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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7324596" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>You're right about that - no secret settting creation. But the GM is expected to bring the "big picture", and to use that as a basis for the pitch - with the players then expanding/adapting/modifying.</p><p></p><p>One example given is that the GM pitches a "magic has left the land" campaign, and one player wants to play "the last mage" - and it encourages the GM to say yes (especially if another PC is the brother of the last mage, and a priest who has to spill a living mage's blood on the land to restore it!).</p><p></p><p>That's the sort of thing I'm getting at when I say that the book expects - by default, at least - that the GM will play an <em>integrating</em> role vis-a-vis player beliefs, relationships, backstories etc.</p><p></p><p>The Adventure Burner gives more detail on how Luke et al approach it (and recommend approaching it). It emphasises tropes and "big picture" over detail, because the detail needs to get filled in as part of action resolution and scene framing in the course of actual play.</p><p></p><p>The main departure from the AB advice in my own BW game is that we use a pre-prepared map (Greyhawk). That said, the portion of the map we're using is the middle bit - which has GH city, a big lake/inland sea to the north, forest to the south-west, a wild coast with pirate-prone waters to the south, desert with ancient tribes across the bay and then hills to the north of that (ie east of GH). So basically every fantasy trope can be handled within that bit of the map - which is why I chose that rather than (say) Keoland or the Great Kingdom. (I assume it's deliberate on Gygax's part to have designed this bit of the map this way.)</p><p></p><p>But the map's not secret - when we need to work something out in terms of the map (eg how far is it to X, and what does that suggest about the difficult of the required Orienteering or whatever check), I pull it out and we all look at it and work out what's going on.</p><p></p><p>To relate this back to the thread topic: a number of posters have talked about the role of backstory in providing depth/context. It seems to do that better if shared rather than secret.</p><p></p><p>I wonder what different approaches groups take to sharing the map, the cosmology, etc.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7324596, member: 42582"] You're right about that - no secret settting creation. But the GM is expected to bring the "big picture", and to use that as a basis for the pitch - with the players then expanding/adapting/modifying. One example given is that the GM pitches a "magic has left the land" campaign, and one player wants to play "the last mage" - and it encourages the GM to say yes (especially if another PC is the brother of the last mage, and a priest who has to spill a living mage's blood on the land to restore it!). That's the sort of thing I'm getting at when I say that the book expects - by default, at least - that the GM will play an [I]integrating[/I] role vis-a-vis player beliefs, relationships, backstories etc. The Adventure Burner gives more detail on how Luke et al approach it (and recommend approaching it). It emphasises tropes and "big picture" over detail, because the detail needs to get filled in as part of action resolution and scene framing in the course of actual play. The main departure from the AB advice in my own BW game is that we use a pre-prepared map (Greyhawk). That said, the portion of the map we're using is the middle bit - which has GH city, a big lake/inland sea to the north, forest to the south-west, a wild coast with pirate-prone waters to the south, desert with ancient tribes across the bay and then hills to the north of that (ie east of GH). So basically every fantasy trope can be handled within that bit of the map - which is why I chose that rather than (say) Keoland or the Great Kingdom. (I assume it's deliberate on Gygax's part to have designed this bit of the map this way.) But the map's not secret - when we need to work something out in terms of the map (eg how far is it to X, and what does that suggest about the difficult of the required Orienteering or whatever check), I pull it out and we all look at it and work out what's going on. To relate this back to the thread topic: a number of posters have talked about the role of backstory in providing depth/context. It seems to do that better if shared rather than secret. I wonder what different approaches groups take to sharing the map, the cosmology, etc. [/QUOTE]
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