Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

[OldTrees1]

Wish people would tell me what those are.

They did for several preconceptions. The most recent one is your preconception that only Authored GMing is good GMing. However people telling you does not do anything.

Like I just said; Such as? Remind me again. I don't remember.

You have to own your side of the process too. People have pointed out misrepresentations. That had no effect.

Weird. I don't feel negative. Mostly confused, and the more questions I ask and the more holes I poke, the more people tell me I'm stupid... People telling me I'm stupid and then proceeding to not explain why, doesn't make me feel negative at all...Just confused and passive-aggressive...And actually aggressive. But I'd hardly say negative.

Did you notice how you only reference players in a negative or neutral tone in this thread? Your posts convey a tone of looking down on players. Players are insane or irrational. You considered "How do I deceive my players" to be a very important question instead of thinking of the obvious mature conversation to coordinate players that want to play XYZ with GMs that want to run XYZ.

Did you notice how you reference other GMing styles in a negative tone? "Oh emergent GMs do no prep at all."*
*This is also an example of misrepresentation because emergent GMs do prep and an erroneous preconception since you assume only Authored game style prep is prep.


At this point there are plenty of posts you could revisit and you have a few examples of Emergent games. If you want to understand, it is in your power to do so.

[NichG]

That sounds like a lot of authoured content.

And this isn't authored content? This isn't just DM Fiat?

Authored doesn't mean 'any decision made by the GM'. It means predetermining things about the course of events. Making decisions about the past isn't against emergence. Making decisions in the present from the perspective of characters isn't against emergence.

Deciding 'this faction will refuse the PCs' offer's before that offer is made is authored stance. Deciding that after the offer is made is consistent with emergence.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Deciding 'this faction will refuse the PCs' offer's before that offer is made is authored stance. Deciding that after the offer is made is consistent with emergence.

But that about defining zones of negotiable agreement in advance? Things like "the shopkeeper has XYZ for sale and will accept offers of at least P outright but can be talked as low as Q. Anything lower will be rejected.

If that's not compatible with emergence, then I'd question whether any game with reasonable verisimilitude can be truly emergent. If it is compatible, then the distinction is mostly a subjective boundary drawing issue and there's no reason to believe that one person's definition will match anyone else's.

Or the quoted example could be improper.

Edit: Also, by that example, the following would be absolutely incompatible with emergence (creating absurdities):

1) any faction or individual (because factions have minimum size 1) who hates the party and will reject anything they say. Or simply won't listen to an offer. Such as, say...a golem that's programmed with a limited set of capabilities and incapable of listening to anyone but its master. Because by its very definition it will reject all offers by anyone--it's incapable of accepting them.
2) change in reputation with a faction. You can't get to a position where you're kill on sight with a faction, because you always have to make that decision on the fly without any prior preparation. Which means factions cannot learn. Betray them a million times? Sure, the difficulty of persuading them might go up, but they'll always let you make the offer. Otherwise you're authoring things.

Note that these are absurd results. Everyone always must be persuadable on anything, there can never be anything impossible (otherwise you're pre-determining the outcome of those paths, which is a no-no according to the bright-line definitions presented).

This is why thinking of it as a mindset of "who is responsible for creating content and moving the narrative", where the values are continuous ones ranging from (DM is solely responsible, aka full authored) to (Players are solely responsible aka full emergent) and all points in between, is, in my mind, much more productive. It explains much more of the discrepancy without causing the absurd results that insisting on a binary, bright-line "have you planned any events" definition.

[NichG]

But that about defining zones of negotiable agreement in advance? Things like "the shopkeeper has XYZ for sale and will accept offers of at least P outright but can be talked as low as Q. Anything lower will be rejected.

I'd say it's close to something compatible, but sounds like an authored mindset because you're framing things in terms of a predecision rather than as a motivation or past decision.

Instead if you had said e.g. 'the shopkeeper has XYZ, paid Q for it, and needs to make a certain degree of profit. This is their negotiation experience, their current need, their focus, etc' and then determined, upon hearing an offer P, 'the shopkeeper would take it', then I'd call that an emergent mindset.

It would also be fine if they just put a price sticker on something and 99% of the time would just tap the sticker and say pay me.

The thing that makes the emergent game potentially feel more alive is, someone shows up and says 'well, I can't pay you, but I can make you immortal', the emergent mindset naturally says 'yeah, that will turn their head', whereas in the authored mindset the natural thing would be to ask 'wait, does immortality trigger this condition?'

[JNAProductions]

But that about defining zones of negotiable agreement in advance? Things like "the shopkeeper has XYZ for sale and will accept offers of at least P outright but can be talked as low as Q. Anything lower will be rejected.

If that's not compatible with emergence, then I'd question whether any game with reasonable verisimilitude can be truly emergent. If it is compatible, then the distinction is mostly a subjective boundary drawing issue and there's no reason to believe that one person's definition will match anyone else's.

Or the quoted example could be improper.

It depends, as always.

If XYZ is a McGuffin you need to progress, that’s authored.
If it’s just useful items, then the players can choose to buy it for P, haggle for Q, or just not buy it at all.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd say it's close to something compatible, but sounds like an authored mindset because you're framing things in terms of a predecision rather than as a motivation or past decision.

Instead if you had said e.g. 'the shopkeeper has XYZ, paid Q for it, and needs to make a certain degree of profit. This is their negotiation experience, their current need, their focus, etc' and then determined, upon hearing an offer P, 'the shopkeeper would take it', then I'd call that an emergent mindset.

