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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5182996" data-attributes="member: 26473"><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=";)" />The veil of ignorance - hold that thought, and I'll come back to that in a moment.I'm not disagreeing with it; in fact I'm agreeing with it, but my process and motives may be, or at least appear to be, different from yours.Same here, but the $64,000 question is, is the encounter an "adventure hook" intended to snag the players and their characters, is it in the furtherance of your sweat- and blood-stained plot, or is it complete in and of itself, with no strings attached save the ones the adventurers give it?Still holding that thought? Okay, here we go.The difference is the <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/#VeiIgn" target="_blank">veil of ignorance</a>. The veil of ignorance is a legal philosophy of justice designed to promote equality and fairness by advancing a social contract in which , " . . . no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like . . ." (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice). The idea is that if no one knows if they will be rich or poor, educated or ignorant, healthy or infirm, competent or inept, it's possible to fashion a social contract which provides the highest degree of justice and equality for all.When I'm behind the screen, I set out to create a game-world which emulates a particular genre: for Traveller it's the space traders of Poul Andersen and CJ Cherryh, for Flashing Blades it's the 17th century swashbucklers of Alexandre Dumas, Rafael Sabatini, Baroness Orzcy, and Arturo Pérez-Reverte, for Boot Hill it's the comic-westerns of Pete Dexter and Larry McMurtry, and so on. The genres provide the 'facts' of the setting.The veil of ignorance as it applies to my gaming is to presume nothing about the assets and abilities of the adventurers in preparing the setting. My goal is to provide the players and their characters with a shared world which emulates the game-genre but makes no assumptions about the adventurers' course within it. The setting reflects the themes of the source lit and reacts to the adventurers in ways consistent with the genre - and that's where I stop. There are no daisy-chains of encounters, no adventure paths, no referee-written story to act out.This allows me to keep the lightest possible touch on the 'controls' of the game and maximizes freedom of action for the players and their characters. In my experience increasing stochasticity keeps the game always a little off-balance, forever tilting in unexpected directions, which for me is what is most fun about roleplaying games.Now you may be nodding along and saying to yourself, "But that's what I do, too!" If so, that's great; we may not be so far apart in our gaming styles as it seems at first blush. But when you talk about a preparing a  "perfectly good plot" involving the players and their characters, or creating a specific encounter or location to spring on the adventurers when you think it's appropriate or amusing, well, that's where you lose me, W#.Again, not so far off from my approach. The difference is that you perhaps put a heavier touch on the collective than I do, since my random encounters are designed to reflect the setting and not to present a specific challenge to a known group of adventurers.Agreed.No, I very much have a problem with, "All roads lead to my super-133+ encounter!" That's illusionism, and I don't like it one bit.</blockquote>

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