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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6741794" data-attributes="member: 6667193">That's certainly one way of looking at it, but it is definitely not how I run games. NPCs can and will be agents of change just as often as the PCs will be, and plots can and will change over time in the game regardless of whether or not the PCs choose to participate in them or even attempt to learn about them or not. Different NPCs will have different levels of impact just like players that show up weekly will have a greater impact than those that show up monthly. Anybody who sits down at my game expecting this perfectly neutral arbitrater who relies mostly on dice to respond to player actions is going to be severely disappointed. I rely on the dice at exactly the same level as the players, no more and no less. If my players want to be able to effect NPCs with dice rolls, it can be used against them in similar circumstances; if they want to stick to strictly roleplay, pulling out dice only for combat or really tough situations, than the NPCs will as well. I do try to balance this out by providing documents describing the key parts of the world and campaign as far as they have been developed to this point, and I constantly am updating those documents with new informaton as the campaign develops, but if a player isn't willing to spend a half hour out of game to read them, I can't do much to help them. While there are DMs out there that can do a really good job of descriptions while also managing the other parts of the game, I am not one of them, and I have seen out of the more than a dozen DMs I've played under maybe 2 or 3 that I would consider truly proficient at it.I do not personally enjoy playing in, nor will I ever run, a campaign where the DM is simply a narrator who uses dice to resolve uncertainty. I don't want a world or NPCs that simply respond to my actions; I want a world and NPCs that give me something to respond to as much as I give them stuff to respond to. It's very much a two way street. I have never liked the idea that somehow NPCs and PCs are fundamentally different, not in video games and not at the table. The DM may not have the same role as the players, but that doesn't make the DM's role any less active on the roleplay side. Just because an NPC will only show up for that scene, doesn't mean that I put any less effort into running that NPC as true as possible to the paragraph of information I've worked up for them than the players put into their characters.</blockquote>

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