This ties in well with Al’s comment about minimal prep, and it points towards an entire GMing style — one where the GM essentially creates NPCs and relationships in counterpoint to the PCs, and the whole group wings it from there.

Interestingly enough given our game this weekend, this style is part of what Burning Empires is all about (ditto with Burning Wheel): relationship maps driving play.

Clayton: Welcome to TT! It does indeed sound like you should play to your GMing strengths, and sketch out loose adventure structures with big holes for you to improvise in.

(Rick) I can appreciate the concept, but in practice I thin the players who do this too often are just being tools.

I see where you’re coming from. I’d say that if a group of players consistently veers away from the obvious adventure path, then the GM and the players aren’t on the same page about the game — and if they don’t discuss that, something’s going to give.

Jeff – highly constrained games work just fine for games with higher dramatic stakes. Dogs in the Vinyard is a great example. The GM prepares a town and the players play that town. Not much choice. But HOW they play that town? They might come in guns a blazing. Or they might decide the most innocent victim is the sorceror. The GM has to roll with that. But the GM doesn’t have to roll with: “No, we don’t go to Winter Creek, we go back to Superstition Gulch instead.”

As Rick says, players who try and burst outside the constraints are being tools.

Of course the key is to have reasonable constraints. If your constraints are “I’ve already written the story, if you try and play it out wrong I’ll yell and scream,” the game probably won’t work.

Frank

That said, my players are usually savvy enough to realize when they are “resisting the story” and go in the planned direction, usually after a good-natured jibe or two.

Walt C