Exactly...now on the other extreme some games just lend themselves to a more open and random framework. Recently we tried our hand at FFGs End of the World. Each games started pretty much with something like "Theres a Zombie at the door, the dead have risen. What do you want to do?" and the game just took off from there. This sort of thing is far easier to manage that way though as the setting (your home town), the characters (you and people you know), and the situation (zombies, aliens etc.) are all so familiar as to make improv extremely easy. Nothing lost by the players going off crazy in some unexpected direction.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;942008IAnd I would have indeed said "Okay, the haunted house burns down, you're all arrested for arson, and I'm going home."

Because it really seems like the players didn't actually want to play the game I offered.

Our party motto is "straight to the boss fight."

Last night we'd been sent to a wizard's tower to smack him over. The tower was by the sea with many ships wrecked on its foundations. No windows visible. We knocked, no answer. We smashed in the front door, nobody came. We ventured in, and it was a labyrinth. We stepped out and collected spare wood from the ships and filled the first 20 feet of corridor with wood and oil, and burned it. We figured either the wizard would die of smoke inhalation, or he'd come out to tell us to go away.

After about twenty minutes the tower... disappeared. It reappeared the next day. We went to the front door again, still smashed, the wood and fire cleared out. A wizard appeared on top of the tower and fireballed us. From 180ft away at the top of the tower. Sigh, it's 3.5  fireball range 400ft. Our men-at-arms all perished but we survived. Next came a stinking cloud, we corrected the DM on range so all it did was obscure us, so he doesn't know if we ran away or dashed in. We dashed in, of course.

Burning it down is always a good idea. Straight to the boss fight.

Quote from: rgrove0172;942033Exactly...now on the other extreme some games just lend themselves to a more open and random framework. Recently we tried our hand at FFGs End of the World. Each games started pretty much with something like "Theres a Zombie at the door, the dead have risen. What do you want to do?" and the game just took off from there. This sort of thing is far easier to manage that way though as the setting (your home town), the characters (you and people you know), and the situation (zombies, aliens etc.) are all so familiar as to make improv extremely easy. Nothing lost by the players going off crazy in some unexpected direction.

True and I agree on the genre. That's more or less how most of the zombie survival horror games I've run have started, works pretty well.

Quote from: rgrove0172;942023I suppose just to revisit the actual topic of the thread I would have to say "It depends"

I am pretty adept at generating content on the fly to better flesh out the setting, lend depth to NPCs, adjust to the decisions and actions of the Players but I do draw a line at some point if the players stretch the premise of the game too thin. If by their choice the plot would take off in a direction I deem beyond the limits of the game we intended to play, I call uncle. I don't want to run a completely random game where the players just run amok. Typically our games have a sort of assumed arc - even in long campaigns they are a series of arcs. Deviating completely from the current arc isn't heresy but it will no doubt postpone the game and perhaps end it.

As I was relating to one of the members in private...

A few years ago I ran a circa 1900 adventure in San Francisco. The game involved a murderous Chinese cult, supernatural elements, a mystery to solve etc. Had the players elected to take a ship to Shanghai I would have reminded them that the game was about the events in San Fran rather than fabricate some railroady reason they had to stay. If they had insisted I would have let them but called the game done until which time I was prepared to continue the adventure in the new direction..IF I even wanted to.

See right here Grove is why you get people here coming at you.  You don't even consider the WHY of what the characters are doing.
It's 1900, there is no internet, and I'm in San Fran dealing with an ancient Chinese Cult.
If time wasn't critical, why wouldn't I go to Shanghai or Hong Kong where you have British gov't and Law Enforcement having to deal with ancient chinese everything for a lot longer than San Fran has, and might have more experience I can draw on.  Hell, you're so much into story, globetrotting to uncover ancient secrets relating to Occult situations is how the genre works.
The problem is, it's just not within the limits of "The Story Grove has Set".

Well, it IS easier to prepare for a game that stays within San Francisco, especially if it's a one-shot. But on the other hand, for the next time you run the one shot maybe prepare some opium den shit in Shanghai too.

I've played Traveller, but always one-shots.  A friend of mine got Traveller:The New Era and was going to run a campaign.  Hell Yeah!

Well, I didn't know what The New Era was, or about Virus or anything, and ended up playing kind of a post-apocalyptic techno-barbarian in kind of a Mad Max campaign.  We did all kinds of adventures, eventually got good enough to work for the Warlord of the biggest city, where there was a functioning spaceport that could handle shuttle landings and the Warlord was sending resources and slaves up to a small dilapitated pirate station in orbit and getting weapons and ammo coming down.  We finally got ourselves off that rock by hiring on as the boarding party/security for a small trader captain.  The GM moved away not too long after.

