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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7054699" data-attributes="member: 42582">But I don't think we're talking in circles! You asked, "How would a game have backstory and a 'plot' if the GM doesn't provide it. I answered.Yes, the answer includes doing things differently from Gygaxian dungeon crawl style. But we've known that, in the context of this thread, at least since  [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] posted outlining three different approaches to player-driven RPGing (Gygaxian; what he called "scene-framing"; and what he called "principle GMing" - I tend to blur those last two together as "modern" or "indie"-style, but that taxonomic issue shouldn't matter to you because it still makes the contrast with Gygaxian sandbox-style clear.)And as I replied to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] upthread, there is nothing about 5e that stops it being run in a player-driven fashion of an "indie" style, provided that the GM adopts some appropriate a techniques in calling for non-combat checks and setting the DCs for them, and provided that the inspiration mechanic is engaged to a suitable degree.But D&D does not "traditionally" have a more DM-driven style, does it? It does assume GM control over backstory, but not GM control over the events of play. In Gygax's PHB and DMG, he assumes that the players will be the ones who choose what part of the dungeon to target, whether to negotiate, fight or flee from encountered creatures, what equipment to take with them, etc.I think it's pretty helpful to distinguish backstory from plot. Designing a dungeon, mapping it, placing all the creature and treasure - that's backstory, which will include some game-world history.But what the players choose to do when they encounter the dungeon - eg does Robilar free the trapped gods; or Erca's Cousin free Fraz-Urb'luu from imprisonment? - is not something the GM is at lbierty to make up. Those events are initiated and driven by the players, and they are what establish the plot of the campaign.Of course from the perspective of the ingame inhabitants they are all just events, but that perspective is not useful for analysing the play of the game.I think there is a narrow, more technical answer to this, and then a broader one as well.The narrow answer: if you declare that you are looking for a diamond in the room, and the check is framed and you fail, then you are going to have to deal with the resulting consequence of failure. (For elaboration, see my reply to  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] not far upthread of this.) And "let it ride" also applies. So the game is not just going to hang, static, waiting for you as a player to roll up diamonds for your PC.Because no PC in this particular game has ever been on the hunt for diamonds, this particular issue has never come up. But a similar one has: a PC mage had returned with the party to the ruined tower where he once lived studying under his brother's tutelage before they fled when the tower was assaulted by orcs (this was part of the PC's backstory; the brother is the mage who was decapitated in the tower by the assassin, having been possessed by a balrog when the attempt to cast a spell to repel the orcs failed). Another part of the PC's backstory stated that, in the tower, he had left behind The Falcon's Claw, a nickel-silver mace which he was preparing to receive enchantments. Having now returned to the tower after lo those many years, a search was made for the mace. This was framed as a check in the same way as looking for a vessel in the bedroom. The check failed; and so the PC did not find any mace. Instead, he found a collection of cursed arrows in the ruins of what had been his brother's private workroom - this discovery therefore (i) implicating his brother in the manufacture of the arrow that had killed another PC's (the elven ronin's) master; and (ii) implying that his brother was evil before being possessed by a balrog, rather than as a result of it.So for all sorts of reasons, of which the threat of adverse consequences on failure is just one, it makes no sense for a player to just go around declaring attempts to find stuff that his/her PC wants.The broader answer is this: the reason for playing a RPG, as I take it, isn't so that one's PC (who is purely imaginary) experiences wealth and pleasure in the fiction (which is all purely imaginary). It's so that you, the player, actually experience, in the real world, the satisfaction of playing a game. If that satisfaction mostly comes from having a really long equipment list full of diamonds, then probably the sort of game I run is not the best for you. But that's not the only way to get satisfaction out of a RPG.</blockquote>

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