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Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6890036" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I have no idea what your criteria are for "occur naturally within the world" vs "contrived . . for no good reason".</p><p></p><p>Given that the world is authored, hence - in that sense at least - a contrivance, and that what is "natural" within it is a function of that authorship, I am having trouble drawing any distinction. Unless you mean <em>inconsistent</em>, or <em>at odds with verisimilitude</em>.</p><p></p><p>In my personal experience, though, most players find it to be <em>good GMing</em> rather than <em>bad GMing</em> for interesting things to occur to, or in the vicinity of, or be stumbled upon by, their PCs.</p><p></p><p>Until you tell me what <em>meaningful</em> means here, I can't evaluate this claim.</p><p></p><p>A player writes into his/her PC's backstory some details about family. The GM decides that, when the PC is captured by goblins, a family member will be in the goblin cages also. This is a deliberate choice by the GM, designed to push the player and elicit some sort of ingame response, drawing upon elements of the fiction (ie family) that the player him-/herself chose to make salient.</p><p></p><p>How is this meaningless? What choices is it negating? Why would the game be any better if the NPC in the goblin prison was one that no PC (and hence no player) had any reason to care about?</p><p></p><p>I don't know what you mean by "plot hook" - unless you mean adventure-path play where the GM tells the players what the adventure is (eg who the enemy is, what their PC motivations are, etc). I don't know how you think that relates to scene-framing techniques, or to player-driven games.</p><p></p><p>I don't understand what you think <em>the point</em> of playing is. But if the PCs have no motivation to adventure, because there is nothing that they want that they don't already have or can trivially get, then the campaign is over.By talking about "cleverness" and "obstacles" you seem to be framing the goals of play in operational or puzzle-solving terms. That's not the general focus of my campaigns.</p><p></p><p>But even in an operationally-focused game (say, a classic Gygaxian dungeon-crawling game) looting room 1 last week doesn't become pointless because there are still traps and monsters in room 2. And this is so even if, had you failed at room 1, you would never have come to room 2 (eg because your PC is dead; or you're still trying to break into room 1).</p><p></p><p>Likewise, if the PCs kill Torog then they face the challenge of dealing with the consequences of unleashing things which hitherto were imprisoned. That is a challenge that wouldn't have arisen had they not killed Torog. How does that make killing Torog pointless?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6890036, member: 42582"] I have no idea what your criteria are for "occur naturally within the world" vs "contrived . . for no good reason". Given that the world is authored, hence - in that sense at least - a contrivance, and that what is "natural" within it is a function of that authorship, I am having trouble drawing any distinction. Unless you mean [I]inconsistent[/I], or [I]at odds with verisimilitude[/I]. In my personal experience, though, most players find it to be [I]good GMing[/I] rather than [I]bad GMing[/I] for interesting things to occur to, or in the vicinity of, or be stumbled upon by, their PCs. Until you tell me what [I]meaningful[/I] means here, I can't evaluate this claim. A player writes into his/her PC's backstory some details about family. The GM decides that, when the PC is captured by goblins, a family member will be in the goblin cages also. This is a deliberate choice by the GM, designed to push the player and elicit some sort of ingame response, drawing upon elements of the fiction (ie family) that the player him-/herself chose to make salient. How is this meaningless? What choices is it negating? Why would the game be any better if the NPC in the goblin prison was one that no PC (and hence no player) had any reason to care about? I don't know what you mean by "plot hook" - unless you mean adventure-path play where the GM tells the players what the adventure is (eg who the enemy is, what their PC motivations are, etc). I don't know how you think that relates to scene-framing techniques, or to player-driven games. I don't understand what you think [I]the point[/I] of playing is. But if the PCs have no motivation to adventure, because there is nothing that they want that they don't already have or can trivially get, then the campaign is over.By talking about "cleverness" and "obstacles" you seem to be framing the goals of play in operational or puzzle-solving terms. That's not the general focus of my campaigns. But even in an operationally-focused game (say, a classic Gygaxian dungeon-crawling game) looting room 1 last week doesn't become pointless because there are still traps and monsters in room 2. And this is so even if, had you failed at room 1, you would never have come to room 2 (eg because your PC is dead; or you're still trying to break into room 1). Likewise, if the PCs kill Torog then they face the challenge of dealing with the consequences of unleashing things which hitherto were imprisoned. That is a challenge that wouldn't have arisen had they not killed Torog. How does that make killing Torog pointless? [/QUOTE]
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