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GameMastery Guide / Running a Game / How to Run a Game / The Art of GMing / Making it Happen

Follow the PCs' Lead

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 28
If you enjoy improvisational play, the best move may be to temporarily drop the planned plotline (or at least the planned plot hook) and follow your players’ lead. Are they more interested in the dark, brooding mage with a zombie-filled bag of holding than the murder the prince of the city has asked them to investigate? Very well, then: the necromancer is the new patron of the adventuring party, and boy does he know about some dark doings—the prince of the city has sent his best troops out on a suicide mission, and the mage would like the PCs to bring back some heads for a quick speak with dead.

This approach requires you to think on your feet and make up NPCs and encounters on the spot, but it also means that the players are fully engaged; they’re guaranteed to be doing the things they want, rather than following a plot dictated by you. And you get the additional fun of improvising and reacting to the players’ ideas, plus the chance to be pleasantly surprised by yourself as ideas flow fast and furiously.

If you’re especially fortunate, you can probably turn some of your existing encounters, NPCs, or plot elements into elements of the adventure that the party wants to pursue—or use their new direction to steer them subtly onto the adventure you had planned—but it’s not always possible. When forced to think on your feet, one helpful trick is to listen to player speculation and then elaborate on their fears or suspicions to make the plots feel even more complex. If the players say “I’ll bet the duke’s involved!”, a simple option is to take the cue and have the duke actually be behind the nefarious plot they’ve uncovered, thus making players feel satisfied for having figured it out. On the other hand, if it turns out that the duke is actually an unfortunate innocent, with his daughter held as a pawn of the true villains—then the players get both the satisfaction of being partially correct and the thrill of uncovering something new, and your adventure feels meatier and more intricate with almost no additional effort.