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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6107307" data-attributes="member: 4937">I approve.   I see what you have is setting roughly worked out ahead of time, but that in responce to player success (the good perception roll) you are inventing additional interesting details on the fly in a plausible manner (a cultist document is partially written in invisible ink).   Likewise, you have a mirror containing the image of a person, and in response to player creativity you are giving a player a chance to interact with that feature in a way that your original prep hadn't foreseen.  What's really telling to me is that your list of reasons for why this was worked out are operative whether you've considered the creative solutions before hand or not, and considering them before hand (they may be interested in the mirror, well of course they are you've made it interesting; or, they may be interested in the cultist document, well of course, it's a clue) doesn't make them less responsive to player interests.  You're pretty much steering the players into what to be interested in and then pretending you are being really innovative to actual give those things you've cued as interesting interesting features.   You're working in features of your established myth - prior encoutners with spiders, the dragonborn empire, and the present day Raven Queen worship - into your ongoing story.  All great.  You've got the broad outline of your story tied into player goals.  But that's really no different than what I or most DMs I've encountered do.  Now, what it is different than is signalling the presence of something interest - a mirror that contains a trapped soul - and the not actually doing anything with that, having any plans for it, or allowing it to be interacted with.   Signalling that something is interesting in the environment and that, if you have good fortune, you'll be rewarded for interacting with it and then not really be able to follow up on that is generally bad DMing.  So what this lets you do is pontificate how different you are from strawmen - an empty tedious desert, a meaningless excercise in role play, or whatever.  But I'm not particularly intested in how your play style differs from strawmen.And then you are saying things like, "That the spiders in the skull were undead spiders as the module stipulated;", amounts to working things out in the course of play.  I don't even know how to respond to that.  "I could have improvised but I decided not to.  Yay, me!"Look, you can call that technique whatever you want.  My point is that such techniques are very common not just to 'high improv GMs' but to all sorts of GMs who wouldn't describe what you just did as "No Myth techniques" and wouldn't spend a whole thread (or dozens of threads) talking about how very different this is than... than I don't know what.  Bad DMing maybe?  And if "driven first and foremost by player signals" means something as limited as, "If the player makes a creative proposition achieves a positive fortune and I can imagine an interesting response, then I'll do it", then it doesn't mean much of anything.   I mean at that level, it's not even different than Gygaxian.I don't suppose you would.  As far as I can tell, your approach isn't particularly radical, isn't particularly extemporaneous, and isn't particularly in response to player cues except in the most broad sense (players make propositions, you respond to them).  On the other hand, manbearcat is playing a game far more removed from mine and far more removed from my comfort zone, and I've given examples of what bothers me about it.</blockquote>

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