NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8440932" data-attributes="member: 42582">Some of this seems contradictory.You say that the players put things in front of themselves. You also say that the GM uses machinery to create the world. I'm not sure how both these things can be true.And some of it just seems false. Mightn't it affect the play experience quite a bit if I as a player decide that my PC has a murdered brother whom I hope to avenge or if the GM decides that my PC has a murdered brother?And even if I just focus on GM-authored fiction: if the GM decides the outcomes of action declarations based on what they think makes sense, won't that change the play experience compared to leaning heavily into stat/skill checks?And if the GM decides outcomes based on working from their notes, won't that change the play experience compared to them departing from their notes and making things up in order to manage pacing and avoid stalling and dullness. (This is something [USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER] advocated upthread. The reason for the advocacy appeared to be the effect it would have on the play experience.)Do you mean the GM should have regard to them in framing scenes? In authoring the GM's setting material? Eg when designing a faction where we can anticipate that the players might have their PCs interact with its members and leaderships, is it good practice to write links between the PC backstories and the faction backstory - eg perhaps the faction enforcer is the one who killed the brother (this sets up a nice potential triangle between PC - enforcer - faction leader)?Also: it seems to me that these sorts of considerations show that how the fiction is generated - ie what principles the GM follows in authoring it - might have a big effect on the play experience.How do players do that? I assume they can't just frame themselves into scenes - OK, we're at the Dragon Highlord's tower, ready to sneak in through the postern. And I assume the GM doesn't just frame that scene - I take it that's what you mean by it isn't instant.I assume that what you have in mind is that the players declare actions that (i) prompt the GM to narrate that their PCs are moving through the "sandbox", and (ii) prompt the GM to reveal more of the hitherto-secret backstory/setting material. The upshot of the (ii) actions informs more of the (i) actions until eventually the PCs find themselves in a scene that lets them meaningfully engage their priorities.Now what I've just described is how I have GMed living world sandboxes, and how I've always understood others to do so too. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that it is so obviously different from what I've described in my BW play, and yet upthread you asserted that BW play and living sandbox play were very similar.Well, do you have such a categorisation ready to hand? The only one that I have much of a sense of - and it's a bit of a rudimentary sense - is Kevin Crawford's in Stars without Number, and it's obviously of relevance to thinking about how fiction is established in other sorts of RPGing. (I'd be surprised if Crawford  has not thought about some of Vincent Baker's stuff on setting design in DitV and AW; and I think [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] mentioned upthread that John Harper draws on some of Crawford's ideas in the design of BitD.) This is not accurate. Talking about different ways in which different components of the fiction are established is not solely to differentiate story now play from other sorts of play. The first work I ever put it to was trying to sort out issues in Rolemaster PC build and action resolution mechanics, which are paradigms of purist-for-system simulation.</blockquote>

Verification