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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8678313" data-attributes="member: 93670">I listened to the clip in the tweet while driving earlier & at the time without context thought it was something totally alien to how I run the game.  When I started watching it I pretty quickly decided that I was probably missing important context & found it interesting enough to watch to the end.I only know Mercer, but  Brennan Lee Mulligan seems to be the one talking at 8:17 is something I agree with a thousand percent.  The joy is absolutely in play & find out.  The comment about how that working best for longer campaigns than short run ones.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a couple months ago one of my players tried to bring in a leathercrafter NPC contact but at the time but was decided that despite having one the leatherworker was someone he was on bad terms with.  Ever since then there has been speculation on occasion but no chance to dig into it or repair the relationship.  Tonight the player & rest of the group discovered that the on bad terms was on account of the elf PC having a drunken one night stand that resulted in a kid rolldice 50ish years ago when the player had to remind everyone why visiting a particular town would be a bad idea.  He's now expressing an interest in trying to fix the relationship with the maybe a big problem kid.  They discovered it at the same time I did in this case <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Nobody knew why he was on bad terms who the leatherworker was or even where they were beyond "way west" & now nobody knows how he can repair it or where it will go so it's interesting to explore.</li> </ul>0 The stuff Matt is talking about just after around 930 about players coming into the game with a bunch of backstory never seems to work out IME.  Sure it sounds awesome on paper, but it's almost always discarded forgotten or just ignored by the players if it'd ever anything but a pure boon to them during the game.  several months later it's likely such things aren't even remembered by the players.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In that same game I have two players who wrote a long backstory (couple pages) & tried to introduce things but there is no depth or interest in exploring what bob wrote by anyone including bob so it's just a broken latch for anything much beyond one shot forgettable set dressing unless the player thinks there's some immediate benefit they can pull from it.  The group is actually in a city linked to the noble family of a PC who wrote a backstory but nobody has any real interest in exploring the family despite the rest of the group starting to be interested in making the town their responsibility.</li> </ul>at <a href="https://youtu.be/LmZSWKPXhZ4?t=914" target="_blank">15:16</a> Brennan brings up an important point about how there's nothing you can do if the players don't care.  With the first play & find out style I can shift the story to the world and/or players who do care if one player seems to nope out of a plot but with the kind of backstory stuff  Matt was talkiing about earlier it just winds up being a jarring wreck to shift trying to do that in hopes of averting heat death of the universe known as the campaign.  I agree with him a lot on players being the driving energy & how where you are going is way more important than where you are coming from beyond if that coming from is used to guide the trajectory of where you are going in that regard really resonates with me.at <a href="https://youtu.be/LmZSWKPXhZ4?t=1209" target="_blank">20:10</a>  where Brennan is talking about the 40 page backstory being plothooks he can expect the player to "bite on every time" is kind of how I view backstories.  Back in 2e/3.x I could treat them that way & confidently get players to bite on them every time but for whatever reason that seems not so much the case these days to the point <a href="https://youtu.be/ZknKIWDA1XU?t=48" target="_blank">there are videos mocking it</a>.at <a href="https://youtu.be/LmZSWKPXhZ4?t=4160" target="_blank">1:50:30</a> Matt  & brennan talks about ToTM vrs grid maps with small & large groups, I agree with that a lot & feel like mattlemats have gotten kinda maligned with ToTM elevated some kind of gold standard one true way.  The vakue of battlemats & their associated supporting tactical rules really shines in larger groups.around <a href="https://youtu.be/LmZSWKPXhZ4?t=5287" target="_blank">1:28:07</a> it gets to the tweet analogy talking about how is the gm the story teller if they aren't any of the protagonists & how as a player I want to be living in/immersed into a story rather than being a story teller playing a character who is thinking about their narrative arc & such because I want to play a character that wants tobe thinking about  saving the world or whatever that the gm as the storyteller "can do using cleverly improvised rails ...".Matt follows it up at<a href="https://youtu.be/LmZSWKPXhZ4?t=5511" target="_blank">1:31:51</a> about how it needs to be modular & able to shift about fluidly.  I can do that much more easily where the players have "play & find out" type backstories but when they have long prewritten things it's much more difficult to do if they are all that involved beyond simply being on the scene at the time .At <a href="https://youtu.be/LmZSWKPXhZ4?t=5624" target="_blank">1:33:44</a> Aabraia talks about players knowing & consciously conforming to things like the 3 act structure & such doesn't usually play out too well IME. I don't think that I'm an aberration as a DM to admit that very few if any of my players are professional voice actors/story tellers/etc & it's not really reasonable to call that knowledge as described being a box that defines "good players".  Yes it can absolutely help but players often get too hung up in trying to force those things without the skill & finesse needed to do so smoothly.  Matt follows that up at about <a href="https://youtu.be/LmZSWKPXhZ4?t=5868" target="_blank">1:37:48</a> & I think puts it in better terms that draw some important lines with important motivations that are often glossed over by players with less finesse.Edut:in case it wasn't clear & because I meant to be more clear when I got to it in tgehe video. The analogy ultimately made a lot of sense in ways that I agree with where the rails are just things going on in the world that the players interact with weather then some planned storyline or something.</blockquote>

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