[UA] Story-Centered or Player-Centered

[Rae]

I find railroading, or too linear a story, is not that much fun for the
players - unless you're very, very good at it, and if you're that good,
you're better off using that talent to create something a little freer.

What I've found, as my GMing experience involves an awful lot of time spent
with players who absolutely will not take the path I expect towards solving
a given goal, is not to set up too much detail around them.  Yes, I make up
a lot of stuff on the fly, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  With
practice, you get used to doing this sufficiently that it's automatic - just
fill in the details as you go, and keep notes of what you've done so you can
be consistent in the future.

Often throwaway details you made up on the spur of the moment can be the
seeds of entire plot arcs in the future.

If you want to have a campaign story, rather just a dungeon bash - though
dungeon bash can be fun now and then - you can still work with this easily,
and without *too* much extra effort to be done from a GMing perspective.
The effort you spend by this approach is probably less than the effort
required to keep players inside the carriages on a railroad plot.

Just remember that the world proceeds regardless of whether the players
involve themselves or not.  The various factions and NPCs in your setting
will each have an agenda, and they will work on that.  If the players know
that a secret cabal of dangerous lunatics is trying to blow up Times Square
three days from now, they can either try and fix it, or go off and do their
own thing, in which case, oh hey, three days from now, Times Square goes
boom.

When you're planning the campaign, rough out what everybody *else* is doing,
in more or less detail as it suits you, then let your players do what they
will.  Some of it they'll encounter, some of it they won't.  It means
there'll be things for them to do, and if they don't come across something
you set up, you can leave it and use it later if you need to.

If they start messing around in brothels and ignore all plot hooks offered
them... let them, and let the hideous consequences of their inaction fall
upon them later.  They will learn that if they've become aware that there is
a small problem that they kind of should be dealing with now, but they don't
*have* to, and they ignore it in favour of bumming around with hookers, it
will later become a really BIG problem that they HAVE to deal with now or
they're all going to die, and eventually they will be less lazy about your
plot hooks.

Players in my campaigns have absolute freedom to do what they think is
appropriate for their characters, up to and including really, truly, and
utterly screwing up their own lives.  As a GM I find it's actually less
stressful in the end just to set up the campaign world, and let the players
move around in it, and just see where things go over time instead of having
a story arc set up in my head in advance.  In the end the story goes places
that surprise me too, which makes GMing much more fun than it is to try and
shepherd players along a plotline.

- Rae
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