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="Campbell" data-source="post: 7066166" data-attributes="member: 16586">One of my intellectual interests is more modern approaches to understanding markets as a way to analyze human behavior. One of the guiding principles of market design is every participant decides their own level and type of involvement in any given market. This has application in software engineering, the way we approach relationships, and I believe has a fundamental impact on GMing. The concept of a hook implies that we must either bite it or not. As GMs I think we should strive to offer the players to approach the fiction as they see fit. Instead of thinking in terms of hooks I think it is far more useful to think in terms of providing opportunities for players to resolve their characters own goals and desires. Blades in the Dark says to Provide Opportunities, Follow Their Lead. The basic conceit is that you provide them with information they can use, and they determine how to act on that information if at all. One of their rivals is being closed in on by their enemies. Do they take this as an opportunity to deliver a telling blow to that rival? Do they support them in order to rehabilitate that relationship? Do they stand back and hope their enemies finish each other off? Do they engage in a bidding war for who to support? Asking a series of provocative questions here can be really helpful, but we should strive not to put designs on what they do. Whatever the case, follow their lead and be a curious explorer of the fiction. Leave room for lateral thinking.One of the things I am careful to do in my own GMing is to not prepare social or combat encounters. I leave that choice up to the players in how they choose to engage with the fiction. They are showing you their interests through the actions they take. Embrace that.I believe we have to be careful about our use of the implied social cache of the GM not to prod or pull too much. We should be asking questions more than providing answers to create an inquisitive spirit in our players and to enable them to make choices about how they approach the situation.</blockquote>

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