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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7404266" data-attributes="member: 82106">And this is exactly the nut of the whole thing, and where the 'traditionalist' analysis sinks into the swamp, falls over, and burns (before being rebuilt for the 2078th time). The idea that the players "will just find secret doors everywhere" or that things will be 'too easy', or that the players will [violate the Czege Principle], etc. is all based on a fundamentally oppositional model of play. One in which the GM has hidden the 'goodies' in the 'maze' and its the player's job to guide their characters to it. Once the goal became to have fun playing the game and making up cool stories about the characters, etc. then all that went basically out the window. It is still possible to engage in it as a specific facet of a greater whole, but its not THE GAME anymore.Now, some will contend that they're playing to 'explore', but the model is the same here, the GM has the 'gold' and the players are tasked with navigating the 'maze' to uncover it. The walls and traps of the dungeon maze may be replaced with other stuff, but they still remain. Finally, you can claim to have gone entirely beyond that by saying "well, the players just come to me and tell me what their PC wants to do (in or out of character) and we work on that", but then we come back to the OP of the thread, what's the world building/details FOR? I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action. There's no Schrodinger's Door if there's no concept of an ESTABLISHED fictional reality outside of what has been presented to the characters. This is something I maintain as a principle of play in games of the type I run, ONLY what has been presented in play exists, all else is vapor until you meet it. That wall didn't exist until we laid eyes on it, so who's to say it didn't 'always have a secret door in it'???</blockquote>

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