You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Hussar]

What if there are players in the group who are enjoying the scene as framed? Should they give up on the enjoyment they're having with it because one or some other minority of other players isn't as engaged as they are? What's the decision rule? Everyone gets veto power? That's what Hussar and you seem to be advocating here.

Are you having fun when you know your friends aren't? Is your fun really that much more important to you than the guy's sitting next to you?

For me, if I know that you're not having fun, that's good enough for me. I don't put my fun ahead of yours.

Again, I'm not talking about the guy who does this every time, I'm talking about a once a very long while event. You mentioned a bit ago about not sharing the spotlight and I think you completely missed the point. In the examples I showed, I'm still dead center in the spotlight. After all, it's my idea to hire the hirelings, who do you think had to interview them and interact with them to learn all those personal details? Who do you think had to go buy all their equipment and spend about an hour of game time kibbitzing with the shop keeper?

If I wanted to hog the spotlight, why would I want to skip scenes where I'm dead center in the spotlight?

Eh. That one's a bit slippery. Should the GM skip the logical barriers to accomplishing the goal, just because the players don't want to be bothered with them?

In that language? Absolutely. In your words, the players don't want to be bothered. They are totally disengaged and not interested. So, why force them to play through things that they don't care about?

 

[Hussar]

If the goal in question is, "find lunch," there's not a whole lot of reason to go through the efforts to find lunch in detail.

If, however, the goal is, "assassinate the Duke," you will be hard pressed to convince me that I should just ignore the fact that there's a castle and guard between the players and the Duke, just because the players don't feel like mucking about with them.

And I would totally agree.

What I wouldn't want is to spend half a session getting to the castle, dealing with lame horses that throw shoes, wandering sheep and a dozen other completely unrelated side quests that are just the DM roadblocking.

If we want to assassinate the Duke and we happen to be in the wrong town, is it totally unreasonable to want the DM to redline travel to where the Duke is located?

 

[Celebrim]

In that language? Absolutely. In your words, the players don't want to be bothered. They are totally disengaged and not interested. So, why force them to play through things that they don't care about?

Because there is a logical inconsistancy here. The players have said they are interested in assassinating the Duke. Clearly, if the story is about assassinating the Duke, then part of the story is about doing that and all the things round about the Duke become part of the story. Sure, we could cut frame to in media res of them standing above the body of the Duke, dripping in his blood, but the story is not then about assassinating the Duke but about its aftermath and two major questions are immediately raised. First, since players aren't the audience of the story, why are we showing the story to them rather than letting them experience it - which is the most powerful and unique characteristic of the RPG art. If we only wanted to show them a story, why play an RPG at all? Secondly, when do we stop? When do we stop all this truncation of the story and actually get on with the story? These sorts of jumps are fine if they jump no significant events or if perhaps they happen once, starting the story in media res? But how long do we keep skipping scenes and why? If the story was to be about the aftermath of assassinating the Duke, can we start the story now or were the players not really interested in that story either? If not this story, then what? When is the story allowed to happen, or do you think us well served by flitting around with every random whim? Stories have a structure. Things like in media res and jump cuts are techniques and often weak ones that make for weak, confusing, jarring stories even when you are telling a story to an audience, much less when you are trying to achieve that singular power achievable in an RPG of actually becoming part of the story and living it from the inside. Big continuity breaks like that are weak framing techniques. If we don't want to spend a lot of time on the planning and lead up to the Duke, fine, then there are economical techniques for creating bridging scenes and continuity cuts that let us advance the story without breaking emmersion.

But just 'jump' 'bang', that's crappy story telling and implies quite the opposite of the indication - that the killing of the Duke is trivial to the story the same way that the preperation of the lunch is.

If we want to assassinate the Duke and we happen to be in the wrong town, is it totally unreasonable to want the DM to redline travel to where the Duke is located?

