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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6672728" data-attributes="member: 42582">This doesn't require secret backstory, however. All it requires is GM authority over backstory authorship. But the GM can actually perform that authorship in real time, at the gaming table.I'm not unfamiliar with this style of play - I've been playing D&D since 1982, and have read plenty of 2nd ed and 3E modules which emphasise the playstyle you describe. But I don't entirely agree with your description of it. For instance, the GM is not discovering the world - s/he is authoring it (or, in the case of a sourcebook, s/he has already read it).It's true that if the world is, literally, randomly generated then the GM discovers at the same time as the players. This is a style that Classic Traveller emphasises to a much greater extent than D&D. But very little D&D play, particularly in the present day, involves literally random content generation. It is mostly pre-authored by the GM or the module writer.And once we turn our attention to non-random content generation, I also don't agree that this style implies some sort of independence from the GM's story motivations. Why does the GM, or the sourcebook, put fictional element A in fictional location B? So that the PCs can interact with it and thereby generate some story! (Some actual adventures I have in mind: the 1st ed module Pharoah, and especially the trapped Efreet; OA6 and OA7, two 2nd ed Oriental Adventures modules; the 3E module Expedition to the Demonweb Pits; the d20 Freeport modules.)(Even random content generation is not necessarily divorced from story motivations - if you look at the city encounter table in Gygax's DMG, for instance, it is clearly intended to produce exciting encounters rather than a simulation of wandering through a pseudo-mediaeval city, given the number of demon, devil, lich, vampire etc encounters it yields.)There are lots of things that are uncertain but that we don't roll for. It's uncertain, for instance, whether or not a person will fall over and ruin his/her clothes walking through a city with cobblestones filthy with mud and worse - but we typically don't roll for that.It's uncertain whether or not a person will contract illness from eating cheap gruel in a cheap inn, but we typically don't roll for that either.It's uncertain whether or not the builder of the dungeon would really want single or double doors to his/her main chamber, but most GMs don't roll for that either - they just decide!What I'm trying to get it is that a lot of fictional content is generated by sheer stipulation. So, when it comes to the truth about the religious icon, why roll? How is it adding to the play experience for the GM to provide the backstory, or withhold it, on the basis of that knowledge check? (The question is not rhetorical, in the sense that I'm interested in what answers might be given, but I'm not pretending that I don't have an inclination - I have doubts that it does add much to the experience for the GM to withhold backstory on the basis of such a check.)Here are some approaches to random provision of backstory where I can see the point:* Random rumours a la the Keep on the Borderlands. The players are expected to use this information to help solve the puzzles that the GM has presented to them; randomisation means that a portion of the rumours is handed out without the GM being responsible for which false ones are provided, and which true. That said, if the rumour list was a bit shorter and the players just got all of them, I don't think that would dramatically impact the play experience. * Monster knowledge checks in 4e: by making a successful skill roll (no retries permitted) a player can get statistical info about monsters. This is the provision of a reward (rationed by way of randomisation) for a certain sort of PC build. Not having the stats for a monster doesn't affect the ability of players to make action declarations in respect of it, but does limit the ability to optimise those action declarations.Here are some approaches to random provision of backstory where I'm not sure of the point:* Monster/NPC lore rolls in 4e: to the extent that this contains story elements that aren't just natural-language repetition of the statblock, I don't see the point of rationing it via die rolling. If it would be better for the play experience if the players have the backstory that (say) some people believe hobgoblins bread the other forms of goblinoid, then just let that come out in play. Why roll for the pleasure of learning that? * Rolls to learn a clue (like the religious icon mentioned above). Why let the game stall for want of player knowledge of backstory?Well now I'm a bit puzzled. I said "if the players haven't actually staked anything, then why roll" - and your reply is that there are stakes.The question that then becomes salient, to me at least, is do the players know what the stakes are? For instance, do the players know that if they fail the religion check they will have to pay a sage?My own practice in this respect is mixed - as with the examples posted upthread, I don't always make overt what is at stake with a failed roll (eg the cursed angel feather, or getting run over by the Sphere of Annihilation), but in those cases the framing of the situation gave a general sense of what might go wrong (in the first case, a dodgy peddler selling an angel feather in a seedy market place, in circumstances where the PC's motivation is to find something that will help him defeat/purify his Balrog-possessed brother; in the latter case, an argument over whether or not to shove the ready-to-hand Wand of Orcus into a ready-to-hand Sphere of Annihilation).But where the consequence is a bit more remote from the