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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6818350" data-attributes="member: 42582">This question comes from left-field.The examples of GMing in the post you quoted were from real life - my own BW game. It's flattering that you regard them as best-case. From my point of view, they are more like best-effort. They exemplify how I try to run my game.As for pre-authoring: inherent in pre-authoring is that fictional content and constraints and consequences are established outside the context of play. That's the point of that technique. Various posters upthread (certainly [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], but he is not the only one) have talked about the importance, in this style, of the players learning about the setting eg via knowledge checks, divination spells, scouting, etc. That may or may not amount to railroading, depending on (i) how it is handled by the GM, and (ii) what the players' expectations are about how the game will unfold. But it is mostly different from what I am looking for in RPGing.Which is, perhaps, a key difference.Upthread, for instance, you've talked about preferring to use FR because then your players know what you're talking about when you mention a Purple Dragon Knight. That suggests to me that shared enjoyment of a pre-authored fictional setting is part of your game that matters to you. That is something that is not a high priority for the playstyle and the RPGs which have self-consciously promoted "fail forward" as a technique.Maybe I can, maybe I can't. It depends on details that we don't have in this discussion.Another way of coming at the question is, "Why would I bother?"I've mentioned upthread that, in my BW game, I use the GH maps and the high-level GH backstory (country/region names, the Suel and Baklun empires, etc). There are two reasons why.First, they give a handy, easily-shared device for dealing with geography in the game. The middle of the GH map has everything needed for classic fantasy RPGing: desert, sea, forest, cities, towns, wild lands with orc raiders, elven and dwarven kingdoms, etc. The low-level details can be filled in as needed as part of play.Second, the high-level backstory gives the same sort of easily-shared flavour for bringing classic tropes into play. For instance, when the PCs were fighting orcs in the Bright Desert, the player of the mage PC is able to say "Suel tribesmen are thick as fleas on dogs in this desert - I Circle some up!" The Ancient Suel become a label for a trope, that provides colour to the game.There are parts of GH that push against this - for instance, the idea that the setting's vikings (Frost, Ice and Snow Barbarians) and martial artist monks (the Scarlet Brotherhood) are descended from the Ancient Suel; and the idea that the Ancient Suel are pale, almost albino. I've always ignored these elements of GH lore, and continue to do so in my BW game.If Ed Greenwood had got in before Gygax to give me a map with some vikings in the north and a trope-filled area like central GH, I'd happily use it. As it happens, though, I got GH first.But at least in my experience, when someone talks about playing a game in FR, they are meaning more than just that they use a map and the high-level tropes.I saw this just yesterday, in a thread on the Old D&D editions board about using other modules with module B10. Some people were advising that certain other modules are a good fit with B10 because they integrate the backstory of B10 with other elements of the "Know World" (Mystara) eg Specularum, Nithia, the Hutakaans etc. That's exactly the sort of prioritising of pre-authred setting that I don't enjoy. But obviously, to those posters, it is quite important.**************Here is an extract from my first post in this thread:If a GM or a group thinks that s/he can achieve story-like progression without railroading and while using GM pre-authored backstory as an important input into action resolution, go for it! Personally I have my doubts: examples that have been given in this thread seem to me to reinforce to the extent that there is a large amount of GM pre-authoring that then informs action resolution by setting constraints and possibilities, the more the game will move away from story-like progression with a high degree of player agency in respect of that story, and towards exploration/discovery.Not far upthread, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said that "those limits you talk about aren't really limiting. If I don't like them I can find a way to leave the world and go somewhere else." That's exploration-oriented play (find a way to . . . go somewhere else). And [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], in discussing player-responsive sandbox design, said that "if the character decides to go in a different direction whether motivation/goal wise, exploration wise, or even theme-wise... either in-game flags or out of game discussion should signal this and that will be factored into the sand box at a later time". It's not clear to me what exactly a later time means, but taken at face value it seems to imply a deferral (to some later time) of character drama to exploration of the sandbox that the GM has already prepared. Conjectured examples of waterholes being fouled independently of action resolution outcomes look the same to me - prioritising exploration over character-driven (and player-driven) drama.That doesn't seem to me to be painting anyone into any sort of worst-case scenario. It just seems to be noting that there are different approaches to RPGing, which give different priorities to exploration of the setting, vs story-like progression focused on the characters as their players are presenting them right here and now.</blockquote>

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