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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6117470" data-attributes="member: 42582">What I described is preplay. It's part of setting up the game. Obviously if the players didn't like it, we'd work up some other idea. In fact the players were generally enthusiastic, especially the one who was familiar with the module (Night's Dark Terror) that I was taking the goblin fight from.Again, we're talking here about pre-play establishment of setting, backstory etc. Players work this out together. For instance, in one game I ran two player played samurai, cousins within the same clan. Each player, in working out backstory, also established backstory for the other. It's part of the collaborative task of setting up the game.For my part, I want the fiction to come first, rather than designing the fiction to spotlight niche choices.So, for instance, I prefer the following approach: "We're going to play a game about fighting Orcus's undead hordes" "OK, cool, guess I'm playing a cleric!" rather than "I'm playing a cleric" "OK, then I guess I'd better stick in some undead encounters."In practice (at least my practice) the causal chains are more complex, with iterations back and forth in both directions, but the first approach is still the overall direction I'm aiming at. System matters to this, too - [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] on these boards has frequently made the point that the broad 4e skills tend to do a clearer job of framing a PC with a thematic and story orientation, which tends to mean there's less need for tailored "spotlight" encounters to permit the use of a niche skill. (4e rituals are more niche in this way, but the system makes them very cheap as a resource, so it's not that purging for a player to be able to pop out a given ritual only occasionally when the fiction calls for it.)</blockquote>

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