Your Plots

They ran after getting swarmed and the town was overrun. With a base of operations and a new slave population the orcs became a bigger threat.

step it up, OP

If your players are looking in another direction maybe you should have talked to them about what every one expects out of the game insted of forcing your plot into them.

The current plot is "Everything the players know about the real world causes them adversity if they try to apply that knowledge to the game world because I am sick of them trying to claim they can build a nuclear missile using a forge in a fantasy setting."
Though I guess that's more a setting than a plot.

Your players are existing in a world with its own plot

>Prophesied Hero/Son of God of a divided people begins taking an active role in taking his people's conquered lands back; seeks godhood
>Salty Lich lashes out at a nearby kingdom after a sloppy assassination attempt by a group of Paladins who were duped by the god of trickery
>Outcast noble tries to rally an army of giants to reclaim "his" throne
>Local Red Dragon screws everything
>Mad scientist is creating enhanced warriors to usher in a golden age for Mankind, also hates the party for reasons
>Two Kingdoms that were once ancient enemies establish a truce after a third attacks both

A lot of shit is going down, mostly behind the scenes.

Say it with me kids.

Just because one extreme is bad, does not mean the other extreme is good.

Starting the campaign in 3 days.

Starting off with some missions that allow the players to interact with the NPC's

From such humble beginnings, who knows where the adventure will take them.

I don't even watch dr who and I feel like i'm taking a page out of dr who. By mid campaign the players should be learning about some faults in space time and by the end i'm planning on them probing the outer regions of deep space and learning that there are forces external to the universe.

Or they can murderhobo around earth if they want.

Currently running a JoJo game using the very beta d10 system for a couple of my buddies. Plot is very simple:
>Players are both Stands users registered with the National Stand Users League, which is a mix between No More Heroes' Assassins and One Punch Man's Hero Association.
>Both players bro-ing it up on their quest to be ranked #1, playing it completely unaware of the end result of both of them trying to be #1.
>Mostly just random fights as they are sent out to stop villainous Stand users/take out their superiors/defend their rank against their subordinates, but once I introduce the BBEG I'll start throwing in a bit more of a plot after the BBEG pees on their carpet, keys their vehicles, and fucks off due to time shenanigans.
>Then they'll have to fight the BBEG's numerous subordinates in order to break through his power bloc and reach #1, where the BBEG will be waiting after killing the old #1.
>Then, either A, they'll beat the BBEG, realize that only one of them can be #1 and fight; B, one of them dies fighting the BBEG, and the survivor becomes #1; or C, I accidentally make the BBEG too OP and they both lose.

Yeah, but there's a difference between "The world keeps moving outside of the players" and "The world ends because they didn't bite at my plot hook."

Most of the time, these kinds of games are cooperative. Everybody involved being on the same page is a good idea.

Nothing wrong with ending a campaign with a bang.

still in planning stages

>players investigate foreign realm to stop the monsters that periodically invade
>Find it wild and untamed, but the monsters are particularly feral, destroying ecosystems and coming from seemingly everywhere.
>players receive powers from the "god" of the land to slay the monsters
>"God" tells them to go to the macguffin shrines and "save the world"
>Players tame the regions with the aid of natives and try to wall off monsters, and/or activate the shrines
>Over the course of the journey, "God" sounds more and more like a "King", talking about how a world is nothing without its people.
>Find that whatever is driving the monsters crazy is starting to infect the land itself, but also monsters that are barely sapient
>Eventually cross paths with other Chosen, only to find that activating the shrines is what's infecting the land, the "God" is from a third, dying world, using the shrines to save as many people as possible who aren't completely infected by letting them cross over. The resident God does not like that one bit.

I'm not sure we're on the same page here.

This sounds quite a bit like Tales of Symphonia, with a bit of Mystery Dungeon thrown in. I like it.

never played them.

There COULD be base building, but it could also end up very hands off, leaving the fort to its own devices after every shrine and going to the next region.

