Quote from: VengerSatanis on September 12, 2022, 02:58:25 PM
I feel a lot of people are getting hung up, focusing might be a better word, on the random encounter aspect.  It makes sense to talk about random encounters because, obviously, planned encounters can be tweaked before the session even starts.  But a decent amount of my GMing is improvised based on a few hastily scribbled notes (if that), so the paradigm infusion is something I want to concentrate on while I'm GMing... every encounter. 

I like "mood", but it makes me think of vague subtext that's perhaps subliminal.  So, close, but what I'm talking about is more straightforward and deliberate.  But mood or vibe is close.  "Filter" suggests you're keeping certain things out, rather than both filtering things out and also including new things that fit the paradigm.

I think you need a compound word with "mood" or "vibe" then.

On the improvisation part, let me compare to an example in my current campaign.  It's a "grim, late dark ages setting but with some heroic fantasy optimism" vibe. Howard and Leiber, but things are looking up.  I wanted to use goblins, but I wanted to deliberately avoid the stereotype and also the cutesy, almost player character way they get sometimes treated today.  What gets scribbled on the sheet is "2d4+4 feral goblins" and some notes in my custom goblin entry about the weapons they use (mainly Aztec style clubs, primitive bows, and rusty hangers (visualize a cross between a short-sword and a machete).  It took me a lot longer to type that than it did to do it, because most of that emerged organically out of work I did to prepare the setting.   

Is that the kind of thing you mean?  Even if yours is more improvised than mine?  For me, improvisation is "things I do in a hurry the same way I'd do them if I had more time."  So when I did the first adventure where I wrote down "2d4+4 feral goblins", I knew all that implied, even though my intent would not be clear to anyone else reading it without the paragraph above.

I'm a World-In-Motion Guy.

Any encounter, combat/non-combat, that requires interaction requires my contextual input which *always* describes the world either locally or in a wider perspective. So if the players end up running into a random encounter that says 1d8 Goblins... that means mentally I figure out:

1) Who are these goblins - what tribe etc.
2) What are they doing?
3) Why are they doing it?
4) What is their disposition?
5) What do they look like?
6) What can the PC's discern based on their respective skills and experience?
7) What, if any, does it say or imply about the local area?
Does any of this have any larger scale impact on the region? If by implication would it?

That happens before the first die hits the table and initiative is rolled.

I pretty much do this for any and all encounters. Obviously some steps can be easier to answer depending on the encounter. The goal in each and every step is to enforce the reality of setting on the PC's and through them the Players.

I land closer to where tenbones is but I liked the article.  It's still a good reminder to push it forward in our conscious GMing.

I like for my encounters to have a purpose, even if they're random.  As tenbones says, these goblins are here for a reason, what is it?  From there I figure out how they factor into the larger world.  Not everything has to weave into whatever storyline the characters are pursuing at the moment, but I like the idea of using most encounters to reinforce the theme/setting.