Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greg K" data-source="post: 5855865" data-attributes="member: 5038">It is not about being the computer.  It is coming up with a setting and helping the players ground their characters in the setting when they come up with their characters and their backgrounds and plot hooks so they fit in the with the setting.  For example in one of my campaigns, I had a two page handout with an overview of each culture and additional one to two page handouts for each each culture that contained more detailed information to hand out when a player took an interest in  a culture :1.  Player chose to be a knight from a country where noble houses try to increase their power, prestige, and holdings through various means.  One of the players came up with a whole background about being the lone survivor of a border patrol that had been ambushed.  The ambush was orchestrated by a rival interested in taking over his character's House and marrying his fiance to merge their houses.2. Two players decided to come from a land of  northern barbarians.  One of the bits of history was that powerful mages had attacked the Druidic council and  nearly wiped them out as punishment for advising the chieftain not to support the Wizards Guild.  The mages had also taken the chieftain's daughter.  One of the players chose to be a young druid that survived the attack. The player noted that the druid's were religious leaders, teachers, and ambassadors.  He grabbed on to the ambassador role and requested to be an envoy to the mages and negotiate the release of the chieftain's daughter (the  player decided that his mentor, also survived, but needed to say among the people)  This would be his first "major" test as a druid.The second player set his character's goal as becoming a powerful warrior, becoming the new chieftain, and marrying the, current, chieftain's daughter. He volunteered to be the druid's bodyguard.The players worked out this whole relationship between the two characters where the warrior was impetuous and the smaller druid would either slap him upside the head or smack him upside the head whenever the warrior did something outside "wrong" and need to be "educated".  The idea of "physical" punishment was to reinforce the notion that warriors were supposed to be tough and the druid's role as both teacher and someone that the barbarian was to respect (nobody else could strike the warrior and have it go unchallenged)..3. A third player chose to be a Paladin raised in a temple of one of the deity's.    The deities, their tenets, relationships between deities and major NPCs for his character's temple (each was only a name with a sentence or two description)   were established. He came up with this whole thing using them and a missing PC from a previous campaign to establish his background.4. A fourth player chose to play a rogue from an island ruled by a wizard's guild.  He gave himself a whole background about wanting to escape the island, but lacking the funds.  He also decided that if the character could ever "stick it" to the wizards ruling the island, he would do so. He blamed them for his poverty, because those without magic were treated as third class citizens. He joined the party to screw the wizards and then took refuge with the party when they escaped the islandEverything from the moment that the characters arrived on the island was driven by the players, their characters' backgrounds and goals, their choices, their actions.  We also got more interplay between characters when differences in cultural and/or organizational beliefs came into conflict.</blockquote>

Verification