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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6764618" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Ditto.  Low prep, low resolution settings that get fleshed out during play, and allowing players some measure of authorship does not automatically correlate to incoherency with respect to the spatial/temporal aspects of play nor story continuity.  There are typically some other ingredients that spoil the meal (such as fatigue/weariness, lack of consistent play, poor GM information organization and improvisation, some breach of social contract).Agreed with all of the above.  Couple thoughts:1)  GMs who devote so much labor, love, and attention to their setting or their metaplot have a (quite natural) tendency to make those things the primary locus/fulcrum/linchpin of play.  The mover/shaker:backdrop/color paradigm has a not uncommon tendency to become inverted (or at least uncomfortably muddled).  That can be a huge breach of social contract if the players expect the opposite.2)  What you note in the second paragraph has a tendency to become rife.  Inhabiting the emotions and sensory experience of an actor in any given situation becomes extremely difficult when your orientation to the world around you must constantly be vetted through the GM by and is beholden to a process of correction > question > clarification (etc).  The other not-so-good byproduct of this is that it slows the action down tremendously.As above, it isn't about that for me as a GM.  I'm extremely confident in my ability to run high-resolution-setting games.  I've run many Forgotten Realms games with players who adore the setting.  I can manage the overhead that comes with it perfectly fine.  I just find it puts players who don't have access to the high-resolution-setting information in a precarious, insecure position, leading to 2 above.  And personally, I get no emotional/entertainment return for either preparing or for running such settings.  It is many times more difficult to "play to find out what happens", the pace of the game has a tendency toward crawling (or a brisk walk when done well and the group has good chemistry) rather than humming along, and the continuum of the focus of play can move further from focusing like a laser beam on "the conflicts the PCs care about, their thematic actions with respect to those things, and its attendant fallout" and more towards "setting as theme park so all these bells and whistles and NPC power players each need their due screen-time (because I think they're cool and to legitimize all the friggin work I put in outside of play!)".I think such situations work best (a) as pemerton depicted above (short arcs) or (b) in a case of Forgotten Realms where EVERY....SINGLE...PLAYER has emotional buy-in to the setting and they're psyched about the "theme-park" aspect of play, they're ok with their agency being somewhat muted or infringed upon (due to the heightened role of the setting and the metaplot relative to the PCs), and perfectly fine with a relaxed pace.</blockquote>

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