>Ignore problem.
>Problem, when ignored has obvious consequences that might need to be dealt with.
>WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, STOP FORCING YOUR NOVEL ON ME.

Also, I have never been in a group where saying 'do what you want' has led to anything but twiddling of thumbs. The fact of the matter is, people (your players especially) are dumb and need to be herded into a direction from time to time. You don't need to pave the road or decide the destination, but you do need to get them the fuck moving or your game will quickly develop an anemic pacing that is fun to nobody.

>My personal experience is the objective truth

Not every player lacks the initiative to help create plot. Not every player *has* the initiative to do so, either. How much hand-holding is necessary depends entirely on the group, and honestly it's not like that was Mr. Goodman's problem anyway--his players did anything but twiddle their thumbs, they set goals and chased them entirely of their own initiative.

That oft-reposted Veeky Forums screencap isn't an example of a GM trying to get his players "the fuck moving", it's an example of how a GM dealt with the players moving in a direction he didn't expect (or maybe didn't want).

Know how you solve that? Making sure everybody knows what kind of campaign it is before it starts. I'm not saying that his players weren't idiots for trying to make a medieval fantasy game about gay rights, but I am saying that it's not a good example of GMing done well. Not really an example of playing done well either, but that's neither here nor there.

>starting with exposition
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

BAD.

*hits storyteller with a newspaper*

Start with action!
Exposition goes in little bite sized pieces spread throughout the rising action.

And it's entirely possible for the middle to be worse than both extremes!

So remember kids: Always be as rad hip XTREME as possible.

Step 1: Come up with a villain. Give him an interesting personality and a bit of backstory. Give him short term and long term goals. Write down some ways he could enact these goals.

Sometimes you need a little exposition, even pregame, just to know where the fuck we are. If I don't say "Okay, this Mage game is gonna be in Seattle", my players won't have any clue what's going on. I tell them Seattle, they have a firm grounding of what to do.

Starting with action is always a good hook, though, so, you're not wrong.

Step 2: Come up with a handful of the villain's lieutenants, hirelings, etc. Weaker enemies the players can defeat, but with characterization. Some of them will escape and be recurring, some will die right away. Don't get attached.

Also create a handful of microvillains, independent of the main villain. These are other bad guys in the area who are also trying to get some evil shit done. They should have one or two lieutennant NPCs each. Give them diverse desires, like bank heists, royal ambitions, undead tomfoolery, etc.

Also create a handful of heroes/neutral dudes. Give them their own personalities and goals. Make some of them have goals that conflict with each other or the villain. Write down ways they might enact their goals. Players often like having allies as long as they don't steal the spotlight.

>Players decide to throw the MacGuffin into the fire using simple angles and gravity
>It instead teleports a mile upward and floats there
Nice setting.

Step 3: Think about every goal you have generated for each NPC, and every method of enactment for those goals. For each method, come up with 3 hints. Hints could be clues left behind somewhere (But not somewhere specific, just an object that can be left behind,) or secrets people might know (but not someone specific, just a secret that can be given to an NPC,) or anything else that a PC can find in any given location and learn something about the methods and goals of the target NPC.

For example, Jibjub the Kobold leaves alchemical acid burns all over places where he makes his lair.

Step 4: Create a very large list of first names, a very large list of last names, and a very large list of character traits. Use these whenever you need to make an NPC on the fly. You may need several lists for several distinct races.

Step 5: Create lists of easy, medium, and hard encounters you can use, and sort them by themes or locations. Here are some easy undead encounters, here are some hard forest encounters, here are some bandits, etc. Make sure they have a cohesive theme, but not an inherent context.

The deathwatch game I'm currently running is finally running up one of the major plot lines I've been developing.

Piggy backing on an imperial invasion of a craftworld to seize several high value eldar specimens for imperial containment and study.

Step 6: Create some setpieces. Mini dungeons, macro dungeons, battlefields, markets, etc. Again, give them cohesive themes, but not inherent contexts. Random dungeon generators are cool, or you can draw them out creatively.

