NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6205471" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is a big part of what I've been saying for the past several hundred posts. I think the notion of "default playstyles" for D&D doesn't work. Even in those cases where the rules texts promote a certain playstyle, there are many players - for all I know, a majority - who play differently.Playing your character is roleplaying. Voices, mannerisms etc I regard as highly optional - 1st person rather than 3rd person narration I also regard as optional (my players use a mix of both, both as a group and individually). Combat at least I regard as an important site for roleplaying - in a game like D&D which makes such a big deal, mechanically, of combat, I regard combat as an opportunity for the players to play their PCs and show what they're made of and what they stand for.I have known GMs who would frame scenes not because there was any expectation that the players would actually affect the fiction via their PCs - the expectation, rather, was that the players would "emote" and "roleplay" - as in, talk out in first person - their PCs, basically contributing colour but nothing else to the GM's vignette. I have basically zero interest in this for D&D play, and for ongoing play of any sort, but don't mind it for Chaosium-system one-shots (CoC, RQ, Pendragon, Elric/Stormbringer).This works for me! I want to be surprised. "Let's see what happens!"Hussar can speak for himself (and others for themselves), but for my own part I think I've made it pretty clear upthread what is predetermined in my game - namely, backstory, at least at the loose level. As a concrete example, I attach to this post my notes coming out of the past nearly 5 years of my 4e campaign. The bit under "History of the Black Peaks Region" is what I started with, although it was sketchier at the start of the campaign. Quite a bit of the other stuff is digested from 4e books, as the references indicate. Notice that it is all about what has happened and about how different parties are related by connections or conflicts. This is the stuff that I then use to adjudicate details in the course of play. Some of that adjudication will add to the backstory; some will rewrite bits of it. (For instance, some of the stuff about Pazuzu is wrong - contradicted by the actual events of play (namely, Pazuzu took steps that would weaken Asmodeus) - but I haven't rewritten it yet because I'm not sure where exactly things with Pazuzu are going, other than that I will be using Pazuzu as a device to introduce more conflict and complication.)I am not trained in improvisation. I just make stuff up, drawing on the conflicts and relationships already inherent in the setting and situation to make up stuff that seems interesting - and then seeing where it gets taken by the players.I think I've already mentioned upthread the player in my game who decides whether or not what his PC is doing is a ritual, and therefore whether or not he gets the +2 bonus to all skill checks with rituals. This doesn't strike me as "rules lawyering" in any interesting fashion - it strike me as playing the game.*********************Here is a quote from <a href="http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/setting_dissection.pdf" target="_blank">this essay from Ron Edwards</a>, talking about what I have labelled "storyteller" play:[O]ur gamer subcultural default expectation for role-playing is that plot is a prepped function . . . Character activity during play is swiftly categorized into two kinds: “with” the story or “against” the story. The GM’s job is to make the former most common, whether by dictating or non-negotiably hinting at proper actions to take, or retrofitting actions taken into outcomes that fit after all. The players are therefore “good” if they cooperate with these methods or “bad” or “disruptive” if they don’t.I think his comment about the "subcultural default expectation" may be a little strong, given the growth in the number of "indie-style" players (especially beyond the literally indie games). But there seem to me to be plenty of posters on this thread who see plot as something that the GM prepares, and who would work pretty comfortably with a notion of players making choices for the characters that either "go along with the story" or are seen as disruptive to the story. And an example of those ideas colliding with issues of mechanical balance between casters and fighters was provided by    [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s example not too far upthread of using Control Winds to disperse the gladiatorial fog and the GM just declaring that the fog rolls right back in.MY 4E BACKGROUND NOTES (if my players are viewing this thread, please don't read!):[ATTACH]59315[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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