The story is ALWAYS told on the fly, unless you are playing a railroad.
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4th edition isn't made to have a working foundation with which to build from. As many have stated in the past about various things, they piece the story together after play. Sure any edition can do this, but with 4th it must.
This seems to be contradictory, or close to it - you say it is railroading to have a story in advance, but that it is a flaw of 4e to not permit a story in advance. I would have thought this was in fact a
benefit, because - if true - it would mean that railroading was impossible with 4e. (In fact I don't think this is the case, but that's because it's not impossible for the GM to force a 4e game into a preplanned story. This seems to be a common complaint about the way many GMs run skill challenges, for example.)
those fictional elements must exist BEFORE the player CAN engage them.
If you don't have any fictional elements to begin with, then how do the players even know what characters to make?
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When compared to EVERY other edition that had set forth to create some sort of setting, even if only loose medieval fantasy, there was something already for the players to WANT to engage in, rather than 4th where the players engage in things just because the DM brought something in at that time for them to engage.
That is why 4th isn't as popular. Because it IS the players sitting in the Ivory Tower surrounded by The Nothing, until the DM creates it so that a combat can be had. There is NO setting, just the skeleton of the game.
I don't need fictional elements for the players to make characters, beyond the rulebooks of the game.
My current game started with an email to my players, saying something to the effect of: 4e game, based in the default 4e world, with FRPG stuff permitted also provided you translate religious and cultural references into 4e terms.
I also told my players that each PC had to have (i) a reason to adventuer, and (ii) a reason to be ready to fight goblins.
When the players created their PCs, a whole lot more of the fiction was suddenly fleshed out. Two, fairly predicatably, created villages wiped out be goblins (one elven, one mixed human and half-elven). One, though, created a major commercial city that had been wiped out by goblin raiders. He had a history in that city. In the first session of play, when dealing with a trader, he introduced an uncle of his who was a trader from that city. That city will definitely keep coming up in future play. (I think it can probably be found on the new layer of the Abyss where all lost things go, described in the Demonomicon.)
Another created a dwarven stronghold for his PC to come from, and a backstory that established various aspects of dwarven culture that I've since been playing with from time to time in the game (see my reply upthread to Lanefan about the relationship between minotaurs and dwarves in my gameworld, which was worked out as part of the resolution of an early encounter).
Another created a secret society among the drow, whose members worship Corellon, sing songs by the campfire telling of when the drow walked by the sea under the open sky, and wish to reunite the sundered races of the elves.
In short, I think you're overestimating how much fiction is needed to get the players engaging the gameworld and building PCs that are embedded within that world.
You get nothing. Nothing about this Feywild.
Actually, for a player there is this (PHB pp 38-39, in the section on Eladrin - and there is also an entry in the DMG, plus all the fey monsters in the MM):
Creatures of magic with strong ties to nature, eladrin live in cities in the twilight realm of the Feywild. Their cities lie close enough to the world that they sometimes cross over, appearing briefly in mountain valleys or deep forest glades before fading back into the Feywild . . .
Eladrin society straddles the boundary between the Feywild and the natural world. Eladrin build their elegant cities and towers in places of striking natural splendor, especially where the veil between the worlds is thin—isolated mountain vales, green islands along wild and storm-wracked coasts, and the deepest recesses of ancient forests. Some eladrin realms exist mostly in the Feywild, only rarely touching the world, while others appear in the world at sunset each day, only to fade back into the Feywild at dawn.
My player who started with a half-elf and then changed to a drow after his PC died has had no trouble at all imagining and engaging with the feywild. It's a secret, twilight place cut off from the mortal world by a thin and permeable border, where eladrin live in regions of great natural beauty. What more do you need to build a PC than that?
Now admittedly if you'd never read a fairy story or Tolkein or watched a fantasy movie or listened to Wagner's Ring Cycle than you might need more than the above to help you along. But how many players of D&D fit this description? (None that I've ever met.)
For those looking to just play, then it might not be a problem, for those looking for that rich place to play in and looking to trust those presenting things to have a place for those things and reasons for them being included or removed, the setting or absence thereof can play a big part in how popular it is amongst those people who look for that element.
My players look to me, as GM, to provide them with a rich place to play in. I deliver it. I don't need it written down in advance to do this. In fact, by making up the details in response to the interests and actions of the player, I can make it more engaging for them! What I do need, in advance, is what the OP called "atmosphere and vibe". And the 4e books give me this.
On the fly DMing is something used for when the adventure path and main plot is left for some sort of sidetrek that the players unexpectedly took the hook for.
I guess that's one view. Mine is different. I don't expect my players to take my hooks. I do my best to take their hooks. And because they're giving me those hooks all the time
during play, I am building the fiction all the time
during play.
When I prep I have a world history and myth, plus the details of what has been revealed in previous sessions, plus a map and some ideas about who might be around. But the details are always up for grabs as I create a situation for my players to engage with (in the sort of way that Paul Czege puts it in the quote I posted upthread).