It would also be fine if they just put a price sticker on something and 99% of the time would just tap the sticker and say pay me.

The thing that makes the emergent game potentially feel more alive is, someone shows up and says 'well, I can't pay you, but I can make you immortal', the emergent mindset naturally says 'yeah, that will turn their head', whereas in the authored mindset the natural thing would be to ask 'wait, does immortality trigger this condition?'

The emergent one means you just can't do as much, you can only have extremely tiny or extremely shallow games just due to information limits. Games always involve synthesis and abstraction. You can't model even a single person in any substantial detail, let alone a world. So you're always going to end up in what you're calling an authored mindset if you want to have more than a single shopkeeper and not have to model (in full detail) the entire world simultaneously. Which is just not possible.

Note that in the example, P may or may not even be money. And those definitions come from the mindset (in a much more abstracted sense than trying to method act all of the people in the world at once) of the person.

It depends, as always.

If XYZ is a McGuffin you need to progress, that’s authored.
If it’s just useful items, then the players can choose to buy it for P, haggle for Q, or just not buy it at all.

I think that's orthogonal. And out of scope for the example. But I'd say that if you have a "McGuffin you need to progress", you're working from much more of a DM-led mindset already. Because you've stolen a lot of bases there (in defining future content).

However, you might have things like

"The cavern of Cavernness has a lock on the door. The only method of opening the door is to bring the McGuffin of McGuffinness to it and tap three times while repeating 'ooga booga'. Inside the cavern of Cavernness is the Sword of Super Sharpness."

And as long as it's just one thing in the world that may or may not ever get triggered, where going there or not is completely up to the players and their decisions. If they want the Sword of Super Sharpness, they have to go to the Cavern of Cavernness--it's a unique item. And if they want to get into that cavern via the door, they have to find the McGuffin of McGuffinness and learn the ritual chant. But there might be other ways to get in consistent with all the other facts.

That, I'd say, is as emergent as anything ever really is. On the scale from (DM authors everything) to (Players author everything), most TTRPGs (especially D&D-likes) sit somewhere left of the middle. But not at either end. Story modules (and especially adventure paths) tend to promote a mindset more to the left (by their nature); other games may end up more to the right. But the ends are very rarely encountered.

----

Edit: Personally, I think that trying for either endpoint is a bad idea. As with most things, the happy path is somewhere in the middle. Where, exactly, depends on the people involved and evolves over time. I prefer the model of speculative branch prediction--at any time T, you know the state of the world W(t = T). You also (as the DM) know the players and have some (baysian) predictors of what they'll do next, contingent on the world state: P(W, t). So you pick the most probable ones and build out the next timestep (session, usually) along those lines, creating W1(t = T+dt), W2(T + dt), etc. But then, during the next session, if the party does something you didn't predict, or deviates substantially from any of the predicted paths, or even if the predicted world-states just aren't satisfying (because this is all a subjective thing) based on what they have done, you construct some other W'(T + dt) on the fly, throwing away your W_n predictions (or reusing parts of them to assemble W' faster and more smoothly). You're not tying yourself to any of those paths, but you're doing the ground work so that you can be consistent and thoughtful about your reactions, keeping everything coherent and preserving all the setting invariants. Because asking DMs to ad-lib everything is just a non-starter for good play. As is asking them to predict everything (which usually devolves into forcing people to stay on one of the predicted paths).

In the speculative branch prediction model, the future is still indeterminate. But the near future is more determinate than the far future. The endpoint of the campaign flops around like an electrocuted snake on crack. But the individual segments are more (but not entirely) predictable, especially when you're in a naturally-linear segment like running through a dungeon.

[Vahnavoi]

@Cheesegear:

It's pretty damning you yourself can think of an example, based on the definition given, where a game master has two diametrically opposed ways to react to a situation, yet still go "I don't understand the distinction, please give me examples!".

Some player wants an emergent game. They unexpectedly start a bar fight in the game. How is the game master supposed to react?

Let's quote you:

Whatever plot hooks the DM had prepared, aren't really relevant anymore. We're now looking at a jailbreak scenario. Possibly a fight to leave the city to become outlaws and bandits.

OR ALTERNATIVELY

Nothing happens. The game essentially continues towards the DM's authored content. Even though the player made an emergent decision that the DM didn't really expect, it's not too difficult to explain away if the DM knows what they're doing.

In the first, the unexpected player actions are build upon and becoming main focus of the game. In the second, unexpected player actions are minimized and explained away so the game can continue on the track the game master has planned. That's a pretty clean split for methodology and consequence.

Your actual problem is that you don't really consider the first option as valid gameplay, as evidenced by statements such as this:

That being said...That's the insane version of emergent gameplay, where anything the PCs do has to be as disruptive as possible.

As for this little gem:

Perhaps more importantly, how can a DM who doesn't want to play with emergence, pretend to their players that they actually have agency when they really don't?

It is not important at all to pretend things are not how they really are. A game master who is not willing to entertain a game move can explicitly prohibit such a move or remove the player who made that move from a game. Stop looking for reasons to be dishonest to your players.

[NichG]

The emergent one means you just can't do as much, you can only have extremely tiny or extremely shallow games just due to information limits. Games always involve synthesis and abstraction. You can't model even a single person in any substantial detail, let alone a world. So you're always going to end up in what you're calling an authored mindset if you want to have more than a single shopkeeper and not have to model (in full detail) the entire world simultaneously. Which is just not possible.

