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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6236813" data-attributes="member: 17106">How do you define nothing? It's nothing in terms of the players accomplishing their goal or the plot moving forward. However, what stuff like this does is establish that the wizard is not a plot device or a tool for the players to use. He is a person, who has motivations and activities completely independent of the PCs.To me, one of the big differences between a beginner and an advanced DM is the ability to strategically put in red herrings: NPCs that aren't critical to the plot and situations that lead nowhere. It's tough to do in a time-efficient fashion, but critical to making sure that the players feel that they're in a real world and that the elements in it do not exist solely for their purposes.I disagree. Players shouldn't be able to do anything and reliably get rewarded. Bad things happen to good people. The universe is large and uncaring. Stuff happens. Again, this is crucial to conveying the sense that the players are characters in a world, not pieces on a game board. At best, being proactive should incrementally shift things in a player's favor, but in some cases it should bring unexpected disaster. Because that's how life works.You obviously don't know much about my campaign setting. It's actually built around psionics. Spellcasters are effectively pawns in a large cosmic war, while the nonmagical characters represent a common sense naturalism neutral to the ongoing battles between powers that ultimately lead to a Ragnarok-style war between dragons and deities. Foiling casters is not a major focus; it's assumed in the same way I assume in any of my modern games that hackers are foiled from robbing banks. Treat the rules of the game as rules of the world, and everything naturally comes to an equilibrium.A pretty basic assumption that is shared by every single D&D player I've ever met in person, including many who otherwise have nothing in common with me.</blockquote>

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