I agree, but I kinda disagree to the specific direction you're taking. You can write plot, but, you need Player buy-in.The solution here is not to write a roleplaying campaign like you're writing a story. It's not a piece of fiction with a fixed outcome that you can plan in advance. There's a nugget of advice that is often told:
Don't write plots, write situations.
Far, far more important than "write situations and improvise your campaign to revolve around the Player's actions" is explain your campaign idea to your Players and get them to buy-in to the premise first.
Do you want to run a "West Marches style hex-crawl"? If your Players decide they'd rather play merchants, your campaign will not work. No amount of "riffing off the Player's actions" will get you to a West Marches hex-crawl if the Players don't want to explore the unknown wilds. Want to run a mega-dungeon? Better make sure the Players are onboard, some Players hate mega-dungeons and if you give them the chance they'll derail your plans and turn it into a city campaign instead (a city campaign is actually a different sort of mega-dungeon, just one you probably didn't map out or plan for and that has a lot more social interactions).
So above all else, get Player buy-in. They might be fine riding the rails from scene to scene and toot-tooting into those "epic set-piece battles". Or maybe they won't and they'll demand that "theirs is the hand on the wheel of this Character's fate", or maybe they'll enjoy a mix of PC agency and railroading.
But regardless, get the buy-in, then run the game the Players have bought into.
Statistics: Posted by evileeyore — 28 Apr 2024 17:46