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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7400692" data-attributes="member: 6778044">Perhaps because “cool” depends on context? Just because I think of something that I think might be cool doesn’t make it so until the context makes it so. At which point I share it.Nor am I saying that every tiny event or aspect is cool. It’s the collection of events, created and/or compiled at the table that is important.Part of what’s cool is exploration, discovering things, reacting to challenges (or really, what the reaction to the challenge is). Part of what we find cool is a believable, immersive world. Worldbuilding helps do that. I’m more interested in the experience at the table. And as a DM I take the responsibility of fostering that experience seriously. My players are also interested in the experience. I have a couple that enjoy the theory of RPG games, as well as designing mechanics and we discuss and work on these things quite a bit. The rest don’t care about the mechanics, the techniques, etc. it’s all about the experience to them.So I’ll use any approach and technique that will help me best do that. Part of that is communicating with the players to understand better what they like. What their expectations are, and working to meet those expectations. Drawing a map of a keep that includes secret doors, and identifies where they are and aren’t is simply a tool. They might never search for a secret door, in which case it’s irrelevant. Or they do, and they find there isn’t one. That’s a point in the overall evening that together shares something cool (hopefully). Last week, I had perhaps 15% input into the night’s session. The majority of the time I was a spectator, and an occasional reference when they had a question. Every once in a while I’d jump in with a clarification or correction regarding something about the world. Otherwise, it was almost entirely the PCs discussing things, sharing information, debating their options, and making plans. A good part of what I provided was prior to the session, to help a player integrate a new character into the world. As this character is from a part of the world that we had not previously discussed, I provided a combination of general things that were fixed, and possibilities based on those and what I knew of their character and relationships to the existing campaign. This was one way that I shared material that had been secret. Some of it was published, some I prepared, and much that we made up in the spot. And much of that morphed when it actually entered the game at the session.The bottom line is that it’s not about every little think I think of. If that were the case I’d just write a book. For me it’s about working the cool ideas I have into the flow of the game with the cool ideas they have. We have different frameworks (world vs. character/family for example) but those are soft, moveable lines. Notes, maps, identifying things like where secret doors are help me do that better. It gives me time to think things through, and then during the session if I decide to add (or remove) a secret door, that’s fine. The purpose is the same - to share cool things. We just go about it differently.Baseball, basketball, and football all provide entertainment, fantasy games, and an exciting “product” to their fans. The details of how they do it are all different. That you (or he) might have a different process for sharing cool things doesn’t alter the fact that it’s what we are both trying to do. His goal and mine are the same, we just use a different approach to achieve it.</blockquote>

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