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  1. - Top - End - #271
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
    Yes. If you're going to use time pressure, you need to actually be keeping track of time, which very few GMs seem to want to do anymore. Keeping track of the passage of time was an important point of advice in 1e DMG from Gygax.
    You need to track the days, the hours, that pass in-game. Decide when the ritual will happen on the in-world calendar, give the players sufficient warning, so if they hustle and sacrifice they can get there early enough to prevent it.
    I have to keep track of time, since my players have a horn of valhalla which recharges every seven days.
    I also modified Daern's fortress to recharge every seven days but it heals 5 HP of damage per day (so you don't need a wish to heal damage...)
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    Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
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  2. - Top - End - #272
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    And other DMs disagree and run games differently.
    I'm not sure I believe you.

    I have examples both in this thread and in others where what I do, is either a reduction or a removal of agency, and others have said 'No that's just DMing. That's not the bad thing we're talking about.', even though to me it reads like exactly the type of thing that people are against:

    - Ambushes happening outside the players' control, forcing them into a scenario.
    - NPCs lying, causing the PCs to make the wrong choice.
    - NPCs being wrong, causing the PCs to make the wrong choice.
    - In order to get information, you must talk to a specific NPC.
    - MacGuffin is found in a specific location.
    - Event happens in a specific location, maybe in a specific time (Ew...)
    - Hostile enemies will fight to the death, and will not surrender or be talked down (Undead are a great example).
    - Certain security measures can only be bypassed through a specific sequence (especially magical defenses).
    - Passphrases; If you don't know the passphrase, several choices will be barred from you.
    - You can't disguise yourself as a Guard if you aren't wearing a Guard uniform. Obviously.
    - The secret society have these tokens. You should probably get one before you continue.
    - Hostile spellcasters have Dispel Magic and Counterspell to stop you from doing things.
    - Escort a person or object to Point B.
    - ...Come to think of it, most quests?

    Most authored content, appears to reduce or remove player agency by default. Anything the DM does, isn't done, by the players. But therein lies the rub. I couldn't DM a game where I wasn't allowed to do stuff. If I can only create scenarios that my players are okay with...I don't even know what that game even looks like.
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  3. - Top - End - #273
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Quantum ogre was already a bad term and following it up with "temporal ogre" helps no-one. There's plain English term for what you're describing: scripted event. It's a basic building block for scenario design and the discussion is just how and why to use it.
    Like most people in this thread, I am not really interested in arguing over terminology or coining new terms. I use temporal ogre because the original quantum ogre article is what made me think about it; that article acts as if the player's route is important but what is occurring in those areas is more or less constant. Fairness and realism would require the DM keep track of time as well as space, but that makes running a sandbox campaign exponentially more effort for the DM, and makes it exponentially less likely that the players will happen upon interesting things by random chance.


    If you prefer to use scripted event go for it; although I feel like that term has other baggage I didn't meant to imply.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    These are all attempts at constructive laziness. "When player characters arrive" is a start condition that's easy to remember and easy to tell when it applies, and it gets players engaged with the meat of the situation immediately. Alternatives involve randomizing when events happen or processing how events are progressing on the background where player characters can't perceive them. The last two allow for more emergent behaviors, but require more resources from a game master.

    The first and simplest step to evolve a game design beyond this is just to put time conditionals on events flags. Instead of happening when player characters arrive, game begins at timestamp X scripts are initialized at timestamp Y. This is out of fashion for chiefly two reasons:

    1) a lot of game masters apparently can't count time and can't keep a calendar.
    2) sunk cost fallacy: a lot of game masters get upset at wasting their time if players miss an event they scripted. Solution? Don't give players a chance to miss the script.
    While I don't disagree with you per se, I don't think this is a bad thing.

    As a GM, I already spend hours every week prepping, usually more time than I actually spend at the table playing. I don't think it is really "lazy" to want that effort to matter. Likewise, if my content is genuinely good, I don't want it to get missed.

    And this goes both ways; as a player I don't want to burnout my GM with lots of needless prep work and I don't want to miss quality content by random chance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    In a game like Minecraft, you can dig up most of the visible game world and turn it into your dream city, or a giant computer, or whatever, creating large scale and visible differences in the game's setting. This should be obviously different from a game where you can spend hours customizing your character, but can't open a door if the game master doesn't think it's time yet. Linear scenario design naturally and demonstrably limits meaning of character creation choices in a different way from a sandbox game. Saying both are "full" of choices means nothing, there are both quantative (amount of choices) and qualitive (what is chosen) differences between game structures.
    I think there is a lot of talking past one another going on here.

    IMO you can do everything you can do in Minecraft in an RPG. One thing Minecraft cannot do, is have the inhabitants on the world react to you in a meaningful way rather than follow their simple AI routines. One thing that an RPG should do, imo, is having the NPCs react to your actions; which would often mean "kicking over your sandcastle" if it interferes with their own goals.

    In my opinion, shaping the narrative and nature of the setting are what constitutes meaningful choices in an RPG, and are more or less impossible in Minecraft except on the most literal level.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Considering it is again possible to take a roleplaying game to a literal sandbox and use it as tabletop, I don't think your opinion of what the medium is good or bad for holds much merit.
    I have to say, this is one of the rudest things anyone has ever said to me on the internet. Congratulations.

    Although, I have to say, judging from the other posters are sain this thread, this assertion likewise holds very little merit.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Creating art is not the opposite of playing a game. See all other games where players are creating art in competition with each other.
    Not what I said.

    I said that there is an old stereotype of telling rail-roady GM's to go write a novel. And I am saying that "emergent" players of this sort would be better served painting a picture, or sculpting with clay, or playing with Legos, or even playing the afermentioned Minecraft.

    RPGs tend to be focused around exploring a simulated world and getting into the head of a single character in that world. Most are also focused around tactical squad level combat or creating a dramatic narrative. If you really just want to make the maximum number of choices possible to indulge your creativity unconstrained, I don't think it is a particularly good medium for it.

    Heck, there are even tabletop games like Microscope which are specifically built around the creative aspects of the game which are far better for creativity and collaborative world building than a traditional RPG.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Do you know what causes aimlesness? Lack of internal motivation. Do you know what causes lack of internal motivation? Experience of being harried by external rewards and punishments to make one act according to someone else's whims and wishes.
    This reads as a weird sort of reverse psychology.

    This also is very much contrary to my experience with the world. Most people would rather consume media than create their own.

    I am by far the most creative person I know, but even I would often rather play a video game or watch a movie than write a novel on most days, it takes a lot of energy and inspiration.

    Likewise, I prefer games with robust character creation options, but hate video games with "sliders" as I am incapable of actually making anything that looks good, in the same way that a big furniture warehouse gives me more options than a home depot where I can, theoretically, learn to make whatever furniture I want.

    Even in fictional settings and RPGs, and again I am very much into creativity and worldbuilding and character choices, I still think its more interesting to imagine something like "What if I were a member of the Fellowship of the ring?" rather than "Man, imagine how much fun I could create for myself if I was dropped down in the middle of Rohan at some point in the Third Age."

    The Paradox of Choice is a very real thing in human psychology or philosophy.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    If you take a real kid who had helicopter parents or restrictive living conditions and place that kid in a real sandbox, chances are they won't have an idea what to do. They will stare at the sand. They will get bored. The actual correct choice, for an outside observer, is to wait that out. Let the kid get bored. They actually need the experience of no-one else coming to save them from boredom, to save themselves from it.
    Maybe. But if I try it in real life, all that happens is that the players stop showing up to game night.

    I have seen boring games hemorrhage players. I have not seen the players suddenly come to the realization that they need to make their own fun.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    As for the rest, it still falls in line with what I just said about sandbox games: of course a game feels more aggressive and unpredictable when one has to deal with some mofo knocking over one's castle, as opposed to simply building a castle in peace or going around knocking over castles of other without retaliation. Wrapping the discussion in terms of genre tropes (heroes reactive, villains proactive etc.) isn't helpful or even required for understanding dynamics of play and what is happening in minds of your players.
    Its not about tropes, its about me relating my past experience with games.

    In my experience, characters with good alignment tend to seek out powerful villains who are preying on the weak and helpless and thwart their schemes.
    In my experience, characters with evil alignment tend to prey upon the weak and helpless, and then rival NPCs seek them out to thwart their evil schemes.

    If we agreed to play a peaceful game about building a community in peace, then yeah, that wouldn't apply. But as I said, most RPGs are built around the idea of fantastic squad level combat and / or creating a dramatic story with lots of tension and drama.


