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Do you provide a Macguffin to the PCs and let them go through the subsequent adventures? (A billboard in are bar advertises adventure; the group finds a treasure map; a ghost ship sails into the harbor....)
Do you take the backgrounds and goals the PCs create and build off that in your setting? (One PC wants to join the Thieves Guild; one wants to find out who killed his parents; one wants to join the PFS.). And you find ways to tie in the various characters’ actions together.
Do you describe the setting and give the PCs several plot hooks from which they can choose?
. . . .
What’s best? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? What techniques should a DM use or avoid for each?
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I start with a place they like and threaten it. Okay, I start with a Paizo adventure path and a session zero. The adventure path provides the place and the threat, and I adjust the details of the first gaming session around their characters so that they like the place and hate the threat.
My player routinely derail the adventure path. I build a new path in the direction they chose. Then I use the PCs' motivations to eventually bring them back to the material in the modules.
For example, suppose the module has a ghost ship sail into the harbor. In session zero, I learned that one PC wants to join the Thieves' Guild, one wants revenge on the mysterious figure in a red-and-blue cloak who killed his parents, and one want to join the Pathfinder Society. While the town guard is fighting the skeletal pirates from the ghost ship, the Thieves-Guidl person and the Pathfinder-Society person are easily lured into spying on the ghost ship. The revenge person spots a figure on the ship in a red-and-blue cloak. They overhear the pirates talk of Bloody Hand Cove. They attempt to sneak aboard and I have the crew bullrush them into the water.
The module says that after the ship leaves, the town offers a reward for the return of the governor's kidnapped daughter. The PCs know where to go. The mysterious Captain Depp no longer needs to know about Bloody Hand Cove; instead, the PCs tell him about it so that he will sail them there. Or if they missed that clue, Captain Depp does know about it: don't forget the Alexandrian's Three Clue Rule.
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in the homebrew I'm currently running, the PCs have been hired by a local noble who will serve as the questgiver to start out. There are plots afoot, and as a PbP, i've been able to select PCs with motivations that I can tie easily into these plots.
By 'plot' I don't mean the narrative term, but the scheme's of NPCs. The PCs will have to choose which plots to back and support and which plots to confront and stop. But to start the game off, their primary task is to serve the noble and his interests. As a GM I provide the threats and escalate them throughout the campaign, from personal and localized to regional and beyond.
So, my GM tactics are kinda a mix of the three. Basic 'Hiring All Heroes' billboard posting to gather the group together, provide the setting and basic motivation to kick the adventure off, use PC backgrounds and personal motivations to bait the hooks and hope for a bite.
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Building on PC backstories is usually enough to get me several levels and adventures into the world. I usually set up some large world spanning mysteries or dilemmas that are accepted by the general populace that slowly become meaningful to the players. I build a sort of quick hierarchy propping up the grand dilemma and use the player's stories to climb up that hierarchy to ensure that the players and characters are invested by the time anything really written is encountered.
If players don't bring much character or story to the table, I'll give them a lonely gun man sort of intro. "You've been traveling this region for months not even sure what you're looking for. Your cash is low and stomachs empty. You know the caravans by sight, the bar keeps by name, and always end up meeting with a few other drifters around a bonfire in an old burned out monastery at a nameless crossroads. You wake up at noon sticky with sweat hearing the sound of heavy hooves on the road and a quarter of a conversation. Half because you can only hear one speaker, and half again as his words are cut off by the sound of a quarrel denting a breastplate and venting a heart."
It lets me see how they'll respond to an ambiguous possible threat, and maybe I can build on that.
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My group is . . . let's say 'unruly'. I provide them with plot hooks, they soundly and determinedly ignore them. I introduce an antagonist, they immediately try to join the villain. If I ask for background, they come up with something like "my character wants to uncover the recipe for the perfect jellybean, has a mongoose fetish, and suffers from diarrhea at least twice a week." So my campaigns don't really have a 'direction' so much as they have erratic spurts in various different directions based on my murderhobos' fleeting and nonsensical whims followed by sudden stops when something more interesting shows up. Which is fine because we all have fun, and that's the point of the game. But GMing a string a petty theft, aggravated arson, and public defecation is kind of like trying to ride bull while tripping on mushrooms. I'm not really sure what's happening through most of it, but know I need to hold on for dear life.
