NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6103834" data-attributes="member: 42582">I linked upthred to about a dozen actual play posts from my 4e game.Once again, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/299440-exploration-scenarios-my-experiment-last-sunday.html" target="_blank">Here</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/301282-actual-play-examples-balance-between-fiction-mechanics.html" target="_blank">are</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/308093-combatless-sessions.html" target="_blank">some</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/309950-actual-play-my-first-social-only-session.html" target="_blank">links</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/312367-actual-play-another-combat-free-session-intra-party-dyanmics.html" target="_blank">to</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/313724-actual-play-pcs-successfully-negotiated-kas.html" target="_blank">some</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/319168-pcs-defeat-calastryx-get-up-some-other-hijinks.html" target="_blank">actual</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/319889-doppelganger-mayhem-long-lead-up.html" target="_blank">play</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/324018-wizard-pc-dies-returns-invoker.html" target="_blank">reports</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324955-Whelm-reforged-as-Overwhelm- and-other-recent-skill-challenges" target="_blank">that</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/330383-underdark-adventure-demons-beholders-elementals-hydra.html" target="_blank">I</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/6039139-post73.html" target="_blank">have</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?332755-PCs-bring-destruction-down-upon-the-duergar" target="_blank">posted</a> from that game.How different is my GMing from anyone else's? How am I meant to tell from message board posts alone? What I do know is that on this particular thread I find Hussar's response to the desert and hireling scenes completely unremarkable and of a piece with how I would react, and I see hm describing a way of GMing that I have experienced and would never wish to emulate. Whereas I read other posters, including you unless I've radically misread you, explaining how Hussar is wrong in his approach and how the GM was quite likely doing something worthwhile.There are also other things you have said about your own GMing approach - including your approach to prep, your world design preferences (that was in another thread), your approach to alignment (I think that was in the BW thread) - that make me think that you GM in quite a different fashion from me.I've never said that I GM strictly No Myth. I have talked about the usefulness of No Myth techniques - treating the backstory as flexible in light of evinced player interests and concerns. (This also came up in the BW thread, in a post by  [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION].)Whereas you have indicated a strong hostily to extemporaneous generation of backstory or of scene. (Upthread you said extemporaneous GMing would be a good reason for you to think about quitting a game.)I've also never said that I allow players to frame scenes. Here, for instance, is what I said upthread in post 177:And I more-or-less repeated this in my most recent posts (383, 384):I personally don't think there's anything very radical about my approach. But then I don't think there's anything radical about what Hussar has said either.I didn't say "since players trust their GM". I said "once the GM has established a reliable ability to frame scenes having regard to player-flagged stakes"  - and I also said that if such a scene falls flat it's going to be mostly on the GM's head. In my view this is entirely consistent with Hussar's take on his desert and hireling experiences - he's saying that the scenes fell flat, and that it's on the GM's head that they did so given there was no clarity of stakes in relation to player flags ("Do stuff in City B"; "Get revenge on that grell"), and doubly so given that the GM didn't pull the plug when the flatness became obvious.That's one technique. "Say yes" is another. Which one to use, or when to shift from one to the other - pulling the plug if things aren't working, or conversely amping things up mechanically if the players show an unexpected interest in what you as GM took to be mere free narration - is a key GM skill. Repated errors of judgement in that respect are part of what can make for bad GMing.The first of the links above is to a scenario that I ran deliberately as an exploration-heavy scenario (it was in the context of a range of sandboxing threads on ENworld at the time).It explains in detail how I selected a scenario, how I tweaked it in advance, how I introduced backstory in the course of play No Myth style, and how I introduced complications in response to various player-expressed interests in the course of play.Maybe you also run your game that way, but to me that wouldn't seem to fit with your hostility to extemoraneousness and your expressed desires in relation to worldbuilding. (Your example of how to run a horse purchase is also not much like how I would handle that in 4e. Unless a player raised it, the issue of lameness is not something I would turn my mind to until it became relevant as part of the resolution of a skill challenge.)</blockquote>

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