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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mathew_Freeman" data-source="post: 5206470" data-attributes="member: 1846">I’ve heard it said that a good GM is well aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The other way I’ve heard to look at this idea is to think of stones being dropped in a pond. There are always ripples, and you can’t always predict where they land.Unintended Consequences means, to me, that as a GM you think about the wider effects that your players are having on a world. Have everything they do, ripple onwards. This can go from something as small as spending a lot of money in a particular town (they come back to find it much more prosperous, perhaps) to as big as killing a major campaign villains (who leaves a power vacuum that someone else moves in to fill, perhaps someone worse). When everything your characters do ripples outwards, soon the campaign will start to write itself. This works particularly well if villains escape, or if you do a good job of making the players really hate the villains.The reason I bring this up is that I’ve found some excellent examples of it in Mass Effect 2, the PC and XBOX360 game. I’d played it through once, taking it as a fresh game, and then a friend let me borrow Mass Effect to let me utilize the save-game mechanic to have one character through both games. Playing Mass Effect 2 a second time, and carrying on the story from Mass Effect directly, has shown me that Bioshock understand the Law.Cameo characters from Mass Effect are showing up in Mass Effect 2, sometimes doing surprising things. One former criminal has decided to become a social worker, one has forsaken a life of crime (mostly because I threatened him at gunpoint before) and has a regular job. One is impersonating me! In each case, these character weren’t there on my previous play-through, and the game was lesser for it. I also believe that if I take different actions in another play-through of ME1, and continue that game on ME2, those characters will probably have different behaviours again.The larger events of Mass Effect are referenced to. As I chose to act in a Paragon fashion in ME1 (that is to say, heroically and idealistically) I’ve had several quite touching hugs from people when I’ve met them again. What makes this even more impressive is that I know that if I’d acted differently in ME1 I would have had different reactions in ME2. It’s enough to make me want to play through all 40 hours of ME1 again, just to see the differences.Bioshock have written an awful lot of material for this game that will only be seen in particular circumstances. The majority of players will not take the time to go through the game with different styles of play, I suspect, the way that I am. I am extremely impressed with the depth of the game. What’s more, with ME3 reported to be in the works, we may be seeing a game in which actions you took two games previously and several years of real-time have an effect in a way that won’t be matched by another player. It’s a remarkable idea.You can make this work in an RPG. Make sure that you pay attention to what characters say and do, and who they talk to and where they go. Take a memorable moment from a session, think about where it can go, and try and reintroduce it several sessions later, or when the characters return to that area. If you want some examples of how to do this in an RPG campaign, I’d recommend the ENWorld Story Hours by @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=2" target="_blank">Piratecat</a>: and @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=726" target="_blank">Sagiro</a>:. Their players have learnt that things they do have consequences*, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always personal.Anyone got any other good examples of this kind of DM? Any unexpected consequences that you can think of?*In Sagiro's game, it's Dranko [spoiler]throwing the bottle into the Far Realm[/spoiler] that springs to mind, but it's just one idea amongst many.</blockquote>

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