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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5502880" data-attributes="member: 42582">I prefer a game of adventure rather than laundry. But I also tend to prefer that any big overarching plot be the product of play, and the choices of my players, rather than be set up by me behind the scenes.Which links back to the idea of "relationship maps", and also Paul Czege's comments about keeping NPC personalities flexible - I like to have a degree of backstory to work with, but exactly what the "big plot" might be, and the details of each NPCs' place in that "big plot", is something worked out in the course of playing the game, as scenes are framed and the players engage and resolve them.Well, for me this links back to the much-debated skill challenge structure.One issue in GMing in an improv fashion - including the sort of improv described in the previous paragraph, of working with a loose backstory plus player concerns and interests revealed in actual play to shape and gradually unfold a "big plot" - is coming up with new and interesting ideas and incorporating them into the game.A mechanic like a skill challenge, and other mechanics that it resembles like HeroWars/Quest extended contests, help with this issue by supporting the introduction of complications into scenes. They do this in two ways: (i) by mandating the introduction of complications at certain points in the game - they stop the GM from being forgetful or blase in this respect; and (ii) because of the triggers for this mandate, they help make sure that the GM has something interesting to work with (namely, the material provided by the players) to help shape and introduce those complications.To me, this seems to be something like the opposite approach to RPGing to the one you articulated upthread, where the mechanics are in principle invisible and the fiction unfolds purely by its own internal logic. Are you able to say anything about how you improvise under that approach? Is it important to incorporate players ideas/contributions, or is the GM the arbiter of what fits into the fiction?</blockquote>

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