So there is a lot of videos, blogs, and other information out there on making sure you don’t railroad your players.  And 100% I agree with that sentiment, you never want to take away player agency, but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan an adventure and you should use that to help you with world building.

I saw a few posts on a couple of DM forums where along with player agency came the question “How do I make it feel like my world is real and living / breathing?”  To me these topics are fundamentally connected.  Because you want your players to feel like they have agency, and the best way to do that is to make sure their decisions have consequences.  And for most DMs that means that if your players turn into murder hobos, they have to deal with the consequences, but honestly I believe it’s a little more macro than that.

For example, there should be consequences for both the actions of your players, and their inaction as well.  If you’re players decide to ignore a plot hook, than something should happen.  

Now when you start to talk about this, it can start to feel overwhelming, but I have a really simple way to make sure your players have agency AND your world changes and evolves around them.  And best of all it embraces the “Rule of 3.”  

3 there must be, and always 3:

When you start an “Arc” in your campaign, and for our purposes I consider an arc to be a section of the story, usually in-between milestones.  I make sure my players will have 3 make plot hooks set out for them.  Now I will likely have a lot more “side quest” hooks out there, but I have 3 that are core to the bigger story that the party and I are trying to tell.  

Now these 3 plot hooks are special, and I usually try to make sure they each signify a different type of game play, and I lay them out and have strong NPCs and other factors that make the players take note of these. 

Let’s take for example, I have players who come to WaterDeep, and my bigger plot is about a war that’s building between WaterDeep and Neverwinter.  So let’s say I create these plot hooks:

Hook #1 –  There are rumors of something attacking ships that are trying to enter the WaterDeep harbor, and the shipping guild wants to hire the players to find out and stop it. 

Hook #2 – The Xanathar Guild is catching rumors of a rival organization setting up and planning something big in WaterDeep, and he wants to know what as it’s bringing more heat down on them.

Hook #3 – The member of the cabinet of the Open Lord of WaterDeep is murdered and the players are contracted by the Open Lord to investigate the murder.  They have reason to believe the murder is in Skullport, and in the dungeons below.  

Now, each of those has a different type of adventure (swashbuckling seas, Noir / Political intrigue, and Dungeon Crawl).  But the truth is that all three actually correlate to the bigger story of the war between Neverwinter and WaterDeep.  

Hook #1 – The attackers are actually contracted pirates from Neverwinter trying to stop commerce in WaterDeep.

Hook #2 – An assasination team from Neverwinter is setting up to make an attempt on the Open Lord of WaterDeep

Hook #3 – A group from Neverwinter is trying to start an uprising in Skullport against WaterDeep.

Making sure players have agency:

So now, I don’t fundamentally care which of these adventures my players decide to go after, I would plan at least 1 session of each adventure and wait to see which they choose to go on, and then focus more of my planning on that adventure moving forward.  This way my characters are free to do whatever they want.

Now I also want to say, that I’m not even forcing them to choose one of these 3, but rather would provide incentives to see them go on one of these adventures.  

How to make the world feel real:

So now the above is pretty much like DM 101, or maybe 201.  But the question is how does this make the world feel real?  The truth is, in the real world we are presented with opportunities all the time, and all too often if we pick one, it means saying “No” to something else, and then things happen.

So when I lay out the following plot hooks, I plan with the idea of “what happens if they say no to this.”  

Say for example, my players are presented with all 3, and they chose #1.  I would have the following planned.

#1 – The attacks become more frequent, and players might find it harder to get exotic or rarer items in the city.  

#2 – The players might hear rumors of a new organization in town, and see an increase in City Watch activity. It might be harder to do things that are illegal.

#3 – There might be an increase in violence as more and more Skullport residents are coming to the surface.  

So if they choose, #1, than #2 and #3 start happening.  And then when they hit points where they might have a lull in between each part of an adventurer, I would give them the opportunity to switch, and keep this pattern going.  

The players will start to notice that their choices are affecting the world around them and make adjustments accordingly.