Note that in the example, P may or may not even be money. And those definitions come from the mindset (in a much more abstracted sense than trying to method act all of the people in the world at once) of the person.

You can model the character however you want and at any level of detail. You don't have to come up with things that would persuade the golem. You just have to play the shopkeeper, golem, faction, etc in that moment. Just as if you were a player playing your character. That's it.

You've got a faction that wants to kill PCs on sight? That's fine, you're allowed to do that - it's a decision about the past. But when someone of the faction encounters a PC and you roll initiative and the PC goes first and makes an offer, then your NPC does have to 'hear that offer' and react to it in the moment. E.g. you're obligated to process that action, you're obligated to at least think about whether the NPC would act different, if you want to offer an emergent game. After all that, if the NPC shoots back on their initiative, well, that's their decision and it's fine.

[Vahnavoi]

You don't have to simulate everything in a world to get emergent behavior. Come on. Simulating as much of it as you can to your limit as a human is sufficient. Simulation heavy sandbox games on computers have a similar principle: the world is only fully modeled to some manageable distance from the player characters.

This is starting to sound like a rehash of the common stupid argument about realism: that you have to go all in or you might as well not bother, and since it's impossible to do to perfection, any bothering at all is futile. Bluntly, that's not how any of this works.

[KorvinStarmast]

Well let's see...

If the prospective GM responds

"You don't get to dictate my GM style to me" - which is a fair response, since they are taking on that role. You seem to be privileging players dictating style choices before the game even begins, and yet provide a (bogus) fig leaf of this being some kind of dialogue.

In an ideal world, there's a lot of room in between, but the OP has established a dichotomy here, which as I pointed out earlier, pre poisons their own well. Also, in the real world with real people, if the pre game conversation arrives at a poor match there's no game, or, for a given player there is no game and everyone else enjoys one without them.

I withdrew from a game recently due to the style not matching my expectations, nor the GM's pitch to me (despite a very, very good experience with the GM previously), and the other players not actively engaging. They are free to enjoy their game in the future, even if I do not.

Do not think in terms of telling a story.

On this we are in strong agreement. I like the stories we all tell afterwards, about what happened over the course of the sessions of play.

@Tanarii
PAFO is a neat approach. I've not had much experience with AW/DW games but there's a lot of room in them to improvise.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The past fully constrains the present, and the present determines the future. So yes, if you take a bright line dichotomy standpoint, you do have to model everything. Because otherwise you're deciding the future by deciding the past.

My point is that the bright line dichotomy does not actually work in practice. Everything is in the squishy middle, where some events are emergent and others are determined in advance. And people can differ about what they want in which category and how much they want to collaborate on how things emerge and are authored.

[NichG]

"You don't get to dictate my GM style to me" - which is a fair response, since they are taking on that role. You seem to be privileging players dictating style choices before the game even begins, and yet provide a (bogus) fig leaf of this being some kind of dialogue.

I mean, I gave an example of a GM saying that they didn't want to run such a game. That's perfectly valid. The player can choose to play, or pass on that game and do something else instead. That's also valid. No one is obligated to enjoy your preferred GM style. No one is obligated to run in a particular style that a player wants.

If someone says that they like emergent games and your style doesn't fit their definition of emergent, that's not a personal attack. That's just, hey, you like different things. If someone tells you 'I want to play emergent games, what you're pitching for a campaign doesn't sound emergent to me', then just go separate ways. Don't try to say 'actually my games are emergent', don't try to trick them, don't argue 'your preference can't exist because of this semantic argument or hypothetical corner case'. Listen, see if its something you're interested in doing with them (and vice versa) and if not there's no foul.

I don't like horror games. That doesn't mean people who run horror games are bad people. It doesn't mean horror games are bad gaming. If I go up to a GM and say 'hey, your campaign sounds interesting, but I don't like horror games, is that an issue?' then 'you don't get to dictate my GM style to me!' or 'you play my way or you don't play!' or 'well, its technically not horror...' or 'well, there isn't really a difference between horror and your average RPG premise, so you can't possibly have that preference' are all bizarre responses. Just say 'yeah, its going to have horror elements, you might not like it' and move on.

The past fully constrains the present, and the present determines the future. So yes, if you take a bright line dichotomy standpoint, you do have to model everything. Because otherwise you're deciding the future by deciding the past.

My point is that the bright line dichotomy does not actually work in practice. Everything is in the squishy middle, where some events are emergent and others are determined in advance. And people can differ about what they want in which category and how much they want to collaborate on how things emerge and are authored.

This is why I like the mindset framing better in a lot of ways.

It's fair play in an emergent stance to influence the future. If you're playing a character in someone's game and take an action, you're influencing the future, and you might even have intent to determine it, but you're still using forward causation there. If for example there was a source of randomness, or other people could make decisions in response, or just you didn't know something or assumed something, or practically your agency was limited, then those things can still act to disrupt your control. From a GM standpoint, you're allowed to decide things, but if you want to take an emergent mindset you should not be preoccupied with trying to make something happen from a perspective that sits outside of events, but rather you should be making decisions in the present based on things embodied in the present, and then what happens happens.

The shopkeeper wants to make money and so doesn't sell at a loss - they intend to bring about a particular future, but that intent is bound to that viewpoint and set of actions - what the shopkeeper knows, what the shopkeeper can do, etc. That does force the GM to play that out, and to be competent at playing that out, but so be it - we're playing games, perfection isn't necessary.

