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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6121704" data-attributes="member: 42582">My group doesn't use anything as formal as this, but we use informal techniques - tossing around PC ideas, background ideas, etc - to try and get similar sorts of results: PCs who are connected to one another, or to similar goals/themes.There seems to be some running together here of ingame and metagame. Within the fiction, the PC can have secrets. That is not impeded by the fact that, at the table, many things are open.The idea of "restriction" won't come up - this will be an episode of play, in which the other players are aware of what Bob's PC has done because they will be sitting around the table when it happens. Depending on the ingame situation, the other PCs may or may not know.That's not true, though. A player can declare an action for his/her PC that is unexpected. In your own example, Bob has his PC go and make a deal with the high priest of the cult. That's an unexpected turnaround to the rest of the table, that reveals a new direction for Bob's PC, and for the game more generally.But that's not true, either. Within the fiction, the other PCs may not know that a deal has been cut. At the table, the other players may not know why Bob has had his PC cut a deal, until it happens and they start asking him about it.It's not a constraint on what Bob's PC can do. As I said, it matters to the aesthetics, the interaction between game and metagame.Yes. The GM also has more authority over backstory than the other players do. It's part of the structure of the game I prefer. I've linked several times upthread to the Eero Tuovinen blog that sets this out in more detail.Hussar is not talking about reactions from adventurers - he's talking about reactions from players. If the players have their own goals that they are invested in in the game, they are likely to find (what is from their point of view) the GM's random cult unengaging. In terms of the structure of the game, it becomes analogous to the desert - a roadblock or obstacle that, from the players' point of view, does not connect to their goals and is (in that sense) an arbitrary interjection of material by the GM.Determination of story elements - a cult, Bob's PC's childhood trauma, whatever - is not determination of the plot. It is framing situations, not resolving them.It's also not about writing a joint story in the literal sense. The Tuovinen blog explains this also. The whole point of the playstyle that Hussar, I, Campbell etc are describing is to generate, in play, in real time, engaging play and engaging fiction without anyone having to set out to do so. The players play their PCs; the GM frames situations; plot is the output, not the input.You are presenting all this from the in-character point of view. Hussar is talking about things from the player's point of view.Within the context of a typical D&D game, there are a million-and-one ways the GM can have NPCs turn up and try to kill the PCs. From Hussar's point of view, the question is why would the GM use a random cult, when s/he can pick up on something that the players have already flagged they want to engage with.What you're describing here, as far as I can see, is a GM-driven game - the players turn up and wait for the GM to throw some action at them. Obviously that's fairly different from what Hussar and I are describing.Like [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], I'm not entirely sure whaty you're trying to show. Upthread, you expressed puzzlement at Hussar's criteria for a good game. You (and other posters) professed not to be able to see why Hussar would have a different outlook on the siege, or the city, compared to the desert and the nomads. Hussar (and a different group of other posters) have tried to explain this. Are you saying:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> that you still don't understand the explanation? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> that you regard the explanation as unsatisfactory (ie you still think Hussar's distinction of preferences is irrational)? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> that that is not how you would want to run a game?</li> </ul>If the latter, that's not contentious. If the first, you're not making it clear (to me, at least) what further information you want. If the middle, though, then I don't quite follow. I get that you wouldn't like Hussar's playstyle. But I don't get why you think it isn't feasible as a playstyle.</blockquote>

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