Step 7: Begin your campaign. Start with action. Something happens, which leads to the players discovering three clues, at least one of which has the villain as the target NPC. He did something here, but the PCs don't know that yet. Think about what it might be, and leve some hints. Multiple hints is key, things can be overlooked!

Use one of your setpieces and have the players delve into a dungeon to find its secrets or whatever. Have them meet an NPC or two. Give them just enough time to start thinking about what the clues mean, and then end the session and go home.

I do the opposite of this. I don't have "villains" at the start of a campaign, at least not so much as I have a menagerie of side-characters and one-offs, mostly existing as a few scribbled lines on an index card or Evernote note. I throw these at the players. For some reason that I will never be able to accurately nail down, the players love some of them. And they hate some of them. Only after the players have actually shown interest in a character do I bother to give them anything resembling a "backstory".

I proverbially throw spaghetti at the wall, and the characters that matter to the plot (as I pull it out of my ass) are the ones that "stuck". That guy everyone suspects of being evil for some reason, even though I didn't intend to play him that way and had no intention of that being the case? Fuck it, he's retroactively the reason for whatever nasty event kicked off the story. Or maybe he turns out to be the good guy, Professor Snape style, that helps them out when they need it most. It doesn't matter.

My point is that I never put more than the absolute minimum amount of thought into a character unless they're going to be insanely important pretty much regardless of what the PCs do, or the PCs have already shown that they actually care. Most NPCs start and end their lives as a description and an accent.

Step 8: Sit back and watch. Over the next few sessions, your players will follow clues to their natural conclusions. They will do it of their own volition. Use the things you prepared in steps 3, 4, 5, and 6 to flesh out any situation on the fly. This is the fun part. Self-directed players will come up with way better shit than you could.

You have to use your intuition and improvisational skills. Write down everything you improvise, and remember it. Make note of how your NPC bank is affected: Do they know more about person x? Did they nullify the power of person y by killing their goblin slaves? etc.

Step 9: At the end of every session, go through each NPC, and make note of anything that changes their situation. Maybe one of their goals is fulfilled, or incapable of being fulfilled. Maybe one of their methods has been uncovered or stopped, and they need to re-think their strategy. Maybe you've used up all their prepared clues, and you need to give them some more. Advance every NPC toward their goals in some way. As time passes for the PCs, it also passes for NPCs who are elsewhere, so think about what everyone was up to this time on dragon ball z.

Step 10: After you've done this for a few sessions, patterns will emerge. You'll get a sense of what the campaign has become, what your players have chosen to be into for this campaign, and the general tone of the campaign. At this point, do a re-tool. Go through every NPC, starting with the villain, and adjust them to fit better into the established tone. Cut out ones that just plain don't fit, and add new ones that fit very well. Start moving the villain toward his endgame, and start making his clues more apparent and obvious.

This is how you build a plot in a cooperative storytelling setting. You follow trends to their natural conclusions through improvisational creativity. The players will show you what they care about, and choose the story they enjoy the most.

Why is Veeky Forums's mantra "IMPROV IMPROV IMPROV IMPROV"?

Have you guys not heard of a story structure? Acts that have basic dramatic cues? Is your entire concept of a campaign "There's the BBEG, here's his army, you need to get stronger so you can fight him"?

Is the notion of having a game that isn't just a basic "Go here, kill this, remind players there's a looming boss on the horizon" somehow LOLRAILROADOMG to you? Who convinces you of these things, and why do you impart this shitty philosophy on every game you interact with?

Everyone at the table brings their own thing to the story. You can only do that by improvising.

This isn't true, and has never been true.

SOMETIMES players bring something to a story, but most of the time they don't, and they have no interest in it.

And honestly, player input isn't some magic panacea that makes amazing experiences. You know how shit Lord of the Rings would be if the plot was born from reader input and opinions?

