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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3398725" data-attributes="member: 2067">The thing is, a DM doesn't need to create an entire world to give players a sense of verisimilitude. All he needs to do is create the direct experiences of the PC's: the dwarf wizard needs a history and a context, but all that can come AFTER we have a dwarf wizard, and it can be tailored to what that dwarf wizard wants to accomplish. In my example above, where he wants to master some great magical apocalypse device, there's already setting material: the dwarves are at war, things might be looking desperate, maybe there is a lead on a scientific advancement (or maybe the dwarf is rebelling against traditional methods because those are getting his people killed). You've got at least two factions (dwarves + enemies), you've got the existence of advanced and dangerous technologies, you know at some point there's going to be a magical apocalypse device. You become the facilitator of the dwarf's story, and the details are left up to YOUR imagination to come up with. It's a bit of putting the egg before the chicken, but Wright's philosophy seems to say that creates a better game experience because it's unlimited and unbound, totally able to run with whatever the player can come up with.I think ENWorld distorts things by having a preponderance of vocal DMs who really really need absolute control over their settings to have fun. That's cool, but I like that Wright is saying that abandoning almost all control over your setting (or what the player can do) is to give the players the freedom that they look for in playing a game in the first place....and looses the sense that you're WATCHING the characters, and embraces the sense that you ARE the characters.D&D seems to be able to embrace these random awesome occurances (and even encourages them with the dice roll to a certain extent) really well. It's filled with examples of minor details that, when you run with them, become pretty amazing stories...just like the story of your custom-made dresser in the SIMS.</blockquote>

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