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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9467756" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Anytime I’ve seen you type something like that, you follow it with some cockamamie conjecture about other styles of play. You don’t ask others for examples, you provide your own flawed example based on a limited understanding of said play style, and then you criticize your own example as not making sense. For example…Whose example of play was that? What is it even meant to portray? I can offer an actual example from an actual game. It’s a game called Stonetop, and it uses the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) game engine. It’s similar in setting and general tone to D&D, except the setting is more iron age-ish, and the premise of play is more focused. Play revolves around the champions of the town of Stonetop… the PCs… ans their adventures. Everything they do is done for the betterment of Stonetop in some way. They’re not wayward murder hobos… they’re members of the town, with strong connections to it. They may leave town as needed, but they’ll always return. Now, this game comes with a default setting. It details the region around Stonetop, and the other settlements that are nearby, along with other geographical features and locations. It gives descriptions of a few cultures that can be found in these settlements. It provides details on the creatures that dwell in the region. It suggests some NPCs for the neighboring settlements. Interestingly, the setting does not provide any NPCs for Stonetop. The expectation is that the group will create the denizens of Stonetop together when they make their PCs. This way, the characters are connected to the town in ways that the players have helped define. The NPCs seem more familiar to the players. Then, the players answer some questions together as a group that help establish some recent events or concerns. For instance, in my game, the Ranger player decided that he had encountered some large beast in the Great Wood, and it had killed one of his three dogs. So we began play with that as a potential threat to the town. The Seeker, a hinter of arcane knowledge, had been gifted a mysterious orb by a stranger. She only vaguely recalls the details of this interaction. After returning home with it, her family all became ill and died. Who was this stranger? What is the orb? Did it cause her family’s death? These are questions posed by player decisions.There were other characters as well, with more starting material. But the point is that as the GM, other than partially reading the setting book, I didn’t do any more work than the players in establishing the beginning situation of play. I offered some ideas here and there, and made some suggestions about NPCs in the town, and that was it. Everything that followed in our early sessions came from the players’ ideas during character and town creation. I didn’t have to create a ton of material before play. It simply wasn’t necessary. I took what they came up with and I ran with that. And that’s the way that the game actually functions in play, too. Actions have consequences. Dice rolls can help the GM determine when a new threat or bad situation comes up. And when they get worse, if not dealt with. The GM has to come up with ideas… he needs to determine what threat to introduce, for example, or in what way an existing threat worsens. But he’s absolutely not sitting down ahead of play and doing 95% of the work. Yes, some games work that way… but that’s a choice. Feel free to ask any questions you may have about the above.</blockquote>

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