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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6815337" data-attributes="member: 42582">The terminology isn't that important to me except as a way to get at certain techniques and approaches to play.I hope I've been fairly clear about these. On the positive side, the main thing I want is for the player's, via action declarations, to be able to render the fiction in accordance with their desires - which means, within the fiction, that their PCs achieve things that they want.On the negative side, the main thing I don't want is a GM's secret backstory to be a block or constraint on action resolution that the players can't overcome, which dooms their action declarations to a futility that isn't known in advance, and perhaps is not even known after the event (if the players don't know that the secret backstory explains why they failed).These are what I describe as a game that is not grounded in pre-authoring. I regard that as quite different from GM prep - generating ideas, statting up NPCs or monsters, etc. The latter isn't any sort of block or constraint on action declaration and action resolution.Because in my games geography tends not to be at the heart of play - it's just a means to an end - it doesn't impede my goals (described above) to use pre-drawn maps. Though there will always be flexibility in the details (eg I need to be able to drop an oasis or a pyramid into the Bright Desert without fussing exactly over where it is in relation to exactly how many miles the PCs travelled in exactly what direction). At a table which, in general, shared my outlook, but did put geography more at the centre of things, my use of pre-drawn maps might be too much pre-authoring.On the other hand, in my game NPCs, gods, politics, and other socio-cosmological matters do tend to be at the heart of play, and so I use less pre-authored material in this respect. I might come up with an idea for an NPC, or a god, and even write up a candidate backstory, but this will not be a constraint on adjudication in the form of secret backstory, and is not a determinate part of the fiction until revealed in play either via scene framing or action resolution.For instance, in my BW game what are the precise motivations and allegiances of Dame Katerina of Urnst, who is travelling in the company of her confessor Father Simon, who in turn is very reasonably suspected by the PCs of being a death cultist? It's clear that she is loyal to her confessor - that has been established in play, as part of my narration around the episode in which the PCs accused him of being a cultist - but is that because she's also a death cultist, or rather she has been duped by him? I have some ideas on how this could play out, and where it might lead, but they're not part of the fiction and certainly not something that I would use to adjudicate action resolution involving her.In my 4e game, the precise motivations and desires of the Raven Queen are in a similar state - very important to the PCs (and the players) but not yet entirely known, though there are strong (and differing) views from various PCs. This is likely to come to a head soon, perhaps in our next session of that campaign.For me, part of the skill of GMing is teasing out these details via play, in a way which feeds on the players' suspicions and inclinations, and allows them to engage (via their PCs) and test their (potentially conflicting) views, without (i) bringing things to a climax too early, or (ii) letting things drag on beyond their ability to sustain dramatic weight.With the dark elf in my BW game, I feel that I could have done a better job in this respect - as is shown, in part, by the fact that one of the players, during our Sunday session, predicted that the dark elf would return in some form or other, perhaps re-animated as an undead. I'm not sure about that - BW tends to treat undeath as a purely human condition - but I am thinking about ways to somehow bring the dark elf back into focus even though he's dead - for instance, if the elven ronin tried a Circles check and then failed, the failure could take the form of the appearance of an NPC who knew both the ronin and the dark elf before their respective (thought somewhat different) falls from being honourable soldiers of the White Tower.I would think that certainly counts as having an idea, and by some measures must count as preparing for the game, but it's not any sort of pre-authoring of anything. No fiction is being established by me having that idea.The ruined tower existed in the fiction because it was part of the backstory of a PC, written by that PC's player. To elaborate: in BW PC generation is via Lifepaths, and this particular PC has a lifepath as a Sorcerer than two Rogue Sorcerer LPs (which is 7 years a pop). In the backstory of the PC, 14 years ago the tower where he was living as a mage with his brother Joachim was attacked by orcs. In order to try and defeat the orcs Joachim tried to summon a Lighting Storm (AoE attack spell) but failed and was possessed by a balrog. The PC escaped - living for the next 14 years as a rogue wizard - but the orcs sacked the tower.The mace existed in the fiction because the same player wrote that into his PC's backstory, wrote a Belief for his PC in relation to it (along the lines of "I will recover the Falcon's Claw, the nickel-silver mace that I had forged and was in the process of enchanting when the orcs sacked the tower"), and then - once the PCs arrived at the tower - declared as an action an attempt to find the mace in the tower.So in neither case did I write these story elements into the fiction. The player did that.When the attempt to find the mace failed (from memory, an Ob 5 check made with 6 dice, so needing five of six d6 to come up 4 or better - never very likely to succeed), the player knew that finding it would involve overcoming some more difficult obstacle. (The whole focus of BW play is on making the players work hard (via their PCs) for their PCs' Beliefs.) Given that the dark elf had already, at that point, been established as existing within the fiction, the player conjectured that the elf would have it. Because that would be a difficult obstacle.But if the GM is authoring the fiction at the table, perhaps drivin by player ramblings, then it is not pre-authorship. Is it? So saying that stuff that's not pre-authored resembles the sort of non-pre-authored stuff that I like seems true, but not a point of disagreement with anything I'm saying.An idea, on its own, is not part of the fiction. Nor is a page of stats. Its raw material that might or might not be incorporated into the fiction, in some form or other or not at all.In the case of the dark elf, for instance, it was only at the