    To use another analogy; in RTS games like Starcraft, a lot of players get mad if you attack them before they finish building their base. The common response to this is, you don't want to be playing an RTS, you want to be playing Sim City.
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  4. - Top - End - #274
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Added comments in green
    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    I'm not sure I believe you.
    - Ambushes happening outside the players' control, forcing them into a scenario. That is just you playing NPCs. As long as you don't force your players into the ambush.
    - NPCs lying, causing the PCs to make the wrong choice. The difference between NPCs lying to your PC and you lying to players was explained several times in this thread.
    - NPCs being wrong, causing the PCs to make the wrong choice. Same goes for NPCs being wrong
    - In order to get information, you must talk to a specific NPC. Depends on why you do it. Because of plausibility ? I would do so. To get the PCs to talk to a specific NPC ? I would not.
    - MacGuffin is found in a specific location. I do that. But then I don't force my players to actually try to get it. It is just there .
    - Event happens in a specific location, maybe in a specific time (Ew...) Not necessarily a problem as discussed in the whole "non static sandbox" sidetrack.
    - Hostile enemies will fight to the death, and will not surrender or be talked down (Undead are a great example). That is just you playing NPCs.
    - Certain security measures can only be bypassed through a specific sequence (especially magical defenses). That is something i don't do. Stuff might be suppossed to work a specific way but if PCs come op with other solutions using the magic system or worldbuilding that is fine.
    - Passphrases; If you don't know the passphrase, several choices will be barred from you. That is you putting DCs and playing NPCs.
    - You can't disguise yourself as a Guard if you aren't wearing a Guard uniform. Obviously. That is you putting DCs and playing NPCs
    - The secret society have these tokens. You should probably get one before you continue. That is you putting DCs and playing NPCs
    - Hostile spellcasters have Dispel Magic and Counterspell to stop you from doing things. That is you building and playing NPCs

    - Escort a person or object to Point B. That is a quest. Which the players are not forced to accept or try to complete.
    Your examples have little to do with you wrote earlier.

    Because I have fixed locations, with many fixed scenarios - some of which do have fixed solutions (e.g; You do need the magical key to open the magical door. That's just how this works.) I do have fixed locations but not fixed scenarios or fixed solutions. I shatter my players' meaningful agency by giving them false information. I never lie to my players or give them false information. I do let NPCs do to the PCs. I shatter my players' agency, in general, by placing them into events they don't want to be in and have to find a way out of. That is a wide field but fields to forceful and railroady for what i ever do. I introduce 'rails' in to my 'sandbox' almost all the time And i don't.
    I hope you see the differences.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-05-07 at 01:48 AM.

  5. - Top - End - #275
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    That is just you playing NPCs. As long as you don't force your players into the ambush.
    - The difference between NPCs lying to your PC and you lying to players was explained several times in this thread.
    - Same goes for NPCs being wrong
    - Depends on why you do it. Because of plausibility ? I would do so.
    - I do that. But then I don't force my players to actually try to get it. It is just there .
    - Not necessarily a problem as discussed in the whole "non static sandbox" sidetrack.
    - That is just you playing NPCs.
    - Stuff might be suppossed to work a specific way but if PCs come op with other solutions using the magic system or worldbuilding that is fine.
    - That is you putting DCs and playing NPCs.
    - That is you putting DCs and playing NPCs
    - That is you putting DCs and playing NPCs
    - That is you building and playing NPCs
    - That is a quest.
    I could not have asked for better responses to prove my point. It all led to this. Perfect.

    Removing player agency, and reducing player agency, 'is totally fine', if it makes sense within the story. Having fixed locations, with fixed scenarios, with tough challenges that happen to the players, 'is totally fine' so long as it makes sense within the story.

    Removing and/or reducing player agency is just something DMs do. All the time. Ideally, they do so because of a reason that the player(s) are willing to accept; Either a) The actual rules of the game, or b) some kind of narrative setup (e.g; Paranoid Wizard does Paranoid Wizard-things). Players are forced to accept that the DM controls pretty much everything, and it's up to the DM to make that control as palatable as possible.

    You're walking down the hallway, and in your path is a 10ft. wide hole. On the otherside is a ladder. Judging by the markings in the floor, you can see that the ladder is pushed over the hole, and the Goblins clamber across it, and pull it back after them once they're across. How do you want to proceed?

    'Can I jump the 10 ft. hole? I have a Strength score of 18 (+4) and Proficiency in Athletics.'
    No.
    'Why not?'
    You can't jump the 10 ft. hole.

    Almost no player will accept that. If they do, they'll come to the internet after-session and complain.

    This tunnel was built by Goblins. It's cramped, it's stuffy. Medium creatures over 5 ft. tall are moving as though in Difficult Terrain. You see a 10 ft.-wide hole in the floor, with a ladder on the other side. What do?
    'Can I jump the hole? I have big strength, and proficiency in Jump.'
    No.
    'Why not?'
    Well like I said, you're over 5 ft. tall. You're walking in cramped conditions as it is. You're not going to be able to have the vertical movement to get any sort of clearance. And of course you can barely take a runup in the cramped quarters. So yeah, it's not really possible to Jump in this specific scenario.
    'Oh that makes sense. Can I climb down the hole, and then climb back up the other side?'

    Same deal. Both DMs are removing the ability to Jump over the hole. But one DM actually has a reason for doing what they're doing, and no-one is going to complain, even though in-game the exact same thing is happening. It's the way the DM presents their authorial control, that matters.
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  6. - Top - End - #276
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    This thread isn't about good DM-ing vs bad DM-ing, or about what players will or won't accept. Part of the advantage of introducing new terms that are designed to both highlight some positive aspect of a style is to get away from any kind of exploratory discussion collapsing into 'are you saying my personal DM-ing style is bad?!' sorts of arguments.

    Authored games can be good. Emergent games can be good. Someone can want to play something from an authored stance. Someone can want to play something from an emergent stance.

    Making this about 'I have to argue that the terms of meaningless in order to defend my own DM-ing style' is basically like baiting people to attack you so you can defend... Whether DM-ing style is appropriate is ultimately just between you and your players - you don't owe the forum to run a game in a way that no one on here could object to, and people on here don't owe wanting to play a game in the style you might choose to run whatever that is.
    Last edited by NichG; 2022-05-07 at 02:38 AM.

  7. - Top - End - #277
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    This thread isn't about good DM-ing vs bad DM-ing, or about what players will or won't accept.
    I actually wrote out a response because I thought you didn't understand my point...

    Making this about 'I have to argue that the terms are meaningless.'
    ...Oh. Time to delete my post. You do understand my point.
    Last edited by Cheesegear; 2022-05-07 at 05:38 AM.
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  8. - Top - End - #278
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    I could not have asked for better responses to prove my point. It all led to this. Perfect.

    Removing player agency, and reducing player agency, 'is totally fine', if it makes sense within the story. Having fixed locations, with fixed scenarios, with tough challenges that happen to the players, 'is totally fine' so long as it makes sense within the story.
    How about you just stop misrepresenting what i write.

    I mean, i was pretty clear with :

    fixed locations yes, fixed scenarions NO, tough challanges happening to the players NO.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-05-07 at 06:15 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #279
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    fixed locations yes, fixed scenarions NO, tough challanges happening to the players NO.
    No you misunderstand what I'm asking: Why not?

    When is a DM allowed to do a thing?
    When is a DM not allowed to do a thing?
    How have you decided the difference?

    Why does a players' agency matter sometimes, but not other times?
    Why is a DM allowed to plan ahead? But how come they can't plan so hard?

    The OP appears to define Emergent gameplay, as the players doing something that the DM doesn't expect.

    Emergent gameplay - as per the OP - doesn't appear to be defined as the players doing what they want. I provided an earlier example of players entering a town for the first time, and declaring that they would head to the tavern. The DM expected this, and has an entire location and maybe a scenario or two for what happens inside said tavern, ready to go. But, it was the players' choice to go there. Nobody said they had to go to the tavern. But that's where the players went, because that's like...Where you go.

    If the DM can pre-empt a players' decision, and plan accordingly; What is that? The players still get to make their free choice. The DM just knows what choice they're going to make. Because it's seven sessions in, the DM knows the players, their characters and their party dynamic. There actually is only a finite amount of choices they can make when confronted with certain situations.

    In another thread I mentioned that I have a FROST plan for almost any hostile encounter I make. I pre-empt that my players, upon encountering a group of hostiles, will most likely do one of five things, and in the back of my head I can just sort of, wing it because I have the framework to draw upon. The players totally get a choice in what they're going to do. But I've pseudo-planned for what they're going to do, 99% of the time.

