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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7733101" data-attributes="member: 6775031">The method of establishment also has an impact on the ease-of-checkability. When the entire backstory of the world is authored by one person, it's easier to check each new question against that one state than it is to compare against each individual element that has been codified as a result of play.If someone asks about the contents of a small shed, it's easier for the GM to remember what that is if the GM was the only one responsible for authoring that content (during the GM-prep phase), than if the contents may have been influenced at any point during previous sessions, possibly without direct involvement from the GM. If the GM knows that there's a weed-whacker in the shed, then remembering that is easier than remembering that there was previously established to be garden shears in the kitchen and something that was probably a weed-whacker or leaf-blower or something like that in the garage (but nobody really remembers, because it was getting late - except for Jef, who knows that it was a weed-whacker and had written it down as such, but was in the bathroom during this discussion). And so the GM says there's a weed-whacker in the shed (after someone succeeds on a check to find one), and then Jef comes back and is confused as to why there are two weed-whackers in this house, and the narrative gets derailed as they go off on this meaningless tangent that only arose because someone forgot. You could easily imagine the circumstances as more troublesome, if the item being searched for was a specific key or a map or something.Not to mention that the former method gives the GM the option of actually writing this all down ahead of time, during their prep phase, so they know exactly where in their notes to check for a definitive answer if they'd forgotten.(The bigger difference, regarding the state of the world and how it is generated, is knowing that something only becomes true when you become aware of it can cause the rational decision to be intentionally not learning information that you don't want to be true. If you see someone murder a loved one in front of you, the rational decision should be to not check and see if they're actually dead, because learning that will causally make it true. It's the sort of logic that normally only shows up in stories about time travel. If you're not sure whether you might need a ladder or a bucket tomorrow, absolutely avoid checking the contents of that shed until you know what you're looking for; in fact, avoid looking anywhere, because more uncertainty now leads to more opportunities later.)</blockquote>

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