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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 8227345" data-attributes="member: 6999616">Thanks, that's clearer, and it makes clear that I'm running games in a very different way. The dramatic needs of PCs are not something I expect GM or players to be fully aware of at the start of a campaign. They're emergent properties of the combination of the set of characters and the setting. These needs are gradually discovered in play, and change as the characters are changed by their adventures. The characters strive towards their dramatic fulfilment by means of concrete actions within the setting reality; they often have fairly complex individual agendas, and have to compromise parts of them. Playing this way assumes that all the players are willing to stay with a setting and group of characters for long enough to let these emergent phenomena crystalize.  Having that happen is a matter of devising an interesting setting, with some depth to it, and of the players being willing accommodate each other's quirks. A GM can't have full information about everything in that kind of setting. So a large part of their preparation for a session is filling out details of the things they anticipate the characters interacting with. That detail is needed to maintain verisimilitude, to keep the feeling of setting plausibility and engagement. Since the start of this thread, I've been starting preparation for the next session of my space navy game. The PCs are going to try to rescue a group of people who are currently stuck on a space station orbiting Io, the innermost of Jupiter's large moons. Jupiter has radiation belts (like Earth's Van Allen belts, only much more dangerous) which are at their strongest around Io's orbit. The space station is a 400 yard diameter rock, which provides fully adequate radiation shielding to the rooms carved into its core, so the people are safe there, but can't leave. The ship the PCs have improvised is a 100 yard diameter rock, fitted with engines, and again with adequately shielded rooms carved into its core. The trick will be getting the ship into position, and moving the people from one shielded area to another quickly enough. The first piece of my prep is looking up how good the available shielded spacesuits are, and thus how much time will be available. The answer looks like "This is manageable, but it's going to have to be planned right and done smartly." That's the biggest constraint on PC actions. The next piece will be more conventional: names and thumbnail personalities for the people to be rescued. There's no need for combat stats: nobody involved is fool enough to start a fight under these circumstances. This is not a situation where dramatic posturing will get anybody anywhere. Radiation doesn't care about such things. The players are all serious SF fans, and running this like Star Trek would utterly shatter suspension of disbelief. Some of the PCs are uploaded, so their minds run on computers, and can be backed up. I'm fairly confident they'll be the ones who volunteer to take risks if those are necessary.</blockquote>

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