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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5587162" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is a great post. And I fully agree. A GM has no basis for using "But the gameworld made me do it!" as an excuse for a bad play experience. That's not an excuse, it's a confession of bad GMing, because it is the GM who is authoring the gameworld.The question is - did the players have a good play experience, or not? If they didn't, it's not to the point that they refused to have their PCs engage the GM's storyline. It's not as if they tricked the GM into giving them a bad time - from their point of view, they've been playing the game by playing their PCs, and now the GM ends the game on them.I think this is Starfox's point: that this isn't an ingame issue, but a metagame issue. Vespucci makes the same point here:Implicit in this is that "running the game" means noticing what the players are interested in, and having their PCs do and not do, and shaping the gameworld and the ingame situations in response to that.Now some players are happy to play their PCs in whatever gameworld and situations the GM serves up. Those players, even if playing the GDS trio, presumably wouldn't have a bad play experience in the situation that Starfox describes. But in my view, a GM who proceeds down a given path without regard to what sort of play experience the players are looking for is a bad GM. As Vespucci says, s/he is no longer running an RPG.But it's not very distinctive of old skool gaming.Consequences happening based on PC action or inaction is central to the play of HeroQuest or Burning Wheel, for example - but they are hardly old skool games.As I see it, the issue isn't whether or not the consequences are bad for the PCs. It's about the way the consequences are attuned to the interests and expectations of the players. Presumably Starfox's GDS trio are happy to have their PCs suffer the consequences of spending too much time dancing and therefore not noticing a crucial astronomical event. Or of being outdanced by the faeries they found at the bottom of the garden while harvesting mistletoe by moonlight. It's consequences that are sprung on them that arise not out of anything they are interested in, or have engaged with via their PCs, but rather out of a plot that only the GM cares about, that Starfox and Vespucci are talking about.The answer to this question, for any typical RPG, has to be Yes. It's practically a job description for the GM. What's at stake in Starfox's example is that the GM has initiated trouble that the players aren't interested in, and haven't had their PCs engage with - and then, on the basis of that trouble that was a dead letter as far as actual play is concerned is bringing the campaign that the players have been enjoying to an end. When the players complain about this, the GM is not going to get very far just by saying "Hey, it's my job as GM to initiate trouble - it's not my fault you guys ignored it!" This won't change the fact that the players ended up having a bad play experience and, presumably, will spread the word about their bad GM. I see this as the pointy end of Vespucci's distinction between the GM running a game, and the GM telling a story regardless of the players.This may be true as far as it goes, but doesn't really address Starfox's point. Because the question then becomes, How is that situation decided upon? If the GM decides on the situation regardless of the players deciding to play the GDS trio - and would have used exactly the same situation if the players had build a Sorcerer Supreme, a Goliath Brawler and a Valkyrie - then is the GM still running a game? Or just authoring his/her own story? The answer to this seems to me to depend crucially on the preferences and expectations of the players. But there is no default presumption that what this GM is doing is the proper way to run an RPG.Another great post! Key to Starfox's hypothetical scenario is that the GM has persisted with his/her own conception of the gameworld regardless of the fact that for whatever reason, the players are unmoved by the bits the GM is very excited by. If the players end up being upset by this, when the GM brings to an end the game that the players have been enjoying, the GM should hardly be surprised!Well, if I get into such a game I know what I've got into, don't I? - even if my naive PC is surprised by the outbreak of war. The question is whether a player is obliged to enjoy the GM springing a war scenario - or whatever else - on the players regardless of the players' preferences for play as revealed through the PCs they have built and been playing. I think that the general answer to this question is No, and that a GM who proceeds in this way is therefore doing so at his/her own risk. S/he had better be pretty confident that exploration of the GM's world, which may proceed in a way completely orthogonal to how the players have been engaging it up to now, is the players' main interest in playing the game.Whereas I would never run a game like that - I constantly rework the backstory to my campaign world in light of the unfolding interests of the players revealed in the course of play, in order to better support situations that build on those interests and allow the players to keep driving the game forward in the way they want to.As Starfox says, a GM must be prepared to take responsibility for his/her own world design decisions. If you know that your players want to explore a world in which you already have a default timeline worked out, and in which your choices for what will be significant in the setting (like the end-of-the-world plot) are settled prior to play, then go for it - take responsibility! But a lot of players don't want to play that way, don't want to explore the GM's world but rather want to play their PCs in the setting as they conceive of it (and as their conception of it evolves over the course of play) - and there is nothing defective about their preferences in this respect.</blockquote>

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