Quote from: Hobo;331000The latter.  It's not exactly kosher; asking a GM how he develops the campaign while it's in progress.  It's a little bit like heckling a magician and asking him to explain how he's doing his tricks while he's on stage.

Its an interesting take, very much rooted I think in the idea that GM's are performing for the players. I do not think there is anything wrong with that, but it doesn't mirror my experiences as a GM.

Quote from: David R;330916I know. It's the reason I asked. Reading you blog post about NPC motivations and very little prep, I kinda of figured you would incorporate this into your work. My players were amazed at how quickly I came up with stuff for our IHW games.

Regards,
David R

Yep! The games are designed for fast prep and on-the-fly generation. If a game I like doesn't have these tools, I have to make 'em. Glad they came in handy!

-clash

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;330923True, it's a tautology. The thing is though that characters can start out great only to be betrayed by the exigencies of plot and stereotyped expectations. Whether that means they were never really great, or that they didn't have any greatness until fully revealed in the course of the story is perhaps a philosophical question when it comes to static fictions that can be revised before release. With RPGs, character has to precede plot IMO.

Agreed entirely, Elliot!

-clash

Quote from: Hobo;331004There's no such thing as a story-game, and it'd be great if the pretentious would-be foisters of that term quit trying to coin it already just to describe a game that has an attitude or a mechanic or two that they don't like.  There's roleplaying games... and then there's other roleplaying games with slight variations.

Sure, ok. You say potato, I say starchy tuber. Let's all embrace and hug that shit out. But I gotta draw the line with Jenga. If you don't have a gaggle of SE Asian bargirls around there's no fucking way Jenga will ever be anything more than a wood block parlor game. No matter how much false sense of drama or ulterior meaning you try to give it...it's just pulling blocks.  

QuoteWow, some of you folks fetishize the "pure" sandbox the way

storygamers fetishize "pure" narrative without GM control?

Sorry, couldn't resist. Maybe it's that word "fetishize" or maybe it's just too much Jenga.

Quote from: jadrax;331020Its an interesting take, very much rooted I think in the idea that GM's are performing for the players. I do not think there is anything wrong with that, but it doesn't mirror my experiences as a GM.

I think there's actually more of an old school "this is player knowledge, and this is GM knowledge" background to it, to be honest with you.

But there's also an element of "spoiler control"---just like an mystery author doesn't tell you who killed the victim early on in the book, the GM doesn't say much whatever plans he thinks might come to fruition in the campaign, other than what's necessary to get a coherent group of characters.  It somehow diminishes the experience.

Also: when I GM, I don't plan very far ahead anyway.  There's too much that's contingent on what the PCs do.  Basically my prep method is to come up with a few important NPCs with agendas of their own, and put them into action.  The NPCs start doing what they want to do and this intersects with the PCs.  As the PCs frustrate (or not) their plans, they react to that.  So I really can't plan too much more than a session or so out at best anyway.  But given that, anything that I would say to the players about the campaign, and the NPCs and what they're doing would diminish the experience for them; adding an extra helping of player knowledge that's discreet from character knowledge that they'd have to struggle to mentally compartmentalize.

Quote from: Hobo;331166I think there's actually more of an old school "this is player knowledge, and this is GM knowledge" background to it, to be honest with you.

But there's also an element of "spoiler control"---just like an mystery author doesn't tell you who killed the victim early on in the book, the GM doesn't say much whatever plans he thinks might come to fruition in the campaign, other than what's necessary to get a coherent group of characters.  It somehow diminishes the experience.

Also: when I GM, I don't plan very far ahead anyway.  There's too much that's contingent on what the PCs do.  Basically my prep method is to come up with a few important NPCs with agendas of their own, and put them into action.  The NPCs start doing what they want to do and this intersects with the PCs.  As the PCs frustrate (or not) their plans, they react to that.  So I really can't plan too much more than a session or so out at best anyway.  But given that, anything that I would say to the players about the campaign, and the NPCs and what they're doing would diminish the experience for them; adding an extra helping of player knowledge that's discreet from character knowledge that they'd have to struggle to mentally compartmentalize.

Hang on, this is about telling the Players what NPCs are doing before they do it, but we were initially discussing telling the Players what the NPCS had done after they had done it?

(Although that said, both work, I remember the Starwars Roleplaying Game suggesting you always start the game on a cut scene telling your players what Darth Vader was up to).

I've only rarely done something like that.  Like I said, we try not to introduce too much of anything to the players that their characters wouldn't know.