Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[Campbell]

Depends on the players, and what sort of consistency you're trying to maintain. Even "professionals" often have difficulty maintaining the consistency of a world, witness the Forgotten Realms.

Multiple authors gives a different feel and a different type of consistency, not to mention a different gameplay experience. I think most people agree that the players should have a lot of input into the backstories of their PCs, although the degree of latitude varies from table-to-table. Beyond that there's a wide range of what individual players and DMs prefer, and are capable of doing. After that, most default to what D&D really provides as their framework - you have control over your character, and the actions they take. The DM will handle everything else.

And before anybody jumps on "capable of doing," it is a thing. Just like some people are not suited to be a DM, some aren't capable of world design, etc. I had a friend who tried playing with us and just could not wrap his brain around even being a character in an imaginary world. No matter what the situation, the scenario, description or clarification, he was totally incapable of playing the game as a character. And he admits it. You're being attacked by goblins, what do you do? He had no idea - well, you're a wizard, and have these spells you can cast, what do you want to cast? I don't know. The only thing he came up with was to cut off the hand of a troll they killed so he could slap people with it.

It's just not the way his brain works. I'm not sure I've ever really seen anything like it, but he's amazing at something like MtG or League of Legends.

When it comes to consistency there are few things my group tends to do that I believe helps to maintain it.

We constrain detail to what we need to create a space for play. Unlike those Forgotten Realms authors our interests are not in creating an entire fictional world, complete with intricate details, lengthy histories, and the like. We are only really concerned with the things that concern our characters. We are not publishing lengthy treatises. If it does not enrich player decision making or help position characters into fiction we do not detail it. The intent is to create a rich space for play while leaving room to expand things further as needed. Often play will focus on a fairly limited geographic area that players come to really know and love. This has other implications on play, but one thing it helps achieve is an alignment of player and character interests. It also helps characters feel like they were not fully sprung up in their current state. This active knowledge base means I can depend on my players as a resource and a check when I go off the reservation.

We elide what does not interest us, and dive deep into what does. We do not have to know everything about the world, a city, or even a given player character. There is so much richness and diversity to a single life it would be impossible to meaningfully cover it all in play. We must choose where to focus our attention. In my case I tend not to focus overly much on exacting physical descriptions, distances, and hard measures of time. I describe things the same way I tend to see the world - in broad strokes with a focus on what stands out and with a focus on people. I do not really do maps well. I do build elaborate relationship maps players can add to and reference during play. That's generally where my interests lay. Other players are generally free to work with me to elaborate on areas they wish to explore. I use their passion as a resource.

We rely on players to be Subject Matter Experts. Instead of depending on one person to keep all the details in their head, we divide up the labor. This is generally done on the basis of the characters they are playing. We assume you are playing a given type of character because you are interested in the fiction that goes along with it. I expect the player of a mage to care more about the way magic works than I might. I want to reward that investment. I also want to provide players with the opportunity to establish deep ties to their characters and really care about their lives so things like relationships, their allies, and even those they regard as enemies are up for grabs. This is another powerful chance to align player and character interests. You will see that a lot from me. I want to encourage the feeling of really being grounded in the setting and being an expert in the things you should be an expert in.

We are exploring characters. We are not really exploring setting. For us, the setting is a means to an end - not an end unto itself. Our primary interest is these characters and their web of connections to the fiction. Being flexible in our approach to setting development means we can maintain our focus on being consistent with the events of play, not conforming play to fit within the bounds of prepared material that often can feel contrived because it does not come from real people interacting with other real people. The social dynamic of play can result in fiction that feels more authentic and less designed. We focus on the fiction as experienced.

We are not afraid of do overs and talking things out.If we play something out and it does not feel authentic to our sense of the fiction or these characters we are not afraid to speak up. We also do not feel like we need to get it right the first time. If we miss some critical detail we can rewind and replay it or work together to clarify the situation. This ability to call each other out on our crap is a critical component of our play. Our core assumption is that you do not really own your characters and no one really owns the fictional world. We trust the GM to play the world with integrity and we trust the other players to play their characters with integrity. We trust everyone to be curious explorers of the fiction. Constructive criticism along the way is not only valued, but expected.

