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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6587718" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't understand how this can be true.The GM knows where the PCs are (geographically, temporally). And the GM decides where the stranger is (geographically, temporally). So the GM can very easily decide that the PCs encounter the stranger by saying (for instance) "As you walk down the left-hand corridor, you see a stranger stepping out of what looks like a library."The GM can choose to randomise whether or not the PCs meet the stranger - for instance, by writing a note that "the stranger is in place X at future time T" before s/he knows where the PCs will be at time T. Or by putting the stranger on a random encounter table.But that is a choice. It is not forced on the GM (ie it's not the case that s/he has no way of choosing otherwise). There may be reasons for making such a choice, but I don't think they've really been spelled out in this thread.No. The GM narrates the situations in which the PCs find themselves. "Framing" means being deliberate about this: narrating situations which will make the players make choices that relate to the stakes they have signalled they want to be put on the line.These two sentences can carry a wide range of meanings, depending on other assumptions about play.I've played in games where the GM would use this sort of device to steer the players onto some particular path: it's a species of the genera "plot hook". The players are expected to follow the GM's leads in this respect. From my point of view, it's a type of railroad. It's also heavily metagamed, in the sense that "the way adventurers do" is a thin ingame veneer over a metagame expectation that the players will follow the GM's lead.In my game, if I tell the PCs there is an NPC grumbling about her boss, they will assume (correctly) that the NPC's complaints relate in some fashion to some dramatic concern that has been expressly or implicitly flagged, because they know that I run a game in which I respond to the players' cues. The metagame imperative runs in the opposite direction (roughly: the players "hook" the GM, rather than vice versa).In a truly metagame-free game, the players would be free to just ignore the grumbling NPC (much as, in the real world, I ignore more than 90% of the strangers I hear complaining in cafes, on the train, etc, and would never think to stick my nose into their personal business). But of course that is not very conducive to RPG play.This is exactly the sort of play I try to avoid. As a general rule, it is not dramatically satisfying.And I have much the same response to this: what was the point of this episode?If the players choose to have their PCs explore the library, only to find a bunch of stuff that either their PCs can't read, or that tells them nothing of use, and then head down the right-hand path only to find that the detour via the library meant the prisoners were sacrificed, I would find that an extremely unsatisfying episode of play. It seems that the players are being punished for making a choice that looked reasonable, and that they had no way of knowing would be pointless and self-defeating. It seems pretty like a microcosmic version of "rocks fall".That's why I call it a GM-driven game. If the GM then pretends that the players' choices make a difference to things, that is illusionism.</blockquote>

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