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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6566969" data-attributes="member: 42582">The most contentious case is one that you haven't covered: the GM hasn't decided whether there are giants or orcs in a particular region, makes the decision based on the level of the party, and also decides on an ingame reason for the giants to be there (or decides that there is such a reason, although may not yet have decided what it is).The GM's authorial motivation is not part of the gameworld - it is an external thing. The reason, within the gameworld, for the giants to be there is whatever it happens to be.By your criterion stated upthread, it seems that this is not metagame.In the Conan novel Hour of the Dragon, Zenobia helps Conan to escape because she saw him in the street once and fell in love with him. How does the GM decide if an NPC has become smitten with a PC and decides to come forward in the PC's hour of need?I find the idea that these things should be obvious to the GM - as if they are fully determined by the prior state of the gameworld - very hard to swallow. In the real world, if I ask a friend for a favour I can't always predict how they will answer. In an imaginary world - particularly one in which the stakes are typically much higher than in the real world, given it is a world of fantasy adventure - I find the sort of predictability you describe even more elusive.</blockquote>