I am a strong proponent of an active dedicated GM role. I do not think we really need GMs or roleplaying games to have a compelling roleplaying experience, but I believe there are definite upsides, particularly if you are also interested in having compelling gameplay like I am. In my preferred approach the GM plays the fictional world with integrity so that the other players can focus on playing their characters with integrity and really driving for the things their characters value. I do not believe GMs should shirk from this responsibility. I just believe they should use the other players as active resources when appropriate, seek to align character and player interests, and depend on them as a check. It's all about valuing the other players as creative equals.

However, there is a danger of too much influence from the other players. As a GM, they depend on you to provide a space to play in and meaningful adversity to test their characters against. Try not to tempt them to utilize the opportunities you provide as a release valve from the tension of the moment. This guided collaboration should be about creating a space to play in, not a creative writing exercise. Know their limits, and accept them throwing it back at you. MC. Bring it. The principle is sometimes disclaim decision making, not always disclaim decision making or usually disclaim decision making.

 

[pemerton]

Dungeon World being a PBtA inspired mash-up of BW (more like Mouse Guard in tone though) + B/X + 4e, there is a lot of DNA overlap. So the equivalent stuff (GMing procedures, Beliefs/Instincts, Circles et al) in Dungeon World to add things in play would be <snip details>

Thanks for the detail: I'm not across all the classes in DW (I know that Thru Death's Eyes is a fighter move; I assume that Connections is a rogue/thief move; the others I'm not sure about, but I'm guessing they are also class moves), and this plugs some gaps in my knowledge/exposition!

EDIT: I looked some of them up: Weather Weaver is Druidic; Heirloom is a fighter move; Wealth and Taste is a thief move. I didn't find the others.

(For anyone else following a long: a class "move" in DW is similar to a feat or other ability gained on reaching a new level in WotC-style D&D.)

 

[Campbell]

My posts in this thread may sometimes lean to the critical end of analysis, but I do not believe that the ways I enjoy playing roleplaying games are right for everyone. They are simply approaches I enjoy talking about. I discussed GM as MC the most because I feel it is not always well understood in the mainstream audience of the hobby. I would like to see more people try playing more different games with more different people because I think it's helpful to find out what's out there, really understand it, and experience this stuff for yourself to find out what's the most fun for you.

When playing these games I ascribe to a certain set of assumptions that color my viewpoints. This originally comes from Deeper in the Game.

1. Not everyone likes the same thing.
2. Play with people you like.
3. Play with rules you like.
4. Everyone is a player.
5. Talking is good.
6. Trust, not fear or power.
7. It's a game, not a marriage.
8. Fun stuff at least every 10 minutes.
9. Address Problems. Don't Endure Them.

 

[pemerton]

Depends on the players, and what sort of consistency you're trying to maintain. Even "professionals" often have difficulty maintaining the consistency of a world, witness the Forgotten Realms.

Well, when I talk about a gameworld I'm talking primarily about the confines of a particular shared fiction. The game I was discussing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is not the first game I've run using GH as a setting, but I wouldn't expect stuff in this game to conform to details of what happened or was established in the prior games.

That said, I don't think the demands are as great as (say) editing the FR, or the Marvel Universe. No single GM is going to run campaigns that touch on even a fraction of the detail published for FR (most of which is not the outcome of RPG play but of story writing). So maintaining the consistency of a setting over years of play with multiple groups - should one want to do that - is not on a par with managing the FR.

Multiple authors gives a different feel and a different type of consistency, not to mention a different gameplay experience. I think most people agree that the players should have a lot of input into the backstories of their PCs, although the degree of latitude varies from table-to-table. Beyond that there's a wide range of what individual players and DMs prefer, and are capable of doing. After that, most default to what D&D really provides as their framework - you have control over your character, and the actions they take. The DM will handle everything else.

Your claim about "defaults" is probably true as an empirical matter. But my post was not about what is common; it was about what is possible.

In the game mentioned in the OP, at one point there was a confrontation (something of a foreshadowing of the decapitation in the tower bedroom) in the Hardby cathedral. The mage PC defeated the wizard/assassin, and took from her an artefact called Thelon's Orb, and hid it in the cathedral altar.

Now I hadn't said anything about an altar. The player declared the action, and in the process made it true in the shared fiction that the cathedral contains an altar (and an altar in or under which a large-ish crystal can be hidden). Is that a threat to consistency?