>Players make the plot, not you.
The GM is as much a player as anyone else, retard, and actually the one responsible for it.

The players are currently trying to get money to start putting cannons onto fishing ships for their village since pirates from a local lawless port have been attacking ships in their area during the summer. They're also trying to get an audience with a local pirate commodore to see if they can work together. This is gonna cause a huge problem with a local city state that's the villages liege. Of course, the working with pirates thing is to hopefully get to the end goal of being independent. The players are also on the side trying to find out the location of a ruin they know an evil wizard is trying to find. They don't realize though, that while the wizard is serving as a priest for the father of orcs, he's also going into the ruins so he can learn more about how orcs were created and begin to create his own artificial life forms.

I don't really have any sort of planned plot. I just make an area but I try to sprinkle in conflicts in different areas, plot hooks and sketched out ideas for interesting situations.

>forcing your game into a story structure
Some of us like to gm to see what happens. If or one, never know how a session is going to end, much less what'll happen three sessions down the line.
Create an interesting area with a lot of npc's, conflicts and plot hooks. When you let things arise organically, you get a tapestry of subplots all interacting with each other and it's a much richer story if it congeals into a main plot.

Speaking from experience:
I DM to make my players happy and entertained. I do this by engaging them with the parts of the game that they are engaged by. For some it's rules-heavy combat, for others it's roleplaying, for others it's plot, for others its sandboxing, and some of my players are simply there to pick my brain by interacting with my setting.

So, we run a session, and I let them do what they want, and inform them of the consequences.

Then I take notes. Notes about how this alters the game world, and how the ramifications of the players' actions might come back to them for good or ill.

I do a lot of improvising, but my improvisation is informed by a series of rules and guidelines.
In terms of story structure, my campaigns tend to look like -which way is up?- in It's not so much that there's a clear antagonist or BBEG I have planned from the beginning; in fact, I tend not to settle on those details until a few settings in. This gives me time to figure out who in my setting is most opposed to the party; or else who most stands in the way of them getting what they want.

Ideally anyways. I also improv because I am an absolute mess of a man and can barely get out of bed at 4pm, much less generate content.

'go here, kill this' is an entirely valid playstyle.

For my group, we sometimes want a very casual, totally recreational game. Sometimes we just want a vehicle to play characters/use splats we haven't gotten to yet. Sometimes we just want to 'play d&d' without too much thought to the content.

When we're all exhausted and hungover and depressed at the end of the week, a style-over-substance game is totally welcome.

>you get a tapestry of subplots all interacting with each other and it's a much richer story if it congeals into a main plot.

Why do you think this?

I mean, I know you've been indoctrinated to think it because of constant repetition, but why do you believe it to be true? It sure as fuck isn't experience.

>For my group, we sometimes want a very casual, totally recreational game. Sometimes we just want a vehicle to play characters/use splats we haven't gotten to yet. Sometimes we just want to 'play d&d' without too much thought to the content.

This is fine if you are, as a person anti-critical and without standards, but why would you ever encourage people to do this, much less advocate for a DM style informed by this mentality?

Woah guys, look out. This man has experienced the totality of all human experience.

This thread turned out way more contentious than I expected.

You know how it is. Someone having fun in a way I don't approve of. Gotta tell him off.

And a lil bit of KR Gaim.

Although description is unclear abit: the "monsters" are the invading god's people, right?

>we have to kill a lich before it ends the world

>plays lqbt quest

>the army of darkness you told warned them about should stop because they stopped caing about it.

Out of sight and out of mind doesn't mean your problems are gone.

Yup. "Monsters" in the sense that they're so different that it's hard to treat them as people. The initial impression of only meeting insane and infected ones and having a kill count of more than a hundred by the time you realize they ARE people doesn't help.

The resident god's people are also "different", but in the "cute animals(?) that can talk" sort of way. Except some of the really strong ones ALSO look like these so-called "monsters"

>running superhero game
>just use random shuffle from behindthename for NPC names
>character traits banally based on name meanings
Will this work?

obligatory

The players will start off in prison. They are arrested by an inquisitive, evil religion where they convert everyone either by persuasion or torture.