Did I play in a Traveller campaign?  I sure did.  It wasn't New Era's fault, technically that campaign could have existed in the frontier of any Traveller era.
Did I have fun?  It was hella fun.
Do I still want to play in a stereotypical Firefly-style Traveller campaign? You betcha.

OTOH, not all games are intended to be open ended Sandboxes  and to accommodate all possible actions that are theoretically possible for some "in" the setting. If the proposal was far a game set in San Fran as the core premise then sailing off to Shanghai, especially long term, really isn't on the term. At least not without giving the gm some time to retool. Assuming they want to run a game set in Shanghai or some kind of globetrotting game. Its quite a left turn from what they've prepared and possibly wanted.  Of course some might think limited premise games suck and that's cool but if it established up front that's what its going to do be it is what it is.

Quote from: Nexus;942063Thing is, not all games are open ended Sandboxes meant to accommodate all possible actions that are theoretically possible for some "in" the setting. If the proposal was far a game set in San Fran as the core premise then sailing off to Shanghai, especially long term, really isn't on the term. At least not without giving the gm some time to retool. Assuming they want to run a game set in Shanghai or some kind of globetrotting game. Its quite a left turn from what they've prepared and possibly wanted.  Of course some might think limited premise games suck and that's cool but if it established up front that's what its going to do be it is what it is.

The issue with a lot of these hypotheticals is that there's not enough specifics given.  Obviously the biggest one is one-shot or campaign.  Those two are so different that there's very few things related to structure that will be similar, discussing the two with regards to freeform gameply doesn't really belong in the same thread.  In the Shanghai example, since it was just off the top of his head, he didn't say why they wanted to go to Shanghai (since it's Grove, personally I suspect it's because he actually wouldn't care why, because no matter why, it's not "Mah Storeh").  If it was to investigate, I certainly see that within the bounds.  If it's to open a Jade Importing Business, Houston we may have a problem.

Yep. In a one-shot, it seems entirely reasonable that the GM will have prepped some limited scope, and the players need to care and stay within it if they want to play the one-shot. Showing up for a one-shot haunted house investigation and burning it down without investigating is a funny troll move that may not be appreciated by the GM, but he can run the one-shot for less trollish players some other time.

Thinking about campaigns, though, in the campaigns I've played in and run, it seems pretty rare that the players have been specifically excited about certain genre expectations. When players have had expectations, it's usually been about their character concept or abilities, or something they want to try out or to accomplish or do (e.g. steal and/or command a ship, be a vigilante, start a riot, rob a bank, be a certain eccentric character type, try out some magic, visit some particular setting, start inside a particular social class, be in a war, be a spy, ...) but those are short-term interests and except for character abilities (er unless they die), they don't expect to necessarily get to keep doing most of those if there's a logical change of situation. Major changes happen and are part of what makes a campaign a campaign. Both players and GM have input into what happens and what play is like, and it rarely stays the same and often goes places and does things that no one predicted, which is one of the best aspects and a reason to play games rather than compose/listen to non-interactive stories (or play/run railroad games).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;942052Well, it IS easier to prepare for a game that stays within San Francisco, especially if it's a one-shot. But on the other hand, for the next time you run the one shot maybe prepare some opium den shit in Shanghai too.

Personally, I'd probably be caught unprepared too, and probably interrupt the current session once the PCs boarded the ship to Shanghai. The long trip itself offers an appropriate opportunity for an interlude.

Quote from: CRKrueger;942050See right here Grove is why you get people here coming at you.  You don't even consider the WHY of what the characters are doing.
It's 1900, there is no internet, and I'm in San Fran dealing with an ancient Chinese Cult.
If time wasn't critical, why wouldn't I go to Shanghai or Hong Kong where you have British gov't and Law Enforcement having to deal with ancient chinese everything for a lot longer than San Fran has, and might have more experience I can draw on.  Hell, you're so much into story, globetrotting to uncover ancient secrets relating to Occult situations is how the genre works.
The problem is, it's just not within the limits of "The Story Grove has Set".

Have to agree with CRK here. The worst case result would be the characters go to the Orient and find nothing (or, something completely different, OR clues to the deeper story).

Grove, you say you can easily adjust to what players do, but you keep giving examples that you can't, or do not want to do it.  I agree that sometimes players can do douche baggy things, as in your haunted mansion one-shot example. But players electing to travel to Shanghai to go to the source of your Chinese cult thread isn't "stretching the premise," it's "exploring the scenario."  (assuming this isn't another one shot).

Of course, if the expectation up front is "thou shalt not deviate from the plan," then the suggestion of just going with what the players do is moot.

Quote from: cranebump;942112Have to agree with CRK here. The worst case result would be the characters go to the Orient and find nothing (or, something completely different, OR clues to the deeper story).

