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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8820752" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not sure what sort of list you have in mind.I think the general difference between using mechanics and using GM curation when it comes to "chance meetings" is much the same as that between using mechanics and using GM curation when it comes to fighting, or to scaling walls: rolling dice is more exciting, it allows the players a greater say in what is at stake, and it creates the possibility of the GM as well as the players being surprised.Your last paragraph is a bit weird to me. In the abstract, I can reiterate my paragraph above that I think gameplay in RPGs is often exciting - the players decide what they want their PCs to do, they help set the stakes, and then they roll the dice and we all find out what happens next; whereas GM curation is closer to the GM reading the players a novel.And I can set out a concrete example from my Torchbearer play: Fea-bella's player decided that Fea-bella (an Elven Dreamwalker) wanted to reach out in her dreams to her adventuring friend Glothfindel, the Elven Ranger. She rolled for Circles, and failed: and so (as determined, and narrated, by me as GM responding to the failed Circles test) she had a vision of Glothfindel, but not of him riding to the town to help her on her intended wilderness journey. Rather, it revealed that Glothfindel had been kidnapped by her enemy, the Dreamwalker Megloss. The fact that she had an enemy already on her PC sheet - written there as part of PC build - made this easy to do as a GM.That unexpected turn of events underpinned our next few sessions of play: eventually the PCs were able to convince Megloss to release Glothfindel from where the latter was imprisoned beneath the floorboards of the former's house, on pain of reporting Megloss to the authorities as a kidnapper.I guess I would contrast that with your last paragraph in this way: you imagine the GM saying OK, <Fea-bella's player>, roll to see if your character knows an NPC pal. Whereas what actually happened at my table was that Fea-bella's player said OK, we need to journey through the wilderness. A ranger would be handy, and luckily my PC sheet records that I have a friend who is an Elven Ranger - Glothfindel, So, being a Dreamwalker, I'll make a Circles check to reach out to him in my dreams.The encounter between the PCs and Megloss happened as the result of a failed check when they were trying to burgle his house - as a result of the failure I narrated a twist, ie that Megloss comes home! They were the ones who decided to try and persuade him to release Glothfindel, and they succeeded (Fea-bella's player did most of the heavy listing, with an astonishingly lucky open-ended roll during the Convince conflict).In my experience, I don't have any need as a GM to make "planned controlled forced events" in the way that you seem to be describing.</blockquote>

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