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Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8439513" data-attributes="member: 87792"><p>Stepping in here ([USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] correct me if I'm misrepresenting anything) there are two different concepts being covered by "what happens before the game".</p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">What happens before the game in <em>in game time</em></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">What happens before the game in <em>real world time</em></li> </ol><p>And the two are not always the same.</p><p></p><p>To use a clear cut example in one game I've played one of my fellow players was playing one of the last elven survivors of a goblin apocalypse. That was her backstory.</p><p></p><p>I, after the game started, retired my character and brought in a replacement. That replacement was a drow survivor of the same apocalypse and they'd known each other and been frenemies and rivals, each disliking each other for being of the wrong elven subrace and having even faced each other on the battlefield fifty years earlier. But they were the only people from each others' homeworlds they were likely to meet and the other might be the wrong type of elf but they were an elf and not a human, let alone a goblin. That was my character's backstory. And to me (and I suspect to [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] ) it also became part of the other character's backstory despite it having been written after the game started.</p><p></p><p>Another example comes from me DMing. One of the characters was the son of the mayor and had a distinctly distant relationship with his father who'd misled him a little. Said character left his village not on speaking terms with his father.</p><p></p><p>Before he came back to the village six months later in real world time I filled out the details of what the secret his father was trying to protect him from actually was and why rather than just that there was a secret. And if I'd written what the secret was the first time the NPC appeared I couldn't have written something that would tie as well thematically to the PC. To me again this was backstory despite the fact I'd expanded on it as a result of play, being careful to write what it was as consistent with everything that had gone before.</p><p></p><p>And then there's the old staple of the flashback scene. That scene in heist movies where they show what's <em>really</em> going on and why the protagonists aren't actually up to their necks in brown stuff (with the classic being "I stole the bullets from that gun last night"). I don't think that's backstory but it's arguable.</p><p></p><p>I don't think he did? I mean Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is literally a Gygax written Dungeons & Dragons module and CoC is Call of Cthulhu, which is probably the second most famous RPG behind only D&D.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Neonchameleon, post: 8439513, member: 87792"] Stepping in here ([USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] correct me if I'm misrepresenting anything) there are two different concepts being covered by "what happens before the game". [LIST=1] [*]What happens before the game in [I]in game time[/I] [*]What happens before the game in [I]real world time[/I] [/LIST] And the two are not always the same. To use a clear cut example in one game I've played one of my fellow players was playing one of the last elven survivors of a goblin apocalypse. That was her backstory. I, after the game started, retired my character and brought in a replacement. That replacement was a drow survivor of the same apocalypse and they'd known each other and been frenemies and rivals, each disliking each other for being of the wrong elven subrace and having even faced each other on the battlefield fifty years earlier. But they were the only people from each others' homeworlds they were likely to meet and the other might be the wrong type of elf but they were an elf and not a human, let alone a goblin. That was my character's backstory. And to me (and I suspect to [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] ) it also became part of the other character's backstory despite it having been written after the game started. Another example comes from me DMing. One of the characters was the son of the mayor and had a distinctly distant relationship with his father who'd misled him a little. Said character left his village not on speaking terms with his father. Before he came back to the village six months later in real world time I filled out the details of what the secret his father was trying to protect him from actually was and why rather than just that there was a secret. And if I'd written what the secret was the first time the NPC appeared I couldn't have written something that would tie as well thematically to the PC. To me again this was backstory despite the fact I'd expanded on it as a result of play, being careful to write what it was as consistent with everything that had gone before. And then there's the old staple of the flashback scene. That scene in heist movies where they show what's [I]really[/I] going on and why the protagonists aren't actually up to their necks in brown stuff (with the classic being "I stole the bullets from that gun last night"). I don't think that's backstory but it's arguable. I don't think he did? I mean Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is literally a Gygax written Dungeons & Dragons module and CoC is Call of Cthulhu, which is probably the second most famous RPG behind only D&D. [/QUOTE]
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