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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9002511" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, its perfectly reasonable, and expected, that the PCs don't know about all the things that might be going on in the world, and all of those which might even be relevant to them. OTOH, nothing IMHO is canonical and actually is 'true' until it has shown up in a scene with the PCs. The story is ABOUT the PCs, but it does include other characters. What we're avoiding here is the sort of elaborate meta-plot and associated detailed descriptions of NPCs and locations and such that leads to play which is ABOUT those things and puts them ahead of character. This can be kind of a subtle distinction I guess, but one key point is the 'holes' in the maps, some things may be out there which the GM has defined and can be located or can take some action, but in the end these things are either just footnotes, or they bear on the story of the characters and impact their goals and needs in some way. The orc horde may be out there, unknown to the PCs. It may come to threaten their homes at some point, but the story will be about how they deal with it, not the history, goals, population, and ecology of orcs (those facts might arise incidentally as useful information though). If you think about it, there really aren't that many trad games where things aren't ACTUALLY built around what would make a good PC story, its just that the nature of that story is generally authored by the GM. In the DW orc horde scenario, the orc king is going to have his goblin minions kidnap the fighter's sister BECAUSE its about the fighter and makes a good story about the fighter. We are asking &quot;what will you do to fight for your family?&quot; Maybe we'll even make it a hard choice, family or town! In a D&amp;D game the same event would be a set up for running through a GM designed rescue mission.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 9002511, member: 82106"] Right, its perfectly reasonable, and expected, that the PCs don't know about all the things that might be going on in the world, and all of those which might even be relevant to them. OTOH, nothing IMHO is canonical and actually is 'true' until it has shown up in a scene with the PCs. The story is ABOUT the PCs, but it does include other characters. What we're avoiding here is the sort of elaborate meta-plot and associated detailed descriptions of NPCs and locations and such that leads to play which is ABOUT those things and puts them ahead of character. This can be kind of a subtle distinction I guess, but one key point is the 'holes' in the maps, some things may be out there which the GM has defined and can be located or can take some action, but in the end these things are either just footnotes, or they bear on the story of the characters and impact their goals and needs in some way. The orc horde may be out there, unknown to the PCs. It may come to threaten their homes at some point, but the story will be about how they deal with it, not the history, goals, population, and ecology of orcs (those facts might arise incidentally as useful information though). If you think about it, there really aren't that many trad games where things aren't ACTUALLY built around what would make a good PC story, its just that the nature of that story is generally authored by the GM. In the DW orc horde scenario, the orc king is going to have his goblin minions kidnap the fighter's sister BECAUSE its about the fighter and makes a good story about the fighter. We are asking "what will you do to fight for your family?" Maybe we'll even make it a hard choice, family or town! In a D&D game the same event would be a set up for running through a GM designed rescue mission. [/QUOTE]

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