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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6373424" data-attributes="member: 42582">Correct. My players are turning up to play a game. They are entitled to enjoy themselves! A key part of world design, and encounter design, is facilitating that enjoyment.I'm sure this is a true biographical fact about you, but I don't see how it is relevant to anyone else's play experience.This is a complete non-sequitur.First, it assumes that there is no mode of conflict other than combat. Which is obviously false - for instance, there can be social conflict. Or "man vs wild" conflict.Second, it assumes a contrast between "playing the game" and "encounter after encounter". Encounter after encounter is playing the game.The most traditional element of D&D world design is the dungeon, divided into levels with monsters of increasing toughness at greater depth; with doors that the PCs have trouble opening and closing but that monsters can open and close at will; with loot and magic item distributed throughout the labyrinth in at least a rough proportion to the difficulty of extracting it.I'm not entirely sure what is even involved in running such a world "logically", but you can't seriously be telling me that that gameworld has not been changed to suit the needs of play. It has no other rationale at all!Consistency of backstory isn't in contrast with metagaming. It is itself driven by metagaming! For instance, how does a GM choose which parts of the backstory to emphasise and which to ignore or downplay? The sort of GM I want to play with follows the cues of the players. If they are interested in the cultists but not in the miners, then the next group of assassins rolled up on the random encounter table will be working for the cult and not for the minerals magntaes.I don't agree with your analysis of Tolkien or Middle-Earth. There were things that he wanted to show off, but an imaginary creation wasn't one of them. As per his essay On Fairy Stories, Tolkien is interested in conveying truth, not fiction.I also don't share your conception of "better". The function of a gameworld, in my view, is not to impress the players with the GM's creative genius. That is presenting what I regard as the desirable output of play as if it were an input.</blockquote>

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