    If players go to the tavern, they're likely going to want to talk to a patron or two, or maybe the barkeep and/or owner themselves. They're going to want a meal, a room, a rumour around town. They're going to ask for directions. Maybe I'll design a scenario involving a fight - a weapon is drawn, blood is spilled, panic! If I know that the players are going to go to the tavern - because I know they will - then I should probably design the tavern to be interesting, no? Players don't have to make certain choices...But they will. The Wizard doesn't have to search out ingredients for scrolls and spells...But they will. The gunslinger doesn't have to be on the lookout for silver bullets...But they will.

    Which is why to me, most 'Emergent' gameplay is basically the equivalent of 'Can I set fire to it?' ...Well no I didn't plan on you burning down the pub for no reason. That certainly is emergent. That sure is something I have to factor now. Emergent gameplay - to me - is effectively 'Irrational gameplay', and that may be one of the reasons why a lot of DMs might stipulate that players can't make Chaotic and/or Evil characters. The amount of 'Emergent' gameplay that a Choatic and/or Evil character can do, is near-infinite, and maybe that's a problem?
    Last edited by Cheesegear; 2022-05-07 at 07:17 AM.
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  10. - Top - End - #280
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    No you misunderstand what I'm asking: Why not?

    When is a DM allowed to do a thing?
    When is a DM not allowed to do a thing?
    How have you decided the difference?

    Why does a players' agency matter sometimes, but not other times?
    Why is a DM allowed to plan ahead? But how come they can't plan so hard?

    The OP appears to define Emergent gameplay, as the players doing something that the DM doesn't expect.
    These questions are are based on your misrepresentation of what others have said and are answered by undoing the misrepresentation.

    When is a DM allowed to do a thing?
    "Allowed" is a misrepresentation.
    "Thing" is overly broad as a means of another misrepresentation.

    If we unravel it back to the honest question we get the following answer:
    If players (including the GM) in a playgroup have preferences for how much player agency (actual meaning, not Cheesegear's misreprentations) they would have, then it makes sense for the campaign to fall within those preferences OR inform the players that won't want to participate so they can opt out. Obviously sometimes informing all the players is the most effective way of ensuring those that won't want to participate were informed.

    Already we notice a few things that were glossed over.
    1) Notice it is preference dependent and thus player (including the GM) dependent. One style is not "bad" but imposing a style on players that won't want to participate is bad. This cuts both ways, some player will not want to play a game deep into the emergent style.
    2) However despite there not being a "bad" style, there are clear player preferences that you have asked for. Just because different people have different preferences does not mean nobody has any preferences.
    3) Fully understanding the answer requires understanding and not misrepresenting Player Agency. You have made a concerted effort to misrepresent it every time it was explained to you. Obviously you are misrepresenting it on purpose. So all you have to do, is stop misrepresenting it.

    Now if we track back through previous answers, we come to Tanarii's definition of Railroading as "negating Player Agency". Given the negative connotation they ascribe to Railroading, it is clear that Tanarii's playstyle preference excludes the negating of Player Agency. So it comes to nobody's surprise that I predict Tanarii's playgroup runs campaigns that don't include the negating of Player Agency.

    That is the complete answer to the honest version of your first question.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2022-05-07 at 10:20 AM.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
    Yes. If you're going to use time pressure, you need to actually be keeping track of time, which very few GMs seem to want to do anymore. Keeping track of the passage of time was an important point of advice in 1e DMG from Gygax.
    You need to track the days, the hours, that pass in-game. Decide when the ritual will happen on the in-world calendar, give the players sufficient warning, so if they hustle and sacrifice they can get there early enough to prevent it.
    Worth noting, Gygax wasn't worried about tracking time so much because of time pressure on PCs. He was worried about it because he had an Open table, with multiple PCs per player and they could bring whichever characters they wanted to the table. So it is important to know if a character was on an expedition to somewhere (follow up session next Saturday!) if a mid-week impromptu dungeon crawl came up. Because that specific character couldn't be involved.

    Keeping strict track of campaign time just has the added benefit that time is a resource. In fact, it's pretty much the main resource, to which most of the others become tied.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    No you misunderstand what I'm asking: Why not?
    Because it is not my style.

    Go back and see how my argument was that I don't run the game that way. And that that means that there are GMs out there doing stuff different from your description. Which means all your talk about "all GMs do X" or "this is the GMs job" is plain wrong.

    That aside :
    When is a DM allowed to do a thing?
    when the group agrees
    When is a DM not allowed to do a thing?
    When the group disagrees.

    The OP appears to define Emergent gameplay, as the players doing something that the DM doesn't expect.

    Emergent gameplay - as per the OP - doesn't appear to be defined as the players doing what they want. I provided an earlier example of players entering a town for the first time, and declaring that they would head to the tavern. The DM expected this, and has an entire location and maybe a scenario or two for what happens inside said tavern, ready to go. But, it was the players' choice to go there. Nobody said they had to go to the tavern. But that's where the players went, because that's like...Where you go.

    If the DM can pre-empt a players' decision, and plan accordingly; What is that? The players still get to make their free choice. The DM just knows what choice they're going to make. Because it's seven sessions in, the DM knows the players, their characters and their party dynamic.
    That is actually an argument i made myself if you look back.

    However, the ability of a GM to guess correctly what their players do, while potentially impressive, is still limited and there are always situations where the GM just guesses wrong.* The only way to make sure prepared scenarios really happen is by enforcing them aka railroading/removing agency.

    In another thread I mentioned that I have a FROST plan for almost any hostile encounter I make. I pre-empt that my players, upon encountering a group of hostiles, will most likely do one of five things, and in the back of my head I can just sort of, wing it because I have the framework to draw upon. The players totally get a choice in what they're going to do. But I've pseudo-planned for what they're going to do, 99% of the time.
    And what happens in the "1%" you didn't predict ? Do you lead them back to your plans (aka railroading) or not ?

    Which is why to me, most 'Emergent' gameplay is basically the equivalent of 'Can I set fire to it?' ...Well no I didn't plan on you burning down the pub for no reason. That certainly is emergent. That sure is something I have to factor now. Emergent gameplay - to me - is effectively 'Irrational gameplay', and that may be one of the reasons why a lot of DMs might stipulate that players can't make Chaotic and/or Evil characters. The amount of 'Emergent' gameplay that a Choatic and/or Evil character can do, is near-infinite, and maybe that's a problem?
    So basically the only way you can fathom players not acting as you guessed is them acting "irrational".

    Do you even understand how belittling that is ?



    * However, if you have players who like the scripted experience, they tend to guess GM expectation and follow them as well. This can lead to a quite robust dynamic where nothing ever leaves the rail becaue everyone always does their best to stay on it.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-05-07 at 02:00 PM.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Do you even understand how belittling that is ?
    If the players solve a scenario in a way that the DM doesn't expect. But it doesn't ruin the game. Who gives a ****?

    If you've never had to look a player in the eyes, and ask 'Are you sure you want to do that? Do you understand how stupid that's going to be?' and then no-one has fun (including the player who committed the action) because you've been forced to address this idiocy that no-one wanted to do? Then you have much, much different players than I do.

    If you've never had other players at the table, Boo! and throw small objects at another player, and turn to you and say;
    'NO! DM. Please? He doesn't assault the officer. He doesn't do that. Here's what we're actually doing...'
    Then you have much, much different players than I do.

    Some choices the players can make are extraordinarily disruptive. I don't mean 'They solved the scenario in a way that I didn't expect.', I mean 'The consequences of this particular decision has the potential to ruin the game for other players, and I'm not actually sure you really want me to play this out...But herrre we gooo...'

    Not all choices a player can make, are good choices. And no, I don't mean they might possibly ruin the narrative. **** it. I'll change the narrative. I'll put scratch marks into my notes and write in the margins. I'm an adult. Take that emergent content and turn it into authored content...Like you're supposed to. There's no problem. Who cares? Doesn't every DM just take players' actions into account? Isn't that just want DMing is?
    - A DM starts with authored content.
    - The players take emergent actions.
    - The DM authors next session with those actions having taken place.
    - The players take emergent actions.
    - etc.

