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="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5182755" data-attributes="member: 26473">Are you sure about that?I tried to quote you as closely as possible in my summary.I present the players with interesting people and interesting situations and more than an occasional curveball - what I don't do is string those together into a complete ballgame. That's for the players to do.Run the setting in response to the players and the characters.Did I actually use the word "evil?"I don't like referees who insist on inflicting their plots on my character. I particularly dislike illusionism, and in reference to the latter I used the word "anathema" - "something intensely disliked or loathed" - but did I really call either of these "evil?"Stop there for a moment.Who is he? Why is he there? Where is he going? Where's he been? What're his likes and dislikes, his fears and his aspirations, his strengths and weaknesses? You seem to be assuming that a randomly encountered npc doesn't include any of the same character-building that a purpose-built npc does, but that's by no means a given. While some referees are sweating and bleeding over their perfectly good plots, I'm rolling up my random encounters and answering these kinds of questions before we sit down at the table, so that gnome fighter isn't a nameless, faceless, souless tally of experience points and treasure . . .. . . on the way to the next encounter in the referee's notes, but rather a living, breathing part of the game-world.This is what I do when I'm behind the screen: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5167589-post5.html" target="_blank">I bring the game-world to life around the adventurers</a>.What the players do with that game-world is the adventure. Maybe the gnome becomes an ally. Maybe he becomes a rival. Maybe he provides them with some information, or they provide some to him. The thread that stitches these encounters together is provided by the players and their characters. The reason this works is that the adventurers are pursuing the goals the players set for them, chasing their dreams instead of a 'plot.' That random npc may become a recurring character in the game, even an integral one, because of what the adventurers do, not the referee.Random isn't brainless, nor is it boring. Unless the referee is, of course.There are few things I enjoy more than springing npcs on the adventurers. It's where the game lives.<a href="http://www.mythic.wordpr.com/page14/page9/page9.html" target="_blank">Why indeed?</a>Because the referee runs the setting. Someone needs to take the results of those rolls and those tables and intepret the results, give them a sense of place, enable them to react to the adventurers in meaningful ways.No, that's setting-building, and it has nothing to do with illusionism in that it doesn't present the players with false choices and meaningless decisions.</blockquote>

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