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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 2755819" data-attributes="member: 812">See, I thought you were just trying to make me say your terminology was correct. Which I remain happy to do, if it helps.Actually, I have to admit that your whole paragraph pretty much defeated my comprehension abilities. I have a great deal of trouble understanding your ideas, Bastoche, and I really wish you'd write more clearly.Monster = NPCKill = InfluenceYes, it does focus on "influencing NPCs". I guess if you hadn't snipped out the bit where I said, "Whether it's kill the orcs and acquire their stuff", you might have understood that.See, here's a case where I'm having trouble understanding you. I THINK, based on what you wrote below, that you are arguing FOR the "active/active" case, which is kind of funny, because I am, too.But what if the PCs never go anywhere near the room? What if they use move earth for some other purpose, and, without even knowing it's there, collapse the secret room where the monsters are trying to move out of, before they even have a chance to move?I see that as a situation where the DM has to make a call, and either shrug and say, "Okay, they killed those monsters, and they'll never even know," or say, "Hm, I'll just shift that secret room fifty feet to the left and have the monsters come out NOW." What decision I would make in that case would depend far more on the current state of the game and the players (is another fight appropriate now, will it be exciting or tedious, is there important information here that I don't have another easy way to communicate, do I in fact have fifty feet of room to the left...) than it would on any considerations of "campaign style". I don't know about you, but the games I run tend to vary widely in how they're operated from one session to another (or even within a single session). Sometimes I'm determined to get the PCs on a particular track, sometimes I don't care what they do.Right. I'm glad we agree on SOMETHING.Well, I don't necessarily disagree with that, but that's only ONE possible motive for a DM, right? I don't ever want to "give an edge" over my PCs, I want them to feel like they are playing in a world that exists beyond the boundaries of the game itself. A world where there are surprises for them, but that still appears to operate in a consistent manner. A world where they are not the only agents of change.Well, you're clearly better at predicting your PCs than I am at predicting mine.Of course I HOPED that all my work would come out and present the PC with a choice. That's why I did the work. But as I am usually juggling the activities of thirty or forty NPCs, along with a bunch of PCs who regularly surprise me with their decisions (and the assorted two dozens things I've suddenly realised I've forgotten and have to come up with arbitrary decisions on the spot over), on occasion I put time into developing material that they never encounter. At one point I decided that the Emir's secret police were weeding out "intellectuals" in Al-Tizim, because I thought they were planning to go to Al-Tizim. Well, they decided to do something else, and so the persecutions of intellectuals never came up for them and they never got involved.Should that then mean I should erase the work I did and pretend it never happened? My style (based as it is on my own laziness) is to preserve the work I've done even if the party should never come across it. Because I'm bad at predicting what my PCs will do, I never know when suddenly they ARE going to run across something I had planted from a year back. So I keep that stuff in the campaign. So that when they DO show up in Al-Tizim, I can refer it and say, "Okay, it's been a year since the purge, so perhaps there's an underground resistance now in the city. Maybe the PCs are sitting in a cafe and some crazy guy comes in with a bomb, determined to avenge the slaughtered historians. Yeah, that sounds like fun."Or even if I don't, and they go to Al-Tizim and ask somebody, "So what's new around town?" I actually have something to say: "Well, the purges are over." It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with them, but it gives a sense of versimilitude to the setting. And if they decide to get involved, it DOES have something to do with them.You have described exactly how I run things. Except that I expand the available choices to the player. He could choose the family cause, the righteous cause, he could ignore the whole thing if he chooses to, he could decide to try and take advantage of the situation for his own selfish ends, he could try to blow up the courts and overthrow the government.Sort of "active/active/active/active..." choice. Point being that because I can't reduce my player's possible choices down to one of two options, I can't perfectly predict what direction the story will go in, and therefore can't predict what information is actually going to be needed. Which necessarily means that at times I will develop material that doesn't get used. I've learned not to let that frustrate me -- instead to let it be a part in developing a living, breathing world that my players can explore.I'm interested in how you handle the case where the PCs arrive in a new place and decide to find out what is going on there. Do they know that whatever you tell them will be their next adventure? In the style I usually run, they find out a bunch of stuff, all of which I've made up, some of which I HOPE they'll find interesting enough to pursue and turn into an adventure. But most of which will just be "flavour text" that serves to make the game world feel more complete to them.</blockquote>

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