NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7058406" data-attributes="member: 29398">Because then you could have built clues around it (whether legitimate or not), had results of second-party interactions influence the party (e.g. someone who had been wronged by the brother later interacts with the PCs), and - to use your term - used it as a lens through which to frame scenes.  Hard to do any of that if you don't know ahead of time what you've got to work with.I've no way of knowing as I'm not privy to the party's past dealings (if any) with any of the various people they interacted with in that posted segment.Because they are.That probably sounds like a dumb answer, so let me try to elaborate.A book author, playwright or screen-writer has the huge advantage of knowing where the end will be before they start, and of knowing or alone determining the path taken to get there.  This gives them the ability to write whatever bits strike their fancy and then tie those bits together later.  The reader/viewer obviously doesn't know any of this, they just get to enjoy the finished product.An RPG takes a group of players, puts them into characters, drops them into a game world or setting, and turns them loose.  After this, both game-world time* and real-world time can only move in one direction: forward.  So, something that's in the past for the characters is also in the past* for the players.  What this forces, however, is a different approach to authorship (usually) by the DM; in that this world or setting the PCs are bashing around in has to be robust enough to withstand what they do to it, it has to be internally consistent and maintain that throughout, and it has to be alive in that it's constantly changing no matter what the PCs do to it.* - with occasional exceptions involving either adventures in time travel (very messy but it can be done) or running concurrent parties in the same game world where you in effect go through the same time period once for each active party (really really messy if you're not careful and-or you don't know what you're doing).So, while in an authored work it's (usually) easy to see the cause-and-effect in the end even if they weren't authored in that order, in an RPG the cause has to be in place first to both allow for the effect to happen later and - in some situations - allow the cause to itself be noticed and interacted with.  And that's the DM's job.In that immediate moment.They succeed in their task of getting the new Duke on the throne.  Hurrahs all round!  Drinks on the duchy tonight!  Only the DM knows he's in fact an idiot (but with really good Charisma/Bluff/whatever abilities) who hasn't got a clue how to run a duchy and, if left to his own devices, will bankrupt the place in a year while the palace halls run red with the blood of the innocent. Disappointment or a major after-the-fact facepalm is sometimes a fact of life, both in reality and - one would think - in the game world.  What were we thinking when we put that jackass on the throne?  Sigh.  Now we've got to get him off it again.  Oh, and by the way, the locals know we were backing him and they're on their way here right now holding pitchforks and torches on high...There shouldn't be any mysteries for the GM - only knowledge.  Mysteries are for the players.The vampire's not evil but if revealed most people - commoners, nobility, and so on - will naturally assume that he is, and act accordingly.  Also, what nobody knows is that (in different guises and names) he's been running things from behind the scenes for about 300 years. (in my actual campaign he's been Emperor twice under the same name of Kallios: the first time he was mortal for most of his run, becoming a vampire only near the end; the second time was about 200 years later when, at a loss to find a malleable figurehead to put on the throne, he disguised himself and put himself back on it as Kallios II.  This lasted for about 7 years at which point he found a suitable replacement, "died", and things went from there)Lanefan</blockquote>

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