    But there are choices that a character can make, that ruin the game, and those choices are really, really hard to take back. Those are the irrational choices that make no sense;
    'I made a decision that got two players who weren't me, killed! Uh-oh, Spaghetti-Os...Sor-ryyy.' But hey, at least the player that didn't die got to exercise their agency, right?
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Not all choices a player can make, are good choices. And no, I don't mean they might possibly ruin the narrative. **** it. I'll change the narrative. I'll put scratch marks into my notes and write in the margins. I'm an adult. Take that emergent content and turn it into authored content...Like you're supposed to. There's no problem. Who cares? Doesn't every DM just take players' actions into account? Isn't that just want DMing is?
    - A DM starts with authored content.
    - The players take emergent actions.
    - The DM authors next session with those actions having taken place.
    - The players take emergent actions.
    - etc.
    Again you are misrepresenting the topic. This is a pattern where you are having a different conversation using your own misrepresentation of the topic and then making posts that are by default misconstrued by anyone that makes the natural assumption that you would be talking about the thread's topic.

    If I have a setting and I make locations, NPCs, etc, that is not necessarily an "Authored" game. Likewise the PCs being able to take actions does not necessarily mean it is "Emergent" game either. At best I am guessing when I guess you are describing an Authored game that makes minor adjustments to the Authored story based the choices the players made in the last session. It is probably a Linear Branching game but might be a Linear game with details being amended. No, that is not every game. (Although maybe you are using your own unrelated definition and all you described was "The DM prepared, the players played, and repeat. It is really hard to answer your questions when we can't assume you are on topic.)

    If I script "the PCs will go to town XYZ to talk to NPC ABC about LMNOP" that is the "Authored game" style as we follow the authored story. If I instead have the players choose what they want to do, and we follow that emerging story, then that is the "Emergent game" style. There are games they will use various mixtures of the two approaches. Although that also means there will be games that appear closer to those two extremes.

    So when you said
    Which is why to me, most 'Emergent' gameplay is basically the equivalent of 'Can I set fire to it?'
    then it comes across as very belittling if we give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are engaging the same topic.

    Consider 2 campaigns in Barovia. In the first campaign the GM titled it "Curse of Strahd" and it is an authored tale of the party having their prophesy told, finding 3 holy relics, and then going to the castle to slay Strahd with plenty of scripted encounters and adventures to flesh out the campaign. In the second campaign the GM started the party in Barovia and followed the emerging story as the PCs decided to revitalize the wine industry in Barovia.

    In an Emergent game, the players have enough agency that it is reasonable for the GM to expect to be surprised on occasion. It becomes inefficient to plan every contingency (as the number of possible choices and outcomes increases), thus preparation shifts to being prepared without having to predict rather than taking time to make the bespoke scripted encounters that were efficient in Authored games.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2022-05-07 at 05:26 PM.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Easy e View Post
    Also, in the Golden Sky stories example; I think you are right that it is an example of emergent play. However, it was still ultimately up to the DM how the child reacts to any given Kami's action.
    That's called role playing (the GM is a player too) not GM Fiat. (as I see it)
    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    I'm not sure I believe you.
    Then believe me: there are other ways to do that.
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Again you are misrepresenting the topic.
    Poking holes in dumb labels is not misrepresentation.

    Authored story based the choices the players made in the last session. It is probably a Linear Branching game but might be a Linear game with details being amended.
    There you go using another label as if it makes a difference.

    If the DM plans something in advance - whether that be a scenario, specific locations, entire regional maps, tailored NPCs and hostiles to the party, adventures based on a player's backstory - and those plans are made outside of the players' control, how is that not Authored Planned content?

    Oooh. There you go. We did it.

    Just call it 'Planned' and 'Unplanned'. 'Expected' and 'Unexpected'. ...Oh whoops. You couldn't have dozen-page long discussions about those terms because what they mean is very clearly defined by what the words mean.

    If I script "the PCs will go to town XYZ to talk to NPC ABC about LMNOP" that is the "Authored game" style as we follow the authored story.
    What script, don't players have choices?

    No, the script - if you want to call it that - is actually, 'If they players want to know about [X], they have to go to [Y], and talk to [Z].'

    If players want to follow a particular story [X], they must get on a particular set of tracks [Y -> Z]. If they don't want to know about [X], then they can get on a different set of tracks to a different plot hook. But the railroad to [X], starts in [Y]. Get on the train or don't. I don't care.

    If I instead have the players choose what they want to do, and we follow that emerging story, then that is the "Emergent game" style.
    The OP says that Emergent gameplay is when the players do what the DM doesn't expect. That's not the same as the players doing what they want. Are there two different definitions of Emergent being used in the thread? 'Cause that would explain a lot...

    The OP
    They want to do things that the GM didn't plan for, and they want to make that take the "story"/game in a way that the GM could not have predicted.
    They want to do things that the GM didn't plan for...Well, that's subjective to your GM. Your GM can plan for a lot if they know their players and characters well enough.
    They want to change the game in ways that the GM can't predict...Again, that's subjective to the GM. But that's the next step. If your GM is really, really good and knows their players well enough, doing stuff your GM can't predict basically leads to disruptive behaviors.

    But of course, as I've already stated repeatedly; The players' choices are still limited by the DM. If the DM doesn't put the opportunity for extra solutions into their scenario, those choices are not on the table (pun unintended). There aren't a lot of options in a 30x30 ft. room. There's a whole bunch of options in a 100x60 ft. dining hall with stairs that lead to a walkway above the tables.


    ...And no, in a land of soulless people being miserable being ruled over by a vampire overlord, with horror themes spread throughout; I would not expect players to get invested in wine. That is certainly something I wouldn't expect. But hey if it's not disruptive and everyone's on board? Sure? I guess. Is this going somewhere?
    Last edited by Cheesegear; 2022-05-07 at 10:44 PM.
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Poking holes in dumb labels is not misrepresentation.
    It is misrepresentation when you knowingly use a different definition than the speakers used and base your "poking holes" on that misrepresentation.

    The OP talks about 2 concepts and conveniently labels them for the sake of the conversation. However you keep misrepresenting the concepts by replacing them with a different definition and using the same words.

    You do so again in this very post. Creating a location in advance is not an "Authored" game as it pertains to the concept the OP was talking about. Despite this misrepresentation being repeatedly pointed out, you continue to knowingly misrepresent the topic by using the same words but swapping definitions.

    If you stop twisting what others said, then most of your questions will resolve themselves.

    If you want to talk about creating locations in advance, go ahead but the OP/Thread/Topic is talking about the concept described in the opening post. Creating the world in advance is not the same as an Authored game. As you well know many Emergent games start with the world created in advanced and yet the OP talks about Authored vs Emergent.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Are there two different definitions of Emergent being used in the thread? 'Cause that would explain a lot...
    Yes, the OP's and yours. Same as how there are 2 different definitions of Authored game (The OP's and yours). Yes, it does explain a lot.




    Now ignoring all of that mess:

    You can clearly see there is a difference between the 2 campaigns I have as examples. One is Curse of Strahd run as an example of what the OP labeled "Authored" and the other is an example of Curse of Strahd's setting run as a campaign the OP labeled "Emergent". Both had the entire setting created before the campaign, so clearly the difference is not in the content being already created. Instead the difference is about how the story was created. In the "Authored" campaign the GM has already decided the route the story will take. In the "Emergent" campaign the playgroup (including the GM) discover the story that emerges from the players making choices with their relatively abundant player agency. Clearly they play rather differently as we can see from the contrast alone. A campaign could be a hybrid of the two styles, but points inbetween are not as useful as examples.

    PS: For context. Revitalizing the wine industry in Barovia is not as outlandish as it initially appears. Wine is a depressant that the miserable soulless denizens of Barovia are well known for drinking. However you are right that it would be a surprising yet possible direction for a party to take if they wanted to and the campaign granted them enough agency for it to be allowed rather than disruptive (spending too long on it could be disruptive in the "Authored" game of Curse of Strahd).
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2022-05-08 at 12:47 AM.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Creating the world in advance is not the same as an Authored game. As you well know many Emergent games start with the world created in advanced and yet the OP talks about Authored story vs Emergent story.
    I backspaced an entire post.

    TL;DR: We can sort everything out with one simple question. What is this scenario called?

    Player: 'I want to do [X].'
    DM: 'I knew you would!' *Pulls out notes written a week ago, marked [X].*
    Player: 'Wait...How did you know I was going to do that?'
    DM: ...Yes.

    Define that for me, and a lot of our problems get solved.
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    I backspaced an entire post.

    TL;DR: We can sort everything out with one simple question. What is this scenario called?

    Player: 'I want to do [X].'
    DM: 'I knew you would!' *Pulls out notes written a week ago, marked [X].*
    Player: 'Wait...How did you know I was going to do that?'
    DM: ...Yes.

