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!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8285524" data-attributes="member: 16814">If the GM is making this choice based on what they think makes a better story, then it's story curation.  Sure, the kobold could scream, but this dishonors the intent behind the player's declared actions, because the kobold could, just as easily, not scream.  You're selecting an outcome based on what you think makes for a better story, then you're engaged in story curation.  Honoring the success and giving the players what they intended with the action is not making a choice based on what makes the best story.I have no idea what vampire you're discussing.  Do you mean my earlier example of a BBEG?  Never was identified, but, sure, whatevs, vampire works.  The change you made was to make a better story -- you felt this told a better tale and so you created the idea that the vampire was a coward and would hide in it's lair.  However, the issue I had with this is that this trait of the vampire was not available to be discovered or leveraged prior to this, but rather you adjusting the story of the vampire to fit the players' actions.  It's a change to make a better story.  Now, this one's not terribly egregious, in the great scheme of things, because it's mostly flavor, but it's also something that a party that had earned this information earlier could have used in a different ploy altogether.  It's not engaging in skilled play, it's adding things after the fact, that could never be leveraged in skilled play, and only to tell a better story.I could, for instance, just not change the vampire at all from the prep.  This isn't a choice to tell a better story, it's sticking to what was established and honored throughout play.Of course I do -- any argument that the GM does not affect play is facetious.  I'm not saying that the GM has no impact ever, what I'm saying is that there's is a large difference between a GM actively striving to be as neutral as possible and a GM that's intentionally manipulating outcomes to better tell a story.  If you disagree here, then you're saying that all games are railroads, which I know you'd vehemently disagree with.  You're taking a trivial observation -- that GM choices have impacts -- and smearing it into an inevitable assumption that there's no difference between engaging with trying to be a fair adjudicator of actions and the GM adjudicating in favor of their story.  I disagree with this, and can do so with the full knowledge and understanding that I, as a GM, cannot ever be 100% neutral, nor would I try.</blockquote>

Verification