Post originally by Jonathan Walton at 2003-06-17 17:20:47
Converted from Phorums BB System

Hey Bifi,

Sounds to me like you're dealing with an offshoot of the age-old problem that Forge-dorks call "The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast": i.e. that both the GM and the players have full control over the story. As the GM, you've created a bunch of stuff that you want the players to experience, but if they control the direction of the story, they may never "get around to" whatever backstory or cool NPC motivations you've concocted. So you could either take control of things during these little "interlude" scenes that fill in the backstory (total GM control) or let the players improvise some backstory with some guidelines (total player control). But you're looking for that magical medium, perhaps? Am I reading the situation right?

Honestly, after many years of GMing traditional games, I've given up planning before sessions. Instead, everything that happens in my games is a result of one of several factors:

1) Whatever comes off the top of my head.

2) Taking things the players have done/invented/imagined/suggested and running with them.

3) Continuing with things that happened in earlier sessions.

Even in the third case, I don't sit down before a session and say, "Well, seeing what happened last session, what should happen this session." Sure, I go in with a few basic ideas that can carry the session if nothing else interesting happens, but I don't flesh them out much or become to attached to any of them. In my experience, trying to shift the story in a direction different from where the players' energy and excitement is pushing it is a sure recipe for disaster.

This way, the game world is run kind of like that weird solipsistic fantasy that everyone has at some point: that the world only exists when you're looking at it, and behind you is only emptiness. Whetever the PCs experience is the full extent of the game. There's never "something else" that they never got around to or never got to experience.

In any case, I've had great sucess with this style of play, and much less disappointment as a GM. Of course, it took me a while to get used to it (un-trained from traditional GMing styles) and it's not necessarily for everyone, but you might give it a try and see if you can grok it.

Your other suggestions sound very intriguing as well. I think they're all worthy of a try. See how you like them and move on to something else if they don't work.

Hope those thoughts are helpful.

Later.
Jonathan