I don't think so. So much of what we do in fantasy RPGing rests on well-recognised tropes (including, eg, that cathedrals have high ceilings, altars, etc) that the player declaring that action reinforces the consistency and colour of the shared fiction.

Likewise when - after that confrontation - the mage PC needed to find somewhere to rest and train for a few weeks. The player simply declared that his PC finds a cheap inn in the dive-y part of town. That doesn't threaten consistency - it reaffirms an existing shared picture of Hardby as a generic, all-purpose fantasy city (with catacombs, wizard towers, a cathedral, docks, etc). This is how Gygax first created the city and world of Greyhawk, after all; or what REH was doing with his "Hyborian Age".

And if, by this sort of thing, the player actually puts something at stake, then as GM I have procedures to fall back on: instead of simply "saying 'yes'", I call for an appropriate check. This came up when the PCs drugged the wizard assassin and then set off, through the catacombs, to the mage's tower. I clarified that there was not something I was missing in the fiction that would make it easy for the PCs to navigate easily through the catacombs to find a way into the tower; the players clarified for me that there was not. So - given that something most definitely was at stake (their ability to get to the tower before the wizard/assassin woke up) - I called for a Catacombs-wise check. Which failed. And so the wizard/assassin woke up as they wandered, lost, through the catacombs; and then, came across them as she made her own way to the tower, taunting them through an opening into the catacombs and sewers from the street; and then the race was on. (The PCs lost - hence the decapitation mentioned in the OP.)

I just don't see that, or how, this sort of role for the players is at odds with consistency.

EDIT: I read [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s post not far upthread and some of it is relevant to this reply. So here's a length addition to the post:

When it comes to consistency there are few things my group tends to do that I believe helps to maintain it.

We constrain detail to what we need to create a space for play. Unlike those Forgotten Realms authors our interests are not in creating an entire fictional world, complete with intricate details, lengthy histories, and the like. We are only really concerned with the things that concern our characters. We are not publishing lengthy treatises. If it does not enrich player decision making or help position characters into fiction we do not detail it.

This is true for my games.

In our main 4e game, all the Prime Material Plane action has taken place on the map on the inside cover of Night's Dark Terror - something like a 100 mile x 200 mile area.

The details of the cosmology have been drawn from an interaction between published sources and play. The fact that the Raven Queen aspires to be the sole god of the cosmos is an example of something established through play, the culmination of that being my narration of her Mausoleum, which was something that I (as GM) authored in the course of play:

The Mausoleum had three areas: an entrance room, with a large statue and modest altar; a set of stairs with slightly elevated ramps on either side leading down to the principal room - very large (about 90' x 50') with a huge statue and two pools of water, corrupted by the Abyss; and then a smaller set of stairs leading down to the burial room, with a large altar and five statues and 4 side rooms (the sarcophagus room, the room with canopic jars, the grave goods room and the treasure room).

The PCs started in the entrance <snippage> They studied the murals and reliefs in the entrance chamber, which showed the Raven Queen's victories during her life, becoming the most powerful ruler in the world (crushing her enemies, being adulated by her subjects, etc - I told the players to think of Egyptian tomb paintings, Mesopotamian reliefs, and similar).

<snip>

The mural in the principal room - also a magical hazard if they got too close, which they made sure not to - depicted the mortal queen's magical achievements - including defeating a glabrezu on the Feywild, and travelling to the land of the dead (at that time, a land of black poplars ruled by Nerull).

The paladin looked in the cleansed pool to see what he could see, and saw episodes from the past depicting the Raven Queen's accretion of domains (fate from Lolth, in return for helping Corellon against her; winter from Khala, in return for sending her into death at the behest of the other gods); and then also the future, of a perfect world reborn following the destruction of the Dusk War, with her as ruler.

<snip>

they went down the last set of stairs to the burial room.

This room had a statue in each of four corners - the Raven Queen mortal, ruling death, ruling fate and ruling winter. The fifth statute faced a large altar, and showed her in her future state, as universal ruler. The murals and reliefs here showed the future (continuing the theme of the rooms: the entry room showed her mortal life; the principal room her magical life, including her passage into death; this room her future as a god). I made up some salient images, based on important events of the campaign: an image of the Wolf-Spider; an image of the a great staff or rod with six dividing lines on it (ie the completed Rod of 7 Parts, which is to be the trigger for the Dusk War); an image of an earthmote eclipsing the sun (the players don't know what this one is yet, though in principle they should, so I'll leave it unexplained for now); an image of a bridge with an armoured knight on it, or perhaps astride it - this was not clear given the "flat-ness" of the perspective, and the presence of horns on the knight was also hard to discern (the players immediately recognised this as the paladin taking charge of The Bridge That Can Be Traversed But Once); and an image of the tarrasque wreaking havoc.

