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DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7942831" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Against my better judgement (ie implausibly!) I'm currently watching Wrath of the Titans on TV.</p><p></p><p>About 5-10 minutes ago, <em>just as the heroes were about to enter the secret way to Tarterus</em>, with the help of Hephaestus, <em>one of them prayed to Ares</em> despite Perseus having earlier directed everyone not to do so. The result was that Ares showed up, killing half the team and requiring Hephaestus to valiantly sacrfice himself so that the heroes could go throw the secret entrance and thereby both escape Ares and continue on their quest.</p><p></p><p>Now this is definitely a B-grade film but its not partiuclarly bad by the standards of fantasy RPGing. And the particular contrivance I've just described is nothing out of the ordinary for an adventure story.</p><p></p><p>The way I would establish such a situation in a RPG is if one of the players' Command (or similar leadership-type) checks failed, the failure being narrated as the NPC praying to Ares. The idea that a GM who establishes such a situation is doing something wrong in having the consequence of the failure manifest in such a way as to maximise the drama and pressure is just aburd.</p><p></p><p>[USER=6775031]@Saelorn[/USER] has referred upthread to the distinction between establishing the "implausibilities" before play starts, and doing it during the course of play. There are some playstyles - most notably Gygaxian skilled play - where the contrast between <em>establishing material in prep </em>and <em>establishing material during play</em> is important. But that has nothing to do with plausibility or "metagaming". It's about fairness in refereeing, and allowing the players to "beat the dungeon". In such play, it would be tantamount for cheating for the GM to alter the dungeon as part of the process of refereeing the players' attempts to beat it.</p><p></p><p>It is a category error to suppose that this principle of fair play has anyting to do with ensuring the integrity of the shared fiction. And it is sheer fetishisation of a rather narrowly applicable technique to generalise it across RPGing as such.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7942831, member: 42582"] Against my better judgement (ie implausibly!) I'm currently watching Wrath of the Titans on TV. About 5-10 minutes ago, [I]just as the heroes were about to enter the secret way to Tarterus[/I], with the help of Hephaestus, [I]one of them prayed to Ares[/I] despite Perseus having earlier directed everyone not to do so. The result was that Ares showed up, killing half the team and requiring Hephaestus to valiantly sacrfice himself so that the heroes could go throw the secret entrance and thereby both escape Ares and continue on their quest. Now this is definitely a B-grade film but its not partiuclarly bad by the standards of fantasy RPGing. And the particular contrivance I've just described is nothing out of the ordinary for an adventure story. The way I would establish such a situation in a RPG is if one of the players' Command (or similar leadership-type) checks failed, the failure being narrated as the NPC praying to Ares. The idea that a GM who establishes such a situation is doing something wrong in having the consequence of the failure manifest in such a way as to maximise the drama and pressure is just aburd. [USER=6775031]@Saelorn[/USER] has referred upthread to the distinction between establishing the "implausibilities" before play starts, and doing it during the course of play. There are some playstyles - most notably Gygaxian skilled play - where the contrast between [I]establishing material in prep [/I]and [I]establishing material during play[/I] is important. But that has nothing to do with plausibility or "metagaming". It's about fairness in refereeing, and allowing the players to "beat the dungeon". In such play, it would be tantamount for cheating for the GM to alter the dungeon as part of the process of refereeing the players' attempts to beat it. It is a category error to suppose that this principle of fair play has anyting to do with ensuring the integrity of the shared fiction. And it is sheer fetishisation of a rather narrowly applicable technique to generalise it across RPGing as such. [/QUOTE]
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DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?
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