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This is all extremely contingent on your preferred play style, so let that be your warning.
I've learned a lot from playing role-playing games and just thinking about what worked, what didn't, and how they made me feel. If you're the Storyteller*, you've got to know your group as well as play to your strengths, but when it comes down to it, I feel like you've got to give the characters something to do or get out of their way.
Let me provide an example.
We've been playing the same Exalted campaign for a while. It's had its ups and downs, but at the moment our group of characters are in a lot of trouble with their superiors for doing what they were told and ponying up an ancient, potent artifact. It was stowed away in a near-impenetrable vault and guarded by one of the most storied legions of soldiers Heaven could muster. So, naturally, the invincible uber-NPC bad-ass storms Heaven, beats an entire Legion into the ground, and wrecks it.
We are held accountable, our group dissolved politically, and we are placed under house arrest.
The reason for it aside, it seems like a pretty good time for us to really show our stuff and break out of Heaven, A-Team style, right?
No. We talk for a while, because we were foolishly all left in the same house, and came up with a plan. As soon as we had something we thought would work, using all of the resources we had at our fingertips, in walked potent NPC soldiers in the service of the most powerful statted NPC in the game and... bailed us out.
This is a particularly egregious example and, lets face it, sometimes it's interesting to be put in so over your head that it's a relief when you realize someone else is willing to go to bat for you, but in this case it's each time, every time. I realized that there was literally never a time in this campaign where we weren't completely shown-up, bailed-out, rigged-against or auto-defeated. My most spectacular success in combat was against a mortal with enlightened essence. My other two fights were against someone who was designed to one-shot me in a friendly contest and an ancient Dragonblooded character who had done nothing but fight for 300 years that after the game, our ST chortled about how there was no way we would have been able to defeat his pet NPC.
That's no way for a martial artist concept character to live.
But I'm not laying all that out there just to complain. Really, I mean it. Most of the story is very interesting - especially the parts where we're actually in it. But that's what I'm talking about. The game is already populated by characters that are cooler and more powerful then we are, and when we succeed, it's usually by fiat. And as a player, I'd like to play.
As a Storyteller, the above scenarios are extremely seductive. It's easy to get attached to NPCs, for example, but maybe most seductive is that it's extremely easy. All you have to do is come up with a reason the PC plan doesn't work until you have something happen. It's the inverse of the rule that the ST can always kill you by making the numbers big enough - simply, just make something's numbers even bigger, and that trumps the other big numbers.
It's also extremely boring, because after we've run through all our plans and seeing them fizzle, we were literally relegated to sitting at the table saying until one player said, "Well, maybe something will happen and things will turn out ok." Which is, incidentally, exactly what happened. Nothing you do at that point is a plot twist. The result is the same no matter what happens, because the PCs have no control whatsoever.
I suspect there are three things going on here, and they're all potential poison to games. The first is an old school issue - don't get to attached to your NPCs. I'm as guilty of this as the next person, but what I really mean is that you can't let these personal creations, no matter how cool you think they are, become the star of the game. They're not. And when you make them the star, your game sucks.
Number two is the ease I brought up. It's tempting just to include the solution and avoid all the dice rolling, the rules lookups, and the general slog that actually playing. If you don't have stats for any NPCs or really have anything besides a scenario map, you might not really have a good recourse between just deciding pass/fail.
Which leads to number three, and probably the most insidious of the traps. The idea that this particular scene just isn't that interesting. As the Storyteller, you want to get to the fun parts, and this scene doesn't contribute, but for some reason, the PCs are just intent on sticking around and monkeying around with stuff that they really don't have any business in monkeying with. Forget it, guys. Move on. Let's go; we're doing big things and this isn't it.
This happens with any game, at some point, but I feel like if you're not willing to play with the mechanics, there's not much point in playing at all and it's time to get into some collaborative short story writing. I'm not putting that down, because it can be really fun. Hell, we do it all the time. The point is, unless we're willing to actually get down and roll dice in good faith, there's zero point at being at the table for this. Let's break out the drinks and watch some movies or playing some Mario Kart, ok? Sometimes this means the game's not going to go as fast as you want it to. Sometimes you'll get through one scene or even less. That's ok! Time is relative around the table. Change your perception - there's no need to rush. You're not trying to 'get something done'. It's not a chore. Have fun with it!
* Or Game Master, or Dungeon Master, or really anyone running a game for you friends.
I've learned a lot from playing role-playing games and just thinking about what worked, what didn't, and how they made me feel. If you're the Storyteller*, you've got to know your group as well as play to your strengths, but when it comes down to it, I feel like you've got to give the characters something to do or get out of their way.
Let me provide an example.
We've been playing the same Exalted campaign for a while. It's had its ups and downs, but at the moment our group of characters are in a lot of trouble with their superiors for doing what they were told and ponying up an ancient, potent artifact. It was stowed away in a near-impenetrable vault and guarded by one of the most storied legions of soldiers Heaven could muster. So, naturally, the invincible uber-NPC bad-ass storms Heaven, beats an entire Legion into the ground, and wrecks it.
