Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6422728" data-attributes="member: 42582">Can you show me a passage from a rulebook that says that a player can't introduce PC backstory part-way through a campaign?Moldvay Basic says (p B3) thatIt is the DM's job to prepare the setting for each adventure before the game begins. . . . The players will create characters by following the instructions given . . . When the DM has prepared a dungeon and the players have created their characters, the game is ready to begin.There is no discussion of PC backgrounds, let alone who can author them, let alone when they can be introduced into the game.Gygax's PHB says (p 7) thatADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is a world. Of course, this world is not complete. It needs organisers and adventurers to order and explore it. It needs you! A fantasy role playing game is an exercise in imagination and personal creativity. The organizer of the campaign, the Dungeon Master, must use the system to devis an indidividual and unique world. Into this world  . . . stride fearless adventurers - you and your fellow players. . . . As a role player, you become Falstaff the fighter. You know how strong, intelligent, wise, healthy, dexterous and, relatively speaking, how commanding a personality you have. Details as to your appearance, your body proportions, and your history can be produced by you or the Dungeon Master. You act out the game as this character, staying without your "god-given abilities", and as moulded by your . . . alignmentThe DMG says (p 7) that "As the creator and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written as one Dungeon Master equal to another."The 2nd ed AD&D PHB says (p 9) thatThe player adopts the role of a character and then guides that character through an adventure. The player makes decisions, interacts with other characters and payers, and, essentially, "pretends" to be his character during the course of the game. . . . [W]henever the character is called upon to do something or make a decision, the player pretends that he is in that situation and chooses an appropriate course of action.I think the AD&D books make it clear that the GM is the ultimate arbiter of the shared fiction. But they don't say that the players don't contribute to it: the AD&D PHB, for instance, expressly contemplates that a player might author PC history, and doesn't say that this has to happen before the game commences.Although the 2nd ed PHB has no discussion of PC backstory, it is probably the most explicit of the quoted rulebooks about "inhabiting" the situation as the character. So the GM tells you that you're in an alley. You know that you want to get to the second story window. Inhabiting your character, and exercising imagination and personal creativity, you say "I look around - are there any boxes, lumber of similar sort of stuff that I could use to get up the wall?"How is the GM to decide the answer to that question? None of the above rulebooks provide an express answer. The closest we get is in Moldvay Basic (p B60), where an example is given of the GM extrapolating from the existence of an underground river in the lower dungeon levels to the possibility that a PC who jumps over the edge of a chasm might survive by landing in a pool of water. But that example combines both backstory generation (is their a pool of water below the chasm?) and action resolution (when I jump do I land in a cushioning pool of water?). It is therefore closer to [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s example of the door being open or shut when the PC tries to flee the cultists.Nothing suggests that the GM is not permitted to have regard to the players' desires.I think you are mistaking your own preferred approach to the game for some dictate of the rulebooks. As I've said, please show me the passages that say that the players, during the course of play, may not have any influence on the shared fiction other than declaring actions that express the ingame causal agency of their PCs.</blockquote>

Verification