    Define that for me, and a lot of our problems get solved.
    Sure that is a simple question with a simple answer:
    Indeterminant from the limited data provided. That same scene can happen in both types of game or anywhere on the continuum in between.

    It is almost as if that scenario is off topic.

    Edit:
    Did that help? Clearly that example is a GM with notes prepared for if the player wants to do [X]. However that is vague enough and zoomed in enough to be unrelated to the topic. The thread is not about "has notes" vs "did not have notes".
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2022-05-08 at 01:33 AM.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    That same scene can happen in both types of game or anywhere on the continuum in between.
    Okay.

    Based on the narrative, their character, party dynamics and what the player wants to get out of the game; A player uses their agency in a specific way.

    The DM knew that that player - or entire party - would use said agency in that specific way, and is already prepared for that eventuality (i.e; I knew you would do that, lol). Or maybe starts authoring new content based on how the player used their agency, so that when next session happens, they're still on the author's tracks...Just not the same tracks they were on last session. 7 days is a pretty long time. You can come up with something between sessions.

    The player - or party - used their agency...
    In the exact way that the DM knew they would, and is already prepared.

    I don't know how else to explain it except as a train line map: You're going to get on a train, the DM just don't know which train you're going to pick. But he has the trains, ready to go, you just have to get on one. And you can take that analogy all the way down to the encounter-level; There are four major train-lines out of this encounter (FRST). I have the trains ready to go. If you want to fight, let's go down that line. If you want to stealth around them, let's do that one. Whatever you pick, I'm ready. How 'bout you? There are maybe one or two minor train lines out of the encounter, but they aren't really marked on the train line map, and are more of a 'secret menu' item that you can get on if you're clever...Maybe.
    Then of course there's just acting irrationally. We'll try and avoid that, yes?

    Did that help?
    Yes but probably not in the way you think. Describing it as a continuum is probably the worst answer you could give, because that's basically the only answer I don't want. But knowing that that is the answer, probably means that I should've left the thread a long, long time ago, and labels are a hindrance, not a help.

    However that is vague enough and zoomed in enough to be unrelated to the topic.
    We're going back to the OP. Try and follow my logic:

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Authored
    There can be optional branches, there can be some shuffling of what order things are done in, etc. But the key is that all the things that are done, all of the situations handled are things that were predetermined.

    This doesn't mean that authored games have no agency, though they have very limited or no agency in specific areas - usually in terms of what specific encounters/scenes happen. Sure, you can change some aspects of hte result, or you can have side-effects, often significant, on the world, but you're really going to mostly go along the same path as others

    This has advantages! Since the GM knows what the players are going to be doing, the GM can prep very cool, detailed, prep-intensive things for the players to do - custom actions, cool terrain, super balanced encounters, etc.

    Emergent
    Sure, there can be some initial elements, but what the players do is fundamentally unknown, and how the world changes in response to their actions is also fundamentally unknown.

    But fans of emergent games want different things - they want their decisions to matter. They want the game to take on a different shape than it would have if they had made other choices. They want to be able to solve the problems their own way. They want to do things that the GM didn't plan for, and they want to make that take the "story"/game in a way that the GM could not have predicted.
    ...You can see where there's overlap, can't you? There's a fuzzy middle ground where the players can do what they want, but the GM already knows what they're going to do, based on whatever information the GM has about their players and characters.

    What about this situation that I - and I'm certain a lot of other people, too - do? Where does this very normal situation fit into this dichotomy?
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Okay.

    Based on the narrative, their character, party dynamics and what the player wants to get out of the game; A player uses their agency in a specific way.

    The DM knew that that player - or entire party - would use said agency in that specific way, and is already prepared for that eventuality (i.e; I knew you would do that, lol). Or maybe starts authoring new content based on how the player used their agency, so that when next session happens, they're still on the author's tracks...Just not the same tracks they were on last session. 7 days is a pretty long time. You can come up with something between sessions.

    The player - or party - used their agency...
    In the exact way that the DM knew they would, and is already prepared.
    If you look at the discussion about mindset, it resolves this somewhat. I think it may overlap well with the distinction between outliners and discovery writers.

    If as a GM you intend to anticipate (or determine) what the players will do before they've encountered the scenario, and prepare with that in mind, then even if the players do something different you're approaching the game from an authored mindset. This maps to the 'outlier' style of writing, where you quickly map out ways things could go, and then the act of play is filling in the details in that existing framework, but the shape of future parts of the framework is decided first before the shape of present details has been determined.

    If as a GM you intend to discover through play what the players will do and use that to inspire an in-the-moment reaction to that, you're approaching the game from an emergent mindset. This maps to the 'discovery' style of writing, where you write the details sequentially in order to find out for yourself what will happen.

    In both cases, the 'past' is already written, and having written the past doesn't inherently belong to either mindset alone. That can include things like 'deciding what NPCs are out there and what they want', 'deciding what's on the map', etc. Of course if you write the past with a mind of bringing about a particular future, that's an authored mindset to take. And if you write it with a mind of, say, asking the questions you think you have the least ability to predict the players' responses to, that's an emergent mindset. It's not whether you did influence things, whether you were surprised, but rather - are you treating being surprised / seeing what the players do as something that happens which you might have to deal with, or are you treating it as the goal?

    So if a GM happens to guess what players will do, that can be consistent with either mindset. The question is how they relate to that ability to predict - 'do I use the ability to predict to detail events that haven't happened yet?' or 'do I instead detail things in the present/past which will help inspire me as to how to react?'.

    E.g. 'the players are likely to talk to the barkeeper, so I'll have him be the one to have seen something skulking around last night to make a plot hook for this quest...' - authored attitude. 'The players are likely to talk to the barkeeper, so I'll detail a bit more about his family and history and activities the last few days' - emergent attitude. The former is creating an outline of a sequence that has yet to happen, whereas the latter is adding detail about what has already happened that will inform the bartender's dialogue, reactions, etc.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Okay.

    Based on the narrative, their character, party dynamics and what the player wants to get out of the game; A player uses their agency in a specific way.

    The DM knew that that player - or entire party - would use said agency in that specific way, and is already prepared for that eventuality (i.e; I knew you would do that, lol). Or maybe starts authoring new content based on how the player used their agency, so that when next session happens, they're still on the author's tracks...Just not the same tracks they were on last session. 7 days is a pretty long time. You can come up with something between sessions.

    The player - or party - used their agency...
    In the exact way that the DM knew they would, and is already prepared.

    I don't know how else to explain it except as a train line map: You're going to get on a train, the DM just don't know which train you're going to pick. But he has the trains, ready to go, you just have to get on one. And you can take that analogy all the way down to the encounter-level; There are four major train-lines out of this encounter (FRST). I have the trains ready to go. If you want to fight, let's go down that line. If you want to stealth around them, let's do that one. Whatever you pick, I'm ready. How 'bout you? There are maybe one or two minor train lines out of the encounter, but they aren't really marked on the train line map, and are more of a 'secret menu' item that you can get on if you're clever...Maybe.
    Then of course there's just acting irrationally. We'll try and avoid that, yes?
    The train line metaphor at the story level sounds like an Authored game structure. It is similar CYOA book. Each station was created by the GM and the trains lead to other stations created by the GM.

    In your example the author of the CYOA book saw the player was going to want an option that was not offered. They spent 7 days to write another 20 pages for the CYOA book. The majority of this game is still the Authored game structure. However that one choice followed the Emergent game structure.


    Contrast this with another GM. This GM is running a park where the players can walk in any direction (in contrast to the Train metaphor). This follows the Emergent game structure. The players can go where they want and blaze their own trail rather than follow an existing trainline. The session was drawing to a close and the players discuss their next direction. They don't reach a decision but the GM gets a good idea of the top contenders. Between sessions the GM prepares notes based on that current choice being discussed at the end of the session. They have a bespoke encounter designed for each direction the party had talked about and notes on what happens for specific outcomes of the encounters. The party finishes making their decision and encounter the Authored encounter the GM had prepared. After the encounter the GM continues to adjudicate what happens based on the party's continued choices of direction.

    This is an example of an Emergent game that had a moment with an Authored encounter before returning to Emergent game structure.


    I have a feeling you are talking about the former and not the latter, but I included both just in case.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Yes but probably not in the way you think. Describing it as a continuum is probably the worst answer you could give, because that's basically the only answer I don't want. But knowing that that is the answer, probably means that I should've left the thread a long, long time ago, and labels are a hindrance, not a help.
    I am sorry, but for something as long as a campaign, a GM can make many different hybrids between these two styles.