It doesn't matter where you are, because just like your "just in time" where you are play little to not part in it until the players are ready to do something. Where they go next doesnt matter until they are ready to go there.
I don't really know what this means, but if you're saying that there is no backstory in my game, you'd be wrong. If you're saying that there's no metaplot, then you'd be right. I don't like metaplot.
If you're saying that dramatic things won't happen unless the PCs are there, you're also mostly right. I don't mind there being dramas in the history of the gameworld, but the
present is for the PCs.
The focus of D&D changed from having a world/setting to play in, to a game you just played. The inspiration to play is the "killing of monsters and taking their stuff".
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There is really nothing to build a story off of anymore than DDM.
If, after reading the 4e PHB, and learning about the fall of Nerath, the rise of Vecna and the Raven Queen, the migratin of the eladrin from the Feywild to the world, etc, etc, you can't think of any richer premise for a game than "kill some randomly generated monsters and take their stuff" then I'm not sure what you're doing playing FRPGs!
And as it happens, the 4e DMG is one of the few recent D&D rulebooks that clearly separates treasure acquisition from monster drops - via the treasure parcel guidelines and also the quest rules. (The 3E Oriental Adventures book flagged having treasure awarded by patrons rather than found on monsters. The 1st ed DMG envisages some treasures not being guarded, although there is no strong suggestion that significant amounts of treasure will be acquired outside the dungeon/wilderness environment.)
The game works when the world exists and the players are set into it and let lose. It doesn't work when they are just set in the Ivory Tower surrounded by The Nothing and then something comes into existence and is created just because and when they want to engage it.
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Well the world/setting for D&D cannot be created in a "just in time" fashion if you intend to have a gave beyond random encounters strung together
Thank you for letting me know that my game doesn't work, and is just a series of random encounters strung together! I linked upthread to an actual play report, which describes my prep for a session, and how that session unfolded, including "just in time" decisions that I made as I GMed it - in what way did that session not work? Where was the series of random encounters?
You've also been posting in the Sacrifice a PC thread, where I posted an outline of the climax of my previous campaign. In what way did that not work? In what way was it random?
I get it loud and clear that you like to play a world exploration game. Fine by me. But I don't see how you can say that other approaches can't work
when people who use those other approaches are posting detailed actual play reports, outlining their campaigns in this and other threads, etc etc.
And in case it needs explaining: the reason the encounters aren't random is because the situations are beinge framed by me - a non-randomly motivated GM - in response to my players - a non-randomly motivated group of fantasy RPG enthusiasts. So far from random, the whole thing is highly deliberate. It's not
random that, after dreaming of the return of the Queen of Chaos, and her crushing of Lolth, a rune of chaos appeared on the inside of the drow sorcerer's eyelids. That's deliberate, because the player is planning on taking the demonskin adept paragon path (which has a self-blinding effect at level 16), and I thought it would be an interesting bit of foreshadowing that could also be used subsequently to drive the game - which it did in that very session, and I already have ideas on how it will be able to do so in future sessions.
Making it all up as you go is a root cause of DM v player, because there was nothing set down beforehand and the DM can get pissed at the players and screwed them over with the next thing because of the last thing.
Luckily I don't get angry at my players, and I don't set out to screw them over. I set out my own views on the sorts of features of a game that can lead to GM-player conflict in the recent alignment thread that I started, so won't retread that ground now.
The fact that it was not fashionable for young ladies to wear such PRIOR to play, was the established setting.
In order to engage that aspect of the world, it had to exist beforehand.
There must be a state of something before you can alter that state, as you did with the jewelry.
But those undefined thing you had a default assumption on and passed along to the players did you not?
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So when leaving this as a so-called "undefined" element, and not including both options, you really did set the state that people didn't wear flammable jewelry. It is fine to change it for whatever reason so long as your players like the change. But in your setting it didn't happen was the default state, because it didn't. It is just an unwritten part of your setting.
Did you or did you NOT include jewelry for young ladies in your game?
In my game it has never come up whether or not it is socks or hose that are worn under shoes. Heck, I don't even know whether the wizard PC - whose name is Malstaph Empal and is from a fallen city called Entekash, and thus to me has a hint of being from a Western or Central Asian culture - wears boots or sandals. If it's ever relevant, I suppose that the player will get to decide.
I think it's safe to hypothesise that in Mallus's game it was assumed that fashionable young ladies wore jewellery (because this has been part of many historical cultures, and certainly is part of the ones Mallus's players are most likely familiar with) but that the precise composition of that jewellery
had simply never come up.
As you yourself say, altering something presupposes a prior state. Given that here there was no prior state, it follows that no alteration took place. Generalise this across large scale features of the gameworld, and you have "just in time" GMing. And I know it can be done, because I do it. And I'm not the only one.