If the travel is trivial to the story, safe, reliable, etc., then no it isn't unreasonable. I 'redline' travel too. Much of the travel on the way up to Campansalus from Amalteen was 'redlined', describing only the changing of terrain. Most of the travel back and forth between Amalteen and Dunbaugh was done in under a minute of narration, a quick summation of the journey to establish what the change in terrain was like on the way up, and then a quick summary of the refugees passing them on the way back. All this was handled this way because the PC's were travelling through largely safe settled lands, and as such there was no need to deal with bathroom breaks, saddle sores, stops at inns for meals, or any of the other mundane things of travel. In a different story, that might have been important, but I promised the players a story at a heroic and not mundane scale. However, to the extent that it matters what condition that you arrive in at the destination, even those journeys provoke Endurance checks to see if you can make the journey without fatigue (or worse). I don't necessarily narrate the saddle sores, but they are mechanically accounted for. Why? Well, for one thing, because two of my PC's are heroic travellers; it's is their right to show and know they can escape hardship less heroic travellers can not. One of them now could keep up with Strider the Wingfooted on his heroic chase across the plains of Rohan.

However when it came time for the journey from Amalteen to Talernga, the PC's were passing through a war zone. That, we didn't skip over, because there were going to be non-trivial events. It wasn't possible to get to Talernga without danger and heroic adventure. Therefore, I didn't uses the same technique.

 

[Hussar]

However, to the extent that it matters what condition that you arrive in at the destination, even those journeys provoke Endurance checks to see if you can make the journey without fatigue (or worse).

See, and that's where our styles diverge. To me, provoking Endurance checks is trivial and meaningless. I simply don't care. Again, it's probably 30 seconds at the table and no worries, but, it's still something I don't care for. Not that it's bad, and I can't stress that enough. It works at your table. Great. To me, it's just not something I'm interested in integrating into the game.

And, to turn your questions around, where does it stop? If we're introducing endurance checks, why not nature checks to avoid getting lost? What about wear and tear on vehicles? Do we roll checks to see if our mounts go lame? Animal handling checks to maintain the health of the animals? Etc.

The answer to both questions is, the table finds a place where it is comfortable. You skip over scenes with the knowledge that you are going to get to stuff that everyone enjoys. You don't skip over stuff just to be a dick. Why would I skip over everything in the castle getting to the Duke? That would be killing my enjoyment as well as everyone else's. That's counterproductive.

If the travel is trivial to the story, safe, reliable,

To me, only that first criteria matters. The other two? Meh, I don't care. Those are simulationist priorities that don't matter to me. If travel is dangerous but the encounters are trivial to the story, I would much rather skip them.

But, again, whether or not the DM has decided that our road has bandits on it or not does not matter to me. I'm sorry, I don't care about setting. Setting, for me, is the least important consideration. So, given the choice of engaging in events unrelated to the assassination of the Duke plus assassinating the Duke, or going straight to the events related to assassinating the Duke, I'll always choose the latter.

I'll give another example, this time when I was on the receiving end of someone ending a scene and moving things forward. We were playing the first module in the WOTC adventure path, Ashen Crown ((IIRC)) and we had captured a hobgoblin to get some information about the area we were in. My character interrogates the hobgoblin and rolls fantastically on his Intimidate check meaning that we're supposed to get some information out of this guy.

This goes back and forth for several minutes. One of the other players declares, "I kill the hobgoblin." in the middle of my sentence. I was taken a bit aback and, as an aside asked the player, "What the?" His response was, "The Dm was stonewalling and I'm tired of screwing around with this. Let's go."

At the time I was a bit put out but then I thought about it a bit and I realized that the other player was 100% right. The scene was over and I was likely beating a dead horse trying to get more information. By executing the hobgoblin, the player ended the scene and we got back to moving forward.

I don't really see a whole lot of difference between what he did and what I've done in the past.

 

[Celebrim]

And, to turn your questions around, where does it stop? If we're introducing endurance checks, why not nature checks to avoid getting lost?

