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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7082527" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, that is pretty different from how I run a game.I don't run what you call "field adventures". And I frame the PCs into situations that speak to their needs and aspirations as characters.That might be a reasonable description of your job. It's a terrible description of mine, though!My job (as I conceive of it) is to apply pressure to the players, by presenting to them ingame situations that - in light of their PCs' concerns, aspirations, etc -drive those PCs to action. To quote <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1361" target="_blank">Paul Czege</a>,Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. <snip> I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. <snip> I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. <snip> the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.I suspect my RPGing is pretty lowbrow by Czege's standards, but his statement of method is one that I often come back to. The gameworld is not something that I present "neutrally". I'm doing my best to turn that "firehose of adversity and situation" onto the PCs: to force the players to make choices that will push them in terms of their aspirations and motivations (both in character, and in their capacity as third-person-barrackers-for-their-PCs).In my experience, that's how RPGing produces dramatic characters and dramatic story.</blockquote>

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