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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8595001" data-attributes="member: 42582">On many of these things we have similar views, but here I think we have a slight disagreement.Given that we're playing an adventure-oriented RPG, the GM will always be providing the players with opportunities to take their PCs on adventures. And in my experience most players enjoy the game more when the adventuring connects in some way or other to their PC.So rather than ignoring PC backgrounds in framing scenarios, I think it's more helpful to use a soft-move/hard-move structure. Reveal the threat (which might also be an opportunity!), and then let the process of play determine whether it crystallises or is held off. In a system like Burning Wheel, which is deliberately rather brutal in its play, as often as not the threat crystallises; but in a more forgiving system like 4e or 5e D&D, the odds are pretty good that the PCs will be able to hold off at least the bulk of the threat.Based on my experiences and my reading around, to me one of the most common errors in GMing is to make the fiction worse from the point of view of what the players want for their PCs, even when the players succeed on their action declarations. I think the most common form of this I see (or at least the one that triggers my "observer biases" most strongly) is NPCs who betray the PCs even if the players succeed at everything the GM puts in front of them - in my view just terrible, verging on outright abusive, exercise of the GM's authority yet so, so common. But going hard on NPCs - including relationship NPCs - even when the players succeed is another example.Part of the point of gameplay is that sometimes you win. And in the context of a game like D&D, that means that sometimes you get the fiction that you want. To me, that's the underlying lesson and logic of the soft-move/hard-move structure of consequence narration - as a GM you're not at liberty to go to the hard move just because you think it would make for a cool story!</blockquote>

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