Settings not stories

 The second topic I want to explore in my Old School Manifesto series is the DM's role in creating "stories" in the game. 

The idea of an overarching narrative to an adventure or an entire campaign has been around a long time, as evidenced by quite a few classic-era modules. I'm no TSR historian, but it seems to me it really started creeping in (at least in basic D&D) after the first few published modules in the B and X series, and took hold hard with the C and M series. At some point, modules became freighted with scripted encounters proceeding in linear fashion to an expected conclusion. To be fair, some of these modules did, if I recall correctly, provide a few possible paths to reach the ending, and allowed for the possibility that the PCs would fail, but they were still expected to proceed more or less within a set of predetermined parameters toward a preordained climactic scene. 

So, I suppose a case could be made that plotted adventures are a part of, or at least not completely foreign to, old school play. They don't, however, belong in MY old school games. The modules I remember most fondly are the ones that provide a setting, some NPCs, and a little light backstory, and let the players do what they will with it. B2: The Keep on the Borderlands and X1: The Isle of Dread are prime examples of the kind. I believe the DM's duty ought to be the same for homebrew adventures and campaigns too. 

The duty of the DM (or module designer) ought to be the creation of a setting, including intriguing places to explore, treasure to tempt, challenges to (possibly) overcome, information and secrets to discover, and interesting NPCs with personalities and motivations, and to mediate the interaction of the players with the setting and NPCs. Ideally, the setting should provide plenty of room for the PCs to make their own choices, whether that setting is as large as an entire world or as focused as a single dungeon complex. It is not the DM's role to dictate how the players should interact with the setting, nor the goals they should pursue, nor the means by which they should do so. It is not the DM's role to anoint the PCs as "chosen ones" or "heroes of destiny" or whatever, either. 

It is, of course, the DM's prerogative to decide what NPCs will do, whether in response to PC actions or in the absence of PC intervention. The DM can decide that Baron von Nasty kidnaps the king's daughter, but not that the PCs should act to thwart his plans and rescue the princess. The players may choose to do just that, of course, but if they instead run off to explore the Dungeon of Ancient Doom, the DM must be prepared to let them do so, and to determine how the Baron von Nasty plot develops without player involvement. 

The DM must also be prepared to allow the players to decide how to interact with the Baron von Nasty scenario if they choose to do so. 

A published adventure of this scenario would likely have an inciting incident (e.g. the PCs witness the kidnapping, or are hired by an agent of the king,) a few expository encounters to let them "discover" who kidnapped the princess and where she is being held and possibly acquire some plot coupons, a dungeon with a combination of static keyed locations and programmed encounters, and a final climactic set piece battle. 

This, in my opinion, is the wrong way to do it. Done right, stripped of preordained story all the way down to the bare bones of the scenario, it allows a much greater range of possibilities and much greater agency to the players. It doesn't have to be a rescue-the-princess story (though it can be.) The inciting incident can be used, but where it goes from there is up to the players. Perhaps the PCs don't give a damn about the princess, but decide the baron's treasury is the perfect target for a heist, or they pretend to ally with the baron in order to doublecross him rather than fight their way into his stronghold through a secret passage from the castle dungeon. Maybe they charm a guard to leave a gate unlocked instead of stealing the keys from the captain as the "official" narrative prescribes. Perhaps they decide for whatever reason that this whole thing is not worth their effort, and abandon it right in the middle to bug out to the Dungeon of Ancient Doom, leaving the DM to sort out what becomes of the aborted mission. On no account should the DM contrive a scene-by-scene scenario for thwarting the baron and shepherd the players through it. 

To condense the above: Provide a physical setting and populate it with interesting NPCs. Have those NPCs (and monsters) plot, scheme, and do things, in front of, behind, and around the PCs, and let the players decide how they want to interact with all of it. Develop whatever parts of it intrigue the players most, and provide a bare sketch of the rest. Some of it will end up as no more than a backdrop to the campaign as the PCs pursue other matters, some of it might be of casual or intermittent interest, and in some of it they'll take serious interest, though likely not in the ways or by the means you expect. Let them take it in whatever direction they choose.