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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7053789" data-attributes="member: 42582">The two most recent campaigns I have started are a 4e Dark Sun game, and (last weekend) a Cortex Fantasy Hack game. Here are links to session writeups for <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?490456-Repost-first-session-of-Dark-Sun-campaign" target="_blank">Dark Sun</a> and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?530990-Into-the-North-Cortex-Plus-Heroic-Fantasy-actual-play" target="_blank">Cortex fantasy</a>.In the Dark Sun campaign, here is how we worked out the temporal and geographic starting point for the campaign:In other words, a part of the process of a player writing his PC's backstory settled that the game started in the arena at the moment of the sorcerer-king's assassination.In the Cortex game, the starting point was worked out in this way:So the basic logic of the game - what it is that the PCs are trying to achieve - was established by the players, again as part of the process (in effect) of establishing PC backstory.This is why I simply don't agree that the heavy listing of setting has to be done by the GM. The plot is created in play, by the play of the game.Eg the PC arrives in the bedroom just as the mage he is hoping to take back to his dark naga master for sacrificial purposes is decapitated by an assassin. Knowing that his master wants to spill the blood of this mage, the PC thinks "I need a vessel to catch the blood". The player declares, as an action, "I look around for a suitable vessel to catch the blood, like a chamber pot or a jug." A check is framed and resolved, and it succeeds. So now that player has a chamber pot, and is collecting blood.That's plot, and it doesn't depend upon GM authorship.After some action dominated by the other PC, the two PCs escape the tower, the first one carrying the vessels of blood (the chamber pot having been established via a check, it's mere embellishment to also allow that there a jug as well and hence two vessels' worth of blood) and the other carrying two bodies - the decapitated mage, and the unconscious assassin (whom the body-carrying PC is hoping will help summon the spirit of the decapitated mage for interrogation purposes).The PCs are now moving through the town. As just described, one of them is carrying two bodies. I call for a check - there is definitely something at stake here, so I'm not just going to "say 'yes'". The check fails, and so I narrate an encounter with the watch. The PCs try to persuade the watch to help them carry the bodies; it fails. The watch suspect they are murderers.That's more plot, not authored by the GM. My contributions are (i) to call for the check - which is not an act of authorship, but an act of pacing management - and (ii) to narrate the consequence of failure. (Had the initial check succeeded, the PCs would have got their bodies and blood across town without trouble; had the persuasion attempt succeeded, the watch would have helped them with their body-snatching.)The vessel-carrying PC tries to summon a spirit of the sky to push the watch members away, so that the two PCs can flee. Again, something is at stake so I'm not just gong to "say 'yes'". I call for a roll; it fails; the angry sky spirits hurl a bolt of lightning at the PC. Another check (analogous to a saving throw) establishes that although the lightning hurts him slightly, he doesn't spill his vessels of blood (again, something is at stake and so no "saying 'yes'").That's more plot, once again emerging from the interaction between (i) PC action declarations, (ii) GM judgement about whether or not a check is needed, and (iii) narration of the consequences of failure of the framed check.Notice also what is not happening. There is no GM decision that no vessel can be found. There is no GM decision that the bodies are too heavy to carry. There is no GM decision that persuading the watch to help with body-snatching is too implausible. There is no GM decision that the sky spirits won't hear the PC's call for help because (say) to carry blood in an open vessel is an act of desecration. At each point, the players choose what response their PCs make to the situation that confronts them; a check is framed; and the check is then resolved, with the players getting what they wanted on success and the GM getting to narrate the consequences of failure.That's one example of how a game can have a plot without the GM writing one (either in advance or on the spot).Your PCs seem to be making a category error! If the PC looks for a diamond they might find it - after all, there are diamonds in the world and there's no apriori reason why one of them may not be right here! - but it is not looking for it that makes it appear. It is looking for it that results in it being found. (Which is a pretty typical causal process.)At the game table, there is a question of how the group decides whether or not the shared fiction includes a large diamond here and now. A dice roll against a DC is as good a method as any, and better than some.(This is all assuming that the presence or not of the diamond is an outcome - something of significance - and hence merits a rolling of the dice.)Again, simply not true in my experience. 15-odd years ago, in my OA Rolemaster campaign, a major plot point was the constables of heaven seeking to arrest one of the PCs - a fox spirit - for breaking the rules surrounding his banishment from heaven to earth. The whole idea that the character had been a heavenly spirit banished to earth was made up by the player - up until the player made up that bit of backstory, I assumed that the PC was a fox who was trying to turn into a human (like the movie Green Snake).I've posted examples in this thread of players providing the core material and focus for the framing of the game: through authorship of PC backstory and goals; through action declarations in pursuit of those goals.How do the players know what is going on and what is possible? From the logic of the agreed setting; of core tropes; of what the mechanics permit; of what is written into their backstories. For instance, in the Cortex session the player of the party leader, during negotiations with a giant chieftain, spent a plot point (roughly = a fate point in the Cortex engine) to establish, as a resource, a giant shaman in the chieftain's hall who agreed with the PCs about the need for the giant chieftain to help the PCs with their mission. He knew this was possible, because (i) the rules allows him to spend a point to create a resource, (ii) he has the Social Expert speciality and so is adept in making friends (ie Social resources), and (iii) we already knew that shamanic types are part of the setting because (a) vikings and (b) a seer was one of the pre-gens that I had written up (although no player had chosen to play it).I'm not saying that what I've described in this post is the only way, or the best way to run a RPG. But I know, from experience, that it is one way. (And is my favourite way.) And it doesn't depend upon the GM being sole or primary author of backstory, and it doesn't depend upon the GM to "lead" the players to adventure, and it doesn't depend upon the GM having authority over the plot. It does depend upon the players having a solid handle on the genre/trope/theme parameters of the game, and the GM having a solid handle on what the PC goals/drives/motivations/etc are. (For a fuller elaboration of these requirements, see my quote of Eero Tuovinen in post 88 upthread.) EDITED TO ADD:I actually find this very hard to take seriously. It seems to completely disregard most of what I've posted in this thread.(1) How can the players determine the odds of success as well as me? They have an obvious and deep conflict of interest.(2) What would make you say that "I'm not making any decisions"? Narrating consequences of failure, and framing the situation, are key decisions. But they're not decisions that establish the plot.(3) What makes you refer to "randomly determining events in the game"? No where in any post have I referred to random determination of events. In fact, it's all deliberate. Hence a thread about GM judgement calls. (The players roll dice, which determines whether they succeed or fail. But the consequences of success aren't random - they've been chosen by the player. And the consequences of failure aren't random - they've been chosen by the GM.)(4) What GM screen? The only time I ever used a screen is for an hour or two of a 4e game after I got one in a GM pack. I thought I'd see what it was like: it was a pain and seemed to add nothing useful to [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]'s handy cheat sheets.(5) This particular post makes me wonder whether you have any experience of playing the sort of game I'm describing, or even have any exposure to it as a phenomenon. It makes me wonder what you think games like Marvel Heroic, Burning Wheel, Dungeon World and the rest of the PtbA stable, etc, are actually about.</blockquote>

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