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My Process:
Monday: "I want to build Geese Howard in Pathfinder"
Tuesday-Thursday: "I should really figure out what I'm doing this Sunday"
Friday: "Okay I'll just get this guy built and figure out a dungeon tomorrow"
Saturday: *videogames*
Sunday (game at 3:30): 8AM: "I really need to work on a dungeon." 1PM: "I'll check Twitter one more time and then build a dungeon." 2:30PM: "Still have time." 3:15PM *cobbles together a map* "Um um um he's an evil mob boss casino owner with a weird weeaboo thing for elves and he kidnapped this elf the party knows and there's an underground fighting ring, reach fighter here, magus here, wizard here, and there's the boardroom and I can b$*$+@@& stats for security guys GO"
More seriously, I generally start adventures with a general plan, give the players a little bit of information, and develop what I'm doing based around what they do to investigate and solve problems. As long as they do something reasonable and don't completely flub all their rolls, I figure out what kind of clue or clues I can give them at that stage and some bits of foreshadowing, and base the next part of my plan on that. For initial hooks, it's usually character motivations or money, but a lot of times once they're sufficiently invested, I'll play with whatever the hook was.
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My Process:
Monday: "I want to build Geese Howard in Pathfinder"
Tuesday-Thursday: "I should really figure out what I'm doing this Sunday"
Friday: "Okay I'll just get this guy built and figure out a dungeon tomorrow"
Saturday: *videogames*
Sunday (game at 3:30): 8AM: "I really need to work on a dungeon." 1PM: "I'll check Twitter one more time and then build a dungeon." 2:30PM: "Still have time." 3:15PM *cobbles together a map* "Um um um he's an evil mob boss casino owner with a weird weeaboo thing for elves and he kidnapped this elf the party knows and there's an underground fighting ring, reach fighter here, magus here, wizard here, and there's the boardroom and I can b~~+++!! stats for security guys GO"
I wish I was laughing at you and not with you. -_- This is pretty close to my usual approach, and when it isn't, player actions derail to the point that it might as well be.
To answer OP's question: The players drive my campaign's direction. I can put up signposts and interesting looking trails, but they're the ones who decide where we're going.
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The players drive my campaign's direction. I can put up signposts and interesting looking trails, but they're the ones who decide where we're going.
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How do you make sure one Player doesn't get all the spotlight or have the only voice? Or, when they PCswant to go separate directions, how to you adjudicate that?
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The players drive my campaign's direction. I can put up signposts and interesting looking trails, but they're the ones who decide where we're going..
How do you make sure one Player doesn't get all the spotlight or have the only voice? Or, when they PCswant to go separate directions, how to you adjudicate that?
There is usually one member who will try to dominate a game. Sometimes more. If there's more than one... be prepared for a massive pain in the butt and a lot of part squabbling. Realistically... this party probably needs to be changed if they can't stop trying to out-diva each other. It's sad... but inevitable. Some people just don't play nice with others.
What you can do though is communicate with all the players and find out as much about their characters as possible and then make intricate plot threads tailored to individual characters and gently nudge players to them to try and make them shine a bit. I try to do this for everyone so that everyone gets their own personal plot IN ADDITION TO the overarching plot. It works pretty well for me because people tend to ignore, derail, or generally f--- up the overall plot for giggles, but are often absorbed by their own character's sub plots.
As for party separation... just guide them back together, or make it not end well. Often one leads to the other. Just know your group -- are they the type who are super fluffy and would get mad if their characters are hurt or killed? If yes, find a new group. That group sucks. If no -- get nasty when needed. Where's the fun if there's no risk?
The players drive my campaign's direction. I can put up signposts and interesting looking trails, but they're the ones who decide where we're going..
