldn't be unusual for them to reach some sort of agreement with the goblins in return for the goblins stopping their attack. And, in fact, something a little bit along those lines is what has actually happend in the campaign, although over many levels and episodes of play rather than early on.In the sort of approach that I prefer, in play the playes are pushing their PCs hard at their goals, at the things they are engaged with. What's interesting about play, to a significant extent, is seeing where that leads.Given that focus of play, having the players pull back from those goals, in order to explore some bit of the setting that the GM finds interesting but that doesn't itself touch upon them, is simply a needless distraction. It doesn't add anything to the play experience. It becomes pointless filler.</blockquote>

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