They escape and must seek a way to end the religion, to do that they can either get to the Grand Library that has been burned down by the religion or to the ancient depths of an Aboleth that will gladly share his information if it meant the annihilation of the gods. They will need to get back to the primal oozes of creation located in a secret area. As a trade, the Aboleth wants them to get his egg and put it safely near the oozes.

At the oozes they will find a way to end any creature, divine or otherwise. With that they need to go the godly realms and end the god of that religion.

The rest, is filler by backstory stuff.

Nobody thought Pacific Rim? I can hardly see Tales of Symphonia in it.

False. The GM needs to build a world but also provide a set of plans and motives for NPCs. The actions of the NPCs should then be set into motion. Its then up to the PCs to assist, hinder, or manipulate the direction of the plot as they choose.

The DM makes the plot, the PCs then add to it, or alter it.

No one likes starting in prison, because it takes away all their backstory and starting equipment. It also gives them no connection to the world and sets them on the path of being disenfranchised murderhobos.

>No one likes
Speak for yourself. Our GM ran "Out of the Abyss" and that shit was fantastic. We made our characters, then he took our equipment lists and said "you won't be needing these for awhile".

Really got us out of our comfort zone in the best way possible.

>No one likes starting in prison
My players already loved it.

>because it takes away all their backstory and starting equipment
One is a bounty hunter who meets one of his formerly caught criminals and he might need his help to get out. The wizard of the group grew up in the Great Library and used the religion plot to get caught and so the library burned down. Now they all share the same information and hatred toward the religion and they still want to fullfill their own backstories. Which they will!
They'll get their equipment back once they get out and defeat the guard.

>It also gives them no connection to the world and sets them on the path of being disenfranchised murderhobos
They already have connections with their backstories. Parents, siblings, rivals, plans, etc.

If you just let players start in prison without any given reason and with all their equipment, then that's just moot DMing. But you know what, user? You can still let them start in a tavern! Nice and boring as fuck.

If your players ignore the problems is your fault as a GM.
First for not talking to them and see what they want out of your game and find a middle ground or finding new players that want to play on your game.
Second is your fault to not engage them on a way that makes them follow your plot hooks. No "you have to stop the evil guy or the world ends, and you live on the world" is not engaging, is a chore.
Lastly it's your fault for forcing your plot and not adapting when you didn't do the above mentioned and clearly they didn't want to play the game you were presenting.

That said: if you communicated with your players prior to the game start and made an engaging and flexible plot for them to follow, it's probably their fault. But you failed at your task: make everyone have a good time.

Because I've played in and ran games like that.
It's a playstyle, if you can't make up 20 plot hooks and encounters in a day, then it's not something you should be running.
Every single game I've been in where the gm tried to force everything into a story structure and planned it out, the story itself was extremely simple and didn't have any subplots or complexity to it. I started in 3.0 and the whole "plan out plot points and run the game as a single contained story" was the common wisdom at the time as well as the norm for modules. If anything, my gming style is considered unusual and breaking the norms when I play irl.

The problem to me is that he had the evil bbeg not interact at all with the campaign between introducing him and having him win.
Should have had the big bad have a constant and growing effect on the setting to get across that he's taking over the world. Maybe even have the big bad start idk persecuting gays or something to help tie him into the plot.

