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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7189157" data-attributes="member: 996">Unless they're being tracked on the players' side of the screen, they're may or may not be happening - not until they or their consequences become evident.  I know there are those who disapprove because it can be used for 'illusionism,' but until the players learn of an event they were not previously aware of, the DM may not have decided not even thought about whether it had happened or how it turned out. If the PCs are unaware of such conditions, and the DM spares them no thought, they are not, in any sense happening.  It's an imagined world, it only exists while it's being imagined...It's not like the old tree-falling-in-the-forest thing.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Assumed something may be happening, sure, but the DM is free to fill in what later, so it hasn't really happened, at all. Sticking with the weather, say the party has been adventuring on one side of the world, and in a lull, one of them teleports to the other side, and asks a local what the weather was like last Tuesday.Now, at that point you're not just making up the weather records for that region, you're probably making up the local.  You might give him a whole life with a bit of tragedy, or a nefarious purpose - or not even give him a name... Are there really that many of that important  (to the play experience) world-building guidelines to collide with?  Rather, the mechanics can get in the way of your vision of the world/campaign/story, and, yeah, you can see to it they back down.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  So if it'd be just wrong for PCs to rest in Pandemonium, you don't let 'em.  If the story just doesn't call for 5 filler combats ahead of a set-piece, you don't force them, and if that dramatically effs balance, you compensate - or you do force 'em, because you can (even if you resort to DM force, which, for the record, I would liken to a fish resorting to swimming).  Either way (or some other) you deal with it, or with the consequences.  Often, especially if you've been running for decades, you do so as a matter of course, all part of the art of DMing... Actually, in 5e, the basic resolution mechanic stars with 'player declares action' - no player, no declaration, not the same mechanics, anymore. The only internal consistency in a D&D campaign is that not noticed as inconsistent by the players.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Trying to get there, for the whole world, by depending on the consistency inherent in adhering to the same mechanics at all times (DMing as Science) works, in theory (apropos, that) but is prohibitive.  Using the mechanics of the game only for the game, itself, and overruling them when they aren't consistent with your vision of the world (DMing as Art), is theoretically going to be inconsistent, some of the time, but it's practicable.JMHO</blockquote>

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