I don't know. As in, I can't remember.
But I do want to reiterate that there is a significant difference between
the thought that the skulker might be a Vecna cultist - which I think I probably had at the time of first mentioning him - and
it being the case, in the shard fiction, that the skulker is a Vecna cultists. It is when the latter occurred that I don't know.
This difference - between
ideas for what might become part of the fiction and
the shared fiction per se - is what gives significance to
Paul Czege's description of the following technique:
I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this.
"Unfixed" doesn't mean "no ideas". It means
establishing the fiction as part of framing and resolution, not prior to it.
Sure, I understand that. I mean, I said as much in the post you quoted....that's how I tend to handle things when I introduce them into my game. I have an idea, but I'm not married to it.
What I am trying to convey is that the same thing can be true on the GM side. So, to relate back to an example I mentioned upthread, just because I have notes that say that such-and-such might happen at the baron's funeral (or celebration) that doesn't mean that the shared fiction does, or will, include any such thing. As it happened there was no funeral (the PCs saved the baron from the catoblepas come to kill him) nor any celebration (instead the baron collapsed upon learning of his niece's death at the hands of the PCs).
Yeah, I'm fully aware of this, and as I said, this is generally how I handle my games.
Do you consider this some sense of illusionism, though? If I understand that term as it's been used in this thread, it mostly relates to the illusion of choice or of consequence of choice being used by the GM. Does this flexibility with the true origin of a story element....let's use the yellow skulker as the example....kind of fall into that same category?
Your use of the word "thwart" is itself tendentious, though. It's not a word I've used - I've talked about determining that an action declaration fails by reference to elements of the fiction (ie fictional positioning) that the player is not aware of, rather than via the action resolution mechanics. Nor have I used the word "bad". And that's deliberate. I don't think it's bad. Rather, it's not something I really care for in RPGing.
As I said above, though, you can't play classic dungeon crawling D&D without doing it. Eg a player declares "I search the southern wall for secret doors". If the GM's map indicates that there are no secret doors there, then that's that - whether or not the GM fakes a die roll, the answer is going to be "You don't find any secret doors". That's an instance of determining that an action declaration fails by reference to fictional positioning of which the player is unaware. Whether or not you would call that "thwarting the player" I will leave up to you, but it is an instance of application of GM's secret backstor. Hence it's not something I'm really into (and, as I posted upthread, it's not something I'm particularly good at either).
No, you have not used the word thwart....but every example you've provided has been one where the GM thwarts the PCs' ideas. The secret door example you just provided is the first benign example of this that I've seen you use. It's very possible that I've missed such an example if you have provided one...but from what I've read, it seems that your examples display a bit of a bias toward how you view it. Which is not wrong or bad by any means.....it just seems a bit obvious even if you don't come right out and say it.
And I know you didn't term it as bad, but I meant that I am not as averse to it as you because I think it can be a legit method at times. So I don't find it bad in that sense.
In that case, I would say that the idea of the GM being constrained by player concerns/interests as expressed by the build and play of their PCs has no work to do. Likewise in these circumstances it would make no sense for the GM to "go where the action is", as there is no action in the relevant sense.
That doesn't sound, though, like a GM being constrained, at every moment of framing and narration, by the concerns and interests of the player as expressed by build and play of the PC. It sounds like a nod to the PC backstory as a passing event in some other trajectory of play.
But it is. It's just that the player interests and concerns are far less constraining. They don't have aspirations beyond those of the adventure path in question, or if they do, they are easily reconciled with and incorporated into the AP.
In the case where players may have much more involved expectations for their PCs and so on, then it would be a concern. In that case, it would be far more difficult for a GM to run a traditional AP as presented without significant changes.
My point though is that this criteria that you described doesn't seem to actually bar the AP style traditional GM driven game, depending on the players' desires and expectations. So as such, it doesn't seem to be a criteria for a player driven game.
I don't fully agree with this.
There are some systems (eg Classic Traveller, at least some versions of RuneQuest, Moldvay Basic) where PC generation is almost totally random, and so building a PC gives the player almost no chance to "hook" the GM. And in some games (eg Moldvay Basic again, Tunnels and Trolls, many 1st level AD&D PCs), PCs - especially at the start of a campaign - are so thin that they don't contain any hooks.