Why not? Though in my game, they are Navigation checks. And again, that's why someone in the party has levels in Explorer. There isn't really a Navigation check needed on a road. Unless the character was travelling alone and had taken an Inept (Navigation) disadvantage, I'd consider it DC 0 and no more worry about it than making Balance checks while walking on the road. But yeah, if you take Inept (Navigation) or you have a Wisdom 6, and you are travelling by night, you'll possibly end up lost and maybe find an enchanted castle, a spooky cave, or something.

What about wear and tear on vehicles? Do we roll checks to see if our mounts go lame? Animal handling checks to maintain the health of the animals? Etc.

Maybe if the journey lasted for a month or if they forced marched the horses. It's unlikely to happen with healthy animals on short journeys though. Even a daily 5% chance would be too high, so don't roll daily.

But, again, whether or not the DM has decided that our road has bandits on it or not does not matter to me. I'm sorry, I don't care about setting. Setting, for me, is the least important consideration. So, given the choice of engaging in events unrelated to the assassination of the Duke plus assassinating the Duke, or going straight to the events related to assassinating the Duke, I'll always choose the latter.

I don't know. I bet those bandits aren't very fond of the Duke either. Maybe we'll meet Robin Hood. Maybe we'll meet Robin Hood's gritty RW counter part. Maybe we'll defeat the bandits, become local heroes and get invited to have dinner with the Duke. When you give up on setting, you've given up on story. "Setting is a critical component for assisting the plot, as in man vs. nature or man vs. society stories. In some stories the setting becomes a character itself." If you are assassinating the Duke, the surrounding setting is a critical part of the story. It will become a very large part of what the story is about. Is the Duke hated, or loved and admired? If you kill this Duke, will you be celebrated as heroes, or will every goodwoman and man in the Duchy want to tear you limb from limb? Don't try to convince me that you simultaneously care about story but nothing about setting.

This goes back and forth for several minutes. One of the other players declares, "I kill the hobgoblin." in the middle of my sentence. I was taken a bit aback and, as an aside asked the player, "What the?" His response was, "The Dm was stonewalling and I'm tired of screwing around with this. Let's go."

His response and motivation was OOC. I'd like your story more if the response was just, "I'm tired of screwing around with this. Let's go." That tells me something about the character. Cool, he's ruthless and impatient. But instead all I learned from your story was something about your friend. GK Chesterton, blah blah blah.

The answer to both questions is, the table finds a place where it is comfortable. You skip over scenes with the knowledge that you are going to get to stuff that everyone enjoys. You don't skip over stuff just to be a dick.

Here's the problem; that seems to be a terribly subjective issue.

 

[Hussar]

Here's the problem; that seems to be a terribly subjective issue.

Well, obviously.

What, you want an objective statement of when to skip scenes? Really? You think there could possibly be an objective metric here? Of course it's 100% subjective.

But, as far as caring about setting? Yup, don't care. I don't know why you would think that's hard to believe, but, hey, different strokes and all that. Killing the randomly encountered bandits gets us invited in to see the Duke we're supposed to assassinate? Wow, talk about destroying any immersion in the game for me. Totally heavy handed IMO. We just happen to meet some bandits at exactly the right time and in exactly the right place to jump us right into where we want to be?

No thanks. Now, if we went hunting bandits because we had heard that bandits were around and it was our plan that finding and stopping the bandits would get us invited to see the Duke? Fantastic. Great. Player driven action at its best.

But deus ex machina dropping bandits in just to get us in to see the Duke? No thanks. Not my idea of a fun game. I would see that as a total railroad. "Here, kill these bandits so you can go and see the Duke." I am not such a huge fan of linear play as that.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I first want to say that though we often disagree, I'm asking these out of an attempt to clarify, not argue, because I'm having trouble following these statements.

Are you having fun when you know your friends aren't? Is your fun really that much more important to you than the guy's sitting next to you?