<snip>

Closer inspection showed that where it was possible the queen's name had once been written on the walls, this had been erased. The invoker/wizard decided to test whether this could be undone, by using a Make Whole ritual: he made a DC 52 Arcana check, and was able to do so (though losing a third of his (less than max) hp in the process, from forcing through the wards of the Mausoleum). Which resulted in him learning the name of the Raven Queen. And becoming more concerned than ever that it is vulnerable to others learning it to.

Asking the guardians confirmed that they also know her name, though will not speak it, as that would be an insult to the dead.

<snip>

The player of the sorcerer had been very keen on the possibility of a magical chariot among the grave goods, and so I decided that there was a gilt-and-bronze Chariot of Sustarre (fly speed 8, 1x/enc cl burst 3 fire attack). They persuaded the guardians to let them borrow it

The map I had drawn in advance. The details of the murals and statutes, the vision in the pool, the details about the names on the wall - all that, and hence what it implies about the Raven Queen, was authored by me in the course of play, building on what had been established already in the campaign, and extrapolating it in such a way as to maintain and build the pressure on the players to make hard choices for their PCs (ie about their attitude towards the Raven Queen's rise-and-rise-and-rise).

We elide what does not interest us, and dive deep into what does. We do not have to know everything about the world, a city, or even a given player character. There is so much richness and diversity to a single life it would be impossible to meaningfully cover it all in play.

Yep, this.

We rely on players to be Subject Matter Experts.

<snip>

We assume you are playing a given type of character because you are interested in the fiction that goes along with it. I expect the player of a mage to care more about the way magic works than I might.

The details of dwarven society in our 4e game were authored by the player of the dwarf PC, as part of his backstory. The existence of a drow secret society of Corellon worshippers, hoping to free the drow from Lolth's rule so that they can return to the surface world and undo the sundering of the elves, was established by the player of the drow PC, initially in backstory and then developed over the course of the campaign.

The player of the invoker/wizard will often explain ingame phenomena that have become salient in the course of play by reference to his conception of how magic, the cosmology etc work. Sometimes this is just colour, and so just stands as he narrates it, adding to the collective experience of the game. Sometimes it is more than just colour. On those occasions, it may lay the groundwork for some permissible action declaration. Sometimes I just "say 'yes'" to this. If it needs to be massaged a bit to fit with something already established, I might work with the player to do this. If it looks like it is the player trying to narrate his PC into a free lunch, I might require a check to see if things really work as the PC thinks (although, since reaching epic tier, most of those checks are auto-successes for this PC!).

In my previous long-running campaign, the player of the lead samurai established details around his family and their loyalties; the player of the animal spirit exiled to earth helped contribute details about the animal courts of heaven; etc.

Of all the ways of approaching worldbuilding that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] mentions, this one comes closest to what I would regard as common sense.

We are exploring characters. We are not really exploring setting. For us, the setting is a means to an end - not an end unto itself.

I would agree that the setting is a means to an end, but in our games sometimes that end is exploring the characters, but not always. In our main 4e game, it is about the reconciliation (if that is possible) of structure and "life"/"impulse"/"chaos". In this context we have a PC remaking the Rod of Seven Parts; a couple of Raven Queen (ie fate/death) cultists; an elemental-type sorcerer who wants to reconcile the primordials with the endurance of the created world as something distinct from the order of heaven; and an eternal defender who is also god of imprisonment, who wants to preserve the world from primordials trying to unleash the Dusk War but in doing so doesn't just want to hand it over to the rule of the Raven Queen.

These characters don't have a lot of personal depth independently of these bigger picture commitments (outside of the standard quirks of colour etc that come with most RPGing); but the setting is a vehicle for exploring/resolving this question. It would be disastrous if it had the answer already written into it! (Eg via GM-authored metaplot.)

