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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6218815" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not seeing how you got from what I said to this.  I wasn't commenting on an actual universe.  The actual universe has features the game universe doesn't have.   The game universe has features the actual universe doesn't have.   I would think that is fairly obvious.  There are several important differences between the game universe and the real universe that are pertinent to what I said.  First, the game universe is inherently limited and incomplete compared to the real universe.  Most of the game universe has never been observed, imagined, or described.  It exists in a fuzzy, mutable, and often quite vague state.  Secondly, whatever you think about whether this universe has a Storyteller, it's abundantly clear that the game universe has a Storyteller/GM/DM and that the game only exists in the interplay between the players.   Thirdly, you are probably going to spend 70-80 years in the real universe, and the real universe seems to take no particular interest in whether any sort of literary story or adventure happens to you in that time.   By contrast, the game universe has a fairly limited schedule, we only get together to play every so often and for a limited time.  Most participants are eager to fill that time with a fun game of some sort rather than recreating the moment by moment realism of the real universe.   The truth is that because the game universe is an inherently thinner stream of sensation than the real universe, whatever the GM relates to the players in their narration acts as a huge flashing signpost that attracts the player's attention in ways that the real universe rarely does.  We as a DM may imagine that the PC's are visiting a large metropolis of 150,000 people, and have in our minds eye what that is like.   But in point of fact, the PC's aren't seeing every shop, citizen, bar, pub, pack animal, cart, pile of manure, curtained window, and cloud unless we explicitly describe them to the players.   Whatever few seconds of narration we use to provoke the players to draw that scene in their mind is everything that the PC's see and becomes hugely more realized than all the rest of the vague city that may or may not have any sort of definition.   Players are naturally going to grab on to whatever cues we give them, or that they think they have been given, and run with them because that is where the reality and sensation is to be found.What I'm saying is that the GM is the exterior and interior reality of the game and he cannot help but steer the players of the game by what you choose to or choose not to narrate.  The amount of exposition required to give the players a truly unfettered choice is too extensive to be gameable.   The players can of course provide feedback through querying the environment, but it's really up to the DM to say, "Yes!  Priorities and objectives this way!  Step right up!"   The image I'm appealing to here is of a crier at a market, or a barker at a carnival.   The DM is always and inevitably putting a highlight on some choices.  When you say some thing that sounds like an adventure hook, you might as well be draping that sentence in flashing lights: "Adventure! Suspense! Treasure! Low Prices!  Come and buy (in)!"</blockquote>

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