Tight focus versus a sprawling playground

[Phaelen Bleux]

Originally Posted by Xplo

There are middle grounds here, you know: the GM could ask his players what kinds of characters or stories they're interested in, and tailor the focus to that, or the GM could come up with some kind of scenario and demand that PCs fit somehow, without explicitly telling them what character types they may have.

And I suppose that's really where my group is at. As a group, we come up with a campaign idea, and I, as a GM, establish boundaries for the milieu. But after that, the players are free to create whatever character does not violate the campaign's boundaries, and I, as GM, in turn respond to the type of PCs they create.

From this POV, I'd say we are fairly broad-minded in our approach (sprawling playground, mutually created).

Right now we are playing a pirate campaign because:
I did not want to deal with magic in combat anymore.
The players prefer swords and medieval to guns and high tech.

TL4 seemed to split that right down the middle as best as possible, especially since I am allowing some ritual magic. Voila! Fantastical (ritual spell casting) swashbuckling (swords and muscle-weapons) with a touch of something new (black powder). I'm happy, the players are satiated, and we are all trying something just a little bit new (supporting the Generic and Universal aspect of our favorite gaming system!).