For me, if I know that you're not having fun, that's good enough for me. I don't put my fun ahead of yours.

It seems like you rather explicitly put your fun ahead of mine, unless my fun level automatically matches yours. What I mean is, if you're not having fun, but I am, you'd like to put your fun ahead of mine, so that we can skip to a scene where we both have fun.

If skipping the scene kills the fun for me ("I thought that scene was very important" / "I've been waiting for this for a long time" / "finally, the big reveal!" / etc.), what happens? I mean, if you're not having fun, as a fellow player, then my fun will be lessened; I'll empathize, and might push to hurry things along. But, what if my fun will be incredibly hampered by skipping this scene? Wouldn't skipping it be rather explicitly putting your fun ahead of mine? If not, why not?

But, as far as caring about setting? Yup, don't care. I don't know why you would think that's hard to believe, but, hey, different strokes and all that.

I find this basically impossible to believe, because the entire game is setting; the duke you want to assassinate, or the city you want to get to. Do you basically mean "exploration of the setting for the sake of it"? Or, something else like that? I just can't imagine it being possible to "not care about the setting" unless you basically saw it purely as game, and only worked from a rules-perspective, with disregard to the narrative. And, based on the rest of your post (where you mentioned your immersion being destroyed), I find this impossible. What am I missing?

Thanks, in advance, for answering. As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

Pretty sure you raised BW first (WAAAAYYYYYY back in poost 101) and continued raising it until celebrim did a bit of research to locate it. I think he did raise the sample module first (Post 259) as an example of how the exact same issue (player not engaged in scene) can occur in BW the same as in any other system. You then focused in on the fact this is a sample module, rather than the fact that BW faces the exact same issue of potential for the player not to be engaged by the scene. It was never a question of agreeing to play the sample BW module to get a feel for the game, but one of showing up for the game and being presented with this specific scenario, which the player finds not to be engaging.

In post 101 I mentioned BW as a system with a formal player-flag-flying mechanic (Beliefs, etc). I mentioned that you can do similar things informally.

I still don't see what that has to do with a sample module with pregen PCs - obviously in such a game the players don't fly any flags. The whole point is that the designer has flown the flags instead, and the players go along with that.

But I don't see why you think that proves that player flag flying is impossible, or must produce play that breaks down. (If that's what you do think. I'm still not following this diversion through The Sword.)

If your point is that sometimes sessions aren't very good, and that no system can insulate against this, obviously that's true. But that's not a reason to try to run good sessions, and to look for techniques that will help with that. Is it?

There is also no reason, once he gets there, that whatever he is looking for in City B presents itself to him in the middle of the street with a bold neon sign, just because he wants to get to that part of the scenario.

Maybe. Maybe not. We don't have enough information.

a challenge is placed to do exactly that - challenge. It is intended that the players overcome the challenge, perhaps easily, or perhaps only with difficulty and/or at great cost. But it is there to be overcome, not to defeat the players so the GM can somehow "win".

Not all RPG players are interested in simply "overcoming challenges" as the goal of play.

A lot of the disconnect on this thread seems to come from whether one assumes the GM is adversarial.

Not on my part. Adversarial GMing can be an issue, sure, but Hussar hasn't put forward any examples of it that I've noticed. The issue I'm interested in is GM control over plot, and the way that GM control over scene framing is relating to that.

My view as a player is that this robs the game of any verissimilitude

I'm sure that' true. But not every RPGer finds his/her sense of verisimilitude bound up in setting exploration in this way.

I would be very disappointed to spend 10 or 15 minutes equipping ourselves for a trek across the desert only to be told "You arrive, hot and sweaty, eight days later".

Of course. But in a system in which the GM is not going to mechanically resolve the desert crossing, presumably s/he would not let you waste 10-15 minutes equipping for it.

If crossing is that easy, why bother with a desert at all?

Because it's part of the setting and backstory? Because it provides colour?

And there's no reason to think the crossing was easy for the PCs. It's just easy at the table, for the players.