This is the second "epic" cosmological game I've run - the previous, OA one turned on the relationship between human affairs - insignificant as they might seem from the divine point of view - and the laws, including the dubious compromises they contain, established by heaven to govern the world. Being an OA game, various and sometimes competing notions of "karma", "enlightenment" etc played a role in framing these issues. The PCs defied heaven, forming alliances with a dead and an exiled god, and ended up succeeding in saving humanity where heaven - due to its compromises - had failed.

This game was run using Rolemaster. It had more depth of personality to the PCs than the 4e one; but RM in many ways it a bit less robust at the moment of crunch. The PCs ultimate victory turned more heavily than (say) 4e does on the players making a strong case as to what their PCs could achieve given fictional positioning, with the role of mechanics not then being irrelevant, but a bit more secondary. While I still think RM is a system that is often unfairly maligned, and has a lot of good things about it, this campaign persuaded me that I wouldn't want to run it again for the sort of RPGing I'm interested in. It puts a lot of "free kriegsspiel"-type pressure on the GM, moreso than the systems I'm now using.

In this game, too, the idea of baking the outcome into the GM narration of setting - so changing the game from the form it took, to a type of puzzle- or mystery-focused game - would have been utterly disastrous.

So these are examples which (I think) show how setting can be a means to an end even when that end is as much about what is possible within the setting, and the meaning of events in the setting, rather than about the characters.

We are not afraid of do overs and talking things out.If we play something out and it does not feel authentic to our sense of the fiction or these characters we are not afraid to speak up. We also do not feel like we need to get it right the first time. If we miss some critical detail we can rewind and replay it or work together to clarify the situation.

Interesting. This is not a big part of our approach - or, at least, maybe we approach it in a different way. This is the sort of thing that we would tend to work out in the course of framing and establishing the content of an action declaration (establishing authenticity; clarifying the situation).

Elaborating on that: framing and action declaration are definitely not 1st person narration moments at our table. The discussion moves very flexibly between first person, second person (GM addressing player/PC as "you"), third person but character focused (eg "Jobe is trying to . . . "; "How does that relate to Jobe's Belief that . . . ?"; etc), and god's-eye-view third person.

 

[Lanefan]

In the game mentioned in the OP, at one point there was a confrontation (something of a foreshadowing of the decapitation in the tower bedroom) in the Hardby cathedral. The mage PC defeated the wizard/assassin, and took from her an artefact called Thelon's Orb, and hid it in the cathedral altar.

Now I hadn't said anything about an altar.

Did this confrontation occur in the main area of the cathedral, where the altar would logically be? If yes, then why wouldn't the altar have been shown on the map? Or do you not use a grid/board/minis for combat?

Likewise when - after that confrontation - the mage PC needed to find somewhere to rest and train for a few weeks. The player simply declared that his PC finds a cheap inn in the dive-y part of town. That doesn't threaten consistency - it reaffirms an existing shared picture of Hardby as a generic, all-purpose fantasy city (with catacombs, wizard towers, a cathedral, docks, etc).

Something as basic as this would almost always be fine with me as well, if it made sense based on what I already knew about the city. But if someone declared they were going to visit the palace in the same city I might very well turn around and ask "what palace?" as I already know this particular city isn't the ruling centre for anything and doesn't have a palace.

And if, by this sort of thing, the player actually puts something at stake, then as GM I have procedures to fall back on: instead of simply "saying 'yes'", I call for an appropriate check. This came up when the PCs drugged the wizard assassin and then set off, through the catacombs, to the mage's tower. I clarified that there was not something I was missing in the fiction that would make it easy for the PCs to navigate easily through the catacombs to find a way into the tower; the players clarified for me that there was not. So - given that something most definitely was at stake (their ability to get to the tower before the wizard/assassin woke up) - I called for a Catacombs-wise check. Which failed. And so the wizard/assassin woke up as they wandered, lost, through the catacombs; and then, came across them as she made her own way to the tower, taunting them through an opening into the catacombs and sewers from the street; and then the race was on. (The PCs lost - hence the decapitation mentioned in the OP.)

I just don't see that, or how, this sort of role for the players is at odds with consistency.

Depends if someone wants to get into more detail than just check rolls. Say instead of just rolling a check to get through the catacombs they wanted to know their exact route (i.e. make a rough line map as they went, requiring a route description from you-as-DM so a player could physically draw out the map) so they could quickly retrace their steps later if they needed to beat a hasty retreat...or, in this case, so they could use the map to help figure out where they were going wrong.

