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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8233413" data-attributes="member: 85555">I haven't been following Emerikols posts so I can't weigh in on those. But, and MaxPerson can weigh in if I am wrong, that there is a world created to explore seems to matter very much. I think all he is trying to draw your attention to is how much the players actions impact the course of the game, what happens within that world, etc. A lot of sandbox GMs for example talk about smashing the setting, destroying the scenery, etc. Allowing the players to do that is an essential concept in a sandbox game, and while I don't know if Maxperson would say what he is doing is sandbox, what is describing sounds a lot like smashing the scenery. What he is talking about is the player characters exerting their agency in the setting. Again, Maxperson can weigh in if I am wrong, but there is generally an expected sense of fair play the players want when they doing that as they explore a world. If the GM is just making up all of the world as he goes, then it doesn't feel real enough (it is literally just a world produced by their actions). There should be some concrete in there. But no GM creation is going to be exhaustive. The GM may know there are hill tribes to the north. He may not have thought through all the details about that hill tribe, and as they players go there and interact with them, ask questions, the GM is expected to refine some elements of the world in those moments (and generally it is expected to follow logically from the things already laid down). That isn't playing to discover the GMs notes at all. And further, the NPCs you may have down on the page, say the hill tribe chief, are just as free to move around and do things as the players. The players are not simply discovering what's in the players (EDIT: GM's) notes if midway through the session the hill tribe chief hatches a plan to steal an artifact the PCs possess (this may be an even neither the GM nor the players foresaw until some spark ignited it in their meeting with the hill tribe). Again it is the energy, the life, the interaction, the ability of players to actually shape setting through their characters, that is the point of play. The point of play isn't to discover what is in the GMs binder. That is an enormously misleading and uncharitable characterization of the activityAnd importantly that energy isn't limited to sandbox play. It exists in most types of play where the GM is expected to prep things (even in things like adventure paths)</blockquote>

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