    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    We're going back to the OP. Try and follow my logic:

    ...You can see where there's overlap, can't you? There's a fuzzy middle ground where the players can do what they want, but the GM already knows what they're going to do, based on whatever information the GM has about their players and characters.

    What about this situation that I - and I'm certain a lot of other people, too - do? Where does this very normal situation fit into this dichotomy?
    I don't see the overlap between the concepts the OP tried to communicate. However it seems your question is orthogonal to the thread's topic.

    What you describe can happen in both styles depending on exactly what you mean. The GM successfully guessing which choice the players will make merely depends on the players having choices and the GM guessing successfully.
    • Authored games can have choices. Multiple choice questions the GM asks the players just have fewer options than freeform questions the players ask themselves.
    • GMs of Emergent games can guess successfully. It is just harder to guess the answer to a freeform question the players ask themselves than guess a the answer to a multiple choice question the GM asks the players.



    PS: NichG's reply was a good way to explain it in a slightly different way.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2022-05-08 at 12:25 PM.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    In theory an emergent GM could predict what the players would do and prep accordingly while letting them make decisions.

    In practice, I have doubts. Once you start designing something, it's kind of second nature to prep the path to it as well. It's also incredibly easy to start making other things subtly harder or putting up resistance, so when players see that, and see the prepped path, they start just looking for the path.

    I'm not saying it's impossible - but I don't think I've ever seen it executed on well. It's also the kind of thing that from the DM's side can be hard to detect, since how do you know if you predicted players, or steered them onto that path? A lot of times players expect a path, and look for the path (see examples in this thread and others). From the GM's PoV, that kind of implicit participationism looks a lot like correctly guessing what the players will do.
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    In theory an emergent GM could predict what the players would do and prep accordingly while letting them make decisions.

    In practice, I have doubts. Once you start designing something, it's kind of second nature to prep the path to it as well. It's also incredibly easy to start making other things subtly harder or putting up resistance, so when players see that, and see the prepped path, they start just looking for the path.

    I'm not saying it's impossible - but I don't think I've ever seen it executed on well. It's also the kind of thing that from the DM's side can be hard to detect, since how do you know if you predicted players, or steered them onto that path? A lot of times players expect a path, and look for the path (see examples in this thread and others). From the GM's PoV, that kind of implicit participationism looks a lot like correctly guessing what the players will do.
    This is part of why I liked the mindset framing, it cleans up this sort of 'accidentally X' kind of example, or the 'these are the events that took place, we can't know what might have happened, so we can't know if X or Y' arguments. Regardless of what happened or not during play, we can still talk about attitudes taken towards that play.

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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    In theory an emergent GM could predict what the players would do and prep accordingly while letting them make decisions.

    In practice, I have doubts. Once you start designing something, it's kind of second nature to prep the path to it as well. It's also incredibly easy to start making other things subtly harder or putting up resistance, so when players see that, and see the prepped path, they start just looking for the path.

    I'm not saying it's impossible - but I don't think I've ever seen it executed on well. It's also the kind of thing that from the DM's side can be hard to detect, since how do you know if you predicted players, or steered them onto that path? A lot of times players expect a path, and look for the path (see examples in this thread and others). From the GM's PoV, that kind of implicit participationism looks a lot like correctly guessing what the players will do.
    This is why in "sandbox" emergent play it's traditionally location prepping, with factions prepping later on coming into the fore. Of course, a lot of location prepping for sandboxes traditionally also includes just-in-time events triggered by PCs arriving on the scene, which probably blurs the line into authored (at any given event location). Even if not, if it's not also faction-based, there's also a good chance the locations are siloed and reactive, not proactive. But location prepping gives PCs places to go explore, which can later on be repopulated with new denizens if the current ones are wiped out. And campaign events emerges as gameplay happens and the locations are "unlocked", causing any denizens/factions (if they survive) to now be more proactive parts of the campaign setting, showing up in other locations and potentially even doing things like launching plots/invasions against the PCs settlement(s).

    Of course in a true sandbox campaign, there are multiple groups of players and PCs, and their actions aren't only affecting their future experience in the campaign world, they're also affecting other groups of players and PCs.

  26. - Top - End - #296
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    This is why in "sandbox" emergent play it's traditionally location prepping, with factions prepping later on coming into the fore. Of course, a lot of location prepping for sandboxes traditionally also includes just-in-time events triggered by PCs arriving on the scene, which probably blurs the line into authored (at any given event location). Even if not, if it's not also faction-based, there's also a good chance the locations are siloed and reactive, not proactive.
    Which is again, why some argue that there's no such thing as a sandbox. It's all railroads, all the time; The DM knows which track you're on, and has prepared accordingly. Just like what all DMs, do.
    When you get here, this is what you're going to encounter.
    When you make this choice, this is what's going to happen.
    (P.S. I knew where you were going to go, and what choices you were going to make before you even made them...Because I've met you.)

    Anything the DM prepares...Has well, by definition, been prepared by the DM. It's railroads all the way down. People have to come up with even more bulls* labels to differentiate what and when the DM does what they do and why it's okay and when it's not, and it's a spectrum and also it's the intent that matters and-

    ...

    DMs are gonna do what they're gonna do. They have overt - and covert - control over the entire world. Some DMs don't know how to use that power appropriately. They haven't yet learned how to hide their power level...Those DMs are often called 'Bad DMs'.

    I've also learned that Good DMs, teaching Bad DMs, how to hide their power level...Makes players **** themselves with rage.
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Anything the DM prepares...Has well, by definition, been prepared by the DM. It's railroads all the way down. People have to come up with even more bulls* labels to differentiate what and when the DM does what they do and why it's okay and when it's not, and it's a spectrum and also it's the intent that matters and-

    DMs are gonna do what they're gonna do. They have overt - and covert - control over the entire world. Some DMs don't know how to use that power appropriately. They haven't yet learned how to hide their power level...Those DMs are often called 'Bad DMs'.

    I've also learned that Good DMs, teaching Bad DMs, how to hide their power level...Makes players **** themselves with rage.
    Again, this whole thing about what is okay or not for DMs to do, whether something is Good or Bad DMing, that's all irrelevant to this thread and irrelevant to the Authored/Emergent distinction. At this point it's basically entirely coming from you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    Again, this whole thing about what is okay or not for DMs to do, whether something is Good or Bad DMing
    Well at this point I've gotten what I needed:

    - DMs are going to railroad their players - with or without their knowledge. Some DMs apparently don't even realise they're railroading their players, and that's crazy to me. Again, this is because getting players to make choices they don't necessarily want to make is actually part of the game, part of the challenge of the game. If it's part of the game, it's not railroading. Apparently. But now that I know this is how people see 'The Game', a lot of things start to make sense.

    - DMs author a lot of content - the game isn't necessarily as emergent as you think. Some scenarios, some locations, simply don't have a lot of options - even if you try. In fact, authoring content is basically a requirement of smooth gameplay, of having a smooth narrative. Otherwise players rock up to a location and nothing happens and that's just...Boring. Whilst I like to start my campaigns with a black map with nothing on it and make **** up as I go along (Emergent gameplay turns into authored content, I guess, in the vernacular of this thread)... Turns out a lot of people don't do that.

    - DMs can do anything they want, it's intent that matters. Which means whether something is Good or Bad can absolutely be discussed. I know I've been called 'bad' several times and have been personally attacked at least once for pointing out several things that all DMs do, and then saying that the thing all DMs do, is the thing that they are currently saying is bad (e.g; Removing player agency).

    - Players' immersion and suspension of disbelief is basically dependent on the amount of agency they believe they have, and if a DM is going to railroad and author content (which they all do), they have to hide their power level. After all; It's not a railroad if your players want to be on it. It's not authored content if your players can't see you reading from a script.

    - Labels are basically meaningless.
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    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    I have a question; how do people feel about temporal ogres?

    They are like quantum ogres, but travel through time as well as space, and I think a lot of GM's use them without even realizing it.

    For example, something scripted to occur so that the players arrive just in time to witness and/or get involved in an important event?

    Or an encounter that occurs the first time the players enter a hex regardless of what time of day they arrive and how long it took them to get there?

    Or an NPC who just so happens to have a quest then urgently needs doing right as the PCs enter town?





    Hmmm.

    So your "emergent" game has as much freedom as any "linear" game that I have ever run.

    I can't imagine stopping the players from doing any of those things in a linear game, and indeed I quite expect that to be the sort of thing they get up to.

    Joining with the bad guys is explicitly always on the table, although I can't recall if the PCs have ever taken me up on it (at least with the main villain, side villains often get allied with).

