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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6593724" data-attributes="member: 85870">I'm a bit torn on this idea (recognizing that you're quoting it from a second-hand source, @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=42582" target="_blank">pemerton</a>). On the one hand, I see the justification for avoiding "boring" scenes by bringing on adversity/conflict to have the PCs engage with. On the other hand, as a GM, I'd feel like I had failed on my part of the bargain if I hadn't set the stakes high enough in the framing material such that those in opposition to the PCs goals are actively generating that conflict as a natural outgrowth. I would also be uncomfortable with it in an instance where I've framed a scene, in accordance with the PCs expressed goals and prior outcomes, but the players play the characters inconsistently. Suddenly those conflicts and natural outgrowths of prior scenes become moot, or lessened in impact. Am I just supposed to toss aside the "framing" information that governs the stakes? I'd feel like I'm betraying the consistency of the NPC motivations at that point.....and that's wholly unsatisfying. I ultimately don't care how the events play out, but if pieces of scene frames are being ignored, I feel like it's my job as the GM to play out the consequences. If that happens to not play into the PC's "dramatic conflicts," tough luck; those consequences still play out. On the whole I agree with this----but with the major caveat being that I've never, ever played or GM'd a game where these kinds of "meaningful" choices and character expressions arose where the players didn't have some degree of care and interest FOR the GM's backstory. It doesn't have to be wholesale interest in the GM's 150-page campaign backstory treatise. But it at least has to be enough for the player to say, "Hmmm, that sounds like an interesting point of conflict. Based on what the GM is telling me, I would choose to insert my character THERE. if I really want to get to the 'meaty' choices and conflicts, I have to have some sense of the how and why my PC is making those choices." On some level this mandates the players having an understanding of what the GM is doing "naturalistically" with the game world. How do events flow around and through the PCs? What existing responsibilities and passions are the PCs invested in to justify their involvement with the "scene frames" they're interacting with? This has been a real problem in a number of campaigns I've played/run. A player creates a decent character concept, but comes up with no way that the character they've chosen would feasibly be involved in the campaign as constructed. I've then had to backfill events (usually hamfistedly and unsuccessfully) to try and keep the character involved somehow.</blockquote>

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