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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8635927" data-attributes="member: 71699">The thought experiment my question is intended to guide toward is this<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I could begin with a pre-authored game-world, such as Stonetop, that I count vivid and inhabitable</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">In an alternative world, I could begin with a tabula-rasa, and my group will author our game-world on the fly. Here I mean tabula-rasa with utmost sincerity! No sneaking in of any preliminary sketches. Nothing about the world is pre-authored. It is perforce the case that no adjectives can be reliably assigned to it by me, thus inviting each reader to make their own judgement (as you do.)</li> </ol>These are dichotomous so that there is no world in which it is possible for me to begin with both a pre-authored game-world and a tabula-rasa at the same time. I could begin with those things at different times, or with different groups, but that is to invent a different starting point for my thought-experiment, and abandon the one I proposed.My question proposes resisting that dichotomy. If we were to avoid either extreme, to find a balance, where might that lie? Can there be some pre-authoring mixed with some authoring-on-the-fly? Might it matter who does the (pre-)authoring in those respective timeframes? Is any amount of pre-authoring - even an iota - a curse? Or is there a way to grasp the pre-authored game-world that dissolves the tension - so that we need not choose a point on a line, but make decisions about each independently? All of these thoughts and others like them are intended to be invited by my question.What you dig into here is close to what I am asking. Is Edwards right? So that Stonetop's - 229 extraordinarily detailed pages of canonical setting is indeed an irredeemable curse!? (There is a technical detail here as to the game texts that I am glossing over, and will get into if necessary.)Tweet's caveats might discount any characterisation of his world-text as "canonical", but Edwards seems skeptical that there can be any value in pre-authored material such as Stonetop's 229 pages at all (canonical or otherwise). Strandberg has wasted his time, or even worse, cursed others with a ball-and-chain around their necks. Nothing in what Edwards says here lets in the possibility of unique answers for individual groups of RPGers.But as you say, there really isn't likely to be one answer that applies to all, at all times. My question doesn't demand one. My question is - sincerely - a question. It suggests that there could possibly be a balance between pre-authorship and player-authorship-on-the-fly, and asks where each reader feels that balance lies for them between pre-authored world and authorship-on-the-fly? Do they genuinely feel the greatest benefit in proceeding from tabula-rasa, or do they benefit from some preliminary sketches?As an aside, I have run a few actual tabula-rasa freeform RPGs. Someone always has to open with something. Typically me <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />My question is intended to imply skepticism about the dichotomy I first put in mind. I suggest that there can be a balance - some of each. That turns not on the question of what adjectives might be applied to authored-on-the-fly game-worlds (that's up to each reader) but whether a dichotomy is forced upon us at all, and relatedly what value (or values, at different times) could inform choices about how much of each we best benefit from (which must be contextualised in our criteria for counts-as-a-benefit which as you imply will vary.)</blockquote>

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