Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[The Shaman]

Since emotional depth is the goal here . . .

"Emotional depth is the goal?"

So tell me, how much emotional depth does a carefully plotted, thematically organized game have the first time the players sit down at the table together? How does writing a character's background into the setting, or better yet, building the setting around the character's background, produce immediate emotional depth right from the giddyup?

 

[Janx]

"Emotional depth is the goal?"

So tell me, how much emotional depth does a carefully plotted, thematically organized game have the first time the players sit down at the table together? How does writing a character's background into the setting, or better yet, building the setting around the character's background, produce immediate emotional depth right from the giddyup?

If I accept emotional depth as the goal, it is the goal, not the starting condition.

So I agree with Shaman that there isn't neccessarily emotional depth from the giddyup.

I suspect Shaman is also questioning that emotional depth is the goal for everybody. I'd agree that not all players or DMs have that goal.

I think some DMs can use emotional depth as a tool (if I get you to be emotionally invested in your PC, it gives me more options and hooks, and you're probably liking your PC more).

I think some players have a goal of emotional depth. They want to be their PC, so they must feel for the PC.

Not everybody plays that way.

 

[Janx]

In my experience those are in fact among the worst referees to play with.

My longtime DM was very good at running games where at the climax, we always thought we were going to die. And we'd always come up with a plan to win the day. So we felt smart, and we felt afraid. As a fellow DM, I know that behind the screen, he'd fudge a few dice rolls either way, when he needed to. Given that he's been running games for the group since we started in 1990 and this group is still going today, I suspect he's a good enough DM.

I think I'd like to hear an example of how it was bad. Care to share?

 

[The Shaman]

I think I'd like to hear an example of how it was bad.

I'm not fond of referees who lie to their players and cheat on rolls.

If you want to narrate an outcome, then go ahead; just don't roll dice and pretend they say something they don't. If you roll the dice, live with the consequences. Then we're all playing the same game together.

 

[Ariosto]

Ariosto, for some bizarre reason, seems to think that because the real world is a sandbox, then gaming worlds must be sandboxes too.

Nope. Wrong on all counts -- not least in that I don't even think that "sandbox" means anything in particular!

Ariosto at the very least, has been openly derisive of any playstyle other than sandbox.

You keep using that word, and I do not think it means what you think it means ... to RC ... who does not think the same as Doug ... and so on.

I have in fact written of my experiences enjoying different styles. I invented a "drama-driven game", for scrying of lard!

What I openly deride is your putting down everyone who does not agree to your superiority. What I openly deride is your insistence, over and over and over again, on telling us that our games are this or that insulting thing no matter how many times we tell you how they actually are.

Now, for D&D, that's not a far assumption, but, again, that's not the only way to play.

Some things sort of go with playing Vampire: the Masquerade or Sorcerer; some go with playing Call of Cthulhu, others with RuneQuest and others yet with Pendragon. Normal people do not expect Axis & Allies to be just like Thurn and Taxis, and accept that Stratego is different from Mille Bornes.

There are an awful lot of games not played just like yours, Hussar!