You refer to "just mark off the resource and move on". Again, this is a matter of style and player preference.

Of course. I didn't realise that was in dispute.

We can also say "Battle the Grell" is a simple matter of resource expenditure - OK, mark off 15 arrows, 10 crossbow bolts, 5 sling bullets, three spells, at least one at your highest spell level, for each spellcaster, and 1/3 of the parties' total max hit points, allocated between you as you see fit. No need to play out the encounter with the Grell - just expend resources.

Sure - that's completely viable. That's how most groups I've played with do shopping.

Part of what matters in RPGing, in my view, is deciding what matters, and honing in on that with the action resolution mechanics. Sometimes it might be shopping, sometimes it might be travel, sometimes it might be fighting.

Maybe some players would rather make combat a minor aspect of the game, so let's drop that to resource expenditure and focus the game on peaceful, rather than violent, interaction by adding depth and granularity to social interaction and removing it from combat.

Sure, that could be done too at the level of system design.

Whether it's a player-inspired maguffin ("I want to find the Lost Sword of Sar-Kor-Lahk"; "I want to meet the High Priest of my faith"; "I want to attend NovemberFest")

That wouldn't be a MacGuffin, then, would it? It's no longer a plot device, but a significant story element in itself.

I don't see where anyone is asserting a conflict between mechanical effectiveness and playing their character

I took that to be an implication of your remark upthread that a good player would RP his/her PC rather than pursue the mechanically advantageous option.

No we don't. We both agree that we should be laying out a world that the players will find entertaining.

<snip>

I very much doubt we have different views on what counts as worthwhile RPGing.

I think you're replying to my comment to N'raac - though as it happens I also think our approaches are pretty different. Like Hussar, for instance, I'm not that much into setting, and on the "What should be in a new setting" thread I didn't find much I would want in your list of desiderata.

my last session went 4 hours of almost pure RP, no combat to speak of, and lots of character thematic development.

OK. Though I'm not sure I see the relevance of no combat. I personally quite like combat as a site of roleplaying and character thematic development - for me, at least, it's a fairly big part of the fantasy genre.

I find this basically impossible to believe, because the entire game is setting

There are different ways of using terminology, but I not only believe Hussar but tend to share his preference. I don't think Hussar is objecting to colour ("The city lies on the other side of a 200-mile desert? Cool stuff.") But it's very feasible to keep this stuff basicaly to the level of colour and nothing more.

I personally prefer to focus on characters, and on situation - what's the conflict? what're the stakes? - than on setting as such.

The answer to both questions is, the table finds a place where it is comfortable. You skip over scenes with the knowledge that you are going to get to stuff that everyone enjoys. You don't skip over stuff just to be a dick. Why would I skip over everything in the castle getting to the Duke? That would be killing my enjoyment as well as everyone else's. That's counterproductive.

<snip>

I'll give another example

<snip>

One of the other players declares, "I kill the hobgoblin." in the middle of my sentence. I was taken a bit aback and, as an aside asked the player, "What the?" His response was, "The Dm was stonewalling and I'm tired of screwing around with this. Let's go."

At the time I was a bit put out but then I thought about it a bit and I realized that the other player was 100% right. The scene was over and I was likely beating a dead horse trying to get more information. By executing the hobgoblin, the player ended the scene and we got back to moving forward.

Nice actual play example. (Can't XP yet.)

And your first para is good too. I don't understand this idea that because you want to skip the boring stuff, you'd want to skip the good stuff too!

 

[Celebrim]

Well, obviously.

What, you want an objective statement of when to skip scenes? Really? You think there could possibly be an objective metric here? Of course it's 100% subjective.

