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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6022109" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, I have two (that I know about, I've never detailed the whole world) - the Lord of Dee and the Master of the Mysterious Isle.  I have never used either, and have no real plans for ever doing so.I have them mostly for two reasons:1) So that I can have campaign level secrets.  Who and even what these people are campaign level secrets.  Their stats would never show up in any authorized campaign setting book for the world.  They exist only by rumor and legend of their great might.  For example, a neighboring kingdom sent an army to invade Dee.  A great wind blew up, and cloaked the army in dust, and when it finally died down lifted the whole army found itself in a desert 400 miles away.  The army limped out of the desert, and since that time no one has ever attempted to take the city.  These are the sort of things that I want to be able to say can happen in my campaign world.  The secrets I have locked in me never to reveal, and wouldn't reveal except if they came up in play.  It something for players that hear rumors to wonder about, and in the authorized works I'd only let them appear in a shrink wrapped adventure with a seal on it.  And even those might have a selection of 4 alternate answers, so that DM's could keep the secrets for themselves.  Campaign level secrets are precious.2) So that in the event I wanted it, I could justify deus ex mechina and wonders of any sort imaginable.  It's not likely, but it leaves the door - if not open - then at least available and unlockable.Perhaps they sit around and eat pealed grapes all day, while being fanned by female djinn and conversing with gold dragon colleages over a game of chess?  And there we part company.  Because I can't really think of a reason to have uber-powerful PC's as major story elements unless your game has gone on so long that the PC's have become the sort of uber-powerful folk that can interact with the NPC's as peers or near peers - and arguably Cook is of the same mind.  It is very important in my opinion to never deprotagonize the PC's.  It's easy for an author to never deprotagonize hsi characters, because they are all his characters and because he can always direct events along paths that all his characters to shine, fail, or succeed against all odds whenever he wants to do so.  That is one of the main things that distinguishes the novel as art, from the RPG.  Yes, but Cook is able to play his characters like puppets, getting them to act according to his whim.  So of course, he can always use the excuse of their character to get them to do whatever he wants (and because he is a writer of some talent, he can make this mostly plausible).  But this logic, while it works quite well for novels, doesn't work for RPGs.You are missing my point.  Unlike the author of a novel, the DM is not all powerful.  He sheds some of his authority as the games creator, for the sake of the enjoyment of the game.  He choose not to govern the actions of the PC's, and so becomes cocreater with the other players of the story.  There choices influence the story in ways that are completely unpredictable, unexpected, and to the novice DM undesirable.  Sometimes the DM even has good cause to be frustrated at the player's strange choices.  But if you don't let the players play, you don't have much of a game.  Likewise, the DM concedes a certain amount of authority to random chance.  Even if you are the sort of DM who feels free to fudge every dice, the random fates dictated to the players by the dice they throw are sometimes beyond your control.Cook doesn't have these problems when he sets out to craft a story.Yes, but if they are smart they are doing this in Mord's Magnificent Mansion or equivalent, so that they are never caught with their pants down.  It's amazing how easily a mage of sufficient stature can dispense with mundane problems.</blockquote>

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