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| IcingDragon;
"Force Feeding Plots" |
IcewindDragon's
post on LiveJournal Forum "Metagaming" about leading
dm's.
A link to the livejournal post from which this was taken This article disadvises to get too immersed into details of an adventure, since wanting the players to fully experience all those ingenious ideas that one has come up with may lead a storyteller to prod the players along a certain path at which time all those ideas will feel force-fed to the players, something that is rarely enjoyable, even if the meal itself is delicious, if you will pardon me getting alegorical. Here is my answer to that: while this may be true for unexperienced storytellers, i think there is a different way to approach and to use it. I tend to amass an excessive amount of background information ere i start any adventure. I rarely plan an adventure in advance, as in my experience players are creatures that are prone not to confer to plans but rather find some unimaginable loop-hole to leave whatever you thought was an absolutely fool- and idiotproof path and either bypass half of the adventure or get themselves into far more serious trouble than they can possibly handle. I also want to avoid keeping the players in leading strings as far as i possibly can – in my opinion players should not have more restrictions placed on their actions than in real life, rather less (with the possible exception of something like mental disadvantages or similar things that they should honor to remain true to the character they have chosen to play). Also i prefer to acknowledge it if a player comes up with something that i have not thought of and rather make it easier for them than put stones in their path – creativity is something that should in my eyes be rewarded rather than frowned upon. That of course makes it normal that players just choose to walk past some part of the adventure i have designed, either missing it or simply ignoring it (i still vividly remember an adventure in which they stubbornly ignored any of the lucrative eight sidequests that i offered them during the adventure). To answer the question „But isn't that frustrating?“: No. The easiest thing to do is what i already hinted on in the title: anything that i do not use in one adventure i can, if i want to, use in another adventure. Just because the players managed to avoid the fifty Death Traps of Doom you prepared for them in advance by going over the rooftop of the castle does not mean that your designs are wasted – they just get passed on to the Underground Caverns of Horror. This is the most obvious way of reusal. There are far more difficile ones, though: single phrases of the speech that you have prepared for an NPC (do you do that? I generally rather try to get an impression of the NPC and make up an impromptu speech, because in general you are not holding a speech but a conversation.) may reappear in someone elses mouth, accessories that you have drawn for the elven princess of Filarnia might be found in a treasure chest on Micol Island instead, and so on. While this is the next level of abstraction, it still is not the last: whether you want it or not, you will reuse part of your adventure – but in the least obvious way: you learn from them. Even if you throw away the sketch of the Orc-Inn, your drawing skills will have improved. Whether or not you reuse the riddle that you have come up with – it will be something that sharpened your mind and wits. Thus, ultimately, even if the you do not even play the adventure you had in mind, simply preparing it will not be in vain. With that mindset, there is no need to get the players to notice and acknowledge all the details you have prepared – and even beside the fact that ultimately all that work is for you, if they do not notice your ingenuity, your brilliance and your skills today, they will if you keep working on yourself to improve your gaming and do not abandon the group. Pax vobiscum IcewindDragon |
