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This seems to be coming up lately, so let me try to ask it in poll form. It's one of those no right, no wrong answers, just a question of philosophy. EDIT: The question wasn't worded to make this clear, but I'm asking what do you personally do in your group (as opposed to what you think other...

That's another luxury in some ways. For me, and for a lot of us, we have a different luxury, which is that we have "the" players. Which is nice, but also means that when they show up, we have to work for them specifically, which is very different than having a static prepared game that people...

It seems that he is talking about two different things. One of them is improvising content, which is still "by the book", and one is actually going off the book. It seems an odd conceit to me, and one that must necessarily derive from earlier, highly structured styles of play. I would never...

Pretty much what I thought. Sometimes, but I get very nervous about doing that. The character creation process is the part of the game where the characters have the most control and exert the most influence, so taking that away from them is a potentially tyrannical approach that will infuriate a...

Well, that's an ironic statement.

One thing that I think D&D does capture is that a magical world would place great value on education. Sure, there are multiple paths to magic, but several of them are really dependent on being trained and educated. The idea of quasi-academic wizardry is quite a compelling social structure, as...

What if, however, there's some kind of roll involved, a Bluff/Sense Motive? Then, the DM really has to be obfuscatory, unless he wants to actually say that the SM check failed. This may not have been an issue when the advice was written; I don't know what mechanical resolutions were typical for...

It is somewhat off. Do you have any suggestions for a more appropriate (and suitably mystical-sounding) word? I assume the reason it's called abjuration is that someone couldn't think of anything better.

That's quite a lot of planning. It's a luxury. I wish I had the same luxury, but I haven't for quite a while. I don't know about that. Hewing to preconceived notions of what the game is another kind of bias, and those preconceptions may very well relate to metagame concerns like the kind of...

I actually think that one of the least "biased" ways to determine the outcome of an open-ended situation is to roll a d%, look at the result, and ask "how does that make me feel?". Your interpretation of the dice is biased, but the dice themselves aren't. *** As for preparation, I agree that...

Good for you. However, the question remains in generic form, what happens if they go somewhere or try to do something that you haven't anticipated. Anticipating things is good, but not always feasible.

To be fair to him, maybe other ways just hadn't been explored that much yet. Clearly the hobby has changed since then. That's very difficult to do though if the players do anything that is at all unexpected. For example, say a PC decides to try and rob a house. You were planning on an adventure...

I didn't think to turn it around like that, but I agree. The type of neutrality being discussed is such a far-off ideal that maybe what the author was getting at is a form of delusion to that effect rather than the reality of it. It would make more sense.

I struggle to imagine how the same person could fulfill both roles, though, and not have some crossover between the two. That is to say, how can you be sure that your basic extrapolation is not in some way influenced by whatever advance knowledge and opinions you may have had about this...

Well, that's probably true. That just seems completely untenable. It assumes both that some kind of prefabricated content exists that would allow a game to move forward without making stuff up, and that the players stay within the scope of that content. Where is this coming from? A published...

I read the thread topic and didn't respond to it. Then I read "Surprising, not a lot of love for official settings." and responded to that, as did several others it would seem.

ENW is a forum for advanced DMs and devoted hobbyists. I'd bet that a lot more beginner or casual gamers are much more likely to use published settings. For a lot of DMs, I've seen the natural progression of trying a game or two in a published setting before creating your own. The hobby is...

Not the right choice of words on my part, perhaps. My point is more that there's an identifiable difference between Paizo and WotC with regard to the thread topic. The motivations of both parties may or may not be describable in business terms.

A fair number of Paizo employees do post occasionally here (most of whom of course are formerly of WotC). Even though they have their own forums, apparently they see some value in ENW specifically.

FWIW, WotC was not always this toxic community of hate. Their forums used to be filled with people who had something worth saying, and generally did so in a reasonable way. Those days are long over now, of course.