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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5016184" data-attributes="member: 80487">How about the real world, for a start? When Hussar, for instance, goes off on his strange vectors, part of what makes them so strange is the seeming dismissal of real life as "lacking depth", or whatever. That could, of course, reflect a religious world-view, but even in such a case I think it unusual.Of course the game-world is not the real world, but I do not think it should be too hard to see the difference between taking the real world as a model and taking Walt Disney World as a model. Even in fantastic fiction, there is a perceptible difference in quality between Howard's Hyborian world, which seems indeed to have weathered ages since the sinking of Atlantis, and the landscape John Jakes provides for Brak, which has all the solidity of a painted canvas backdrop erected just in time for the latest scene.Such questions of verisimilitude aside, by "situation" I meant a state of affairs that simply is as it is and shall be as it shall be in accordance with cause and effect -- whatever relevant effect (including none) the players may cause. By "scenario",  I meant in this case for instance the common "dungeon module" default: a mise en scène locked in stasis until such time as players arrive, upon which the place and inhabitants suddenly lurch into clockwork motion.Ah, but is it not a waste of effort -- even if made practical in the first place, say by computer program -- to simulate continuously events in every acre of Secondary Creation as a sort of solitaire game, just on the chance that someday a player might pass through? Yes, indeed; that is certainly not what I do.However, there is a long way between those extremes!Suppose I were to set down the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief in my world. Is there really any reason I must, or even should, "run the adventure" as if I were a DM in the Official D&D Tournament back whenever? I see none. The context is totally different, most significantly that the Steading is now part of my campaign.I treat it as a place with inhabitants pursuing their own objectives. Do they "have plots" in that sense? Yes. Can I "plot" the probable course of events based on what I know of them and other NPCs, and of other processes I have set in motion, hypothetically assuming that players' actions do not interfere? Yes, although I am likely to incorporate probabilistic elements that call for periodic checks (standing in for the mass of cumulative little uncertainties that Von Clausewitz called "friction" and some others call "chaos").That, however, is the limit of my "plot" creation. The players naturally have "plots" of their own, in the same sense as the hill giants and their allies. I am not interested in determining the outcomes of the intersections of those plots; the choices of players, the luck of the dice and the rules of the game shall do so in due time in actual play. My only concern is to referee the process fairly.Whatever happens is "the story" we shall discover, and the grist for the mill that shall produce however many stories we will tell when we, "Remember that time when ...".</blockquote>

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