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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7088393" data-attributes="member: 16814">Well, you use it inconsistently, so perhaps that's the confusion.  I had thought it meant 'stuff the DM made up that the players don't know' and that 'using this stuff secretly to determine the outcome of player declarations is bad' was separate.  After reading this, I think that 'secret backstory' is just 'using this stuff secretly to determine the outcome of player declarations."  Which is a weird construct, but you're welcome to it.  And my response to 'secret backstory' as you've framed is it that I don't use secret backstory in my DM driven games.Again, I'm glad we've decided that 'secret backstory' means 'using secret stuff secretly to determine the outcome of player declarations.'  Much back and forth would have been avoided had you said this, and I'm sure that many posters that have responded to you may change their responses given the newly clarified definition.I really do not care what the Forge calls things.My response was specifically generated by your holding out the on-the-spot generated 'foreshadowing' of the stealing of the mace by the Elf in the Elf poisoning the water-hole.  That was you trying to show how your method can generate the same outcome as a more DM driven foreshadowed reveal.  My entire point is that such 'story now' elements only create a good, well-integrated story because they're viewed through the lens of survivor bias -- the things that happened that ended up mattering are all that are considered; the things that ended up not mattering, but happened, are forgotten about.In short, your idea of a good, well-integrated story is more akin to the anthropic principle:  the things that happen had to happen for the story that emerged, therefore it was a good, well-intergrated story.  This ignores all the things that happened that didn't matter to the story.This cuts directly against your assertion that the Elf ended up as good foreshadowing, though, and goes, again, to survivor bias.  Since the Elf ended up mattering, he's been remembered.  Had a player not reintroduced the Elf as an important plot point later in the game, thereby authoring the backstory, then the Elf wouldn't have mattered and couldn't have been foreshadowing.  If your best example of how your style exhibits foreshadowing can be dismissed so easily, then I challenge that it actually does this in the first place.Why would you ask me?  Did I say that?  I've looked back, and it appears your authoring of that backstory is inconsistent with established events.That said, I strongly doubt that you or your players review the playlogs for consistency when establishing new backstory.  I'm uninterested in going through your curated logs for evidence, though, and am fully comfortable resting on the assumption that, at some point, you've all forgotten something that happened before because it was a one-off and have authored something that contravenes it.And, to forestall the sputtering, I've done that in my more DM driven games.  Assuming people forget stuff and countermand in by accident over multiple years of gaming isn't an attempted insult -- it's unavoidable.Ah, then I misread that, I recalled it as more open that just character goals.  I've never forgotten character goals, either, because, as you say, the players really don't let you.No, you've, once again, misunderstood a point.  This was a continuation of things that integrate into a story.  You just said that you have one-off characters, that do something in the moment and then move on, and that some are more lingering than others.  So, you've just agreed with the point I just made -- some things get thrown at the story wall to see if they stick, some do, some don't.  The Elf stuck.  The Dark Naga stuck.  The Good Naga is slithering towards the ground.  I'm sure there's things you've forgotten happened that are further towards the ground than the Good Naga.  This isn't an insult, it's an objective appraisal of how cooperative storytelling works:  not everything is a hit.And that point tied back into my wider point about survivor bias, which again seems relevant. If you can't even admit that not everything sticks around as part of the well-integrated story, then you've obviously unwilling to examine those things that were done and moved on and had little real impact on the players or story.</blockquote>

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