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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7329139" data-attributes="member: 42582">Again, this is a red herring. You don't need pre-authored setting for the PCs to fail.In my 4e game, the PCs found themselves committed to sparing the cleric of Torog that they all wanted to see dead. That was a fail.They brought ruin upon the duergar stronghold at the hands of Orcus and Pazuzu. That was a fail.They failed to save all the prisoners of goblins that they were pledged to save - because of their cowardice, one ended up being sacrificed, before their eyes, by a cultist of Yeenoghu. That was a fail.At least one of them is committed to ensuring that the Raven Queen does not become ruler of the cosmos. Yet nearly every action he takes helps her along that path, and he knows it. That could be a fail too.In my Cortex+ game, the PCs first attempt to learn the source and nature of the blight falling on the land was a spectacular failure: one of them became rich by looting the drow caverns while leaving the others behind, but they learned nothing about the fate of the land. Some time later, when the two fragments of the party crossed paths again in a village under attack by raiders heralding the coming Ragnarok, they failed to save the village and ended up being left for dead by said raiders, who took all the villagers captive. That was a fail.In my BW game, the mage PC failed to save his brother from possession by a balrog - instead his brother was assassinated before his eyes. And he then ended up in prison, where he currently still is, without any clear plan for attaining his freedom. That was a series of failures.Luckily for me, that's not a problem in my games! - either as GM, or in the ones where I'm a player. (With one exception, back in 1990, when we sacked the GM after a couple of sessions.)And why do you care?And why does it matter if the players can tell? Which obviously they can all the time - if the game's not on rails, and if the outcomes aren't predetermined, then every time some significant thing happens, it's obvious that the GM has to generate new content.Just thinking of a few examples from my own experience: a player has his/her PC pray for help; the prayer is answered - it seems - by a duergar peering down through a cleft in the cavern sealing, giving the signal for aid - and the PC signals back "the dues will be paid". After the immediate crisis is resolved, the PCs are now heading off in the company of the duergar to the duergar land. New content is needed.A player decdies that his PC -having been part of a successful defeat of an Orcus cultist infiltration - is going to look for where they came from. The ranger PC helps find and follow tracks and trails, and they find the entrance to a secret lair. Which they go on to explore. New content is needed.A player (playing his PC) persuades the group to lay-over in orbit about a world, so that his PC can look for signs of alien influence. He decides to do this by examining trinkets for sale in a market. New content is needed.Etc, etc. New content is needed all the time. Players don't need to be very bright to work out that the new content is coming from somewhere! Maybe the GM pulls out something s/he prepared earlier and slots it in - this is where module maps, module vignettes, monster manuals, etc come in handy - or maybe the GM makes stuff up from scratch - this is where a familiarity with basic genre tropes and devices is useful.This also reiterates the difference between prep, and (pre-)establishing a setting.Trust the GM to do what?I trust my BW GM to run an interesting game. What's that got to do with the point of worldbuilding? I'm sure if I wanted to play what [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] has called a "setting tourism" game, he could do a good job of that too. But that's not what I play RPGs for.OK - when I sit down at the BW table I trust that the GM is going to present an entertaining game with a consistent and reliable setting and that the game will be fair in an overall sense. I trust him to come up with interesting framing that will push me (as my PC) in difficult and surprising directions. Occasionally he might falter - we're all human - but most of the time he delivers.Our contrasting preferences for RPGing don't really bear on the issue of how much either of us trusts our GMs.</blockquote>

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