Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 7391795" data-attributes="member: 23751">They do mean something that happens in the narrative.  He even gives specific examples which I will quote below."My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want. There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character."The bolded is specifically about backstory as narration.  In this case, the DM is allowing the players to narrate the backstory, rather than having the DM do it."Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?"Again, he is speaking about the DM narrating the high command in such a way as to leave the army undefined so that the players can fill in that narration."In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it. I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."Here he mentions players being able to invent backstory on the spot by paying points for it.  This is no different than inventing backstory on the spot by rolling to see if it happens or not.  Secret door anyone?As for PCs talking about backstory, they do it all the time.  If the DM decided that the kings son was assassinated prior to gameplay, when the PCs discuss that assassination, they are discussing backstory.  Backstory is only backstory if it makes it into the game.  It doesn't matter what the DMs notes say at the game table if they never make it into the game.  Those notes are not backstory until they hit the game world.P.S. It's a shame that you ignored this post.  I was really looking forward to your response. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?611305-What-is-*worldbuilding*-for&p=7391365&viewfull=1#post7391365" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?611305-What-is-*worldbuilding*-for&p=7391365&viewfull=1#post7391365</a></blockquote>

Verification