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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732088" data-attributes="member: 42582">Good question.Referring again to my recent Traveller experience: when the random patron table throws up a diplomat, is it better GMing to introduce a &quot;plot hook&quot; that is indpendent of the players' current concerns in dealing with a bioweapons conspiracy, or to have the diplomat be an Imperial official who has heard of the PCs' anti-conspiracy exploits and wants them to investigate further?When the random starship encounter table throws up a pirate cruiser, is it better for this to just be some random pirates who happen to be hanging out on the edge of a tech level 3 world? Or for the ship to be connected to the conspiracy, and coming back to the world that is the source of the pathogen that the bioweapons research is based on?When I was a novice GM and didn't know any better, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to use those random outcomes to establish connections to existing currents of play and thereby &quot;go where the action is&quot;. But with a bit of experience under my belt, that seems the pretty natural thing to do!I remember reading advice for dungeon building back in the early and mid 80s that talked about how to make sense of the results of random dungeon stocking (eg if room 1 has giant ferrets in it, and room 2 has traders in it, maybe the traders are trading in giant ferret skins). Extending that sort of principle to real time content generation, and also honing in on stuff that matters to the players, seems a straightforward extension of that approach. The fact that the resulting content is not &quot;neutral&quot; vis-a-vis events at the table and concerns/&quot;biases&quot; of the GM and players seems a plus if the goal is to play a game that involves collectively imagining dramatic adventuring, not a negative.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7732088, member: 42582"] Good question. Referring again to my recent Traveller experience: when the random patron table throws up a diplomat, is it better GMing to introduce a "plot hook" that is indpendent of the players' current concerns in dealing with a bioweapons conspiracy, or to have the diplomat be an Imperial official who has heard of the PCs' anti-conspiracy exploits and wants them to investigate further? When the random starship encounter table throws up a pirate cruiser, is it better for this to just be some random pirates who happen to be hanging out on the edge of a tech level 3 world? Or for the ship to be connected to the conspiracy, and coming back to the world that is the source of the pathogen that the bioweapons research is based on? When I was a novice GM and didn't know any better, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to use those random outcomes to establish connections to existing currents of play and thereby "go where the action is". But with a bit of experience under my belt, that seems the pretty natural thing to do! I remember reading advice for dungeon building back in the early and mid 80s that talked about how to make sense of the results of random dungeon stocking (eg if room 1 has giant ferrets in it, and room 2 has traders in it, maybe the traders are trading in giant ferret skins). Extending that sort of principle to real time content generation, and also honing in on stuff that matters to the players, seems a straightforward extension of that approach. The fact that the resulting content is not "neutral" vis-a-vis events at the table and concerns/"biases" of the GM and players seems a [I]plus[/I] if the goal is to play a game that involves collectively imagining dramatic adventuring, not a negative. [/QUOTE]

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