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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7325058" data-attributes="member: 42582">I guess so, yep.Sort of - I'm really asking what that GM-centric, prior-to-play worldbuilding is for? As in, what purpose does it serve in the context of RPGing? The main answer (though not the only one) seems to be the the point is for the GM to present something to the players (@shidaku likened it to an artwork) which they then draw on to contextualise/deepen their experience of the game: something like a creator-audience relationship.I personally have doubts about the "rare talent" claim, but that's tangential - this idea of "someone has to do it, and that's the GM" is another one that has come up in this thread, though I think your's is probably the clearest statement of it!I've never played an RPG where the players make that sort of decision. (OGL Conan allows for it, via its Fate point rules, but I've never played OGL Conan.) In thie systems I play, a player can hope that something is around the next corner, but it is action resolution mechanics that will determine whether or not that hope is rewarded.One thing I've been trying to do in this thread is talk about RPGing literally rather than using metaphors. So when you refer to players "exploring" or "discovering", that seems like a metaphor (given that in reality there is no dungeon, no corner etc - there's some fiction written by the GM). So "exploring" literally means something like - the players declare certain actions for their PCs (eg "I look more closely at the statue") and this acts as a trigger, in the context of the gameplay, for the GM to then tell the player something. Assuming the GM has worldbuilt in advance, the GM's telling will be a reading or a paraphrasing from his/her notes.This is an interesting one. There are certainly aspects of the gameworld in my games that I would think of as "my characters".But this then leads to questions about action resolution. Normally, a GM can't just declare that (say) his/her NPC beats a PC in a sprint. The action resolution rules have to be consulted (eg maybe there's an opposed check; maybe the character with the higher Speed score wins - whatever it is that the rules of the game dictate).But what, then, if the PC is looking for the special map in the study, while the GM (playing the gameworld as his/her character) thinks that it's more likely really hidden in the bread bin in the kitchen. In the way I run my game, the action resolution mechanics have to be consulted (in BW it wouldn't be an opposed check; the player would have to beat a static, contextually-determined difficulty; in Cortex+ Heroic it would be an opposed check, but against the Doom Pool rather than a NPC; in 4e it might be part of a skill challenge, which generally involves static DCs).But I think a lot of GMs (eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] in this thread) would assume that the GM's "character" just wins in this context. Ie the GM gets to decide where the map is, and thus that the PC can't find it in the study if it's not there, independently of the action resolution mechanics.Do you have any thoughts on why some aspects of the GM's world (eg hidden maps) are treated differently, from the point of view of resolution, from how other aspects (eg sprinting NPCs) are treated? What is that difference for?</blockquote>

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