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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3516248" data-attributes="member: 2067">Because you wouldn't be targeting the problem? If your character has bad results, you complain  about the bad results and let the DM fix them their own way. I wouldn't tell any of my DMs that they should have me make a Climb roll with my Dex modifier instead of my Strength modifier or that my Jump check of 25 really did beat his jumping cliff face when he says it didn't. I wouldn't tell my DM that they have to allow my warforged ninja in their 7th Sea game if he says it's not allowed. I wouldn't tell my DM they're playing the game wrong just because they're not DMing the way that I would DM. I will tell them if my character has bad results: "My jump check of 25 didn't cross the 5-foot wide gap?! Uhm...I attempt to disbelieve the illusion?" But it's not my prerogative as a player to tell them how to DM. My players give me much the same respect.I wanted to spur a discussion on how applicable a writer's advice for writing a good story was in regards to doing a good game of D&D, and to see what kind of defenses were offered against his position. It seems that more than 10 pages later, we're still discussing the OP and the various ramifications of the position, so I'd call it a resounding success. It has been especially interesting to me to see some of the passionate defenses of worldbuilding, which seem to echo a lot of Harrison's statements.I've got no major issues with people having fun treating their world as a hallowed place of dedication and lifelong study, showcasing their great clomping nerdism, and loving their setting porn. If it's fun, do it. Sweet Zombie Jesus knows there's a lot of great clomping nerds who play this game because certain fictional worlds have been worthy of their dedication and study.Where I take issue is when people insist that it must be this way for it to be rich, detailed, believable, and lively -- that you need prep work to have a world worthy of dedication and lifelong study. Whether you do the thinking alone in a room and write it down and do extensive research, or whether you do the thinking in a room full of people and use archetypes and twists and mental names in a hat to formulate whatever background you require, you can create a setting that lives and breathes with all the lungwork one needs.Now, they will be distinctly different in many ways. They will show how they have been crafted. The spontaneous world may have a lot of areas that are "unknown" or vaguely defined, to be filled in only later as need be. The prepared world may have 50 pages on the politics of a nation-state the PC's maybe have a 1-in-20 chance of visiting, if they insist upon in. But it doesn't matter if the region is unknown or simply irrelevant -- the world lives and breathes around the characters just fine.</blockquote>

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