Some feedback from my PCs that I thought other GMs could make use of

[valadil]

My 4e game wrapped up two months ago. This weekend I hung out with all but one of the players and some other friends. The players were telling stories about my game.

Without fail, every last one of the stories was about a time when we went off rails and improvised.

That's not to say that I spent a lot of time railroading or that I was upset the players weren't talking about the stories I came up with. I'm glad they were talking about the game two months later in a positive way. I'm glad they played characters with opinions and took the initiative to do what they wanted. And I'm glad I let them.

I've spent a lot of time posting my opinions about letting the players have control, but it's not every day that the players confirm that I was right.

Sure, the story they told may have been inferior to the one I set out to tell if you analyzed it from a literary perspective. But it's their story, dammit. Players are not an audience. The best story for them is the one they make themselves.

[Knaight]

All of this really seems rather obvious. Player directed improvisation is clearly a valid style, that clearly works well for many people. Not all - some players want a heavily planned railroad, some just want to crack jokes and screw around, and all of these are valid - but clearly enough that improvised player directed stories work well.

Also the sky is blue, water is wet, the ocean is deep, and space is cold.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

All of this really seems rather obvious.
...
Also the sky is blue, water is wet, the ocean is deep, and space is cold.

It always helps to get evidence in the form of personal experience. :P

To me, the best form of improvised games come out of everyone in the game knowing the setting at least reasonably well.
The GM needs to have at least soem form of consistent setting in mind, and the players need to know approximately what that's like - you can't collaborate on improv very well if half the participants think the world is Through the Looking Glass Psychedelia, and the other half think it's Game of Thrones Gritty.

[valadil]

All of this really seems rather obvious.

It is rather obvious. It's basic stuff. That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be reinforced.

[Sipex]

I agree, just because it's obvious to some doesn't mean it shouldn't be said.

I notice this too, my players tend to have a lot more fun once the game is knocked off the planned course and I have to continually work with the actions they've done.

[RandomNPC]

Points for the OP.
My game style: toss a few solo missions at the group, see how the party interacts, and see if they get interested by anything they run into.

I take the party interactions into account, and turn whatever they got interested in into a plot arc. From there, more attention means deeper plot.

This style got my gamers a 4 year game where they chased a Lich over the north pole, down the other side, and into a metropolis built around Stephen Kings Dark Tower. They fought the Lich at the top of the tower, and without wondering why the chair in the middle of the room was so important, the Bard in the group sat in the throne of reality. Anytime this game comes up there's an hour spent talking about "That 4 year game" and it makes me smile.

[Toofey]

When you're improvising it tends to be because the players have somehow knocked the story off it's tracks, which means that these are the times when the player's actions are directly impacting the story, that's always going to be what stands out in their minds. Also if something crazy is going to happen, it's going to happen when your on your toes.

[Zaranthan]

All of this really seems rather obvious. Player directed improvisation is clearly a valid style, that clearly works well for many people. Not all - some players want a heavily planned railroad, some just want to crack jokes and screw around, and all of these are valid - but clearly enough that improvised player directed stories work well.

Also the sky is blue, water is wet, the ocean is deep, and space is cold.

Ahem.

The main drawback to player-driven improv is that it requires players that are skilled at improv. While to some extent, a bit of improv skill is a prerequisite to play tabletop RPGs in the first place, there's a far cry between "you stand before the Duke in his court" and "we're gonna go investigate that random guy we sold all our loot to, he gave me a weird vibe."

[Knaight]

Ahem.

Space is cold. The trope isn't actually about space not being cold, the trope is about it taking forever to cool down in space due to radiation being the method of cooling, instead of convection or conduction. Here's a quote from that very article: "In practice, space is near enough at the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, energy which permeates the known universe at a temperature of about 3 kelvin, provided that you're made out of normal matter and you aren't near anything hot, like a galaxy."