If on the other hand the GM says 'the world would not make sense if shopkeepers sold at a loss, therefore any situation in which we discover that deciding a certain way would have systematically lost money for the shopkeeper is excluded', that's reverse causation. That may in many cases make it much easier to achieve verisimilitude (see e.g. the economics thread about old currencies having more gold by weight and that kind of thing), but it does sacrifice a kind of flexibility that can be important - more important than verisimilitude - to some players. In that vein, if you (as the GM, playing the shopkeeper) don't spot the trick, its fair play that the shopkeeper gets tricked and loses money.

I think all of this becomes far less arcane if you just think of the GM as a player in the game - same ability or inability to predict the other players, same aspect of deciding for some active elements of the game 'what do I do in response to what just happened?'. From that perspective, even if the GM schemes about futures and such, they're doing so from a limited viewpoint that lacks the power to simply say 'and so it shall be' but rather has to act through what it can do here and now (of course, since the GM is playing several such forces, they must take care not to have those forces conspire to coordinate to bring about the GM's will)

[Cheesegear]

They did for several preconceptions. The most recent one is your preconception that only Authored GMing is good GMing.

Did I say that? What an odd thing to say. If you could link to the specific post where I said that, that would be great. I'll go back and change that. But of course whatever damage is done, has been done. Maybe I can explain myself better with new words.

Like so...

If I did in fact, say that Authored is straight up better than Emergent...Let's build some bridges.

I believe that a good DM makes the game run smoothly.

Part of making the game run smoothly, is having stuff locked and loaded, ready to go, for when your players want to do something. It cuts down on the 'ums and ahs', and you don't really have to waste time looking in books to make sure that somebody can do something. Part of making the game run smoothly is having authored content so that the DM doesn't spend time buffering. I know this to be true because as soon as I said 'Maps aren't Emergent' people freaked out and said that maps had to be a part of the game or they - or their players - couldn't make good and/or meaningful decisions.
Which I accept as part of the game. But I also accept that Maps aren't Emergent. Both are true.

Now, if you consistently have the ability to make stuff on the spot, that makes sense and is consistent with the last stuff you made up and will also make sense with the future stuff you're also going to make up; Well played, I guess. Like I've mentioned I can DM that for a Session or two, tops. If you can play a game for six months like that, well done. I couldn't run a game where I am constantly making up new things at the table, every single session for half a year or more. I just couldn't do it.

Authored doesn't mean 'any decision made by the GM'. It means predetermining things about the course of events.

And part of the contention is that the DM can predetermine things with simply good - or exact - scenario design. They can't predetermine everything, but they can predetermine...A lot.

The instant the DM introduces an antimagic field, they have...Predetermined...That magic can't be used in the solution for the scenario. Ergo, that definition has a hole in it. Which people can - and have - handwaved away saying that DM design is part of the game. Which I accept that it is. Thus, how do you even have emergent gameplay, when the DM predetermines events just by being a DM?

People don't like scenarios when there is only one, specific solution, that they must do to progress. Fair.
What about two?
Three?

If a DM is designing a scenario, how many solutions are they allowed to plan? Obviously, 'exactly one', isn't the right answer because that makes people mad. At least how many solutions must a DM include for a given scenario? Now...The answer to that is 'How long is a piece of string?', which means that that definition has a hole in it because there is no right amount of solutions for a scenario...So maybe exactly one solution can be the right answer, in the right situation?

There can be a pre-determined outcome for a scenario, it just depends on what kind of scenario it is. The solutions for the scenario(s) can absolutely be pre-determined by how the scenario is set up. The red key goes in the red door. The blue key, even if you have it, doesn't go in the red door. Aww we've poked another hole again. Sorry Mum, I said I would stop trying to do that.

But the DM must be able to pare down some solutions from scenarios, or else there's no challenge, right? Well...How many solutions can the DM remove? More importantly, what kind of solutions can the DM remove? Is it fair to remove spellcasting solutions when the party contains spellcasters? Of course it isn't. But the DM is going to remove spellcasting. Antimagic Fields are things that definitely do exist, and they specifically target one kind of character.

And therein lies the rub.

It doesn't matter what type of game you run; So long as you're fair. If you're including Antimagic Fields in every single scenario...That's not fair.

How often are you doing [the bad thing]?
Why are you doing [the bad thing]?

What purpose does doing [the bad thing] serve, and does it help the game run smoother...How often can you do [the bad thing] before your players complain? Remember, players complaining does not make the game run smoother...It nearly explicitly does the opposite. Once again...How long is a piece of string? Some players will put up with [the bad thing] a lot. Some players will leave the table the first time they see it. I've done plenty of [the bad thing] at my table, and none of my players have left.

Someone might say that Invisible hostiles aren't fair to certain kinds of characters, and thus, they shouldn't be included. Well, Invisible hostiles are part of the game, and that's something you have to deal with. If every hostile was Invisible, there'd be an actual problem.

It doesn't matter how many solutions the DM authors, so long as the players get to make their emergent choice.
If the players choose to do - of their own volition - the 'right' choice, then it doesn't even matter that the content is emergent or authored, because it's both. The players chose what the DM wanted them to do, anyway.

The problem with authored content, of course, is when the emergent choice should work, and then doesn't...Authored content is bad because it allegedly biases the DM towards pre-conceived outcomes, and is therefore bad. I don't see how that happens with a good DM who understands sense when they hear it. But apparently it's a thing. Players present a logical solution that should work, given the parameters of the scenario, and the DM, because they're biased to the two, three or four solutions they've written, doesn't allow it... That doesn't make any sense to me. But apparently it happens.

