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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6238887" data-attributes="member: 17106">I would think that a DM that has a pre-written plot does not have a clear vision. If he did, what would he need the pre-written plot for?When I say vision, I'm referring mostly to setting and character rather than plot, but also deeper thematic elements. Plot is, as in most fiction, icing on the cake. A DM who knows what the tone of his world is; is it Ravenloft with gothic elements, FR with medieval-inspired magocracies, something else entirely? A DM who has clear and distinctive and interesting personalities for his NPCs. A DM who knows what emotions he wants to elicit from the players and how to do it. That's what I'm getting at. Plot can be largely emergent, given a strong foundation.Trying purposefully to run games without having this kind of knowledge in my head has not lead to good results, nor would I expect it to.Also, what's with the knock on CoC? AFAIC, CoC has much better DM advice than any DMG I've ever read. And I would hardly say that it's about planning things in advance. Selling horror requires sophisticated emotional manipulations of players in real time, not pre-written plots. CoC is about thematic improvisation, which I find works very well for D&D as well.Even if they want to, it's a dubious endeavor. Too many cooks and all that. It's very difficult to groupthink a fantasy reality. That's why we have DMs and players.I find it difficult to imagine players feeling the parts of their characters without a significant amount of time spent in-session, not beforehand, on establishing naturalistic details of the world around them.You're entitled to your preferences, but when some phrase to the effect of "I would never do that" pops up enough times, it passes a certain threshold into snobbishness. Can't we just agree that neither of us would want to play in the other's game and leave it at that?And, to the (!) thread topic, there are multiple ways to play, which will create different dynamics between all sorts of rules elements. Dynamics that can't all be accounted for by people writing the game.</blockquote>

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