Grove, you say you can easily adjust to what players do, but you keep giving examples that you can't, or do not want to do it.  I agree that sometimes players can do douche baggy things, as in your haunted mansion one-shot example. But players electing to travel to Shanghai to go to the source of your Chinese cult thread isn't "stretching the premise," it's "exploring the scenario."  (assuming this isn't another one shot).

Of course, if the expectation up front is "thou shalt not deviate from the plan," then the suggestion of just going with what the players do is moot.

The devil is in the details, of course. Are the characters going to Shanghai to "follow up on the cult" or because they got a random urge to do so or even decided to just see if they could flummox the GM. And it does seem a bit much to expect the gm to whip essentially another setting on the fly.  I admit I'd be stymied and probably end up either dropping the game (as it seems like they don't want the game I'm prepared to run) or just going "All right you spend several weeks traveling, see some interesting sites, don't really find anything ((or throw them a few bits that point back to San Fran since that's where the cult is currently active) but when you get back...' and  detail what's happened in their absence.

Going to another country in a game billed as investigation in the San Fran does feel like stretching the premise to me but maybe its just fundamental difference in expectations when it comes to rpgs and some of us will never see eye to eye. I'm used too and enjoy games with a narrower focus and tighter premise than seems generally popular here. I think rgrove is at least close to that but he's on his point in the spectrum.

Quote from: The Butcher;942094Personally, I'd probably be caught unprepared too, and probably interrupt the current session once the PCs boarded the ship to Shanghai. The long trip itself offers an appropriate opportunity for an interlude.

A long ship ride to Shanghai from San Francisco? Sure that could be an interlude. It could also be its own mini-adventure.

Or it could be a nice setting for RP intrigue dealing with some of the issues that the PC's might face going to Shanghai (perhaps some NPC's of note from Shanghai are on board). It could be a huge springboard for all kinds of interesting things that can't be acted upon until the PC's arrive - or make a stop along the way or whatever. I usually never let things like this go wasted unless it doesn't warrant it.

Quote from: Nexus;942130The devil is in the details, of course. Are the characters going to Shanghai to "follow up on the cult" or because they got a random urge to do so or even decided to just see if they could flummox the GM. And it does seem a bit much to expect the gm to whip essentially another setting on the fly.  I admit I'd be stymied and probably end up either dropping the game (as it seems like they don't want the game I'm prepared to run) or just going "All right you spend several weeks traveling, see some interesting sites, don't really find anything ((or throw them a few bits that point back to San Fran since that's where the cult is currently active) but when you get back...' and  detail what's happened in their absence.

Going to another country in a game billed as investigation in the San Fran does feel like stretching the premise to me but maybe its just fundamental difference in expectations when it comes to rpgs and some of us will never see eye to eye. I'm used too and enjoy games with a narrower focus and tighter premise than seems generally popular here. I think rgrove is at least close to that but he's on his point in the spectrum.

So, what I'm hearing here is that, if the players do something outside what the GM has planned, then said GM bears no responsibility to continue the session/story.  I think the point of contention has to do with how sandboxy the GM wants to go. That aside, what are the specific issues with adjusting to the change in plans? Would it really be that hard to gin up a new situation on the spot? If so, is that a system issue, rather than a style issue (i.e., crunchier systems are more difficult to wing?).  I'm curious about this, because, though I've had players constantly go against what I think they'll do, I've always been able to adjust, albeit with varying degrees of what I consider a "success" (though, I guess if we did what they wanted, it's a success).

Eh, I understand where rgrove is coming from here. It's an issue of scope. I'm preparing content around these boundaries. You can go off the boundaries, but I am not obliged to run your sidetrack at the expense of my table.

And sometimes the easiest way to do that is being upfront and honest.

Because, (and this will be lots of fun I promise CRKrueger,) time is rarely not critical, especially in a CoC quest -- and remember Gygax said that we can't have meaningful play without proper time keeping!

SF to Shanghai/HK would likely be over a week one-way. So then, there and back and some Shanghai/HK investigation would easily eat up 3 weeks to a full month. By then the trail runs cold, the cult speeds headily towards victory... might as well write off the whole adventure as a failure and have the players try again.

A month of nothing in such detective cases is usually downtime and build up, not for immediate mysteries and hot leads.

But I wouldn't be opposed to PCs sending letters overseas. It accomplishes the same thing, and opens up an challenge to develop a contact and maintain correspondance! (It also gives me time to prepare expanding the campaign's scope, if I so desire.)

Time, like space, is its own domain with subsequent boundaries. I just don't really see it being written off so easily in order to illustrate a point. Particularly not seen so in time sensitive genres, like detective stories about supernatural death cults.