No, that wasn't what I was going to argue. I was going to point out that "You skip over scenes with the knowledge that you are going to get to stuff that everyone enjoys." was terribly subjective. I'd say you could take a vote, but I know that democracy always work in a small group dynamic. Majority rules is a bad approach here, and agreement is often falsified for the sake of not causing conflict. It's going to work sometimes, but sometimes no matter what scene you choose to skip to it just won't work out as well as you'd hoped or expected. You can't really know if what you skipped would have been more fun for more of the group. Instead of judging scenes by the content, which frankly as a player you don't know and probably don't want to know, you should just trust good story telling techniques to deliver fun scenes.

Killing the randomly encountered bandits gets us invited in to see the Duke we're supposed to assassinate? Wow, talk about destroying any immersion in the game for me. Totally heavy handed IMO. We just happen to meet some bandits at exactly the right time and in exactly the right place to jump us right into where we want to be?

No thanks. Now, if we went hunting bandits because we had heard that bandits were around and it was our plan that finding and stopping the bandits would get us invited to see the Duke? Fantastic. Great. Player driven action at its best.

But deus ex machina dropping bandits in just to get us in to see the Duke? No thanks. Not my idea of a fun game. I would see that as a total railroad. "Here, kill these bandits so you can go and see the Duke." I am not such a huge fan of linear play as that.

- emphasis mine

In the last two or three posts you've gone complete cognitive dissonce on me. You argued against Umbran saying, "Should the GM skip the logical barriers to accomplishing the goal, just because the players don't want to be bothered with them?", where the "logical barriers" were "the castle and the gaurds" and then immediately turned around and argued with me, "Why would I skip over everything in the castle getting to the Duke? That would be killing my enjoyment as well as everyone else's. That's counterproductive." Well, yes, that was the original point, though I guess you maybe failed to understand that. You are bouncing back and forth between two logically incompatible statements sometimes within the same post. In this case, you've simultaneously noted the bandits were a random encounter and accused me of dropping them in purposefully to get you invited to see the Duke. Those two things are contridictions.

If I roll random encounter check and it comes up bandits, and the bandits turn out to be a sizable force, and the PC's defeat the bandits, then its bog standard that the local authorities upon learning of the PC's deads (assuming that they do) fest them in some fashion. My world is not one of those where you can do lots of heroic deeds and it not get noticed and everyone treats you as strangers (assuming that the deeds are done somewhat in the public eye). If you kill powerful bandits, chances are that you'll discover that there was a price on the leaders head and the people in power are going to want to see for themselves who these heroes are. It's happened several times in my campaign already and never was the heroic deed dropped their to purposefully get the PC's talking with the local authorities - be it the mayor or the His Royal Highness, Our Benevolent Despot, Falster Dikelgard, Prince of Amalteen. I certainly never knew ahead of time whether the PC's deeds would rise to the attention of the Despot, but you know, after you save the life of a Decamarch, help fight off an attack of Deep Ones, save a town from a Dracolich, defeat an ancient curse, etc. etc. and rumors start flying around that you may be Saints because you have had direct communication with the gods (these rumors are actually false), Falster wants to find out what is going on and whether he can get you on his side. There is nothing railroady about having NPC's act in logically consistant manners.

Moreover, you ignore the possiblity that the 'random bandit encounter' is only semi-random. For example, an entry like "werewolf" or "bandit" or "dragon" on my wandering encounter table probably or certainly leads to an encounter with a specific named NPC whose lair exists on the map and may or may not have a backstory. In the case of one of my campaigns, one of the main plot hooks revolved around Piotr Davair - an infamous bandit whose wanted posters were up everywhere - and who all 'respectable' citizens spoke of with a shudder of terror and disgust. If you encounter bandits in a certain region, they were Piotr Davair and his merry band - yes, he was Robin Hood, and his first notion was that you adventurers were wealthy types needing to contribute to the poor. Piotr Davair proves to have the hidden backstory of being from a wealthy family, and that he became disgusted that the laws of the Republic prevented farmers from organizing and forming a guild - and without guild membership, the farmers are unable to participate in government. In this way, the Republic has effectively continued serfdom, allowing many of the large landholders to keep their tenents effectively in bondage. Moreover, the Republic was actually pretty hypocritical about it, allowing wealthy members to buy essentially fraudalent craft guild memberships (the black joke was that all wealthy merchants were members of the 'Minter's Guild', because they 'made money'). If you had killed Piotr Davair you really would have gotten an invitation to see the Duke (don't get me to try to explain how a Republic ended up having Dukes, because its a long complicated story) so that he could have presented you with a medal. There would have been nothing at all railroady about it, for one thing I certainly hadn't planned for Piotr to get killed easily. And it's quite possible, that in between kiling Piotr and meeting the Duke, the PC's could have come to feel they'd killed the wrong man, but I certainly would have never planned for PC assassination either. One way or the other, I would have been intrigued by the turn of events.

