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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9480173" data-attributes="member: 42582">Does this imply that you think an important or principal reason why players don't play their characters as wanton murderers is because the GM will bring in-fiction consequences to bear?If that is not what you think, then I don't understand why you have replied as you have done. If that is what you think, then I am glad that I play with different sorts of players from the ones you are imagining.I've not said that anything is bad. But I do have my own preferences for RPGing. And GM-provided "plot hooks" and "quests" are not among them.I've not accused anyone of anything, and I don't think I've used the phrase "limiting player freedom".But anyway, I talked about me as GM working with players to establish backstory etc. I didn't say anything about who has "ownership" of those elements, who may be at liberty to change them, to reveal them to be illusions or false rumours or whatever. But it is precisely the ownership aspect of bastions that you are criticising: you want this player-created element of the fiction to be fair game for the GM.I didn't say anything about me assigning a deity to a cult from a backstory. I said "Do they see their explosive-obsessed Dwarf as something like a Tinker Gnome - in which case presumably the forgotten temples are to Reorx and the Greygem?", and went on to talk about working with players to establish the backstory, setting etc elements. It would be the player doing the assigning, not me.As to whether or not it is bad for a GM to want to keep a number of gods limited - I don't think that is bad. Nor is it bad for a player to want to introduce a new god. It's probably not possible to satisfy both those wants at once, at least if they are understood literally. Hence the need to work together.Among other things, it is colour. A lot of what happens in RPGing is colour. The funny accent the PC speaks in is colour. In most games, the cut of a characters hat or cape is colour. Most of the time whether a gemstone is a sapphire or a ruby is colour. The bastion, at a minimum, establishes some colour, and also - as I understand it - gives the player a little mini-game to engage in outside of play sessions.It also seems to me to have the potential to be more than colour - besides the minor benefits the player might get for their PC from the productive activities that occur in the bastion, there is the possibility that the PC establishes a reputation related to their bastion, which then matters to NPCs they meet. And other stuff like that.None of these ways the bastion might matter to a player in play is undermined by the fact that the GM can't make it into something that is at stake in play.</blockquote>

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