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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6433048" data-attributes="member: 42582">Do you mean that "it would have been", or "I would wish it to have been". I believe that you would wish it to have been. I am utterly confident that in most games it won't have been. The typical GM sorts out the warhorse quest at or around 4th level, when it becomes relevant.Not only is this typical, it is what Gygax advocates in his DMG! (Much as he advises building the gameworld as the game unfolds.)Your original claim was that "events that happen ingame have no effect on events that happen out-of-game". Now you've changed your claim from a descriptive one to a normative one: "The ideal player is one who is not affected, in his/her real-world disposition, by ingame events." I don't think the normative claim is true - I want my players to be affected by ingame events (eg to be moved by them), much as a novelist wants the reader to be moved by the events that s/he reads about. But in any event the normative claim is orthogonal to the point I was making, which is that good game design pays attention to the real world as the causal determiner of the play experience.I would say that that makes no sense. A desire of the GM can't be an ingame reason, as the GM doesn't exist within the gameworld. I quickly narrated an ingame reason at the time - I can't remember now, but I think it was along the lines of "you're too tired to be bothered making potions".Why would you imagine that? I've never heard of anyone playing a game in that style. It seems silly to me, except perhaps as cheap, 4th-wall-breaking humor Order-of-the-Stick style.My point is that the salient ingame event - namely, the non-manufacture of potions - was not inferred from an known ingame state-of-affairs - that the crafter PC was too tired to be bothered. Rather, the igname event was stipulated by me (as GM) in order to get the game moving, and a relevant ingame cause was introduced as part of that stipulation process. This is how authorship works.I am not talking about pre-game stuff. I'm talking about events in the gameworld.I can give you an example if you like. Appendix C of Gygax's DMG has a table for town and city encounters, and the GM is advised (p 190) to "[c]heck for encounters every three turns as normally, or otherwise as desired." Three turns means thirty minutes of ingame time. The encounter chance is not specified, but in AD&D defaults to 1 in 6.So that is an encounter, on average, once per 3 hours, or otherwise as desired. (On pp 9 and 110 Gygax advised the GM to disregard or manipulate "random" monster rolls in the interests of exciting play, pacing and not penalising skilled players. That would clearly permit an ingame event - namely, the encountering of a creature or NPC in a city - to be introduced for a metagame reason - making the session more fun. But I'll put this option to one side and focus on random determination.)For nightime encounters, over 20% are with criminal types (assassins, bandits, thieves, ruffians etc). Over 10% are with undead or demon types (including night hags, will-o-wisps, etc). That means that PCs who spend a lot of time moving through a town or city at night are likely to meet criminals once a week or more, and undead or demons multiple times per month. These are ingame events, generated via a random table. That table has been authored - it didn't wriet itself! And that authorship was motivated by a desire to generate ingame events - like encounters with criminals or demons - that will be interesting and engaging at the game table.This is not about choosing a game in advance of starting to play. This is about a procedure for generating ingame content. That procedure is written one way, rather than another, in order to achieve a real-world outcome: exciting encounters for the PCs. Considerations of ingame causation are secondary - if the GM rolls up a lich on the table, s/he is expected to have the GMing skills to narrate this lich into the ongoing fiction, and make sense of it, whether or not s/he had anticpated in advance the possibility of a lich turning up.Likwise, considerations of simulation are secondary. Do these chances of meeting bandits and demons reflect their general prevelance in the gameworld, or is the table gerry-mandered in favour of putting the players (via their PCs) into engaging and challenging situations? Gygax doesn't tell us, and each GM is free to make of that what s/he will. (Although the GM who treats the table as simulationist might have trouble explaining how so many demons, undead etc keep coming into urban areas without completely wiping them out. For some GMs this is a challenge to be overcome by baroque world-building. For others it is a reason to avoid the simulationist interpretation. Gygax does not dictate one way or the other.)</blockquote>

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