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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9047378" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm thinking along these lines:It's a &quot;living world&quot;. That means that, from time to time, the GM &quot;updates&quot; or &quot;evolves&quot; the fiction - that's the &quot;living&quot; part, right?Some of those updates are responses to things the players have their PCs do - I think that's pretty key to the approach. Some of those updates are independent of the players and the PCs - eg the GM has a default &quot;timeline&quot; unfolding, or periodically rolls for random events, or whatever.Suppose that the players typically need X actions to work out the nature of some element of the fiction, and its relationship to other elements (eg they might have to talk to a person, track down a rumour, inspect a building, and cast a spell).And suppose that the GM typically makes Y changes per X actions performed by the PCs. And suppose that there is a rate of random events that is Z per X actions. So Y+Z changes are happening per element of the fiction that the players work out.Suppose that Y and Z each equal 0.5. Then that means that, typically, the GM is making 1 change to the world per element of the fiction the players work out. Assuming that that change has some relevant to the element the players are working out, at this rate of change the player's grasp of the ingame situation will always be imperfect, though they might be able to &quot;see&quot; it just out of reach, make sensible extrapolations, etcSuppose that Y and Z are each well above 1. That suggests to me that, over time, the players are never really going to be able to grasp the setting. It is moving more quickly than they can generate knowledge about it.Suppose that Y and Z sum to less than 1. Then, over the course of play, the players gain more and more knowledge of the setting, as things change less quickly than they are learning about those things. (In the Tomb of Horrors Y and Z are both equal to zero, or near enough to, making ToH the paradigm of the static dungeon crawl.)As I posted upthread, the mathematical presentation is a fairly crude one. But the idea behind it seems to me pretty important for &quot;living world&quot; GMing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9047378, member: 42582"] I'm thinking along these lines: It's a "living world". That means that, from time to time, the GM "updates" or "evolves" the fiction - that's the "living" part, right? Some of those updates are responses to things the players have their PCs do - I think that's pretty key to the approach. Some of those updates are independent of the players and the PCs - eg the GM has a default "timeline" unfolding, or periodically rolls for random events, or whatever. Suppose that the players typically need X actions to work out the nature of some element of the fiction, and its relationship to other elements (eg they might have to talk to a person, track down a rumour, inspect a building, and cast a spell). And suppose that the GM typically makes Y changes per X actions performed by the PCs. And suppose that there is a rate of random events that is Z per X actions. So Y+Z changes are happening per element of the fiction that the players work out. Suppose that Y and Z each equal 0.5. Then that means that, typically, the GM is making 1 change to the world per element of the fiction the players work out. Assuming that that change has some relevant to the element the players are working out, at this rate of change the player's grasp of the ingame situation will always be imperfect, though they might be able to "see" it just out of reach, make sensible extrapolations, etc Suppose that Y and Z are each well above 1. That suggests to me that, over time, the players are never really going to be able to grasp the setting. It is moving more quickly than they can generate knowledge about it. Suppose that Y and Z sum to less than 1. Then, over the course of play, the players gain more and more knowledge of the setting, as things change less quickly than they are learning about those things. (In the Tomb of Horrors Y and Z are both equal to zero, or near enough to, making ToH the paradigm of the static dungeon crawl.) As I posted upthread, the mathematical presentation is a fairly crude one. But the idea behind it seems to me pretty important for "living world" GMing. [/QUOTE]

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