I'm fussy about detail in things like this, where it matters (as it obviously did here). Were I DMing this I'd probably have spun that one catacombs-wise check out into half an hour of detailed play regarding where they were going (including asking at each intersection which way they were going), probably resulting in a map of much of the catacombs if they were really lost. Result - whether or not I had those catacombs mapped out before they're mapped now for later reference should a party ever find their way down there again. Were I a player I'd be the one wanting to draw the map.

Where it doesn't matter as much (say, finding one's way around the streets of town when there's no pressure or risk) I'm nowhere near as fussy.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Well, when I talk about a gameworld I'm talking primarily about the confines of a particular shared fiction. The game I was discussing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is not the first game I've run using GH as a setting, but I wouldn't expect stuff in this game to conform to details of what happened or was established in the prior games.

When I talk about a game-world I'm talking about the whole thing, including what lies beyond the bits the PCs have actually encountered as those bits are potentially just waiting their turn to become relevant...or not, as the case may be.

Each time you've used Greyhawk as a setting, regardless of whether the "stuff in this game ... conform to details of what happened or was established in the prior games" it's still conforming to the background Greyhawk canon as a whole (more or less, let's not open that can o' worms again), meaning any player familiar with Greyhawk will have some vague ideas of what to expect. This sets a whole series of baseline assumptions that whatever comes next can build on...and conveniently gets you off the "DM-driven" hook in this aspect as all you did was select that setting; the rest of the baseline info, maps, etc. is already out there if anyone cares to dig for it.

My current game-world is Akrayna. Ever heard of it? I doubt it - in fact if you have I'd be both surprised and rather impressed, as it's something I made up for this campaign. My players had never heard of it either, before the campaign started, meaning they didn't have any baseline at all. They had to learn about it from the maps I'd drawn, the info I'd posted, and things discovered later during the run of play. Is this DM-driven? By your definitions I'll guess it is. Is it bad, or poor, or providing any sort of negative experience? I don't think so in the least.

Therefore, DM-driven does not always equal bad.

Lan-"if a giant falls in the forest and there's no PCs there to see it, does anyone get xp?"-efan

 

[darkbard]

Whew! After a week of furious reading, I'm finally caught up in this thread.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I wonder if you might address how the Rod of Seven Parts, its relation to the Dawn/Dusk Wars, the role of Miska the Wolf-Spider, etc. came about in your game. Was finding/collecting the rod (a three tier-spanning artifact) a desideratum of the player from the time of character creation? Were details added by you as bits of color (drawing from canon material and shaped by player declaration) or introduced by player action? Etc.

I think your answers to these questions might help further elucidate the distinction you've drawn about a player-driven game--even when it comes to introducing an element (like this iconic artifact) to the game that could, in other hands, bias a group towards GM-driven story.

 

[pemerton]

Whew! After a week of furious reading, I'm finally caught up in this thread.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I wonder if you might address how the Rod of Seven Parts, its relation to the Dawn/Dusk Wars, the role of Miska the Wolf-Spider, etc. came about in your game. Was finding/collecting the rod (a three tier-spanning artifact) a desideratum of the player from the time of character creation? Were details added by you as bits of color (drawing from canon material and shaped by player declaration) or introduced by player action? Etc.

I think your answers to these questions might help further elucidate the distinction you've drawn about a player-driven game--even when it comes to introducing an element (like this iconic artifact) to the game that could, in other hands, bias a group towards GM-driven story.

On including iconic elements (Vecna, the Rod, etc): these work because they're tropes. (Not as generic as altars in cathedrals, but well-established in D&D gaming.)

So when the PCs first found the Sword of Kas, for instance, the player of the invoker/wizard had already been talking a bit about his character's strange relationship to Vecna as well Ioun. When I mentioned that the sword seemed hostile to him (I can't remember if it did damage when he touched it, or something like that) he worked out straight away it was the Sword of Kas. So this was a way of me affirming his conception of his PC, as well as helping to foreground the various layers of conflict (different commitments, hence different ultimate goals) among the PCs - eg the paladin wielded the Sword for a while, then the PCs gave it back to Kas, and then the paladin took it back from Kas about 15 levels later when the PCs killed him.

