Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8284752" data-attributes="member: 16814">I think we're stuck on the scale of the made up thing and when a thing needs making up.  If I my players are asking after a candlemaker and I don't have one detailed in my town, but there's space available in prep and it makes sense, then I can add this and make up a shopkeeper.If, on the other hand, my players have maneuvered the BBEG into a solo engagement at a serious disadvantage, making up sudden reinforcements (which is also available to GMs) because it makes a better story is not at all the same kind of thing.Again, this seems to be speaking to a specific scale of ad libbing.  The candleshop example doesn't really take the "story" in a new direction, or if that counts as a new direction then we need a different term to denote a major change in direction.Well, that depends on a lot of things about how the GM approaches the game and what the scope of the game actually is.I can play 5e as a series of short campaigns of a half-dozen sessions that deal with specific objectives and it's still 5e.  And that are very conducive to reasonably tight prep so that the need to make up things is rather limited and easily contained.  Or, I can have a fully open ended game where I'm expected, as GM, to make sure it all works.  This isn't conducive to tight, or even loose prep, and the game is very sensitive to what the GM makes up in play.  For reference, I'm more towards this latter than the former, so I very much understand how story curation works at my table and I embrace it quite often.  On the other hand, I have clear flags for when we're shifting into "dungeon" mode and things move toward skilled play.  As I've said, you can switch between things.And, now that I've said that, it also depends on when in play you're making the choice to introduce new things.  You can switch between imperatives, you just can't serve both at the same time.</blockquote>

Verification