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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7731919" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think the model that has emerged pretty clearly in&nbsp; [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s most recent reply to me is:the GM supplies all the theme and tropes, under the guise of &quot;worldbuilding&quot; (thus answering your point 1); and,

the players play PCs who respond to those themes and tropes without injecting any of their own (thus answering your point 2).I use the word &quot;injecting&quot; deliberately - the player can build an elf paladin if s/he likes, but elfishness and paladinhood will become significant elements in play only if the GM - by dint of his/her &quot;worldbuilding&quot; - choose to make it so.Well, it seems at&nbsp; [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s table that &quot;the stuff&quot; is something made salient by the D&amp;D rulebooks - so there'll be dungeons, but probably not family relationships - and the &quot;whatever&quot; is the GM's world, which the players will learn about as they go along. The burden is clearly on the players to just follow whatever cues the GM provides them with: so if the GM writes a story about rescuing captured elves, it's the players' job to write PCs who find rescuing captured elves a compelling thing. I don't know what happens at Saelorn's table if the players decide to have their PCs kidnap more elves on behalf of the &quot;bad guys&quot;. (How do we even tell who are the &quot;bad guys&quot; without GM metagaming by just telling the players who they're meant to fight? I assume that's all taken for granted and implied via the alignment rules, the way the GM frames a patron encounter, etc.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7731919, member: 42582"] I think the model that has emerged pretty clearly in [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s most recent reply to me is: [indent]the GM supplies all the theme and tropes, under the guise of "worldbuilding" (thus answering your point 1); and, the players play PCs who respond to those themes and tropes without injecting any of their own (thus answering your point 2).[/indent] I use the word "injecting" deliberately - the player can build an elf paladin if s/he likes, but elfishness and paladinhood will become significant elements in play only if [I]the GM[/I] - by dint of his/her "worldbuilding" - choose to make it so. Well, it seems at [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s table that "the stuff" is [I]something made salient by the D&D rulebooks[/I] - so there'll be dungeons, but probably not family relationships - and the "whatever" is the GM's world, which the players will learn about as they go along. The burden is clearly on the players to just follow whatever cues the GM provides them with: so if the GM writes a story about rescuing captured elves, it's the players' job to write PCs who find rescuing captured elves a compelling thing. I don't know what happens at Saelorn's table if the players decide to have their PCs kidnap more elves on behalf of the "bad guys". (How do we even tell who are the "bad guys" without GM metagaming by just telling the players who they're meant to fight? I assume that's all taken for granted and implied via the alignment rules, the way the GM frames a patron encounter, etc.) [/QUOTE]

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