    There is only going to be a problem if the players somehow forget about Voldemort; if they do nothing to address him IC (or have a talk about the direction of the game OOC) their plans to reform magical Britain are probably going to run into some real problems when He Who Must Not be Named takes over the ministry.



    Yeah, I suppose if you are "punching down" you can always make an impact on the world. I don't tend to enjoy that sort of game though, as I have said in the past, it feels like bullying.

    And of course, my players would get mad if I challenged their perception of omnipotence by having the world react logically to a super powered newcomer trying to overthrow the order by, say, uniting against them or finding champions of their own.

    Now, I tend to start games at level 1 because I like the complete experience, from both a mechanical and narrative level. My players tend to be very advancement motivated and retire once they hit max level, and so I start at low levels so that the game can last a long time and I can use a wide variety of plots and challenges.

    Although... I imagine characters who start at level 20 still need to come from somewhere in the fiction, and I wonder... if you actually mapped out their entire backstory if it wouldn't have just as much authorial FIAT as any linear game... just something to think about.



    This gets at the heart of what I was saying, much more succinctly put.

    Linear games allow you to "punch up" on the level of scope you can influence, simply by being in the right place at the right time. The players are more likely to save the lives of royalty, thwart villains, find forgotten artifacts, witness events that change history, etc. Whereas in a fairly run sandbox game, you have to get lucky enough to find these, or at the very least lucky enough to learn of them and decide to go out looking.

    Its kind of like the whole idea IRL of the "great man" theory of history or the self-made industrialist. The deeper you look, it appears less that they were super great and special, but more that they just happened to luck into a lot of opportunities and be at the right place and time where a big change in the world was imminent.
    Ouch. I scarcely know how to address this.

    So... let's start here: I'm not a fan of what you're calling a "temporal ogre", of the PCs just so happening to show up at the right place at the right time, time and again. Where "the only reason we could ever do anything was because of GM pity artifact", in timing form. IMO, that's just... terrible.

    Or, to explain that slightly differently, I want PCs to be able to "punch up" because they had a good plan, or invented (not found) the McGuffin of Voldimort Slaying, or sought out Gandalff and convinced him to help with this ringing in their ears, or... whatever. I want the PCs to be active in their "punching up", not following some GM prescribed path. I don't want Gandalff to exist because the GM's story needs him to fight the Baylore, I want Gandalff to exist because he makes sense for the world, and the the PCs to interact with him (or not) however they see fit, for his existence to be a tool in their toolkit, to use to write their story.

    If you ran the content 3 different times, with 3 different groups, Gandalff's involvement should be completely different for each group; otherwise, he's not a good object to use...

    ... is my preference.

    Or, to try to win the contest for the rudest comment you've heard on the internet, if your dragon is only interesting in the 15 seconds while it's kidnapping the princess, then your dragon is boring, it and you should be ashamed, and you should both go home and rethink your lives.

    That is to say, I think that if you're putting a "dragon" and a "princess" in the game, they should both be interesting objects in their own right, not only interesting because the dragon is kidnapping the princess, and not only interesting during those 15 seconds while the kidnapping is occurring.

    The party shouldn't need to just so happen to arrive during those 15 seconds for the dragon and the princess to be interesting objects.

    Nor should they need to just so happen to arrive during those 15 seconds to be able to influence the outcome. Maybe they "punch up" by asking for help from the evil princess, who loves to kidnap dragons. Maybe they "punch up" by carefully investigating the scene and crafting some bubble-proof armor (because, by investigating the crime scene with their particular skillset, they learn that this is a bubble-breathing dragon). Maybe they "punch up" by making a deal with Sauron for a Ring of Power in exchange for stabbing Gandalff. Or - get this - maybe they don't need to "punch up" because they're actually strong enough to engage the scenario, because it's actually a level-appropriate encounter.

    Given that Harry Potter has "at will, no save, just die" effects, I'm not actually convinced that a D&D Wizard 20 is strictly "punching down" at their world. I'm not sure just how much they'd need to make use of the fact that it's "you" - ie, someone who (in theory) knows a thing or two about their world, rather than a stranger from the outside blundering in oblivious - in order to have a meaningful impact. But the two together was indeed intended to be enough to hopefully be "punching down", so that you could (hopefully) see that there existed some level of ability (power and knowledge) whereby "have an effect" was actually possible. Focusing on "punching down" misses the point.

    Still, "punching down" - "of course they succeed" - is, IMO, a better error to make at a table than "the players have no concept how they could ever accomplish anything in this scenario". If you focus on "challenge" and "punching up", your games are more likely to error out on "and then the players have no concept how to proceed", rather than if you focus, not on "punching down", but "allowing capable characters, and giving your players a vast toolkit", where the error state should look more like "and then the players get into an argument about which of the 20 successful ways to proceed they see, whether they should sell the dragon to the evil princess, gain power from Sauron, nuke the site from orbit, build anti-bubble armor, have Toph tunnel under the princess & grab her while the traveling circus the party hires distracts the dragon, ...". Which is different from "punching down", where "20th level Wizard Talakeal debates which spell to use, or Loki tries to get him to engage in an 'I can resolve this in 6 spell levels' competition."

    Anyway, my point is, I struggle to imagine a game that is "linear" or "authored" where, when placed into the Harry Potter storyline, the PCs are allowed to get Snape fired, open a "Juno's Jumping Jellybeans" competitor for Berty Bott, kill Harry Potter to cement their place in the new order, use that power to get love potions banned, and otherwise not interact with the Harry Potter plot in any way. Not because the GM planned for them to do any of those things, but because that's what they independently chose to do as they were introduced to the elements of the setting.

    I'm not sure if my inability to see it is just because it's not my cup of tea, or if it's as nonsensical a pairing of events and labels as my brain makes it out to be.

    Now, I understand that some GMs will let players have their side-projects, so long as they complete all their homework on time. And that there's other GMs on this very site who proudly state that they would never allow players to perform such actions unless they were part of the GM's plot. But I can't see how those things can be the entirety of the plot (while "having Dumbledore's baby and burning the Daily Prophet to the ground" and "replicating the deathly hallows, until Howarts students can pown Voldimort (and the ministry, and the world - "Dumbledore's Army", indeed)" is the entirety of the plot for a second and third group running through the same content), and still call it "authored" or "linear".

    Yes, Talakeal, I agree that your description of (what to my knowledge is) your most recent game (with the time monk and the teleporting demon girl and not!Toph and...?) sounded... potentially too "authored" and too "GM Pity/Spite temporal ogred" for my taste. So you declaring its style as "Authored" and "temporal ogred", I won't gainsay.

    But... hmmm... nothing in your world really made me say, "here's what I want to do with this", so I can't use that game as a direct example. But... I don't see how you'd take an "authored" (let alone "authored" and "temporal ogred") style, and use that to allow "cross-breed monsters into the entire muggle population of Europe (yes, that'll take a lot of Obliviate / love potions...) and found a new school of Witchcraft and Wizardry", or any of the other Harry Potter universe "plots" I've listed.

    How can you possibly implement that without it being "Emergent"? Isn't allowing that kinda the definition of Emergent play?

    As to the backstory of a whole-cloth 20th level character being fiat... one, I've lost context, did I actually say anything about the character being new; two, I don't really need to think about it, as my player has seemingly been roleplaying me consistently wrt how I feel about fiat:

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Hmmm... "matching existing characterization" was described as "not fiat" by a previous poster.

    So decisions that are made which match existing characterization of a character are not fiat.

    Which means that all choices of new characters are fiat; consistently roleplayed choices of existing characters are not.

    I wonder if this is related to why I prefer to run existing characters? I just don't like (apparent) fiat.

    And... it would match why I prefer hard mind control - it removes fiat from the interpretation of how to react. Huh. I seem to have found one of my core values, and found that I'm roleplaying having that value consistently.

    Seems I don't care for a new 20th level character any more than a new 1st level character in that regard.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I would say that emergent games definitionally do not. That world reactivity is kind of the point. However, that world reactivity makes pre-planning on an individual scene basis very difficult.

    In fact, I'd say that a static sandbox is closer to Authored than it is emergent - all the scenes are there (even if via random table). The only things the players can really do is choose the order they engage in them with.
    Wait, what?

    OK, let's imagine a Minecraft-like puzzle world, where the PC is the only "actor".

