Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Relinquishing Narrative Control

I was rereading Jeff Rients' post on How to Awesome-Up Your Players last night, and it got me thinking about setting the players loose in between games as well as in-game.

At this point, the mini campaign with just the girls has moved beyond the bounds of any published adventure I have lying around. I'm also finding 4th edition encounter design easy enough that I think I could give them something to do for a session given a hook or goal and a couple hours prep time.

So at this point I'm throwing it open. What do Mazzil and Mardred find out from interrogating the tiefling they captured? What do they find in the cave when they go back and search it? What new adventures do those things lead them on? What cool monsters do I get to run for those adventures? I dunno. You tell me (preferably before this weekend so I can prep some encounters for them).

The narrative ball is in everyone else's court now. You can comment on this post if you want to pick it up and run with it.

2 comments:

ChaoticBlackSheep said...

But if anyone leaves comments, Mardred and Mazzil will be able to read them too.

Gregor LeBlaque said...

The questions I asked take that into account.

"What do Mazzil and Mardred find out from interrogating the tiefling they captured? What do they find in the cave when they go back and search it?" - Obviously they'll know the answers to these.

"What new adventures do those things lead them on?" - They should have some clue where they're going by the time they know the answers to the above (that's kinda the point).

"What cool monsters do I get to run for those adventures?" - OK, there might be spoilers here, or the tiefling might spill something like "You'll never defeat the dire sheep of chaos that guards the McGuffin of Doom! Bwahaha!" so they know something about this in character as well.