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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7095521" data-attributes="member: 42582">Generally, I like to present situations in such a way that the players, in playing their characters, have a reason to act. This goes back to <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">Eero Tuovinen's "standard narrativistic model"</a>:One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . . Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . . The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules.If a player's response to a situation that I frame is to have his/her PC do nothing, then I've clearly framed a dud scene. In practice, because these things are happening via back-and-forth, if I can see that the situation I'm narrating is not engaging the player(s) via their PC(s), I'll change focus or add something in to correct for the initial misfiring.I guess it could happen. I don't think it would happen - it doesn't sound all that interesting. A bit of light colour, perhaps. Certainly not worthy of a check.More generally, I don't see why the idea of most action declarations having a purpose behind them, connected to the stakes of the evolving ingame circumstances, is dull. Whereas, given that I find shopping for clothes in real life rather tedious, why would I want to spend my leisure time pretending to be shopping for clothes?That's kind of the point, though. In my preferred approach, there is no the challenge. If the PCs enter the fortress via a secret door, the GM's job is to narrate the resultant situation in such a way that it contains complication that forces a choice.My game has plenty of mystery without the additional mystery of "Do we have any reason to care about this?"As for depth: in my personal experience I haven't found random encounters with owlbears to add all that much depth. I tend to find that the "depth" of the gameworld is a product of immersion in compelling ingame situations, rather than a product of the accumulation of random details.The last claim is not true. It makes a huge difference, as a player, if I'm trying to divine the content of the GM's notes or if I'm trying to play my character, engage the fiction, and find out what sort of stuff ensues.But they're not.Again, all I can do is reiterate: there is a huge difference between playing a game in which the goal is to discover (say) whether or not the GM has decided that the Dusk War is pending, and playing a game where your PCs are trying to show to the cosmos that the Dusk War is not pending, and you (as a player) are trying as hard to do that as your PCs are.</blockquote>

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