I just ignore that stuff. I throw statblocks at my players for them to number to death with their own statblocks, and I let them invent the story as they go along.
I don't much care what the whole story motivation is, so I just ask the players what they want their excuse to be for fighting 4d6 Statblock Elementals + 2d4 Charsheet Golems + 1 d20 Construct.

and sometimes the players don't care either, so the player ends up fighting against "CR5 Blue Token" in order to obtain the "Story entry"

First of all, not every game is D&D and encourages open world sandboxing. Games like Call of Cthulu, Shadowrun, and even the less bloodthirsty sessions of Dark Heresy revolve around investigation, espionage, and other things that involve some degree of prior preparation to be remotely satisfying. Part of this preparation involves, brace yourself, writing a skeleton plot for why this is happening, who dunnit, and for what purpose. This provides context that you and your players can build upon, my dear /v/. Everything that follows from that: what the players actions might result in, how adversaries might react, what this means from the game world; all of that is now more easily ready when needed because you wrote those tidbits before hand. It can even helps if your players go off in a different direction entirely, stat blocks can be reused, and some elements are universal starting points.

Secondly, and this is especially true with new players, most people aren't willing to step up to the leadership plate right away; especially in a hobby that, let's face it, has a lack of people with decent social skills. This solves itself once the game gets off the ground and everyone in comfortable and in-character, but sometimes it can only get off the ground if you point them in a direction of something interesting. They're free to ignore it, but once you state that the threat (or place of interest, etc.) exists you need to have it be an active part of the game world for the sake of immersion and consistency.

And, lastly, the meme of the computer GM who can't have any enjoyment in his own right started with D&D players and needs to die. It's a shit mentality brought upon by shit game design; roleplaying is inherently collaborative, and the GM is very much a player that is also allowed to collaborate. Otherwise they're going to burn out and grow disinterested, at which point nobody is having fun.

Now THAT'S some great art right there. Know the source?

>You know how shit Lord of the Rings would be if the plot was born from reader input and opinions?
Yeah, but what if Star Wars 7 or WoW: Legion or pretty much all of Marvel Comics were born from reader input and opinions?
For every masterpiece that would be ruined by a thousand retards scribbling on it, there's 10 toilet abortions that would get an improvement from the thousand retards.

Why not?

D&D doesn't have to be xXx Hardc0RE_R0l3playING xXX _ xvid_subrip.exe for you to have fun.
... But if you're aiming for a low-effort game you should probably try a simpler system, I agree.

Look harder, my son.

>You know how it is. Someone having fun in a way I don't approve of. Gotta tell him off.
qft

>For every masterpiece that would be ruined by a thousand retards scribbling on it, there's 10 toilet abortions that would get an improvement from the thousand retards.

That doesn't mean the product will be good. The reason viewer input could help something like Star Wars or WoW is because A.) We have the benefit of better entries in the early history of the franchise serving as a reference point for quality, and B.) The people offering ideas for fixing it are observing a huge decline in quality, which means you're just fixing it back to a neutral position, not back to being amazing.

>roleplaying being compared to movies and literature with the idea that proper roleplay has the same plot structure and style as a book
Roleplay is a fundamentally different medium due to its interactiveness. The idea that a good rp is like a good book needs to fucking die.

One of these days, someone is going to run a 4th edition game with Donald Trump, Loli foot fetish, Nazis as the good guys, Fat feminists + white beta cucks as the bad guys, Railroaded so hard you'd have to invent timezones except the plot ends up going nowhere, and an equal mix of absolute freeform RP where the players get to decide the rule of cool and absolute strict combat munchkin gamist GM-as-antagonist-that-vetos-everything, with nothing in between. And the players will have fun with it.

The PCs were originally there to check on the growing number of orc raids on a nearby trade route. When they got to the town they found out that there was some corruption and that some arms and equipment were being stolen via "missing caravans" and redirected to the theives guild. They want to squash that shit first for some reason.

Just because roleplaying involves player interaction doesn't mean that the GAME YOU'RE PLAYING IN SHOULD BE DEVOID OF A STORY.

You can still have story structure, you can still have rising and falling action, dramatic set-up and pay off. I'm actually telling you that if you DON'T have these things, your game is objectively bad (yes, it's bad even if you are having fun playing it, as enjoyment and quality are not proportionally linked concepts).

Eh, neutral position will do.