It's pretty damning you yourself can think of an example

It's pretty damning that I had to think of my own examples...Sometime after 10 pages.

Your actual problem is that you don't really consider the first option as valid gameplay

Of course it's valid gameplay. It's insane gameplay. But it's still gameplay. At no point did I ever say that a PC can't punch an NPC for (seemingly) no reason. If the game is running smoothly, there's no problem. If the DM knows exactly what to do after their Town burns down and the PCs get locked in stocks for three days, there's no problem. If the DM throws his notes in the garbage, and says 'Well I don't know what to do now that the town's on fire. I guess we'll go home and come back next week and I'll having something new.', then there's a problem.

Stop looking for reasons to be dishonest to your players.

I am looking for ways to make the game run smoothly.
If, occasionally, I have to be dishonest with them...I'm okay with that. It's a fictional game of make pretend. Nothing matters.

It's all illusionism anyway. *Spooky hands*

[Vahnavoi]

If it's valid gameplay, what about it is supposed to be insane?

[Satinavian]

People don't like scenarios when there is only one, specific solution, that they must do to progress. Fair.
What about two?
Three?

If a DM is designing a scenario, how many solutions are they allowed to plan? Obviously, 'exactly one', isn't the right answer because that makes people mad. At least how many solutions must a DM include for a given scenario? Now...The answer to that is 'How long is a piece of string?', which means that that definition has a hole in it because there is no right amount of solutions for a scenario...So maybe exactly one solution can be the right answer, in the right situation?

There can be a pre-determined outcome for a scenario, it just depends on what kind of scenario it is. The solutions for the scenario(s) can absolutely be pre-determined by how the scenario is set up. The red key goes in the red door. The blue key, even if you have it, doesn't go in the red door. Aww we've poked another hole again. Sorry Mum, I said I would stop trying to do that.

But the DM must be able to pare down some solutions from scenarios, or else there's no challenge, right? Well...How many solutions can the DM remove? More importantly, what kind of solutions can the DM remove? Is it fair to remove spellcasting solutions when the party contains spellcasters? Of course it isn't. But the DM is going to remove spellcasting. Antimagic Fields are things that definitely do exist, and they specifically target one kind of character.

And therein lies the rub.

See, i generally just don't prepare solutions at all.

I do prepare the opposition and what they have in stock and what measures they did according to their abilities and goals and knowledge.

And I generally do know how the power of the PCs match up to the power of their opponents so i can somewhat guess if they are likely to succeed or not. But looking for solutions and ways to apply their abilities is their job not mine. And yes, they might completely fail on something i think was pretty easy or succeed in something i think was quite difficult but at no point is it even interesting how many solutions exactly exist nor do i need to be aware of them.

[Morgaln]

And part of the contention is that the DM can predetermine things with simply good - or exact - scenario design. They can't predetermine everything, but they can predetermine...A lot.

The instant the DM introduces an antimagic field, they have...Predetermined...That magic can't be used in the solution for the scenario. Ergo, that definition has a hole in it. Which people can - and have - handwaved away saying that DM design is part of the game. Which I accept that it is. Thus, how do you even have emergent gameplay, when the DM predetermines events just by being a DM?

People don't like scenarios when there is only one, specific solution, that they must do to progress. Fair.
What about two?
Three?

If a DM is designing a scenario, how many solutions are they allowed to plan? Obviously, 'exactly one', isn't the right answer because that makes people mad. At least how many solutions must a DM include for a given scenario? Now...The answer to that is 'How long is a piece of string?', which means that that definition has a hole in it because there is no right amount of solutions for a scenario...So maybe exactly one solution can be the right answer, in the right situation?

There can be a pre-determined outcome for a scenario, it just depends on what kind of scenario it is. The solutions for the scenario(s) can absolutely be pre-determined by how the scenario is set up. The red key goes in the red door. The blue key, even if you have it, doesn't go in the red door. Aww we've poked another hole again. Sorry Mum, I said I would stop trying to do that.

But the DM must be able to pare down some solutions from scenarios, or else there's no challenge, right? Well...How many solutions can the DM remove? More importantly, what kind of solutions can the DM remove? Is it fair to remove spellcasting solutions when the party contains spellcasters? Of course it isn't. But the DM is going to remove spellcasting. Antimagic Fields are things that definitely do exist, and they specifically target one kind of character.

An antimagic field does not predetermine outcomes; It provides an additional complication to the situation. Depending on the situation, it might not even exclude the use of magic completely. For example, if the field is small, it might absolutely be possible to stand outside the field and use magic to accelerate a boulder so it crashes through the door. Bonus points if you use the blue key and smash it into the red door with enough force to blow out the lock.

You can obviously plan as many solutions for your problems as you want. My go-to number is "none." I'll wait for whatever solutions my player come up with and decide whether they would work depending on the parameters of the problem. There's no need for me to plan a solution; the important question is whether the players can find a solution and what results from that solution. This is completely independent from whatever I could have come up with, even if it might be similar.
That's how you pare down. You set the parameters of the situation. Those parameters will determine what doesn't work ("no Knock because antimagic field"), but they will not force a predetermined, exhaustive list of what you can do to solve the problem. On a micro-scale, it's an example of something that I consider a truism of TTRPG: "Everything goes, unless it is specifically forbidden."

Of course it's valid gameplay. It's insane gameplay. But it's still gameplay. At no point did I ever say that a PC can't punch an NPC for (seemingly) no reason. If the game is running smoothly, there's no problem. If the DM knows exactly what to do after their Town burns down and the PCs get locked in stocks for three days, there's no problem. If the DM throws his notes in the garbage, and says 'Well I don't know what to do now that the town's on fire. I guess we'll go home and come back next week and I'll having something new.', then there's a problem.

