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You'll forgive the inexact comparison (and my apologies if anyone feels this pushes the no politics policy), but this is a bit like exclaiming "all lives matter" at a BLM rally. Sure, some of the things being celebrated/protested/whathaveyou may be expandable beyond the original context, but...

IBHEA traces the ascending eastern pathway, like a predator feline eyeing some serpentine catch. But, no! That path is more the fanged viper: too potent a threat should one false movement or failure to discern a threat go awry. "How is your balance, scrivener?" he asks. The scholar...

I don't mind a reasonable amount of back-and-forth about the given topic either! But, collectively, we've hashed out these contrasts innumerable times in the appropriate places. This thread was laid out specifically as a place to solicit and gather advice for prospective Story Now GMs. I don't...

@Lanefan, I seriously question your vigorous participation in a thread seeking to compile good advice for a particular mode of gaming that you've made clear you have no interest in. No one is required to post or not post in any thread, of course, but your contributions amount to "but I don't...

The whisky priest freezes. He had blithely claimed to have preferred facing the Dread Canyon Worm to an excruciating death under the burning sun, but now when faced with the beast in its immense totality, he knows what a fool he had been. Its bulk defies rational comprehension, a raw force of...

The pilgrims spend some time in discussion about the best route. Xin Mae recites a long allegory drawn from the folklore of Kifu Chanyee, featuring three frogs, a heron, lily pads in the formation of constellations, and a wise dragonfly that foretells the future to the satisfaction of all. Qamra...

The votaries release a collective sigh of relief to match the sucking of air from the once-fouled area beneath the great overhanging rock. Their immediate peril is over, and so too is the curse that trapped malevolence and innocents alike in its echo through time. Freed from any overt thread...

Quite frankly, your surmise is wrong. As @AbdulAlhazred notes, other games have different ways of bringing the setting into play.

IBHEA recognizes now the nature of the threat they face: Eztcoatl is a potent practitioner of the necromantic arts, no doubt; but he has too the might of a whole religion, however ancient, behind him, and the power of the once-god, Nerull the Reaper. Is he dead no more? The whisky priest feels...

IBHEA can no longer just watch as this scene of desperation, despair, and malice plays out over and over again, a congeries of ills with such potency as to echo its wicked force across the ages. And so, when the scene "reboots" and begins to play out once again--the abbot with his uncaring...

IBHEA’S invocation of the Rites of Control of the Heavenly Spheres and Their Cycles is no mild intervention. Calling upon The Goddess to alter her governing of time, even for a short period, is a miracle of grand proportion! And it does not come without consequence. Time itself is disjointed...

Ibhea commands THE DEFILED BEAST to "seek the light," causing it to shamble without volition of its own towards the Radiant Downdraft. As it moves past him, Ibhea strikes the creature a wicked blow with his enchanted blade. And the creature reflexively unleashes necrotic energy upon the whisky...

I understand your previous experiences presented D&D from such a set up: what gets termed "traditional" (or trad) gaming in conversations about this topic. But there are other approaches, like "story now" gaming, which centers the PCs and their concerns as the starting point of play, not...

If this is so, then wouldn't it make sense to frame your game around the things the players explicitly tell you they care about for their characters from the beginning, as @pemerton suggests, rather than crafting an elaborate story in advance for them to choose how or why they care about?

I can't be precisely sure who these "some here" you reference might be, but if you're referencing the usual cast of characters in these discussions, such as @pemerton, @hawkeyefan, @AbdulAlhazred, and @Manbearcat, et al, I can provide a current example that demonstrates how patently false is...

In our 4E D&D game, we handle this through a Skill check by a PC during a Skill Challenge, whereby the player determines the fiction on a successful roll and the GM determines the fiction on a failed roll (as a complication to be met rather than negation of player's idea). Here's an example from...

Matters of the Bookkeeping Variety: As a result of the successful Thievery Check to steal provisions, we have outfitted the group with 3 bottles of arak (Ibhea would have included these despite the disapproving look from Arunny), and abstracted the other provisions to Survival Days (see Dark...

The priests, the blessed, and the scrivener stand, dispirited, before the milling throng inside the Manticore Gate. On the one hand, the Imperial Sentries have their hands full maintaining order over the crowd, keeping tempers from flaring into violence, and overseeing a steady rhythm of coins...

My optimization knowledge has degraded over the years (and wasn't great to begin with!) but very happy to see this new guide!

With a shrug of his shoulders, IBHEA mutters, "if they're going to treat us as criminals, we might as well act as some" and eyes the wares of the market stall at which they had paused. Arunny gives the whisky priest a conflicted glance, then rushes off towards the crowd. "I'll distract the...