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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9052476" data-attributes="member: 29398">So, spoilers all the way, then.  The characters (and by extension the players) know the future of their world as well as its history.  Yeah, not gonna fly.Now if there is no preplanned future - which is, I suspect, where you're leading with this - then fine, bigger-picture events can be made up on the fly.  That still doesn't mean those bigger-picture events don't and can't exist, and the guides for some of these games even say as much when referring to what happens off-screen.When you phrase it as "oh sorry I decided all your plans are crushed" that phrasing implies the decision was made on the spur of the moment (which I agree would be terrible form).   Things like this should be laid out before play even begins and before the GM has any idea what the PCs' goals will be.And then if-when a PC comes up with a goal that by sheer bad luck is almost certainly doomed by something bigger that will happen, IMO all the GM can do is keep a straight face and carry on, even if inside thinking "this ain't gonna end well".  I suspect I-as-player might have been in this very situation for some time now: my characters end goal is to overthrow the faux-Rome republic* and make it an empire, with herself as Empress; but I've a nasty sneaking hunch that nation is going to fall long before I get anywhere near a throne and I ain't entirely sure there's a thing I can do about it: I know what's out there, and I know if it comes for us we can't beat it.Still, she soldiers on, hoping for the best...* - very short version of a VERY long story: when she was younger it was an Empire, but due to some cataclysm or other during the campaign the whole nation got punted 250 years back into its own history, to a time when it was still a republic.  My character is still in her own "time", however, and thus has a whole bunch of memories of things in her past (and the country's history) that now may or may not happen in the "new" future.</blockquote>

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