[quote=The 42nd Gecko]
Ah, I misread your statement. I thought we were talking about overpowering NPCs shutting down mechanics, not new quests.I am not fond of the. "The CR 20 creatures shows up and tells you he'll kill you if you keep casting haste." "Is there anything I can do to convince you otherwise seeing I can't hope to fight you?" "Nope."
[/quote]

Agreed, that's stupid, but that's not how he handled stuff. It would be more like we get attacked by a few weak seekers, then as we are assessed they send out more agents, first to warn us away from disrupting the time flow and later to enforce that if we keep doing stuff- of course, we can try to avoid or outfight them, and it'll usually only be an issue if we're really just completely abusing an ability, but you get the idea.

Again, this guy is writing scripts for TV and movies now, his games were awesome.

[quote=Assallya]
Avoiding formulaic adventures is the responsibility of the players in my opinion. For example, when I was GMing, my players instead of going up against the local tribe of Goblins instead hired the goblins to help them against their mutual enemy- the local kobolds. It totally messed up my story arc but it made for some awesome story. Particularly when Maglubiyet, the God of Goblins, caught wind of a bunch of humans and elves civilizing one of his tribes.
[/quote]

It's everyone's responsibility. It's up to the DM to present interesting scenarios, and it's up to the players to come up with interesting ways of handling them rather than just brute force their way through the same way every time.