    I play the game, build snow golems, get them to destroy spiders, use the webs to build a rope, use the rope to retrieve the Gloves of Catching, use the gloves to catch snowballs, use the snowballs to kill pigs to stockpile food, use the stockpiled food to make it to the Crystal Cliffs, use the rope to retrieve the Bottled Storm, unleash the Eternal Storm from the bottle to get water for crops, realize I've inadvertently killed my snow golems (and can't make more) and therefore have finite ammo, and now the story is about my struggle to snowball pigs to death to feed myself while waiting for my crops to grow.

    Someone else took a character with different skills into the exact same world, and their story is about stealth and bow-hunting and foraging as they search for the legendary moo-shroom island. A third player with a third character leaves behind a trail of destruction as they carve a bloody path with their shovel and wooden sword, their biggest challenge being sickness, as they're not bright enough to differentiate "cow meat" from "zombie meat", until they reach Village, and learn that YANA.

    It seems to me that the story is emergent, the scene transitions are emergent. How is this not your definition of Emergent, even without any active "actors" besides the PC?

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyoryu
    A good analogy. Even if the game was really "about" stopping Voldy (I think an Emergent game can have a goal/direction, provided everybody buys into it), how they do it would likely be very different than in the books.
    Emergent / Sandbox games can have... an agreed-upon goal, like "stop Voldy". But not only is the path there dynamic, inherent to it being Emergent, it's not guaranteed that the PCs will succeed at their goal.

    This is one place where, IMO, discussing macro / super-macro agency seems easier than discussing Emergent/Sandbox or Linear/Authored.
    I'm not entirely sure I agree, can you explain more?
    Ah... hmmm...

    OK, the simplest bit is this: "Authored vs Emergent" and "Linear vs Sandbox" have inherent in them - or in ourselves - that people will tend to want to label an entire game with a single label, color an entire game with just one red or blue crayon. Whereas the (super) [macro/micro] agency listing has inherent in its definitions the scope of each label.

    That's not quite right. Let me try again: because the other model has multiple labels for different kinds of agency, it is easier to know what, exactly, you are talking about when using such a label.

    More word make talk more good. Sigh.

    If I say someone is a "redhead", that means something different than if I call them a "redskin". It's kinda like how I rebeled (recoiled? revolted? there's some word that starts with re- that goes here...) at the notion that Civilization was Emergent, because there are hard constraints on the end condition. And hard constraints on what "getting there" looks like.

    So my point was about how it's easier to use a system that has words for different areas of agency, when trying to discuss just some limited form of agency relative to that area.

    "red" vs "redhead".

    Clearer?

    It feels like "Authored" and "Emergent" need more words, like "Emergent Scene Transition" or "Authored Ending", to make clear / limit the scope of their usage when describing a style element of limited scope.

    Especially when you in particular also want to use the terms to talk about... a general mindset of play? Boy, this is feeling more and more complicated.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Except I don't think it's that obvious of rebranding. I mean...... yeah, if you squint you can just substitute one for the other (as has been done in this thread), but since there is a difference (it's been talked about for decades) I don't see a way around that. And the point here is that it's not just a rebranding, it's a refocusing of the definition specifically to stop implying certain things that are false or strawman argument.
    Ah, so I've been focusing too much on their similarity, rather than simply using that as a jump-start, then focusing on their differences, and then viewing them as their own thing, like I should have. Gotcha.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I've heard sandbox used to mean:

    1. Any emergent game
    2. Living worlds, where the players can do things, but the world goes on
    3. Static worlds, where the players do things, and nothing happens that they don't initiate.

    So it's not surprising that your definition of sandbox is unclear.
    A "wife" can be a drug-addled narcissist. But if you say you have a wife, and I inherently picture a drug-addled narcissist, and cannot picture anything else, no matter how much you explain it to me, I think that's on me, no?

    Humanity needs an update.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I mean, are they fundamentally mutually exclusive? I dunno. In practical terms, they tend to be, simply due to practical constraints - see arguments about "game have to be railroaded becuase GMs don't have time to create infinite branches" in other threads.
    I'd rather not.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Not necessarily. You could totally have a CaW authored setup as well.
    Sure. I think you said something equivalent to, "one of the strengths of 'Authored' is that it is easier to craft fair challenges". Easier, not that they were inherently linked.

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    Ehhhhh not really sure I agree with that. Like, that doesn't really feel emergent to me. I think mostly because the challenge is just in isolation. It's the contents of a path, and doesn't impact the path itself after that.

    Like, my example of megadungeons - if the rooms don't interact, if it's just a series of combat encounters, then it's authored (non-linear authored). If you can start making alliances, or the various tribes react to invaders in ways that have an impact on the larger megadungeon, to me it's emergent.
    We may be stuck on the "emergent mincraft puzzle world" concept again here.

    However... if we cross "making alliances" with "choosing what the room copies", we break the "balanced encounter" promise of the room. Of course, "making alliances" tends to break balance too much for CaS to begin with...

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I mean, billiards is a highly emergent game, right?
    I don't know, is it?

    The game (or, the game I play, which may or may not share any resemblance with billiards) only has 2 valid end conditions: sink 8 ball, scratch on 8 ball.

    It has exactly 1 pre-determined start condition. (and, as an aside, I think talk of "start conditions" in RPGs is missing the point in this thread)

    The play in between can contain infinite variations of its very, very few variables.

    And, assuming I'm playing against an opponent instead of just by myself, my perception of my opponent's personality and skills adds a whole 'nother layer to the game.

    Does that make it Emergent?

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    To be clear, by "soft control" I mean things like "for x period of time (or x number of uses, or whatever), if you do something against the implanted goal, you suffer <penalty>." The PC still has an incentive to comply with the directive, but the choice hasn't been completely removed. It makes an interesting set of decisions about how counter to their own goals you want to make the control. So it's not really "fiat" - you can accept the penalty (be it a penalty on actions, damage, whatever). But it's not hard control in that you still have the choice.
    Yeah, I'm one of those oddballs who prefers hard mind control. In no small part because of the Fiction. If Loki had said, "help me take over the world... or eat penalties!", I think most of the SHIELD agents would have dealt with the stomach issues those penalties caused when ingested. I think if the "Imperious" curse gave its victims the option to not betray everything they love, it might not have qualified as an unforgivable curse. I don't think the Purple Man would be so feared or hated if his mind control could be so trivially bypassed. I don't think a D&D monster with "Do what I say... or take a -2 penalty to craft: underwater basketweaving" feels even remotely the same as one that just has "Do as I say".

    As I player, I don't really want to have to think about how my character responds to a supernatural urge that I, in theory, have no valid frame of reference for. I want hard mind control that says, "you do this", rather than a Gamist "you do x else you eat penalty y". I'd rather roleplay how the character goes about X, than break to the system layer, and game the system of whether to x or y.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
    Yes but probably not in the way you think. Describing it as a continuum is probably the worst answer you could give, because that's basically the only answer I don't want. But knowing that that is the answer, probably means that I should've left the thread a long, long time ago, and labels are a hindrance, not a help.
    These characters are printed in two colors on my screen: black, and white. No continuum of grey. Just black, and white. However, it is not the case that the entire screen is black. Nor is it the case that the entire screen is white. There is both black, and white, used alternately, in a pattern that makes these words.

    "Black" and "White" are labels that have meaning when describing technology's implementation of these characters. Both are being used on the same screen. This does not make the terms meaningless.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2022-05-08 at 11:04 PM.

  30. - Top - End - #300
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Feb 2015

    Default Re: Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    In theory an emergent GM could predict what the players would do and prep accordingly while letting them make decisions.

    In practice, I have doubts. Once you start designing something, it's kind of second nature to prep the path to it as well. It's also incredibly easy to start making other things subtly harder or putting up resistance, so when players see that, and see the prepped path, they start just looking for the path.

    I'm not saying it's impossible - but I don't think I've ever seen it executed on well. It's also the kind of thing that from the DM's side can be hard to detect, since how do you know if you predicted players, or steered them onto that path? A lot of times players expect a path, and look for the path (see examples in this thread and others). From the GM's PoV, that kind of implicit participationism looks a lot like correctly guessing what the players will do.
    I don't disagree too much which is why i called this a mixture, not pure emergent gameplay.

    But if we are talking about unconscious steering, does such behavior not start even earlier ? Do emergent DMs really prepare stuff they don't expect the players to go for wih the same attention to detail as stuff they think will very likely be relevant ? Where will corners be cut, when the GM does not have time time ? And well, even GMs who don't try to guess what the players will do will aquire related knowledge during play. I mean, i know several GMs who make a point of not wanting to know the PCs stats and abilities lest that produces biased expectations. But stuff like that will get revealed during sessions and there are player character traits and interests as well which are hard to actively ignore.

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