Bandits aren't always faceless individuals that exist so that the PC's can kill them and take their stuff. Nor our they just in the way to give the players something to grind. They are part of the setting. They may not be essential to the story the PC's end up having, but they can be. The PC's may never discover the plot hook, or they may pass up on it. I never know exactly what they are going to bite. Encountering bandits on the road I never know whether the PC's will fight, parley, intimidate, bribe, or evade them or even whether the PC's will be enemies or fast friends. Considering I've had many of group that often acted like bandits, it wouldn't be out of the line for the bandits to great the players like brothers in the trade sometimes. I don't know. Without knowing the setting, how can you know whether bandits are important to the story or not? You are going to end up with a really lame story though if it doesn't have a setting.

And the really crazy cognitive dissonce here is that you even admit that it is reasonable to think that killing bandits might lead to an invitation to the Duke when you offer that it could be a player plan. Yes, and it might be as I've said a very good plan. But, don't expect the plan to be 100% successful just because the player offered it. Nor expect that the same event has 0% chance of doing what you consider reasonable just because the players 'luckily' stumble into it. In other words, I would expect these plans to arrise out of understanding of and interaction with the setting. The players have seen wanted posters for Piotr Davair, and they are brainstorming, "How can we meet with the Duke?", and someone says, "Maybe if we captured/killed Piotr Davair, we'd be such local heroes that the Duke would want to see us?" That's a great plan. But if the same plan is offered up in absence of any interaction with the setting, who knows. Maybe. Maybe there just aren't a lot of bandits out there, and they are just a band of feeble pathetic 1st level warriors that the larger society has no real reason to care about or fear. It would be like a plan let's "Sneak in through the rear secret entrance to the castle that's hidden in the hollow tree." It's a great plan if the existance of the secret entrance has been previously established. It's a pretty terrible metagamey plan suited for a game with the mood of Mel Brooks movie if the players are just making up this secret entrance because it would be convienent.

But the even crazier thing is, you even admit that as well because you make your player driven plan dependent on "we had heard that bandits were around", making it dependent on the setting. But if your hear that bandits are around, what is unreasonable about randomly encountering them? I mean, if you go hunting bandits whom you know to be nomadic, aren't you in part saying, "We will go into this area where they are known to be until we randomly encounter them?" So if the setting is to be internally consistant at all, if there is to be any reasonable chance of your plan working or of learning of the existance of the bandits in the first place, must there not be a reasonable chance that you encounter them at random? What in the world is linear about this? You say you aren' a fan of 'linear play', but on some level it seems what you mean isn't that, but rather, "I'm not a fan of doing anything but making the DM repeat back to me the story I'm making up for myself. No twists. No surprises. No obstacles. No freaking DM input except to validate my success."

 

[Campbell]

As far as I'm concerned its all a matter of priorities. The way that I look at it is setting is a thing, but it is not the point. It's a tool that exists to serve the ongoing narrative of the game that can be mutated to serve the needs of the game. I keep detailed notes of whats been established in game, but anything that has not been established may change at any minute if it will improve the game.

When I play I view my character in a similar manner. It's a tool to be used to create and resolve conflicts, a narrative construct.