Although RM and RQ are both ultra-simulationist games, they have important differences, and it's not a coincidence that I fell in love with RM whereas - while I have long admired the austere beauty of RQ - I have never fallen in love with it. RM allows the player to make choices at PC build that send signals - eg choosing to give your PC skill in Cooking and Lie Detection, or in Etiquette and Seduction, tells me as GM something about what you want to do with your PC. RM also, in action resolution for melee and spell casting (not so much archery, which is a bit of a weakness0, allows choices to be made - roughly, trade offs of risk vs potential reward - which (again) allow a player to express an attitude towards the ingame situation and set stakes in a fashion; whereas in RM everything is just percentage skill checks without the same scope for player stake-setting.
Well, you've kind of narrowed this down to "the players hooking the GM with PC stats or game mechanics", but that need not be the case, and was certainly not what I had in mind. Regardless of PC creation methods, or statistics, the player can say to the GM "I kind of want this character to be haunted by his past...he's done some things he's ashamed of, and is working toward some kind of redemption, but he's not sure that's even possible at this point."
That's an idea that a GM can take in so many directions. My current game has a PC with that very backstory involved. As a result, I created a mercenary company he had been a member of, and an entire group of supporting NPCs that he has a past with, and an NPC villain that usurped the mercenary company. I then figured out a way to tie this group into some of the other stories that have been established. All of this helps to constantly bring up elements of the group's past actions, and therefore the PC's past, in the current game. So he is constantly being reminded of his dark past and having to deal with that.
It's a major part of our game, and it was entirely inspired by the player having an idea for his PC. He had the initial idea, and then I came up with some details and shared them with him, and we kind of tweaked them till we were both satisfied, and then we incorporated it into the game. Now, I will admit that I did have some elements in mind that I kept from him....I want there to be elements of this story that still need to be discovered.
Certainly conflict between the PCs and . . . obstacles . . . whether those are NPCs or inanimate aspects of the gameworld.
Dramatic need + obstacles/challenges/complications => conflict. That's what makes the game unfold, rather than just hand around in stasis, with nothing for the PCs (and hence the players) to do. And if the external conflict generates internal conflict (the sorts of choices I've just been discussing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]), or conflict among the PCs that forces hard choices to be made there too, well so much the better.
(Intra-party conflict is obviously tricky. As I approach the game, a certain onus falls both on GM and players to manage this carefully, especially in a system like D&D that presumes pretty tight party play. The conflict has to be enough to drive action, without being so great as to cause a split. I wonder what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s thoughts are on this.)
By competition I mean more about conflict between the PCs and the game world more so than the players and the GM, although the GM does have to adopt a certain amount of antagonism toward the PCs when he is playing the villains of the game. I do like things to be difficult for my PCs.
But I do also root for them, and I try to make sure that any competition is fair. Or that in the case of something being unfair (for example, an opponent of some sort who is beyond the PCs' ability to actually fight and win) that I give enough information so that the situation is clear, and that there are alternate ways to handle the conflict, and the players can decide how to best proceed.
I want at least this much competition: if I (as GM) am playing a NPC/creature who wants to hurt a PC, I want to be able to do that without having to hold back. I, the GM, have no particular desire that the PCs lose; but their opponent does, and I want to be able to express and give effect to that in my play of that opponent.
Not all systems allow for this: or, at least, if played this way they will produce what I would regard as an unacceptably high level of player defeats. (Low-level AD&D played in a non-dungeon crawl context I would regard as Exhibit A in this respect.)
I prefer ones that do. 4e combat handles this, by building a certain sort of "softballing" into the mechanics (PCs have depths of resilience and capacity to project power that NPCs/monsters lack). (It doesn't really arise in 4e non-combat, because skill challenges don't involve mechanical opposition, only narration in the form of framing, and then re-framing in light of consequences.)
BW handles it quite differently, by building in a range of non-death defeat consequences, and by embracing "fail forward", so that PC defeat isn't (straightforwardly) player defeat.
MHRP has some issues with this, in virtue of the way the Doom Pool works. I'm still getting the hang of it. The dominant online advice is "Sometimes the GM should softball the Doom Pool", but I have doubts about that for the reasons I've stated.
(Note: the distinction between framing and resolution matters to the above. Framing is, for me, a metagame process, and I do that based on the principles I've discussed above. But when the actual conflict is being resolved, once the situation is framed and the competing actions being declared, I don't want to have to metagame.)
All good ways to deal with PC failure. And I think we pretty much agree on how the GM needs to run opponents of the PCs. I also agree with your note about metagaming in how the situations are established, but then letting the game take over in the resolution of the situation.