>2016
>this post
wow

>Terrorist group rises to be a worldwide threat
>Taken down by a joint corporate venture
>Leaving one man and a lot of sleeper agents left
>He must rebuild, must perform their plan
>Spends twenty years remaking one of the most feared groups, which itself caused a global economic crag the first time around
>Players stumble into some old abandoned artefacts of theirs
>Players start following leads and slowly begin to realize the magnitude of the shit they're getting into
>Played vow to take them down for good and profit
>The players don't yet know about The Thor Shot they have to stop
I don't know how it'll end, but it should be fun.

Nothing has to be planned out in advance other than what kinds of conflicts are present, npc's, where the players fit in, that sorta thing.

Think of it this way. It's like a play where the actors are also the audience. The audience is essentially a passive consumer of events in plays, literature, movies, etc. Enforcing a structure of events destroys the opportunity for more interesting story structures to occur and puts the majority of participants into a passive consumption role, diminishing their ability as equal creators of story. Rising and falling action may occur but the story only occurs in the exact moment that it's being played. Planning out beyond the beginning of the story takes away tension and drama from game as at least one participant is secretly aware of what happens. These things happen naturally with an engaging and strong group as varied events come to heads. It's like reading a wiki synopsis of a movie before watching it.

>Enforcing a structure of events destroys the opportunity for more interesting story structures to occur and puts the majority of participants into a passive consumption role
The fact that you think this is true means you can't actually be reasoned with.

>diminishing their ability as equal creators of story.
Yes, as we've discussed, player input to the story is not inherently good, nor is it the default thing to strive for. If your players are particularly good at roleplaying and all that? Sure, they can have a hand in things. But by default? Are you fucking kidding me?

>Planning out beyond the beginning of the story takes away tension and drama from game as at least one participant is secretly aware of what happens.
Yeah, you're an idiot. This is why books and movies can never have drama, right? Because at least one person, the writer, already knows what's going to happen.

>It's like reading a wiki synopsis of a movie before watching it.
How is that even remotely comparable, what? Why are you acting like the DM is somehow a player who's supposed to be experiencing the game for the first time as it happens? That's not the fucking job of the DM and I have no idea why you are operating from that premise.

Do it faggot.

>yes, it's bad even if you are having fun playing it, as enjoyment and quality are not proportionally linked concepts

Look, I agree with everything else, at least partly, but this is stupid. Argue as we may, RP isn't an art form, it's a leisure activity and is, first and foremost, about having fun.

But I don't know 4th ed.

...

Imma run it in MAID.

Wait, shit, if this is maid, then realistic western corporate and military have to be the good guys and Japanese Anime Tropes have to be the bad guys.
So where do I put the Nazis and the Cucks?
wait of course, I just roll on the random table then flip a coin to see if it becomes e.g. "Nazi tyrannosaurus rampaging" or "The master ate some bad cuck food"

Remove the feet and I'll play it

>player input into the story is generally a bad thing
So you're a gm who wishes he was a writer?

That...doesn't address the statement at all.

The point was, you can still have fun with something that's shit, but it doesn't make the thing less shit. I can have fun watching a really horrible movie, but just because I laughed at it and I had a good time making fun of it doesn't mean that the movie is suddenly not shit. It's still shit, because quality and enjoyment derived are not causally linked.

Got it. TWICE the feet.

only if you mean in this sense

imagine!

You have an amputee fetish?

>
>>player input into the story is generally a bad thing
You're misquoting him. He said it's not inherently good. He did not go into the opposite and say that no player input is inherently good.
Believe it or not, the World is not black & white.

I have a small cast of NPCs with their own goals and motivations and an outline for what they will do to achieve those goals if the PCs don't intervene. Feuds will escalate, spooky magic will become more of a problem, shitty people will further their shitty political agendas, et cetera, until the PCs act. How the PCs approach each of the issues facing them will affect future plots and NPC motives. At least, that's what I'm aiming for. So far the PCs have just latched on to a couple of NPCs they like and are siding with them on every possible thing, and keeping things interesting in light of that has been difficult...