Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732421" data-attributes="member: 42582">Seriously, this looks like something that might take a couple of emails or a conversation at the start of the first session to sort out.As [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] posted not far upthread, sometimes the game iteslf tells us what it is going to be about, at least in general terms. Of games that I GM, Marvel Heroic RP is a pretty clear example of this: Marvel super heroes come with built-in hooks. The players flipped through my printouts of "datafiles", chose War Machine, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Ice Man and Invisible Woman, and away we went!Burning Wheel or default 4e (to look at some other games I GM) are a bit broader in their range of tropes and theme, but not that broad. I didn't have any problems starting a game with either system - the PCs that get thrown up tend to have *fantasy adventurer* written all over them.When I started my Dark Sun game, I emailed around a quick spiel about what Dark Sun is about - sword & sandals, sword & planet, desert, psionics, sorcerer-kings, templars, gladiators. These are all pretty recognisable tropes, and the PC gen options (with themes like Gladiator, Wilder, Althasian Bard, etc) send clear signals to the players which in turn don't leave the GM in much doubt as to what the game might be about.Rolemaster is a very open-ended system - but when I started my OA RM game in 1998, telling my players I was thinking a little bit more Japanese than Wuxia, the players made a couple of samurai, a fox spirit ninja, a martial artist sone of a merchant family, and a martial arts monk - ie the sorts of PCs that fit into a OA game.I've just never found it that hard to work out some general parameters and then see where they lead.Two things.(1) Why not start with the players' ideas? Instead of mucking about for X sessions first.(2) What form does the GM's reaction take? If the reaction is to veto actions and thwart plans on the basis of secret backstory, then what is the point fo the players coming up with those ideas? If the reaction is to resolve those actions and narrate the backstory accordingly, then how is what you're doing different from what I'm doing?Again, the obvious alternative is to give some thought at the start and for the GM to take that seriously. Eg if you want to play a character who is committed to saving his brother from possession by a balrog, that seems a more likely way to get such an outcome.Just to add to what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] said, about the fact that this must be practical to some extent given that thousands of RPGers are doing it: I trust my players to push the game in interesting directions. They have interesting characters, and interesting ideas about what to do with those characters.I've got interesting ideas too - I think for a very amateur storyteller, I do OK at coming up with some interesting situations in the course of GMing my games.The fiction that results is generated by the interaction of these creative endeavours, as mediated through the game rules.</blockquote>

Verification