It's not necessarily insane. The PC probably had a reason for punching that lute player, even if said reason isn't apparent at that point (maybe not even to the player yet). I'd fully expect that reason to come out later during a discussion between the PCs, a trial, or some other way. That's not the important part. The important part for emergent gameplay is that the GM lets it happen. Yes, certain plot hooks will most likely no longer be available after the PCs caused a bar fight and ensuing fire ("I was planning to hire these adventurers, but clearly they are too dangerous.") while other hooks will appear ("So we enjoyed that chaos you caused and would like to see more of that.") That lute player? He might have been a background setpiece before, but now he'll probably turn into a recurring character holding a grudge against the PC that hit him. This is how minor villains get created by player action.

A GM going for emergent gameplay shouldn't have too many notes they have to throw away since their notes are not dependent on the players following certain actions. Their notes detail the current status of the setting and various plot hooks, but not the outcome of what happens. That vampire in the graveyard? She's still there; she just won't feature in the game for now, as the actions of the players are driving the game down a completely different road that doesn't involve her. But she's still around and might well be relevant again at a later point. It's not insane, it's just a logical consequence of the players making choices and the GM being willing to run with these choices.

The GM in the webcomic Darths & Droids sums up the emergent mindset pretty well (Paraphrasing here as I don't remember the exact quote): "You are the PCs. Technically, whatever you do is the adventure."

[Hytheter]

"You are the PCs. Technically, whatever you do is the adventure."

Excellent conclusion to an excellent post.

[NichG]

Now, if you consistently have the ability to make stuff on the spot, that makes sense and is consistent with the last stuff you made up and will also make sense with the future stuff you're also going to make up; Well played, I guess. Like I've mentioned I can DM that for a Session or two, tops. If you can play a game for six months like that, well done. I couldn't run a game where I am constantly making up new things at the table, every single session for half a year or more. I just couldn't do it.

You don't have to like a style to acknowledge that other people might like it, or that it could exist... I think its perfectly fine to say 'yeah, I just don't GM that way and have no interest in doing so because I think it would make my game worse'.

I don't run fully emergent games in the context of this thread because my player group does actually seem to want there to be occasional things pushing them, but I also basically don't prep at all these days and do everything on the fly, and my average campaigns last about a year. So styles vary.

And part of the contention is that the DM can predetermine things with simply good - or exact - scenario design. They can't predetermine everything, but they can predetermine...A lot.

Well, I could theoretically steal something from a shop without paying, but until I actually do that I'm not a shoplifter...

If the GM takes a mindset of intentionally trying to predetermine something, that's an authored mindset. That is, if they look at an antimagic field as a way to e.g. make sure the party wizard doesn't just use Fly to get across this natural chasm, and that's their underlying rationale for including it. If on the other hand they take a mindset of trying to think first about 'why would something be there?' and then in a future-blind way they follow that mindset to determine what things are there, that's an emergent approach.

Its mens rea - the intention behind the choice matters. If you as the GM are trying to use your power to bring about specific sequences, outcomes, etc, then that's authored stance. If you as the GM are trying to avoid thinking about the elements of design you include from the viewpoint of those elements being needed for some future thing, but rather just think about 'what would make sense to be there?' - which can include e.g. NPCs with intentional goals, because its their (fallible) plans for the future rather than your (as an omnipotent force outside of the game world) plans for the future.

If a DM is designing a scenario, how many solutions are they allowed to plan? Obviously, 'exactly one', isn't the right answer because that makes people mad. At least how many solutions must a DM include for a given scenario? Now...The answer to that is 'How long is a piece of string?', which means that that definition has a hole in it because there is no right amount of solutions for a scenario...So maybe exactly one solution can be the right answer, in the right situation?

If you're running in an emergent stance, the answer here is 'zero' - the GM should not plan specific solutions. When you run the game, you then find out how many solutions there actually were (or rather, you find out whether the players invent a solution or not).

There can be a pre-determined outcome for a scenario, it just depends on what kind of scenario it is. The solutions for the scenario(s) can absolutely be pre-determined by how the scenario is set up. The red key goes in the red door. The blue key, even if you have it, doesn't go in the red door. Aww we've poked another hole again. Sorry Mum, I said I would stop trying to do that.

That kind of game design tends to belong to authored stance. In emergent stance, you might well have a red door, and the red key may be inaccessible on the other side of the door and there are literally no 'normal' sequences that ever get past the red door because someone locked themselves out. But then the party brings a battering ram, or uses a teleport spell, or Knock, or tunnels in from above, or goes ethereal, or pours wax into the keyhole to make a mold and uses it to make a false key, or says 'actually we don't care what's behind the red door and will never go there'.

It doesn't matter what type of game you run; So long as you're fair. If you're including Antimagic Fields in every single scenario...That's not fair.

This is a totally separate issue from authored vs emergent. Authored games are not 'the bad thing'. Fairness is totally orthogonal to authored vs emergent. Expressing a preference for emergent play is not just a roundabout way of saying 'I want the GM to be fair', its just a different issue entirely.

I am looking for ways to make the game run smoothly.
If, occasionally, I have to be dishonest with them...I'm okay with that. It's a fictional game of make pretend. Nothing matters.

