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General Tabletop Discussion
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Situation, setting and "status quo"
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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7610025" data-attributes="member: 177"><p>Archtypically, for a game like D&D, we buy (or write) a setting book, and then we have to assemble (or purchase) an adventure which takes particular elements of the setting, and places them in a current situation the PCs have to deal with.</p><p></p><p>When we say "the setting is the situation" is to say we haven't bothered writing a whole darned book of setting, and then plucked elements out of it to make a current situation/adventure. We instead establish the elements of the setting that we *know* are relevant to the PCs at the moment, and we work with them. The rest of the setting is implied, and not terribly detailed until it needs to be.</p><p></p><p>Some FATE games (I'm thinking The Dresden Files, specifically, but others as well) do something similar. They have a session before play really begins where major elements the PCs are expected to interact with are created. The rest of the setting is.. the city, but not pre-stocked with huge amounts of stuff. For FATE, this is done explicitly ("Let's all sit down and generate our city!") rather than implicitly ("let us follow you around for a day, and the things we happen to establish while we do that play will be our starting situation.")</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 7610025, member: 177"] Archtypically, for a game like D&D, we buy (or write) a setting book, and then we have to assemble (or purchase) an adventure which takes particular elements of the setting, and places them in a current situation the PCs have to deal with. When we say "the setting is the situation" is to say we haven't bothered writing a whole darned book of setting, and then plucked elements out of it to make a current situation/adventure. We instead establish the elements of the setting that we *know* are relevant to the PCs at the moment, and we work with them. The rest of the setting is implied, and not terribly detailed until it needs to be. Some FATE games (I'm thinking The Dresden Files, specifically, but others as well) do something similar. They have a session before play really begins where major elements the PCs are expected to interact with are created. The rest of the setting is.. the city, but not pre-stocked with huge amounts of stuff. For FATE, this is done explicitly ("Let's all sit down and generate our city!") rather than implicitly ("let us follow you around for a day, and the things we happen to establish while we do that play will be our starting situation.") [/QUOTE]
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