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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7340386" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think force/illusionism goes well with heavily pre-generated elements. It provides the GM with both means and motivation. Means in the sense of plot elements which can act as easy controls on PCs or to force the plot along lines the GM desires. Motivation in that a heavily plotted backstory integrated with a detailed setting (or even just the mass of setting details itself) begs to be shown off and elaborated on vs being undone. Few GMs relish spending several weekends of prep time on a town just to have the PCs burn it down in session 1. Instead the fire brigade will prove to have been equipped with a magical water pump, or something. You can light it on fire, but you can't burn it! The essence of illusionism, ones actions and choices simply don't produce predictable effects. Now, this isn't ALWAYS bad, but it can get old sometimes.Now, see, I found the opposite to be true. Playing out combats in 'TotM' meant I had to VERY carefully set everything out, describe it all in detail, etc. This is usually facilitated by pre-generated descriptions, and even artwork. Whereas I can drop a few dungeon tiles or draw a few lines on my Chessex with a wet erase marker about as fast as I can spin out the description in my head. Frankly, I like to consider many possible encounter locations and opponents ahead of time, but I don't get too detailed about who they are, where they might appear, or exactly what the action will be ahead of time. That way I can come up with some clever tactical situations that might be harder to just whip out on the fly, and still have a pretty unstructured game. Besides, if I don't focus on too many trivial combats, then the real fights are going to mostly be with 'name' figures, which have probably already been fleshed out to some extent in most cases through play. Stories with significant plot rarely run to "suddenly you find yourself fighting a dragon out of the blue" kinds of things. That dragon will be developed through earlier interactions, knowledge gained in the course of study or recon, etc. It may well be a sometime patron that has now come to a parting of the ways with the PCs! So, the general situation is likely to be that the location has been developed to some extent already, etc. I'm only fixing tactically relevant details at the time of the fight, and if I know its coming ahead of time I may even do a bit of that before the session. Heck, I might even map out the whole lair, though I've gotten pretty lazy in my old age...</blockquote>

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