It's all illusionism anyway. *Spooky hands*

All of this theory stuff aside, practically speaking you can run games however you want and as long as your players don't mind the opinions of people on the forum are irrelevant. But if it turns out that your players find out, do mind, and throw a fit about it, expect to get a lot of 'I told you so' rather than any sympathy.

[KorvinStarmast]

"You are the PCs. Technically, whatever you do is the adventure."

Yes, that is the basis of an RPG (going back to Wesley's Braunstein games) regardless of what label one wants to assign to it.

[Xervous]

"You are the PCs. Technically, whatever you do is the adventure."

And with how many groups like collecting pets, the real adventure may very well be the friends they made along the way.

[KorvinStarmast]

And with how many groups like collecting pets, the real adventure may very well be the friends they made along the way.

That is so true. We had a PC in a campaign last year who wanted to adopt quite a few of the 'friends we made along the way' although the group usually tried to talk him out of it.

[Easy e]

I like to quote Obi-wan to my group, "It looks like we have picked up another pathetic lifeform."

I think the only distinction between authored vs. emergent is that the GM plans no solutions, and only introduces hooks, problems and complications. By that sense, I am an emergent GM, even though I use a structured beginning, middle, and end component to my sessions. I typically prep nothing, introduce a hook scene, sometimes based on what the players wanted to do anyway, and then see if they engage and go from there.

Example:
I had three players, one was running away from an arranged marriage and the others were her accomplices.

Opening scene they were being chased and they came across the entrances to a barrow mound that they could try and hide it, or they could continue. They chose to enter the barrow mound, and had an adventure which helped them escape out the other side, and lose their pursuers.

Next adventure, they came across a small village from the kingdom they were fleeing from. They chose to engage with the villagers and discovered that the village was under a curse, and the local Noble was unable to break it. They went to the noble and offered to help break the curse in exchange for protection and safe passage. Adventure ensued. They got a magic crown.

They broke the Curse, and the noble gave them a guide/supplies and they were on their way. They encountered a travelling group of scholars/monks who told them of the ancient civilization prior the rise of the kingdoms and the standing stones dotted around the region. They ignored these hooks and proceeded to the next village where a wizard's tower overlooking the area suddenly exploded. They were not that interested until they found out a local village girl had been kidnapped by the wizard to be his bride, so they went to investigate what happened. Adventure ensued. Oh, that magic crown started to cause one player nightmares.

After that, they decided to travel to the next kingdom over to get away from the people pursuing them, who they thought they had lost but were not 100% sure. In the next kingdom, the first farm they came across was deserted. Eventually they got to town and a festival was occurring, there they found out several local farmers were not in attendance as they had been expected. They chose to ignore this and went towards the King's castle to seek asylum instead. Adventure ensued in court. Oh, that Magic Crown made people really responsive to the PC wearing it, despite the terrible dreams.....

None of this was planned, and the content of the campaign simply "emerged". However, I also did not have any pre-made maps, encounters, charts, groups, etc. pre-made. They all developed organically based on what the players decide to do next. Every session had a beginning/middle/end, but the overall campaign emerged based on their decisions.

Even the adventure hooks they picked up on, I was improving the entire thing from monsters, to stat blocks, to complications, to names, etc. The campaign and adventures emerged from the players decisions as the characters.

[Talakeal]

Example of what?

Emergence? Okay: Lamentations of the Flame Princess module, Weird New World. There is particular sentient aurora that can warp reality based on thoughts and fears expressed by the player characters upon meeting it.

Since it is mostly seen as a random encounter, it is impossible to say exactly when & where it will be encountered in the module, and its effects can be anything from trivial to campaign altering. The sample effect is that of an evil wizard appearing because of players idly wondering about an evil wizard.

It's a great example otherwise too, owing to its nature as a really large hex crawl with climate zones, rules for weather, random encounters for different terrain types, random encounters also keyed to hexes etc..

Except that you wouldn't play it because I doubt you or your players would appreciate such emergent features as player characters getting stuck in an ice floe for three months or getting stranded in the middle of nowhere due to a shipwreck with no way back.

Thanks for giving me an example!

Having read the module, it seems a pretty standard, if barebones, sandbox.

It doesn’t make heavy use of “scripted events”, but I do not that most encounters are either completely random or completely static, for example The Thing will always be infecting a single dog and the castaway will always be alone and alive.

The module author notes that you are going to have to give the players an authored hook to get them to the points of interest as many are too small to stumble upon by chance, which is one of my standing complaints about sandbox play.

I don't think it would be a problem for my group, although they would likely bitch and feel helpless if they got screwed by random chance while exploring, although I think a bigger problem would be boredom caused by lack of reward in the overworld and lack of combat in the dungeons, but thats an easy fix.

Out of curiosity, does it become authored if the DM fleshes out the random encounters with names, descriptions, histories, motivations, etc? How about if the DM improvs it only once rolled?



As for the sentient aurora itself, yeah that is some cool player generated content, and something I have dabbled with before, but I have very little idea of how to actually handle it at the table, and in my experience players just use such things as a vehicle for power gaming. For example, I am sure I have told the story about the time my players found a time gate which allowed them to explore any point in history, and instead groundhog dayed themselves and demanded free XP for all the new skills they practiced in the timeloop.

[Vahnavoi]

The goal I suggested for my players was simply finding equivalent of Northwest passage on the map. Their own goal towards the end was to have kids, then survive back to civilization with the kids. In another game using the same module, players spontaneously turned to piracy once they realized how much money there is to looting other ships, and spend a significant time just sailing back and forth hoping for the ship-based random encounters, until they sailed off the map and I had to expand the map southwards.