The Rod came into the game because the invoker/wizard (back when he was a 2nd level human wizard, before being reborn as a deva invoker/wizard) had died. I asked the player if he wanted to keep the PC or change characters - he wanted to keep the PC, and expressed this in terms of the PC's story not being over. So we talked about it a bit more, and he thought that the Raven Queen and Erathis might have a mission they needed to send him back to complete - finding a Nerathi artefact in the ruins near where the PC had died.

Originally this Sceptre of Law had some fairly undefined functions that the player would call upon - pointing the way to other Nerathi roads and ruins, for instance. But then I got the idea that it could be the Rod of Seven Parts, and the player bought into this as a development of his conception of his PC and his PC's quest.

For a while he used a Tome as his main implement, and had the Rod as a backup. But then, after he was reborn as an invoker, his Tome was largely stripped of magical power (in mechanical terms, I think this was running down the value of magic items so as to meet the notional cost of rituals to which he was no longer entitled for free as a class feature) and he fully embraced the Rod as his main source of magical power. Which it has been since. (He has access to the Crystal of the Ebon Flame, which from memory is a +6 implement, but because at first he had Misak trapped in it, and more recently Ygorl, he doesn't use that one on a day-to day basis.)

What will be interesting to see is whether - if/when he gets the 7th part from Miska - the rest of the party let him rejoin it to complete the Rod. Because this is prophesied to herald the coming of the Dusk War.

So I would see the Rod as a collaboration between me and the player: a mix of player-originated quest, a wish-list approach to items (which is how I approach "rewards" in 4e), and GM framing to help connect these things to the bigger picture of that PC and the rest of the PCs in the context of the default cosmology.

Miska the Wolf-Spider is another example: the PCs build and play PCs who, in various ways and for various reasons, are hostile to the primordials (or, at least, the more destructive ones); I introduce Miska as one personification of the thing they are hostile to.

What is important to me is that the backstory, the flavour, etc is shared at the table. Not to say that there can never be surprises (either as framing or consequence), but the players know the cosmological backstories (in the fiction, the invoker/wizard remembers them, as he was there in the early period of his 1000 lifetimes) and draw upon them to help express their PCs and frame the significance of their choices.

It's not "secret GM backstory" of the form I dislike.

I hope that is a bit of an answer to your question.

(Also, you didn't ask but: one tricky thing about running a Dark Sun game will be working out to use the setting. It's not as trope-errific as default 4e, but my players aren't going to be interested in reading pages and pages of backstory, and that's not the most exciting way to make it part of the game in any event. To date I've been relying on painting with a pretty bright palette: templars, psychic hounds, secret societies, etc - maybe I'll just stick to these fairly clear sword & sorcery/sword & planet tropes, and just ignore the more intricate elements of the setting that don't necessarily seem to add a great deal.)

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION], [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]

Another thought/comment: I suspect my group might make heavier use of setting, at least sometimes, then Campbell's group. I think it can often be lower stakes than character, because external (eg cosmological-type questions) rather than internal ("Who am I?" can be quite demanding because revealing, even when the character is a fiction). Which suits the generally laid-back approach my group takes to RPGing.

Even in our BW game, external setting elements (the Dark Naga, the mage PC's concerns about the balrog and the coming apocalypse, etc) seem to figure as much as "internal" character matters.

I think Ron Edwards is onto something when he says that setting can be prominent in a player-driven game: but I think that, if this is to work, it has to be "public" in a certain way, and so owned by everyone at the table. Not just the GM's thing.

Going back to the Rod, just to give a simple example: when the chaos sorcerer had opened a portal from the base of the hills to the top (where a hobgoblin army was massing), and the invoker/wizard wanted to use the Rod to refocus the portal to the nearest Nerathi path to the top of the hills, was he able to do so? Absolutely (with an appropriate check as part of the skill challenge). The description of the Rod of 7 Parts doesn't talk about this anywhere; it doesn't link it's function as a Sceptre of Law to any particular mundane, political manifestation of the law.

But that's my player's understanding of the Rod - it speaks to human concerns for law and social organisation - the Empire of Nerath - as much as to cosmological conceptions of divine law vs elemental/primordial chaos. And so it's 100% part of the gameworld.

 

[pemerton]

DM-driven does not always equal bad.

Sure. That's not in dispute!