last minute that I crossed out the entry for sword skill on the stat sheet I'd written up and wrote in "mace" - so that when he turned up wielding the nickel-silver mace he would be able to attack the PCs with it.That sheet also has some notes on it about backstory for the dark elf, but none of that conjectured backstory actually came out in play. So from my point of view the backstory remains highly open (and in this post I've set out some ideas I have for working it out in play) though it will have to include some seminal moment in which the elf was turned from Grief to Spite (which is the crux of being a Dark Elf in BW - hence the relevance of Eol and Maeglin from the Silmarillion).But what you describe here is not part of my method. In fact it's almost contrary to it.My method would more likely be to announce that the body on the floor wears a breastplate with the symbol of Orcus - whom the PCs (at least those who serve the Raven Queen) are sworn to oppose - or that it bears a symbol of the Order of the Bat - a secret society among the drow, invented by one of my players, that is dedicated to the worship of Corellon and to undoing the sundering of the elves.In my BW game something quite similar to the scenario you posit came up in our second-to-most-recent session. One of the PCs - the elven princess - was dining with a priest, who evinced a more than healthy interest in elven immortality, and deathlessness in general. The player, and the PC, pegged him for some sort of death cultist. When, later on, the PCs had a chance to search his room one found his death cult book, bound in human skin. (On the stat sheet that I'd written up a holy book was noted. The decision that it would be a death cult book was made by me on the spur of the moment.) I described it being bound in human skin.This mattered to the players because one of their PCs - the elven ronin - is sworn to oppose evil whether it resides in orcs or in humanity, while another - the sorcerer-assassin who discovered the book - is seeking revenge on her former master, the balrog-possessed brother of the mage PC, who is also the sort of chap to use books bound in human skin.When in due course I told the players, as their PCs were looking through the book, that it is a tome of the cult of Chemosh, this didn't have the result that nobody knew what I was talking about. Rather, the significance of Chemosh and Chemosh-worship - that it involves the worship of a dark god and the quest for immortality through undeath - had already been established and grounded in relation to the PCs. Between sessions, the player of the mage PC even wrote a new Belief for his PC, to learn what the cult of Chemosh knows about the coming apocalypse. (That there is a coming apocalypse is something of an article of faith for this PC.)Upthread, [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION] have talked about establishing depth in relation to story elements introduced during the actual course of play. I don't know how the example I've just given strikes them, but for me it is illustrative of how I like to establish depth and player engagement: not by evoking or referring back to some piece of fiction that they've already read (like Ed Greenwood's stories about Purple Dragon Knights), but by establishing the significance of the story element in relation to the dramatic needs of the PCs.(Of course the name "Chemosh" is taken from Dragonlance. So is the motif of skull masks, which came up in the last session when the mage PC detected a magical skull mask in the priest's apartment. I don't think any of my players have ever read Dragonlance - certainly no one has commented that they recognise the name. And I don't know anything more about Chemosh in Dragonlance than the entry in the old Dragonlance Adventures book, which I last read probably 20-odd years ago.)What is the railroad? Are we using some notion of railroad where every time the GM makes a decision rather than rolls on a random table (that was randomly constructed?) that counts as railroad?In this case, if the PCs never go to X they won't meet the monster. So the difference is that I am using a scene-framing style whereas what you describe - from the brief description - looks like a sandbox style.The dark elf had no established backstory until he appeared in play (and as I've noted above, that backstory itself is not very richly established - by the rules of the game, he underwent some experience that turned his Grief to Spite; and it's been established in play that he was serving a dark naga in trying to hurt the PCs; but that's it).He had no location until he appeared in play - at which point he was established as living in the general vicinity of the ruined tower.His most important possession (the mace) and his weapon skill (mace, not sword) were not established until after he had appeared in play - and were established as responses to a failed check by a player, and concerned an item which wouldn't have been part of the fiction but for being built by one of the players into the backstory and aspirations of his PC.What fiction, exactly, has been pre-authored here? All I can see is that there are dark elves in this world, who are spiteful people who might try and hurt others. Even the forms this spiteful hurt actually took in the fiction - fouling a waterhole, stealing a mace - weren't pre-authored.Successful navigation through a desert includes finding water. When the check is failed, the intent is not realised. I decided that the task had succeeded (the PCs found the waterhole) but intent failed - the waterhole was fouled.The dark elf that I had written up had the Filthy trait, but I hadn't given much prior thought to what that might mean. When I described the recently-fouled waterhole to my players they were suitably disgusted, and moreso when they worked out from the footprints that it was an elf. (Which I was glad of - I was worried that it might divert the game into schoolground humour.)If the navigation check had succeeded but I nevertheless described the waterhole as fouled, and hence needing more effort to purify it (or find another, or whatever) then I would have been vitiating the basic rule of the game, which is that when a check succeeds the player (and PC) realises his/her intention - in this case, to navigate safely and successfully through the desert.I'm not sure if Maxperson is suggesting that I might narrate a successful check as coming to the waterhole, finding it fouled, but then purifying it in some fashion - but that would, in my view, be contrary to the spirit of the game: introducing a complication of that sort only to narrate it away again seems not to add anything to play except GM verbiage.</blockquote>

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