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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8083171" data-attributes="member: 16814">It's a generic term form outside of gaming to mean places in a process or life that cause friction and are difficult.Ah, I see the argument.  It's the "but you could have scripted the exact same thing (in an infinite universe of scripts)."  The parenthetical is the part that's often left unspoken.  That a thing can happen does not mean it must or should happen, and the idea that a game that is created in the moment could have been scripted, given the perfect attempt in a sea of infinites, is not a strong or even useful argument.  You've essentially leveraged randomness in your argument that randomness doesn't fully exist.For your questions -- no I did not plot what the nemesis might do.  I played the game to find out what the nemesis would do.  It was not purely random, it depended entirely on what the players declared as PC actions and what the results of those actions were.  The available set of outcomes was therefore much more tied into PC desires (they drove the script, so to speak) and more varied in possibility than any scripting could have been.  There are no charts.  I do not roll random locations, if a new location is needed, it will be pretty well defined from the preceding fiction.  The number of other people around, if relevent (and I can't see how it was here) is dependent on the fiction established and the actions declared.  Same for time of day -- I mean, why would I need to determine this randomly, my players are probably going to tell me when they're doing a thing, if it matters.  The nemesis didn't feature here -- to be perfectly frank, even at this point in the campaign (about 25 sessions later with more interaction with the nemesis' organization) I still don't really know who or what the nemesis is. The character background was a name and the destruction of their clan, no other details.  In play, the nemesis has become a rival in another player set goal, so that's the level of interaction.  The only thing I know is that the nemesis is powerful, has a competent organization answering to them, and is interested in the same goal as the PCs.  I'll know more as the game goes on.  I've even asked the player if they want to flesh out the nemesis more, and they're having fun right now and have decided they're not sure either.  It seems we'll both find out.Again, this is a failure of understanding on your part.  I had that same failure, for a long time.  I completely bounced off of Burning Wheel in the aughts because I could not grasp how the game was telling me to run it -- I was stuck in the idea things were prepared or planned for by the GM (at least at the outline level) or were randomly determined, so when the rules were suggesting that the player gets what they want on a success, I couldn't reconcile it.  Turns out, you have to toss the idea that the GM is proactive at all and that things follow the fiction in play.  It's not an easy switch, especially for people that only have D&D or D&D style GM approach games (there's a number of them) as experience, because it absolutely doesn't run the traditional ways.  In my 5e game, I run a hybrid -- some things I prep and plot (loosely, always willing to abandon), but a lot of things I leave up to the fiction to determine in play.  This is neither pre-plotted by me nor is it random.  It's driven by the players.At the end of my current campaign, we will be able to look back and see a full story, with ups and downs, and strong beats.  Right now, I have no idea what that story will be, and can only tell you what's happened.  I really don't know what comes next, and am looking forward to finding out (we're doing a rotation with Blades right now, so D&D is on temp hold).  What I can tell you is that the game has focused almost entirely on PC motives and desires.  Everything that's happened has been tied to those, because the players are the ones telling me what happens next.  I react.</blockquote>

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