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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5215276" data-attributes="member: 3820">That makes sense. The authority that you prefer players work within is the authority of the game-at-play. The reason I questioned the use of "fanfic" is that in any setup where the GM encourages or even requests backstory, a different form of authority is being explicitly extended. (I should maybe note that I draw a difference between solicited mythos-building-as-background and unsolicited. I think there's something of an assumption in this thread that it's more often unsolicited than not, which hasn't been my experience -- even though I'll admit that someone providing unsolicited details is much more likely to run into or stir up disappointment somehow.) The motives are often somewhat similar, I'd argue. They begin with a sort of "what if?" question -- what would happen if I did things my way instead of the way that history, or the author, decreed they would play out? That might be kind of a different philosophy-of-gaming conversation entirely, though...Quite understandable. I think I favor the middle region between a player doing solo dictation and a player having minimal impact on the world during the "setting up the terrain" phase. It can happen as a group, but not yet in actual play. The idea of a setting that is partially crafted by the players, to me, poses an interesting challenge as a GM that I'd liken to deriving results from random charts. If a player places a monastery in a world, it's roughly the same intellectual challenge to me that it would be if a die roll had come up "32-33: Monastery". Of course, it's a challenge that comes with more collaboration and negotiation, but I enjoy the process. In a way, it's where I get to cooperate with the players more fully than I do when actual play begins.You have, thanks!</blockquote>

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