We are held accountable, our group dissolved politically, and we are placed under house arrest.
The reason for it aside, it seems like a pretty good time for us to really show our stuff and break out of Heaven, A-Team style, right?
No. We talk for a while, because we were foolishly all left in the same house, and came up with a plan. As soon as we had something we thought would work, using all of the resources we had at our fingertips, in walked potent NPC soldiers in the service of the most powerful statted NPC in the game and... bailed us out.
This is a particularly egregious example and, lets face it, sometimes it's interesting to be put in so over your head that it's a relief when you realize someone else is willing to go to bat for you, but in this case it's each time, every time. I realized that there was literally never a time in this campaign where we weren't completely shown-up, bailed-out, rigged-against or auto-defeated. My most spectacular success in combat was against a mortal with enlightened essence. My other two fights were against someone who was designed to one-shot me in a friendly contest and an ancient Dragonblooded character who had done nothing but fight for 300 years that after the game, our ST chortled about how there was no way we would have been able to defeat his pet NPC.
That's no way for a martial artist concept character to live.
But I'm not laying all that out there just to complain. Really, I mean it. Most of the story is very interesting - especially the parts where we're actually in it. But that's what I'm talking about. The game is already populated by characters that are cooler and more powerful then we are, and when we succeed, it's usually by fiat. And as a player, I'd like to play.
As a Storyteller, the above scenarios are extremely seductive. It's easy to get attached to NPCs, for example, but maybe most seductive is that it's extremely easy. All you have to do is come up with a reason the PC plan doesn't work until you have something happen. It's the inverse of the rule that the ST can always kill you by making the numbers big enough - simply, just make something's numbers even bigger, and that trumps the other big numbers.
It's also extremely boring, because after we've run through all our plans and seeing them fizzle, we were literally relegated to sitting at the table saying until one player said, "Well, maybe something will happen and things will turn out ok." Which is, incidentally, exactly what happened. Nothing you do at that point is a plot twist. The result is the same no matter what happens, because the PCs have no control whatsoever.
I suspect there are three things going on here, and they're all potential poison to games. The first is an old school issue - don't get to attached to your NPCs. I'm as guilty of this as the next person, but what I really mean is that you can't let these personal creations, no matter how cool you think they are, become the star of the game. They're not. And when you make them the star, your game sucks.
Number two is the ease I brought up. It's tempting just to include the solution and avoid all the dice rolling, the rules lookups, and the general slog that actually playing. If you don't have stats for any NPCs or really have anything besides a scenario map, you might not really have a good recourse between just deciding pass/fail.
Which leads to number three, and probably the most insidious of the traps. The idea that this particular scene just isn't that interesting. As the Storyteller, you want to get to the fun parts, and this scene doesn't contribute, but for some reason, the PCs are just intent on sticking around and monkeying around with stuff that they really don't have any business in monkeying with. Forget it, guys. Move on. Let's go; we're doing big things and this isn't it.
This happens with any game, at some point, but I feel like if you're not willing to play with the mechanics, there's not much point in playing at all and it's time to get into some collaborative short story writing. I'm not putting that down, because it can be really fun. Hell, we do it all the time. The point is, unless we're willing to actually get down and roll dice in good faith, there's zero point at being at the table for this. Let's break out the drinks and watch some movies or playing some Mario Kart, ok? Sometimes this means the game's not going to go as fast as you want it to. Sometimes you'll get through one scene or even less. That's ok! Time is relative around the table. Change your perception - there's no need to rush. You're not trying to 'get something done'. It's not a chore. Have fun with it!
* Or Game Master, or Dungeon Master, or really anyone running a game for you friends.
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Most games, even most sessions need NPCs, and reoccuring NPCs are great. The more interesting, the better. It's really only when they start stepping on the toes of the PCs that things become an issue. There are so many caveats to it that it's difficult to be a lot more specific, but if the players like 'em, then you're doing it right.
My third point is really something that's crystallized to me recently, when out characters where in a bar trying to talk to an NPC that was being temporarily played by a friend in from out of town. We felt pretty sure we could just move on, but we felt it'd be nice to make sure he got to play more (as well as figuring getting on the good side of a high ranking NPC would be a good idea...), so we kind of went out of our way to play longer and engage the character in the bar scene.
We ended up being met with some surprising resistance, and at the end of the game, we were chided for holding up the game with the idea that if we're going to get through this, we can't be spending all of our game time at the table in pointless bar scenes.
I realize it's a bit of a lengthy example, but that's kind of the deal. Sometimes there's a scene that the PCs are unexpectedly interested in that an ST doesn't bank on, or they try to interact with the world in unexpected ways, but what may seem like a waste of time can actually be a great thing.
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Again, reading these things is always useful.