Anonymous
7/4/2025, 2:23:02 AM
No.96009600
>>96009502
>So you are going for the sort of game that has a set beginning, middle, end point? Not that I don't think that sort of detail wouldn't be good to have in general but what if the setting exists for "We're doing this sort of thing this scenario."?
I mean, I have storylines that I know I want to do, but the game has no premeditated end. There are, to my mind, three different possible general endings of the campaign that the players could arrive at, with a lot of wiggle room about the specific details of how or why they end up there. And there is plenty of room for them to develop a 4th option on their own.
How I run games is largely to define a situation, and then have loosely mapped out what happens if the players do *nothing*. Given time, the world advances without them. They can, and should, change the course of those events through their choices and actions, but its important to know what happens 'by default'.
Assassins are going to attack the fancy ball, their aim is to kill the duke. By default, they won't succeed but they WILL kill the duke's captain of the guard and there are a bunch of other important NPCs that could get caught in the crossfire depending. If the players intervene, they could save the captain of the guard... or they could get the duke killed if they end up pulling the captain out of where he is 'supposed' to be. They don't know what the default outcome is, but I do. Because that makes it easier to improve responses to players stirring the pot if I already know what the important NPCs in the scene want to accomplish if left tot heir own devices.
If the players come up with a more interesting outcome than what I had planned, I'm happy to switch things up. But we don't agree on the outcome before we start playing.
>So you are going for the sort of game that has a set beginning, middle, end point? Not that I don't think that sort of detail wouldn't be good to have in general but what if the setting exists for "We're doing this sort of thing this scenario."?
I mean, I have storylines that I know I want to do, but the game has no premeditated end. There are, to my mind, three different possible general endings of the campaign that the players could arrive at, with a lot of wiggle room about the specific details of how or why they end up there. And there is plenty of room for them to develop a 4th option on their own.
How I run games is largely to define a situation, and then have loosely mapped out what happens if the players do *nothing*. Given time, the world advances without them. They can, and should, change the course of those events through their choices and actions, but its important to know what happens 'by default'.
Assassins are going to attack the fancy ball, their aim is to kill the duke. By default, they won't succeed but they WILL kill the duke's captain of the guard and there are a bunch of other important NPCs that could get caught in the crossfire depending. If the players intervene, they could save the captain of the guard... or they could get the duke killed if they end up pulling the captain out of where he is 'supposed' to be. They don't know what the default outcome is, but I do. Because that makes it easier to improve responses to players stirring the pot if I already know what the important NPCs in the scene want to accomplish if left tot heir own devices.
If the players come up with a more interesting outcome than what I had planned, I'm happy to switch things up. But we don't agree on the outcome before we start playing.