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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7644519" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Certain authors are notorious for having laid out the world in excruciating detail before putting pen to paper about the story itself. I would argue that, given their age at time of writing, neither Tolkien nor CS Lewis were RPGers, but both noted their worlds are modeled first, then written. Doc Smith clearly has more ideas than make it into Lensman, things that retain internal sense, but are not actually detailed out in the novels, and has a deep seated sense of how it worked. Verne was notorious for his attentions to minute (and manufacturable) detail; his radium driven Nautilus is astonishingly excellent as a prediction of the technology. And HG Wells was a gamer, albeit a miniatures wargamer, not an RPGer, but his writings have the same level of world creation as any RPG-fiction writer. Hell, I'd love to see what HG would have done with an RPG... as his Little Wars is a delightful read, and not a bad game at all.  In your playstyle, perhaps.In Burning Wheel, playing to push your character's goals over those of other characters is explicitly part of the intent. And why the game has a "any conflict needs a roll" rule within it.Alien, the preview "Cinematic Starter Kit" explicitly has hidden agendas for the PCs.You're being rather noisesomely chauvinistic  about your play style over all others.My preferred style is no in-party violence, and only limited in party conflict. I want players to engage both with their character and the story... But there are many styles of play that, in the right groups, work. The character building process in quite a few games begins with generating game stats, not story elements.Old school D&D, for one.Traveller... the backstory even is generated mechanically in CT, MT, TNE, T4, T20, and T5....R Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk (2013/2020) and Mekton (I, II, Z) have random backstory generation and random attribute generation (albeit roll them all, then place).Many groups, the story arises out of play, not out of some prior fictional stricture. The character often arises out of the stats and the play, rather than the other direction. GM as operating system for an open world, rather than GM as story pusher.Some people can't handle random generation conceptually. Others can't handle non-random conceptually, tho' that's a bit less common.  Most can handle either, but prefer one or the other. Ideally, the game arises out of a combination of the group-members' desires and their interactions with the rules at a level comfortable for all involved.</blockquote>

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