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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8224709" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Hard disagree. Anything that isn't actually established yet--anything for which the players have neither evidence nor even opportunity to acquire evidence--doesn't exist. Once something is actually part of play, it is significantly different. Before something enters play, it's not just &quot;well I could change it...but I won't.&quot; It's &quot;I as DM am still ALLOWED to change it pretty much as I like.&quot;Once something is actually part of the shared experience, even if only to the smallest degree, DM freedom is significantly curtailed if that DM actually values player agency and choices. I know many DMs think it's totally fine to rewrite the world beneath the players' feet and preventing the players from knowing this, but plenty of DMs also thought that it was a great idea to give a 3.5e-or-earlier Paladin a &quot;choice&quot; to be either good OR lawful, and thus guaranteed to fall no matter what they do. (That is, &quot;if everybody were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too???&quot; applies here. Just because a lot of people do a thing doesn't make that thing good, wise, or right.)Something that still exists EXCLUSIVELY as prep work is not just malleable, it is absolutely so, literally all parts of it are 100% free rein to modify, delete, replace, or intensify. The moment it enters the fiction even a little bit, those freedoms are significantly restricted, as now the DM must JUSTIFY a change, not just MAKE one. Yes, you as DM can absolutely change the established fiction, but you cannot do so unilaterally. Both sensibility/logic and player-agency prevent such cavalier changes. I mean, assuming you want players who actually DO have agency and whose choices actually DO matter, as opposed to simply feeding them an illusion carefully maintained so they can never detect it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8224709, member: 6790260"] Hard disagree. Anything that isn't actually established yet--anything for which the players have neither evidence [I]nor even opportunity to acquire[/I] evidence--doesn't exist. Once something is actually part of play, it is significantly different. Before something enters play, it's not just "well I could change it...but I won't." It's "I as DM am still ALLOWED to change it pretty much as I like." Once something is actually part of the shared experience, even if only to the smallest degree, DM freedom is significantly curtailed if that DM actually values player agency and choices. I know many DMs think it's totally fine to rewrite the world beneath the players' feet and preventing the players from knowing this, but plenty of DMs also thought that it was a great idea to give a 3.5e-or-earlier Paladin a "choice" to be either good OR lawful, and thus [I]guaranteed[/I] to fall no matter what they do. (That is, "if everybody were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too???" applies here. Just because a lot of people do a thing doesn't make that thing good, wise, or right.) Something that still exists EXCLUSIVELY as prep work is not just malleable, it is absolutely so, literally all parts of it are 100% free rein to modify, delete, replace, or intensify. The moment it enters the fiction even a little bit, those freedoms are significantly restricted, as now the DM must JUSTIFY a change, not just MAKE one. Yes, you as DM can absolutely change the established fiction, but you cannot do so [I]unilaterally[/I]. Both sensibility/logic and player-agency prevent such cavalier changes. I mean, assuming you want players who actually DO have agency and whose choices actually DO matter, as opposed to simply feeding them an illusion carefully maintained so they can never detect it. [/QUOTE]

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