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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6860781" data-attributes="member: 42582">And when the person is rescued, or the item recovered, or whatever else, then - if the campaign is not to end - the player must author a new dramatic need for his/her PC.In D&D, party play is also very important, so the players must also take steps to ensure that the dramatic needs of their various PCs are somehow interrelated or at least reconcilable. This is more metagaming.That's not generally my experience, but that's because I play with RPG systems where the mechanics and the fiction push in the same direction, rather than against one another.To give an example from my 4e game: the invoker/wizard PC has tremendous knowledge of both the past and the future. This is because he is a deva with the memory of 1000 lifetimes; a divine philosopher (paragon path) and a sage of ages (epic destiny). He meets very little that he does not recognise, by reputation if not by prior experience; and little occurs that surprises him.Mechanically, whenever the player is wondering something (about campaign backstory, or the nature of some NPC or other creature), a knowledge skill check can be framed and rolled and will almost always succeed (knowledge skills in the high +30s and low +40s, where at 30th level the highest default DC is 42). If a check fails the first time round he can use his Memories of 1000 lifetimes (a racial ability enhanced by a couple of feats) to give himself +1d8 on the check.As far as the character's prescience is concerned, he has a class feature (from Sage of Ages) that lets the player roll a d20 at the start of each round and use that in lieu of rolling; and the character has various abilities that allow him to move, or to attack, or perform other sorts of actions, outside the normal action economy.In virtue of these mechanical features, the player is able to confidently declare his knowledge of things; very often know in advance whether or not a plan will come off (because he can look at the pre-rolled d20 sitting in front of him and work out whether or not it is enough to succeed at some check); react with confidence to the actions of his enemies (in virtue of his various interrupt and similar abilities); etc.This player doesn't have to ignore the mechanics of the game in order to play his character. Playing the mechanics leads to the playing of the character.Here's another example from my 4e game, but involves an effect that two PCs suffered, rather than features of character building:The 4e Chained Cambion (in MM3) is described in the flavour text as having a "tortured psyche", as "hat[ing] its life, its captors, and its enemies who roam free", and as "screaming its despair within the minds of nearby foes." And it has a mind shackles ability which causes two enemies to take ongoing damage unless they are adjacent to one another, with each victim having to make a separate saving throw. When I used this in game, I shackled the melee fighter to the archer ranger. As the two players had to coordinate their actions or else take damage, they started bickering and complaining. Once one had saved but the other hadn't, the bickering got worse, because the one who had saved nevertheless had to stay shackled because the other player couldn't roll a d20 high enough.In other words, I didn't have to tell the players to pretend to be filled with despair and hate towards one another; the mechanic ensured that this actually happened.I don't understand how the last sentence has any connection to anything I said. I didn't mention combat ("straight up" or otherwise). I said that, as a GM, I don't author backstory (including the inhabitants of dank dungeons) randomly, but rather by reference to the dramatic needs of the PCs (which I take to signal the play interests of the players - more metagaming!). So if one of the players is playing a paladin of the Raven Queen, then absolutely that character is going to encounter minions of Orcus (or, at a suitable level, an <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?332755-PCs-bring-destruction-down-upon-the-duergar" target="_blank">Aspect of Orcus</a> or <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468466-Session-report-Victory-over-Orcus-escape-from-the-Abyss" target="_blank">Orcus himself</a>).As for the notion that "anything the PCs do drives the game forward", I don't agree with that. I know there are playstyles for which that is true - in my own experience I associate them mostly with a certain sort of 2nd ed AD&D playstyle in which the players "immerse" in character and spend a lot of time talking to NPCs although there is no conflict and hence nothing dramatic at stake. But that is not my own playstyle.As per my post upthread about the relationship between 4e and DungeonWorld, I am more from the Vincent Baker/Luke Crane school of "say yes or roll the dice", and of pushing play towards conflict. That means authoring and manipulating backstory so that, as much as possible at every point, the players (as their PCs) are forced to make choices that matter, relative to each PC's dramatic need.To give another example: in the actual play report linked above in this post, it is not a coincidence that Oublivae, the Demon Queen of The Barrens, offers to tell the PCs the location of the Raven Queen's mausoleum. Given that three of five PCs are Raven Queen devotees, but the other two are not and at least one is concerned that she is becoming overly dominant in cosmological terms, this forces a choice (or, as it turns out, a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470791-Session-report-the-party-comes-close-to-a-split-but-not-quite" target="_blank">series</a> of <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?480707-Session-report-PCs-defeat-Kas-but-cede-the-battlefield-to-Osterneth" target="_blank">choices</a>) that are not easy for the players (or their PCs), and that continue to push the game towards some sort of climactic resolution. (Another non-coincidence there: that Jenna Osteneth, the wizardly apprentice the PCs rescued when they travelled back in time at late heroic tier, turns out, in the present, to be an archlich servant of Vecna, another divine being to whom the various PCs have a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?348410-Should-this-PC-implant-the-Eye-of-Vecna" target="_blank">complicated</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?355600-Session-report-(Apect-of)-Vecna-defeated-demon-bargained-with" target="_blank">relationship</a>.)This is all metagaming on the GM side of the game. It is absolutely crucial to running what I regard as a good game. (You can easily follow the actual play report links to get more of a sense of what that game actually looks like.)</blockquote>

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