The unbreakable story.

I've seen a few GMs say things like "my players broke my adventure by doing something I did not expect". My
philosophy is that planned adventures can be broken, but stories cannot.

Story-based campaigns do not have a fixed plot - railroad - for the players to follow. The game master (GM) makes
preparations to facilitate the story, but he doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have a plan of how the story will actually play out
- that’s determined by playing the game. So while the players can (and will) do the unexpected, it’s nearly impossible
to do something in the game that will ruin his preparations. There’s no such thing as “messing up the GM’s plans”, so
players should never feel like they're walking on egg shells when considering what they’re going to do next.

The bad guys, however, do have plans (that the GM creates). They want to blow up the city. They want to go on
murderous rampages. They want to open a portal into the demon realm. They want to do all the horrible things that
bad guys do and they would accomplish those things if the player characters (PCs) weren’t there to stop them.

Even with the PCs trying to stop the bad guys, it’s still not certain how things will play out. The bad guys could still
accomplish some (or all) of their objectives, depending on what the PCs do and how they do it. As examples:

Maybe the PCs decide that they don’t care about the terrorist threat (the plot hook) and want to spend a week
investigating a random (but mysterious) cemetery. That’s okay. As the PCs find a lair of zombies, they will hear
explosions rocking the nearby city as the terrorists continue to progress their own agendas. If the PCs decide the
zombies are still more important, maybe the government collapses (or maybe the GM adjusts the terrorist agenda to
include the release of a virus which causes a zombie apocalypse - everyone wins!).

Maybe the PCs decide to be heroes, stop the terrorist threat, and the PCs become publicly recognized heroes (and
the targets of vengeful assassins).

Or maybe the PCs try to take down the bad guys, get the snot kicked out of them, and feel the bomb explosions
shaking the city from their hospital beds as they wonder if investigating the cemetery would’ve been a better way to
go.

All of these scenarios are possible stories for the same exact "adventure". In fact, that’s what makes this so exciting
for players and GMs alike. Not even the GM knows what will ultimately happen; all he knows is what will happen if
no one does anything about it.

Preparation for the unbreakable story

As a GM, I first need to understand what the threats are. Usually, this begins with the players. Understand their
backgrounds and ask them questions to flesh out the details. Sometimes this will bring to the surface a potential
threat (something from their past that might come back to haunt them), others times this will bring to the surface
things that you can threaten (things that they would fight to protect). Start with one threat to keep it simple and
then add more as time goes on. Usually 2 to 3 threats is enough to give the players options and put pressure on
them, while not giving yourself (the GM) too much to manage. Take note of any other potential threats for future
use, creating a fairly large supply of future content.

For each threat, determine what would happen if the players did not exist. Start small (plot hook), and have an
escalation path for how the threat grows bigger and bigger if not dealt with. More particularly, create a simple
motivation for that threat and determine what might follow. As a GM, these are arrows in your quiver when you
want to put pressure on the players or motivate them to action.
Example of orcs who are motivated by power:

The players hear rumors of a small band of orcs pillaging a farm on the outskirts of the kingdom.

A player receives a message that a large band of orcs has razed his home town to the ground and his family is
missing.

An orc warlord unites the orc tribes of the realm and marches towards the capital city

The orcs overrun the kingdom and enslave all the humans, elves, and dwarves.

The fun part is that when you have 2 or 3 threats, you can either rotate between them or make the players choose
which one they're going to deal with (while the other ones continue to grow).

Preparation for a session

Review and update your threats and their paths of progression.

Decide on the 4-6 things that could happen in the next session. Usually I have these as a backup plan if the players
run out of problems to solve and as escalation points where I increase the pressure on the players because they're
ignoring a threat or they failed to succeed.

Based on what could happen, create some potential NPCs, each with a simple motivation, a name, and a memorable
characteristic (physical or personality). Additionally, make sure to have some stat blocks for potential baddies that
might be encountered.