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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8338717" data-attributes="member: 42582">When I GM, I make up the world on the spot all the time!This has to be done to frame situations, in games (like BW, or like Classic Traveller as I GM it) that don't rely on prep of situations in advance. Even in prep-oriented games (eg in Prince Valiant I tend to use scenarios from the rulebook or the Episode Book), it's often necessary to add bits of detail to framing that aren't present in the (pre-)authored material.And making stuff up is also pretty central to the narration of failure, as per my post just upthread.I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "choice" here. Do you mean a choice made by the PCs, or by the players? And if the latter, do you mean an action declaration, or just a bit of colour narration?If a player narrates that his/her PC wears a headscarf, should that matter to play? Maybe in The Dying Earth, which makes quite a big thing out of fashion, and hats in particular; but often I think it won't and that's probably OK. It's just colour.If the players are explaining that their PCs are trekking across Europe, and they explain how they are travelling north of the Alps, or south of the Alps, should that matter to play? Or is it just colour? That will depend a fair bit on the details of the game being played; most of the time I will tend to prefer a game where it is just colour.As far as the "quantum ogre" is concerned, is it important to the game that the players be able to exercise control over scene-framing? If the game is B/X D&D, then the answer is Yes. If the game is Prince Valiant, then the answer is mostly No. That's not to say that Prince Valiant encourages illusionistic GMing - quite the opposite. It just means that it treats travel and geography, and especially the minutiae of travel and geography, primarily as colour.EDIT: You mention the ogre tailing the PCs, or seeking retribution against thieves. It seems to me that, in a non-railroaded game, those would normally be states of affairs established by the GM as consequences of failure. Or perhaps if the game is stalling a bit and everyone looks to the GM to see what happens now, the GM might introduce hints of such possibilities to get things moving (a "soft move" in PbtA parlance).Treating those as "given" elements in the fiction that can then be used to adjudicate action declarations, rather than as a resource for the narration of failure or for framing, strikes me as tending towards railroading.</blockquote>

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