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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8284609" data-attributes="member: 16814">WHAT DOES STORY CURATION MEAN?A recent post by [USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER] has made me realize that there is at least some confusion as to what's meant by story curation.  I will try to clarify.Story curation is not the assigning of motivations or goals to NPC.  It's not the development of a plan by the BBEG to do a thing that needs to be stopped.  These aren't curation, so long as they are determined prior to play or in the moment of introduction for an NPC that is generated during play because of player actions.  Having these things does not entail curation, this is just play.  Maybe there's a neat term for it somewhere, but it's really just part of the fabric of sandbox approaches, or even basic adventure design.  This is not curation.What story curation means is that the GM is making decisions on outcomes during play that focus on maintaining a good story.  IE, when the players declare an action for their PC, then GM considers how that action impacts the story and then chooses an outcome based not on how that action would have played out according to a strict reading of the rules, but instead on how it best improves the story.  This could be about pacing, or challenge level, or even a new idea about a cooler story that could be told.  It's not necessarily railroading, although that is a degenerate version of curation.  It's merely about making choices about the gamestate that focus on improving the story outcomes rather than not considering the story outcome.  Playing an NPC according to their BIFTs or goals is not story curation.  Changing an NPC's BIFTs or goals in the moment because it makes for a better story is story curation.The OP is a good example of an inflection point for story curation vs skilled play.  Here the concept is that the players have, though play, set up a situation where the final encounter is isolated.  By this I mean that there's no way to change the structure of the final encounter according to the established fiction (both in play and in prep).  By all rights, the PCs have engineered a situation where they can easily rest and the final encounter cannot adjust (the BBEG is trapped, or unaware, or whatever).  So, now the PC are choosing to take a long rest, which will further trivialize the final encounter.  The GM is at a decision point -- if they adhere to skilled play priorities, then that's what happens:  the PCs have earned this outcome, as dull and anti-climatic as it might be.  Or, the GM can consider making changes to the situation on the fly and either adding reinforcements to the final encounter so that it maintains an appropriate challenge even to a rested party or deploying some reason that the party cannot take the rest.  These, though, are changes to the gamestate for the purposes of curating the story -- making the final encounter exciting and memorable, in this case. This is the conflict introduced by the OP and the conflict I've been discussing throughout.  I hope that what story curation means is clearer now.</blockquote>

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