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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7340394" data-attributes="member: 42582">You said "a significant goal of play is for the GM to read stuff from his/her notes to trigger the players to make action declaration statements." The description of the starting town as Hardby isn't triggering an action declaration It's just colour. I could have said Zamboula if I wanted to. Or just made something up.The action declarations are generted by the details of situation that aren't mere colour, like the angel feather for sale by the peddler. That's not based on notes.The GM's role is to establish situations - framing - that speaks to the dramatic needs of the PCs, as evinced by the player through PC build, through actual play, etc. This then leads to action declarations by the players for their PCs - resolution of those declarations provides new material that feeds into further framing, etc.So if the plauyer builds a Raven Queen devotee, then situations are going to include agents of Orcus. If the player builds a mage who is trying to find items to help free his brother from possession by a balrog, then the situation is going to include stuff that speaks to that desire, like angel feathers of doubtul provenance.This goes also to the contrast between mere colour, and substantive aspects of the situation. The fact that the Orcus cultists is 5' tall or 6' tall is (at least in every game I've run that I can think of) mere colour. I've never had a player build a PC where personal height is a thematic component of the PC. The fact that the Orcus cultist wields a mace is also colour, but - assuming that "mace" here is the mechanical representation of a skull-tipped rod - is also part of establishing the feel of an Orcus cultist. The fact that the Orcus cultist is in a tomb or not is - in the context of the Raven Queen devoteese - more than mere colour, because that matters to the way in which, in that particular context of play, Orcus's desecration of the dead is going to play out. And obviously the fact that the cultist serves Orcus rather than (say) Demogorgon is not mere colour.An understanding on the GM's part of what is mere colour, and what is not, is pretty important to the approach I am describing. Glossing over mere colour is fine, and even expected. But glossing over some substantive element of a scene is a GMing mistake, on this approach. This also connects to establishing stakes, which goes back to secret backstory: suppose the cultist is some otherwise run-of-the-mill townsperson. The players are aware that, if their PCs kill the cultist, that has consequences in the mundane world - eg the dead cultist will be missed by family, colleagues etc. If the GM thinks its appropriate to introduce that into some subsequent framing, it probably doesn't matter whether the dead cultist turns out to have been a cobbler or a baker.But if the cultist is (say) an undertaker, then that probably should be part of the framing, as that bears directly upon the stakes of the situation - this cultist of Orcus has been handling funerary preparations for who knows how many people! That's not mere colour that can be harmlessly established after the event.I also would like to stress that improvisation is not really the key concept here. What is key is (i) an absence of unilateral authorship of the setting by the GM, and (ii) no use of secret backstory as an element of framing so as to defeat action declarations.You can get (i) and (ii) with prepared material - be that encounter maps (for systems that use them) or NPC ideas or NPC/creature statblocks - that is likely to be useful. Preparing material doesn't, itself, estalish the setting prior to its actual use in play.Preparation isn't the same thing as pre-establishing setting. And it's even moreso not the same thing as pre-establishing setting secretly or unilaterally.Preparation can include all sorts of different things, depending on the system, the campaign context, etc.Writing up some NPC ideas is preparation. Whether ot not that is also establishing setting is a further matter. Before my first BW session, I had an idea for a NPC taken from a Penumbra d20 module - a renegade murdering mage. I wrote up a BW version of that character.During the course of play, as the situation with the peddler, the feather, the curse, and Jabal the red unfolded, I introduced that NPC into the situation as part of the framing - as the dishevelled figure visible on Jabal' staircase, and as the person who sold the feather to the peddler.The preparation did not establish any element of the shared fiction. The moments of framing and narration, in the course of play, did.</blockquote>

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