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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6121580" data-attributes="member: 6681948">So the reaction you would expect from these adventurers, when set upon, not once but twice, by an unknown foe is to say "well, surely it will not happen a third time - back to what we were doing."  I can tell you that ny character would be investigating this cult, and encouraging his fellow adventurers to do the same.  THEY ARE TRYING TO KILL US - that would make finding out who they are, and a means of stopping them from TRYING TO KILL US before they succeed, a pretty significant priority to my character.  Perhaps your character is so bullheaded stubborn, or brain dead stupid, than he will just keep walking straight ahead as he is peppered by missiles from all sides.  If so, my character will wish to get as far away from him as rapidly as possible and locate some more useful teammates.By the way, how does your system work when, in this plot/character generation process, one of your players says "I want some mystery in the game, Mr. GM.  I want an unknown adversarial force that, for reasons we don't know, has targeted one or more of us."  Are his wishes less valid than yours, solely because he does not wish to have the game's storyline laid out before him in advance?Guess what?  In the real world, and in adventure fiction, it's not always YOU that goes looking.Perhaps Bob is tired of always playing the game that the loudest guy at character generation wants to play, and tired of other possibilities being shot down because everyone has long since learned that any suggestions they bring to the table are shot down byMr. "All About Me".  I would hope that Bob's cultists are not the sole element of the game.  I would, in fact, hope that elements of his background are woven into elements of the other PC's backstories, and into things that have nothing to do with anyone's backstories, because it is that kind of variety, mystery and uncertainty that makes the game exciting, interesting and engaging.  I don't want to spend the first few sessions of the game BUILDING the railroad so we can all hop aboard the plot wagon as soon as play begins.  It is no less a railroad simply because we built the rails more collaboratively.  If I want to engage in collaborative creating writing, then I will do so.  Here, I want to GAME, not write a joint story.And there is where we disagree.  I think it is just as easy for one player to hijack the game in that campaign setting stage as at any other point in the game.  It may look like "consensus", but it is not "consensus" when one player is simply exercising a veto power until what he wants is suggested and everyone else goes along for the sake of getting the game rolling.  Now we have all the group marching in a straight line along the Plot Rails because "that was what we all agreed the game would be about" (ie that is what the rest of us finally acquiesced in the hope we could end the campaign planning meetings and actually PLAY for a while).  Sadly, the guy who just went along is off playing with his Playstation because it sure beats the hell of playing Player 1's game - again -  while other players follow along with varying degrees of disinterest, having constructed their characters to hook into whatever was left after Player #1 shouted down any ideas that did not fit his vison for the game.Player #1, meanwhile, is sitting there, all happy because he gets to be the center of attention and blissfully unaware that he has watered down or removed all of the elements the other players would have liked to have incorporated in the game so that they, too, could enjoy the game.An extreme interpretation?  To be sure, it is.  But, in my view no more extreme than your interpretation of a game without rails constructed at the outset to ensure that "we all agreed" which plot wagon we would  board (ie that you could veto any suggestions not to your immediate liking).  Or, to use your phrasing:By the way, my understanding is that true "consensus decision making" is not univerally recognized as being the superior approach.  From the little work I have done in the field (mainly a few CPE courses some years back), the view of the experts is that a TRUE consensus decision is extremely powerful because it holds universal buy-in.  However, it is also an extremely slow and labour-intensive process, with about a 1/3 chance of ever actually resulting in a decision being reached.  Claims that "consensus" is significantly more successful in various instances are commonly debunked on further analysis that shows there was no actual consensus, only a large serving of acquiescence.  Much like I describe above.</blockquote>

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