10:06 AM
Okay, so it took me a while to figure out that the kind of stories I can tell as a GM are very different from the kind of stories I can tell as a writer.
Specifically, I can't expect things.
You say you like to "lay the ground work for epic things" and then "reveal things later." I've been there.
And it's possible! The trick is doing it in an RPG way rather than a novel/film way.
There are two techniques I've found useful, and one is divided further into two subgroups:
Xanatos gambits are the first, and the hardest, but the best for actually achieving what you're envisioning.
But Xanatos gambits are a kind of illusionism (providing the illusion of free will to the players without actually giving them any significant choices).
(Note: I'm not talking about an NPC enacting a Xanatos gambit--that's nearly impossible to pull off because PCs are masters of
taking a third option you didn't expect. No, I'm talking about
engineering your whole setting so that all paths lead to the final confrontation.)
The other technique is to be ready to roll with the players and pretend you meant it to happen that way all along.
This is a lot easier if your players talk to each other a lot about what they think is happening.
In this kind of game, I set up a lot of stuff that could be really cool, but I don't get invested in any of it. I just see which things my players are interested in, and I build on that, letting the other things fall to the side.
As a really blunt example, I can prepare the first session of three very different missions and give the players the option of choosing--say, but having three WANTED posters they see.
The mission they choose, I start building more stuff for. The missions they ignore, I ignore, unless and until they head back and ask "Hey, is that other mission still available?"
(At which point I probably decide that no, it's not, but because they didn't take it something happened which makes a related mission.)
This is where it branches into two different approaches: one is to have a living, breathing world full of stuff going on which the players may or may not notice. This usually winds up burning out the GM from putting lots of effort into stuff that never gets used.
The other is to make
a world of cutouts with just enough prep to get you through the first encounter with any given thing they're likely to come up against.
If you do that, then you have the opportunity to actively create a body for the cutout which is based on what the party's done in the past--thus making it look like you expected that stuff to happen all the time.
But in the end, all of this is just a fancy way of saying that the only way you'll ever get to have exactly the campaign you envisioned is if your players are willing to be led by the nose like docile sheep, or if you can consistently and transparently outsmart them.
Most of us can't or won't do that, so we find other kinds of stories to tell.
For example, instead of setting up cool events which I want to happen, I set up cool interactions which are happening and have the potential to lead to cool events in the future.
The pirate king of Barathra is taking over the local trade routes, and the Order of the Enlightened Hand is preaching that magic items are inherently evil, and the apostate catfolk are attacking caravans which leave the gnome city.
What will happen? Well, if the pirate king isn't stopped he'll come to blows with the Order because he wants to traffic in magic goods, and he'll go to war with the catfolk tribes (not just the apostates, because he doesn't know the difference) to protect his land trade routes. The Order will side with the catfolk in the war, and the gnome city will starve because the soldiers on both side commandeer their food and trample their fields.
Now anything the players do is likely to disrupt that balance, but it's very unlikely to make the events less awesome, and because I know the motives and interactions between the factions I can pretty easily adjust the world in response to the players.
(There's probably something going on with the gnome city itself, too--maybe they're trying to develop dirigibles so they can fly over the catfolk attackers and create a new set of trade routes out of the pirate king's control.)
If that's the case, then the party might be asked to steal the gnomes' dirigible tech so the Order can drop bombs on the pirate's armies, and then they're given the option of instead selling it to the pirate king.
No matter what happens you'll probably get dirigible battles (an awesome thing you planned for!), but the party's given a major and meaningful choice about how it goes down.
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Aaand I think that's all I've got on that for now.
Questions, comments, compliments, complaints?
Oh, one last thing that just occurred to me, and it comes from a set of essay-topic-focusing questions my mother uses with her students:
- What was the status quo?
- What has happened to change the status quo?
- What could the response to that change be?
Use questions like that to create the beginning of awesome stories, and see what awesome endings your players create for them.
