NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8282490" data-attributes="member: 71699">I like this summary. From my reading of posters' presentations of SP, it most relies on there being something consistent there to base the decision on. The easiest (and classic) case is the drawn map. The DM has an artifact that captures their pre-planning. For decades however, D&D designers have offered advice about pre-planning worlds and NPCs, beyond the drawn map. The blue Villains book would be an example.Were a DM making everything up inconsistently on the fly, they might adhere to authorial concerns... although it might be shoddy, under the veneer of their story-telling artistry. Where a DM has consistent and discoverable principles - known means and motives for their NPCs and so on - then they don't experience conflict between SP and authorial concerns.In 5e I've run OOTA and am running ToA. Both have fine detail on terrain, fair detail on NPC means, and poor detail on NPC motives.[SPOILER="Mild ToA spoiler"]The deal between Ras N'si and Acererak is a good example. Ras N'si has promised Acererak that he will defend the Tomb of Nine Gods in exchange for the lich's help finding a way to summon Dendar, the Night Serpent, to end the world. On Acererak's side, this is weirdly in conflict with Acererak's fundamental motive that he - "takes sick pleasure in devouring the souls of adventurers, whom he lures into trap-ridden dungeons where they suffer horrible deaths". A more serviceable motive might be that Ras N'si ushers high-level adventurer's into the Tomb - much to the advantage of both!  Ras N'si is now dying of the death curse, without (as written) suspecting Acererak is involved... which beggars belief for the Intelligence 18, Wisdom 18, Charisma 21, ancient warlord, who has contact other plane on his daily spell list!A possible reason for the deal being authored as it was, is that Fenthaza - an erstwhile Yuan-ti ally of Ras N'si's - wants the Black Opal Crown from the Tomb.  Fenthaza is intended to be at odds with Ras N'si so perhaps the designers didn't want their goals to align? The designers want the yuan-ti to be an obstacle to the party, with Fenthaza a chink for them to worm through. Note however, that Fenthaza and Ras N'si have the same overarching goal of summoning Dendar.As written, I felt these motives fell short of successfully merging authorial concerns with SP. I revised the deal so that Ras N'si's promise is to usher high-level adventurers into the Tomb. Ras N'si has other obligations, too - ensuring for his yuan-ti a steady supply of slaves, sacrifices and fresh purebloods. I felt that Fenthaza and Ras N'si's shared overarching goal was more than sufficient to overrule - so long as it were convenient - their underlying distrust or hatred (without setting those motives aside, of course). As written, Ras N'si has suspicions about the lich keeping its end of the bargain, so in my version he simply extends this suspicion to include imagining that the evil creature is at the root of the death curse.[/SPOILER]So much detail. The point is that these motives were - with work - perceptible to the player characters. At one point, they had a rather tense, guided tour of the fane, allowing them to make a good assessment of resources. They knew also of other pressures - the Red Wizards, guardian gargoyles, the King of Feathers - to name a few. Were the OP's dilemma to have come up at any given moment, I believe such pre-planning allows a DM to deliver a more "gameful narrative". The putative conflict dissolves: there is a third path.</blockquote>

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