How do you make sure one Player doesn't get all the spotlight or have the only voice? Or, when they PCswant to go separate directions, how to you adjudicate that?
So far, one player stealing the spotlight hasn't really been an issue. To be fair, I make sure my players to make sure they're mature* adults before they ever reach the table. This keeps a lot of issues from coming up--when a disagreement comes up, they resolve it in character.
Party members have split off from the main group from time to time, though, though only on a temporary basis. They usually find a way to end up back together. If a party member decided to leave the group on a more permanent basis, then I would ask the player to make a new character to play untill/unless the original character returns. If the party perma-split more or less evenly? Well, that would be tricky, and would rather violate the social contract of sitting at a table to play a shared game, but I'm confident we could discuss that sort of thing and resolve it (see: that mature thing).
This system has served pretty well for our needs so far, and it prevents me from having to set up artificial roadblocks or railroad tracks, which I detest.
*but not too mature
The only times I've ever had a problem with players being real obnoxious about the spotlight have been with players who make characters based exclusively around social fu. When I see those kinds of characters these days, I'm just saying no.
I come up with a campaign idea and an overarching story idea that I hope will come to fruition by the end of the campaign. Inside that are multiple smaller story arcs, some of which revolve around individual characters and others just to further the story along.
Of course not everything goes according to plan because of things the players do, so I continually adjust things to keep my vision in sight while allowing them to do the things they want to do to further their own stories or things they want to do just for hoots and giggles.
I've run enough games where the players did not coordinate what they're backstory would be and/or didn't make a character that fit the adventure in any way, so we'd end up having to cobble together a justification for four strangers from three different continents with wildly different goals to be in the same place at the same time and working on the same objective.
This was stupid (imo, I know it can be fun sometimes but I'm just over it).
Now I start adventures by giving my players a few options of goals, factions, and/or bonds they can use to build their characters *together*. They could all work for the thieve's guild or be recent graduates from the mage school or have been cursed by the same witch coven, but they need to have some kind of common thread. I also require them to know each other, at least for the past few months, so they have some kind of rapport and reason to trust one another. Maybe they don't like each other, but they have a narrative reason to get along outside of mutual survival.
Doing this has given my games a level of cohesion and camaraderie that I never had before. I highly recommend trying something like this for every group.
All of the above, really. Every adventure has its own catalyst, sometimes in the form of a MacGuffin. Every PC has their own backstory and motivations. I take whatever opportunities the PCs give me to work their backstories into the main campaign or one of its subplots.
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I've run enough games where the players did not coordinate what they're backstory would be and/or didn't make a character that fit the adventure in any way, so we'd end up having to cobble together a justification for four strangers from three different continents with wildly different goals to be in the same place at the same time and working on the same objective.
This was stupid (imo, I know it can be fun sometimes but I'm just over it).
Now I start adventures by giving my players a few options of goals, factions, and/or bonds they can use to build their characters *together*. They could all work for the thieve's guild or be recent graduates from the mage school or have been cursed by the same witch coven, but they need to have some kind of common thread. I also require them to know each other, at least for the past few months, so they have some kind of rapport and reason to trust one another. Maybe they don't like each other, but they have a narrative reason to get along outside of mutual survival.
Doing this has given my games a level of cohesion and camaraderie that I never had before. I highly recommend trying something like this for every group.
I decided to run the reason they are all allies in my most current game. Modern Pathfinder, had everyone make up their characters, all pretty cut and dry stuff (base races, simple stat generation) then I took their characters on that first game and gave them back small character sheets I had made for each of them based on the toons they made as children. Then ran a Goonies, Stranger Things, The Exploreres, etc...style game with them trying to rescue a friend who had been kidnapped by an evil witch (actually her venerable Ogre lackey and a gang of Mites). Gave them a "toy box" of things kids have, from which they got to pick out 4 items with which to take on the adventure. Players really got into it, gave them stories to actually relate to in their relationships and built some really cool bonds between the characters for when they are adults and actually get into the "real" adventure...only problem is that they all just want to play the kids now, but I guess that is a good problem to have.