Crimson Longinus
Legend
I'm not being contrary. I'm talking about what I am looking for in RPGing - which is not to be entertained (nor, as GM, to be an entertainer).
The poetic character of a description is important to (some) poetry. I don't regard it as important to GMing. As I said, I think advice to GMs that emphasises evocative descriptions and the like - and such advice in my experience is pretty common - is not very helpful advice. I think the key GM skill is to be able to frame compelling scenes, and then narrate powerful consequences. And what makes these compelling and powerful is their content - in particular, the patterns/connections/relationships that are part of that content, and that locate it as meaningful to the PC and thus the player who is inhabiting that PC.
What makes it feel real is the reality of that meaning.
When the GM tells me (as Thurgon) that I find letters in Evard's tower, what makes the scene matter is not any description of the feel or smell of the paper, or the texture of the ink. It is the description of what those letters say, because what they say reveals something new and disturbing about my (ie Thurgon's) mother and heritage.
If you mean that content matters more than presentation, then that would sound pretty sensible. But you seem to dismiss presentation altogether. But I strongly feel that presentation is vital, it is what makes you feel that you're in the world. The GM is not portraying NPCs vividly just to make the players marvel how funny, weird or scary they are. They do it to make the players feel like they're actually interacting with this fictional character, making them feel like a real person. Same with describing the environments and situations. It is to make the players feel that they're truly there. I think that making the world seem real is one of the most important jobs of the GM, as it is the prerequisite for the payers to immerse in it, and interact with it as part of it.
Well, I feel like I've been articulating "situation first" in most of my posts over the past 10 or 20 pages. In short, it is what it says on the tin.
Here is "backstory first": the GMing process begins with backstory/setting, with the basic process of play being that the revelation of that backstory/setting to the players - in response to their action declarations like we go <here> or we talk to <so-and-so> or we search <this place or thing> - "activates" the scenes/situations latent in that backstory. Often the significance of such a scene/situation won't be known to the players immediately, because that depends on learning more of the pre-authored backstory by declaring more of those actions that oblige the GM to reveal bits of backstory.
Here is "situation first": the GMing process begins with framing a compelling scene. What is at stake in the scene is known to the players - that is (part of) what makes it compelling. The content of the scene is based around prior shared understandings of what matters to these characters - normally this means that the players will have exercised some authority over backstory in PC building, to establish families or mentors or rivals or other sorts of orientations towards and connections to the fiction, that give their PCs inbuilt "momentum" and dramatic needs. In AD&D, thieves and paladins and monks and most OA characters are good for this; fighters and magic-users and rangers will tend to need more work done than the books instruct you to in order to establish sufficiently "hook-y" PCs.
Backstory is as much an output of framing, and of action resolution, as an input into it. It is built up - "accreted" - as new elements of content are needed to establish compelling scenes or narrate powerful consequences.
In 5e D&D I would say that warlocks, clerics, paladins, druids, monks are good for this; other classes might need a bit of extra work done at PC build because the requisite hooks won't arise purely from PC building. I would also lean heavily into backgrounds. There are 10 billion maps and stat blocks suitable for 5e D&D, so there should be no issue getting the material a 5e GM needs to frame a scene, often via a quick Google or flip through the MM. Setting DCs for action declarations will be a key issue, I think, and by comparison that's not really a challenge in AD&D as checks (stat checks, thief skills, etc) tend to be against a fixed difficulty. Honouring success and failure is important - that is what builds up the material that drives situations forward and allows the framing of new ones.
As I already posted upthread, I suspect that Investigation becomes a largely useless skill on this approach, but that seems not a very big cost to me. (Perception is still useful, because it can be applied in the context of the framed scene without needing to invoke additional setting/backstory external to the scene.)
Yeah, I have no doubt that you can run D&D like that. And I suspect a lot of people do, or at least in a way somewhat resembling that. My GMing definitely has elements of it. Backstory exist, but it is more advisory rather than binding, characters are more important. Though with my current campaign I intentionally give prep more weight, as I wanted more old school D&D approach, some sort of faux sandbox. Albeit I'm sure anyone who actually likes old school D&D and/or sandboxes wouldn't recognise it as such.