[X] My Assistant

[Draco18s]

Do you want to participate in published missions/story and accept that you (as a player, and character) have no impact whatsoever, because the devs/story is decided before you even get involved. or do you ignore the published stuff and come up with your own because then your players will be less impacted by discordant background source changes in the world?

Reminds me that someone out there took Pathfinder's Reign of Winter adventure setting and went, "Ok, what happens if the players fail each one? Fail all of them? Awesome. Here, have some more adventure plots."
(I think one of the failures leads to a major city being hit with an asteroid)

[Sendaz]

(I think one of the failures leads to a major city being hit with an asteroid)

Wow, I guess you could say they ended up between a rock and a hard place.

(•_•)

( •_•) ⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

Yeaaaahhhhh

[Fatum]

I've realized that part of my discomfort stems from 'being caught in tow' with the ongoing narrative. I've had a chance to catch up on the 4th edition stuff, and some of the 5th edition missions and source material now, and I'm getting this sense of "here's the story, what you players do is pretty irrelevant because we have it planned out." Its easier to see in hindsight, the missions give the illusion of player choice and contribution to world narrative, but then GMs would potentially have to retcon player stuff to fit into the source material that comes out a few months later. Or they have to go further off track, in which case the new sourcebook can be a little difficult to reconcile.

Now, this isn't anything new. Many games and genres do it. In a sense it makes sense for the SR setting, the idea of "Frak you peon, megas and dragons and the like always win out." I feel it kind of lends to a decision point: Do you want to participate in published missions/story and accept that you (as a player, and character) have no impact whatsoever, because the devs/story is decided before you even get involved. or do you ignore the published stuff and come up with your own because then your players will be less impacted by discordant background source changes in the world?

Well, it can be mitigated by adventures (or fluff books, for that matter) only giving hard info up to a certain point, until the subject is revisited a few years later in another book.
Like, take the technomancer trouble in Geneva. It's mentioned in... what was it?.. Runner Havens?.. and then GMs are left to do with it what they will, until an edition later it comes up again.

[Voran]

Heh pathfinder. If you do the Drow series, a potential failure is also "Rock falls from sky, everyone dies." I also liked the Demon (devil?) one with the Worldwound, where you basically got invasion. It was like...Warhammer 40k setting if you wanted it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)