Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9543421">But this seems needlessly pedantic if you understood his meaning. I think a lot of these debates actually revolve around this. While I appreciate your desire for precision and understand that is what some people want, not everyone writes, speaks or reads that way. I don't want precise language from gaming manuals. I actually want more metaphor and colorful language that helps give me the idea. And I even like vagueness in my game books. I get there is a whole approach to design and to talking about gaming, where you look at the pole vault footage. That isn't how everyone learns this stuff. I approach it more like stand up comedy, where I pay attention to what works and what doesn't at the table but I don't break down the process into discrete parts (I find it loses its spirit and organic quality when you do that). If this kind of assessment of GMing works for you, that is fine. But not everyone needs or wants this kind of approach And again no one denies the creative role the GM has here. But there are different ways to do this. There are ways that make it about "Something dramatic will happen and it will be X" versus "here's a conflict,  or better yet, here is another NPC who wants something that interferes with things, let's see what happens". You are still throwing the ball back to the players and trying to adapt in good faith to their actions. It isn't just the GM making stuff up. The Players are actively involved, through their characters, in where this campaign goes (none of them are under any illusion that they created "Brick McCoy" who tried to take over their business, but their actions and choices clearly led to that even being viable for the GM to do. You've made history and a situation. That isn't a story in my view. Now if you say "the story so far is..." and go into that. I won't stop you. I get what you mean but that. But once we get into what ought to be happening on the GM side of things, I am wary of adopting that language. I am with you half way here. You absolutely should be creating the side of the conflict involving characters other than the party. But they are a part of this conflict, and they will have a say in how it could be resolved. I don't mean the player out of character ought to be setting the terms for how this conflict is to be resolved, but the GM shouldn't just dictate that this or that is the way for this conflict to be resolved. The GM doesn't even know what the players are going to do yet to resolve it. He should be open to their efforts I can't speak to those GMs. I am sure plenty of GMs either say they play one way but play another. And yes some GMs run a very boring sandbox (though if you find yourself in that game you should look around the table and make sure it isn't just you being bored because sometimes a group likes things you don't). But I also think the style of gaming I am talking about can be tremendous fun. One thing I will say is you should never let online gaming ideologies control your table. If you are trying to run a sandbox and intentionally avoiding story or plot or dramatic twists, but your game is dull as hell, you need to throw in something dramatic. It is great to talk about these things, but ultimately you have to serve the table and players you have before you and adapt Sure, I don't disagree with this. I would throw this back at you (but to be clear no insult intended). But either you don't understand sandbox, or you don't understand how I run sandboxes. I have to run, but if you are running a sandbox and prep it right, there may be a lot of prep before hand, but sandboxes become very low prep once the world starts to come alive with power groups, conflict, etc. I do maintenance prep week to week as things develop, but every session my goal is to respond to the players and let things play out organically. The worldbuidling before a sandbox is heavy. It requires effort. My point is you can have a very low prep campaign in a sandbox once it starts and it can go on for years that way (because you aren't planing an entire adventure week to week but letting the players actions dictate where things go)</blockquote>

Verification