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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9040178" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I think there's plenty of skipping of boring stuff in every game. Even in D&D, when it comes to travel, typically there's a process like rolling to see if there is an encounter of some sort every X time period, and if there's no encounter, then you gloss over all of it with a bit of descriptive narration. But again, I don't see the meaningful difference between something interesting happening that's related to dramatic needs and something interesting happening that's not. Either way, something interesting is happening. So, what makes them distinct? One is related to the players' goals or their characters' themes, and the other is not. The only reason to have them not relate to the players' goals or characters' themes is because you don't want them to. Let's look at it another way. If the players are being proactive, then they're pursuing specific things. Those things and related events happening would seem to be the natural conclusion of that starting point, no? If they aren't proactive, then things are still going to happen to them because it's a game and we all want stuff to happen. Wherever they go, they run into significant events, unrelated to their own agenda. So, the argument about realism seems to me to boil down to saying that (A) unrelated remarkable events continually happen to the same group of people all the time is somehow more realistic or sensible than (B) related events continually happen to the same group of people all the time. That's a really weak argument. So let's set aside the appeal to realism. What is the difference?The most obvious, to me, is that (A) is more about the GM dictating what happens, and (B) is more about the players dictating what happens. Realism is just the excuse GMs use for pushing for (A).</blockquote>

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