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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 6374866" data-attributes="member: 1879">Better is obviously a value judgement, and equally obviously therefore a matter of opinion. YMMV, different strokes etc, etc. It's not about impressing me as a player with your creative genius. It is however about convincing me that I'm having more fun playing D&D than I would be playing WOW. I have played with some excellent GMs, some ok GMs and some terrible GMs. (Actual quote from one of those "Huh. I never thought to give him a motivation.") With a mediocre GM I'm taking my fun from interaction with my fellow players. With a great GM I'm also having fun interacting with the world, the feeling of verisimillitude is what affords me that chance. If the game world seems to consist of a bunch of drones without motivation, why am I bothering?There is a camp here that seems to take actual offense at the notion that a campaign world exists as anything but a set of concious choices. This is garbage, and I say that as someone with degrees in psychology. There is no such thing as an entirely concious creation. Any creative endevour floats along a river of unconsious ideas and assumptions embeded in everything from childhood cartoons to shorts stories you forgot you read to the very structure of language. And while something as complex as a gameworld almost certainly does start from a set of concious decisions these subconcious stirrings will try to take it in direcetions that won't match what was intended. A mediocre author, or GM (IMHO) will ignore that and do whatever the predetermined plot demands. A good GM or Author will let it go and see where it leads. Personally I would never have assassins on a random encounter table, or at least not ones aimed at the PCs. If someone is trying to kill the PCs in their sleep I as a GM want to know damned well who sent them and why. For my money random encounter tables are there to portray the world at a point where I haven't fleshed it out or at a level I'm not going to track. Random critters in the wilderness, random people on a city street, a random ship at sea. It is for things that did not exist until the PCs run into them. You might have bandits or orcs, but the only way I could imagine a random assassins table was if the PCs had made so many enemies that it wasn't worth tracking who wanted them dead this week.</blockquote>

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