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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7054866" data-attributes="member: 42582">What I've quoted is what I have in mind.In the context of the post about plot: if the players don't know what the backstory is - it's just something in the GM's notes - then (whatever else it might be) that backstory is not the plot of the game: it is nothing like "the main events, forming an interrelated sequence".I have read modules that suffer from this issue (eg just recently, prompted by a thread on rpg.net, I've been looking at some of my OA modules that I've never run): they have all this backstory, which the module writer appears to regard as highly significant, but that - if the module is run more-or-less as presented - is quite unlikely to ever come out, let alone matter, at the table. Whatever we make of that stuff (eg I think of it basically as filler), it is is not going to amount to the plot of the adventure when run.Maybe, although it's not something I would ever have come up with on my own, and my knowledge of theatre is weak enough that in saying "maybe" I might be making commitments that I'm not aware of!<a href="https://www.rpg.net/oracle/authors/chrisk.html" target="_blank">Christopher Kubasik's "Interactive Tookit"</a> is one set of ideas that I have drawn from. He offers the following advice on GMing (and he uses "Story Entertainment" to describe his approach to RPGing):Let's start with roleplaying's GM (referee, Storyteller or whatever). This is usually the person who works out the plot, the world and everything that isn't the players'. To a greater or lesser degree, she is above the other players in importance, depending on the group's temperament. In a Story Entertainment, she is just another player. Distinctly different, but no more and no less than any other player. The terms GM and referee fail to convey this spirit of equality. The term Storyteller suggests that the players are passive listeners of her tale. So here's another term for this participant - one that invokes the spirit of Story Entertainments - Fifth Business. Fifth Business is a term that originates from European opera companies. A character from Robertson Davies' novel, The Fifth Business, describes the' term this way: You cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business. You must have a Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody's death, if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without the Fifth Business! This certainly sounds a lot like a GM, but it also makes it clear that he's part of the show, not the show itself. Let's call the players the Leads. They're not players in the GM's game. They're participants in a story. The Fifth Business has a lot more work to do than do the Leads, changing costumes and shaping the story while it's in progress. But the Leads are equal to the Fifth Business. The Leads must react to the characters, incidents and information that the Fifth Business offers, just as players must react to what the GM offers in a roleplaying game. But the Fifth Business must always be on his toes and react to what the Leads offer. Why? Because in a Story Entertainment the story doesn't belong to the Fifth Business. The Fifth Business can't decide what the plot is going to be and then run the players through it like mice in a maze. The Leads determine the direction of the story when they create their characters. Remember our definition of plot from the start of this article? What do the characters want? What are their goals? The story is about the attempt to gain those goals. The Fifth Business creates obstacles to those goals.That's not a bad account of how I prefer to GM a game.On the issue of improvisation: as I posted somewhere upthread, I prep things (eg statblocks, maps of locations, etc - either myself, or by using the pubilshed works of others, like modules, Monster Manuals etc). So not every element that I introduce into the game is improvised in that sense. But its introduction into the game is triggered by the events of play. Eg in my BW game I had statted up a renegade elven wanderer, as (i) I'd just downloaded the relevant supplement and wanted to take it out for a spin, and (ii) one of the PCs was an elven ronin-type who had the Belief "Always keep the elven ways", and a renegade elf seemed like a good way to put pressure on that Belief in some fashion. (The fact that I knew of that Belief reveals another dimension to prep, that Kubasik also flags - the players' have set goals/orientations/themes for their PCs.)When the players were trekking across the Bright Desert to the Abor-Alz, and failed a relevant check, I got my chance: when they arrived at the waterhole at the edge of the desert (where the streams pool before flowing on again and draining into the desert sands), they found that it had been fouled - someone had anticipated their arrival. Investigation revealed that this was the work of an elf, but only a filthy renegade elf would do such a thing! (As it turned out, the elf was working for the dark naga - when the PCs later captured and killed him, that created the context in which the naga needed a new servant, and hence dominated the PC who therefore needed a vessel to catch the blood.)So the elf as a stat block and concept was not improvised. But the elf as an antagonist in the fiction was introduced in an improvisational way. As a general rule, in a "fail forward" style of play the consequences of failure can't be narrated except in light of what is at stake in the check; and that can't be known until the check is declared; and hence all checks have (of necessity) an improvisational dimension to their resolution.No. The PCs might learn of it in other ways. (See eg <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?484945-Session-report-the-Mausoleum-of-the-Raven-Queen" target="_blank">this actual play post</a>, where I describe a session in which the PC's explored the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, and learned quite a bit of history in the process.)But if the players don't know something, than - by definition, almost - it is not part of the shared fiction.Well, presumably all sorts of things are happening in the gameworld that the PCs don't know about. But in so far as the players don't know about those things, they're not part of the shared fiction of the game.That sort of stuff would be a consequence of action resolution, not an input into it. Or it might be an element in framing.For instance, in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?490454-Session-report-reposted-PCs-stave-of-the-Dusk-War-by-negotiating-with-Yan-C-Bin-and-defeating-the-tarrasque" target="_blank">this session</a> the PCs - having received warning while in the Raven Queen's Mausoleum that the tarrasque had returned to the world - went out to hunt said tarrasque. They found it easily enough, but accompanying it (at a safe distance) were some maruts, who explained that, in accordance with a contract made with the Raven Queen millenia ago, they were there to ensure the realisation of the end times, and to stop anyone interfering with the tarrasque as an engine of this destruction and a herald of the beginning of the end times and the arrival of the Dusk War.Or, in an <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?355600-Session-report-(Apect-of)-Vecna-defeated-demon-bargained-with" target="_blank">earlier session</a>, the PCs spoke to a demon imprisoned on the Feywild, and learned from it that learned that it had been summoned long ago during the Dawn War ("When Miska's armies were marshalling on the Plain of a Thousand Portals") by a powerful drow who had come into the Abyss, in order to ambush a strong and cruel sorceress. But the sorceress had defeated it and trapped it in the grove. (When they asked it the name of the sorceress, it replied that the name had been erased from its memory - and so they worked out that the "sorceress" was the Raven Queen, and hence that the summoner must be Lolth. They later saw a mural in the Raven Queen's mausoleum recording her victory over this demon.)The backstory is something that informs framing and emerges as part of the process of play. It is not a separate and prior element that I, as GM, use to adjudicate action resolution.</blockquote>

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