Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5220645" data-attributes="member: 55271">Ah, English. You poor muddled, bastard of a language.This entire thread, AFAICT, is based on the fact that people are interpreting "expectation" in mutually exclusive (or at least slightly dissonant) ways.So let's ditch that word and try a couple of different words. And even go one step further and very specifically define what we mean by them.(1) On the one hand, we have a prediction. By "prediction" we mean that the GM is anticipating that the players will be interested in X or do Y. Predictions are useful because you use them to guide your prep. After all, you can't prep every single detail of every single person, place, and thing in the entire campaign world. So you need to pick your battles. And you pick your battles by predicting the direction(s) that the PCs are likely to take.(One great way to maximize the accuracy of your predictions is to simply ask the players, "So, what are you planning to do next week?")(2) On the other hand we have a presumption. By "presumption" we mean that the GM, assuming that the PCs will pursue a particular course of action, prepares his adventure in such a way that the PCs are required to take that action.What's the distinction? Generally it can be detected by the GM's reaction to unexpected input: If the PCs defy the GM's prediction, there's no problem. If the PCs defy the GM's presumption, the GM has problems.Another way to look at it is the GM making a prediction is preparing a safety net: "I have put a locked door at point X and a key for that door at point Y. I predict that they will find the key and open the door." This is useful because it ensures that there is at least one valid solution for the problem, but if the PCs find some other solution to the locked door (teleportation, breaking it down, picking the lock, blowing up the entire building) the GM doesn't care.The GM making a presumption, OTOH, is preparing a tightrope: If the PCs don't walk the rope that's been prepared for them, they're going to fall to their figurative (or literal) deaths. (This is the guy who will prevent the PCs from opening or bypassing the door in any other way and force them to find the key, either because some important event is keyed to the key; or they'll need the key for later in the adventure; or just because that's the way he designed the adventure and he doesn't want to "waste his prep".)</blockquote>

Verification