Quote Originally Posted by Samayu View Post
Part of this remind me of parts of a recent campaign I played. Too many hooks.

We were based in a town, and there were defined bad guys, but there were too many things we could choose to do at any given moment. It's not that we couldn't choose something, it was more that there were so many things we could do that we felt that whatever we chose would have so little effect overall.

What's worse is that with so many hooks presented, we felt like we could handle a new one every session or two, but when all was said and done, it became clear that the only way to succeed on many of the paths was to stay on them. Which meant abandoning all the other story elements (people and causes), which made me feel like a failure.
Quote Originally Posted by Sparky McDibben View Post
This is excellent feedback! Thank you for sharing, because this is exactly what I want prospective DMs to see before they try this kind of game.
This seems like almost the opposite problem that is described in the opening post, though. One of the reported issues was that the players felt that, because they could tackle anything in any order and the world would wait for them to get around to it, they "had" to "do everything," and thus were slogging through busywork side quests to the point that they just wanted to get the game over with. Or were overpowered for the last fight or something? I wasn't clear on what the problem was. But the fact that they could do everything meant they "had" to, and this was a problem.

There's probably a middle ground, here, but I worry that it's a mindset, thing, too. With Samayu's group, it sounds like they would feel that even two options is too many if they can't do both of them without one advancing in time and stages of whatever villain's plan it represents. This isn't necessarily a criticism of Samayu's group: some groups may simply dislike non-linear games with more than one major path to follow, because they don't like the notion that they're "missing out" by not doing everything. Or, if not "missing out," then "failing" because anything the PCs don't do is a failed quest, to them.