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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7323233" data-attributes="member: 6696971">@<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=29398" target="_blank">Lanefan</a> Don’t have a ton of time so I’ll keep this as brief as possible and hopefully it conveys what I’m getting at. Let us say you have a table of 4 players to play a game.  You ask them what they signed up for.  2 say something like: “I like to use strategy and teamwork to overcome the obstacles of the game world.” Another says something like: “Yeah, me too and I like to see where the story goes as we overcome those obstacles and make choices that we care about.” The last player says something like: “Yeah, that all sounds good.  Whatever.” Let us say that their wishes are a very good representation for what the game says on the tin.  Now consider the following: Travel through a hex of N terrain is supposed to take X Exploration Interval per mile travelled.  One of the first 2 has a rationed ability (maybe once per day) to facilitate halving that Exploration Interval X and also allows the group information/resources Y and to avoid encounters of the Z variety during that interval.  But the GM either (a) has scaled their hexes nebulously rather than precisely (encoding ad-hoc ruling which allows for fudging for or against the player) or (b) has scaled their hexes really disproportionately (which renders null the player’s decision-point regarding distance/time and game mechanics completely). This is because the GM has prioritized all of this other stuff in their worldbuilding and either didn’t have the time or inclination to have their world interface properly with game mechanics or (worse still for these players), doing so would disallow the GM to make rulings which would allow them to introduce content that they, themselves, are interested in.  The player thought they would have been able to aid the group by circumventing both time and an encounter due to deploying this resource.  Nope, they didn’t cross anywhere near as much as they all thought and now they have to camp in hostile areas because of it (which is basically a block by the GM to stall or to introduce content that the GM is interested in playing out at the table).  This player specifically, and all the players generally, now know that they can’t rely on precise information from the GM/map to make Exploration decisions (which they signed up for) so subsequent decision-points are going to involve a proportionate measure of insecurity and dissatisfaction. So the structure of worldbuillding for both the game and the players assumes one thing…but the GM’s worldbuilding methodology and prioritization degenerates into having an entirely different quality that facilitates the GM’s ends and negatively impacts the players’/game’s expectations.</blockquote>

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