situation - as with having to pay a sage - then I think I would want to make that clear in the framing of the situation. One way to do that is to frame the consequences of success and failure clearly: succeed, and you get the info for free and quickly; fail, and you get the info at a cost and requiring the passage of time. If the players aren't prepared, or lack the money, to risk the cost then they don't get to make the roll and have to suck up the consequences of their ignorance.Another way is to use the payment of money to a sage or other contact as a way to get a post hoc bonus to the skill roll: eg 100 gp gains a +1 and requires the sage to read/ponder for a day, so if you fail by 10 then it will be 1000 gp and 10 days to get an answer from the sage. I used something similar to this in a recent skill check in my 4e game, when <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?440504-The-Abyss-sealed-the-drow-freed-the-campaign-reaches-its-climax" target="_blank">one of the PCs was trying to seal off the Abyss from the rest of the cosmos</a>: as a chaos mage, every healing surge spent allowed a +2 to the roll (that rate of exchange is suggested in the 4e DMG2) so, when the player missed by 8, he had his PC spend 4 healing surges. In that case I required the expenditure ex ante, but we allow ex post expenditure at the cost of an action point, and other conventions at other tables would seem quite reasonable.This is more the sort of thing I have in mind in saying that I don't quite see the point. Why let a random roll of the dice decide whether or not the table is going to pursue the adventure about the mysterious cult? If the GM thinks it's a fun adventure, and the players are interested in it, but it depends upon giving the player access to some backstory, then why not just provide the backstory.This is the sort of case where I don't see what the roll is adding to the game. Gygax himself recognised this issue over 30 years ago (from his DMG, p 110):t is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the players. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, eg a secret door that leads to a complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every right to overrule the dice at any time if there is a particular course of events that you would like to have occur.Another passage in the DMG (p 9, where Gygax says that fudging combat die rolls would be "contrary to the major precepts of the game") makes it clear that when Gygax is talking about a particular course of events occurring he is not talking about action resolution. Rather, he is talking about introducing backstory and framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into particular challenging situations - as with his example of making sure the PCs find a secret door that will lead to a fun part of the dungeon.If it would be fun for the players to play through the cult scenario, and it depends upon them learning about the religious symbol, then why not just tell them?I find this odd in at least two ways.First, the integrity of the story in REH's Conan, or Tolkien's LotR, or a movie like Excalibur or (to go a bit more downmarket) Ladyhawke, is far greater than the typical D&D campaign. It's certainly much greater in those classic stories than in any WotC or TSR module I've ever read. If I could get my game to have half the integrity those stories have I'd be very happy, but those authors didn't achieve the integrity of their stories by trying hard to avoid making a good book or movie!Second, and following on, the dramatic weight of a story is not at odds with its integrity. To advert back to the example of the cult symbol: if we agree that the PCs have a chance of knowing the backstory (eg the DC is 20 and at least one PC can roll without a penalty, and hence has at least a 5% chance of knowing it), then how does it spoil integrity to just stipulate that the PC does know it. (If you like, to stipulate that the die roll comes up "20"?) This is similar to the example of boxes in the alley - if there's no reason for there to be no boxes there, then it does no harm to realism/verisimilitude for the boxes to be there.(If you are concerned about the PCs seeming to be the luckiest people ever, then you ration: in Trail of Cthulhu, finding more than the most basic clues is rationed; in Burning Wheel, finding boxes that the GM didn't specify might require a Perception check, with an adverse consequence for failure, just as in my angel feather example above. To advert back to [MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION]'s OP, it seems that his group might work fine without this sort of rationing, because they have reached there own informal consensus on when it is appropriate for the players to push the fiction and when not - eg only the knowledgeable character seeks to acquire the backstory from the GM.)Yes. You are restating my point back to me. If you are not playing in the Gygaxian style, then there is quite possibly no reason to keep using Gygaxian play procedures, like insisting on writing everything down in advance and using random rolls to avoid bias.As a matter of historical fact I have doubts about that. Games like RuneQuest and Classic Traveller, for instance, weren't derived from Gygaxian play but reactions against it, and in part reactions against its contrivances (like dungeons with convenient levels, and combat with convenient hit point buffers, etc).But in any event, there is no particular connection between simulationist play and rolling for things where nothing is at stake. Even Traveller and Runequest don't make the players roll to see if their PCs break their legs while peacefully mounting a horse or climbing down a spaceship ladder.</blockquote>

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