Does it turn to authored game if you more detail to the random encounters (etc.)? Look. The map is very big. Even if all you're doing is going back and forth between two distant points, there's a good chance no two trips will be the same. As long as the number (and variance) of entries on the tables remains the same, unpredictable emergent behaviour is nearly guaranteed to take over. Improvisation over preparation doesn't make much of a change in this regard - it only changes when you're adding in detail.

As for handling the aurora, I've not had issues with players trying to powergame. The closest it got was when a group of players developed a policy of only thinking happy thoughts and not speaking aloud when there were northern lights on the sky. This was the group who became pirates, so they spend a really long time gambling on the random encounter tables, to the point where they had standard operating procedure for things like spotting the dragon on horizon. Other groups have not figured out exactly what the aurora is or what it does. All they've worked out is that bad things happen when it is sighted.

[Talakeal]

Yeah, the aurora does look kind of tough to power game. I am more curious about how you figure out what the player characters are thinking without the player characters immediately figuring out how it works and robbing the scene of tensi9n and mystery.

[Vahnavoi]

The thing to remember is that there is nothing immediately apparent setting the sentient aurora apart from a normal one. So, the first time players encounter it, they might think it is just a normal weather effect the game master is using to distinquish this day on a boat when nothing happens from all the other other days on the boat when nothing happens.

So what do you, as a game master, normally do to flesh out the days when nothing happens? I ask players about what their characters are thinking, their hopes, dreams, worries and fears. I ask them about the things they do to pass the time, the conversations they have with their crewmates or each other, so on and so forth. Whatever this leads to or doesn't on days when nothing truly is going on, one thing it leads to is that players aren't automatically suspicuous when I ask such things.

The question then becomes: can they recognize it isn't just a coincidence when something they talked about happens? A lot of variables go into this, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. They may form a theory on what happened, which in turn can directly influence what will happen next time they meet the aurora. The more players talk about game events on their own accord, especially in character, or if they keep in-character notes, the easier it is to covertly pry something usable out of them.

[Stonehead]

@Stonehead: I feel the level of abstraction is making you miss something obvious here.

Let's suppose there are two processes: a juice machine and a guy named Steve.

The machine can create various soft drinks tasting like fruits. Steve can also create various soft drinks, by going to the market and buying fruits to make into juice. They have some overlap in what kinds of drinks they can make - let's say banana, pear, lemon and pineapple. They also have some non-overlapping options - the machine can make various colas, but Steve can make tomato juice etc.

If you prefer drinks capable of being made by both, all else being equal, it makes no sense to have strong preference for either process. For example, If all you want is banana, pear and lemon juice, either the machine or Steve is sufficient.

If you prefer mostly drinks capable of being made by both, plus some choice only one of them can make, then you favor the process that gets you all drinks you want. For example, if you want banana, pear, lemon juice and cola, you prefer the machine. Steve's ability to produce some drinks you want is irrelevant.

If, instead, you prefer some drinks capable of being made by only one AND some capable of being made only by the other, it again makes no sense to have strong preference for either process. For example, if you want both cola and tomato juice, you need both the machine AND Steve.

At no point do your preferences imply existence of a third, "middle ground" process. There's a continuum for how much you use the machine and a continuum for how much you pester Steve and you can put the two side by side to get yourself a ratio, but there is no continuum of processes. There is just the machine and Steve.

It's not that I don't understand the idea of the idea of a discrete binary separation, it's that I don't think it accurately reflects DMing styles, for the reasons I listed above (DMing style is a human trait, the games I've experienced don't seem to fit, and the criteria for each are not mutually exclusive). I understand the concept, using what I think is a much cleaner metaphor, one textbook isn't exactly more true than another, it's that it contains a higher proportion of true statements than another.

The reason I don't find that convincing, is that these scenarios are being talked about as if they were more or less emergent than one another. To use a real world example again, in the campaign where the players decided to evacuate their home world, that scene, or that decision was emergent gameplay, because the players choice drastically affected the game world in a way the DM did not prepare for. The DM did however prepare an expected outcome, which makes it more authored than if he had not. This does not seem to be two different elements of the same campaign, it was one decision. It was one scene that was in some ways emergent, and in others authored.

I've made my arguments for why I believe it to not be a discrete category, and if you don't find them convincing, that's totally fair. (I never was good at debate in high school) I haven't really seen any actual arguments on the other side though, only the repeated assertion that it's true.

(I hope this doesn't come across as hostile, I am interested in your reasons, I'm not trying to insist you don't have any)

[Vahnavoi]

The point that I'm trying to make it is that if you're the one fetching the juice, you ought to be able to tell if it was made by the juice machine or Steve, even if it makes no difference to the person who drinks the juice.

Applied to games, if you are the game master, you ought to be able to tell which elements of your game you authored and which emerged. On the level of entire games, the amounts and ratios of different elements can vary wildly, but on the level of moment-to-moment decision making, it really shouldn't be hard for a game master to identify which kind of process they are using. That's what I called Cheesegear out on: they were acting as if what a game master should do to achieve emergent game is obscure, yet immediately after they described two diametrically opposed methods of responding to unexpected player action.

Classifying entire games according to authored/emergent dichtomy may be fruitless; it's much more useful when it comes to looking at what a game master is doing to produce individual game elements.

[KorvinStarmast]

Applied to games, if you are the game master, you ought to be able to tell which elements of your game you authored and which emerged. On the level of entire games, the amounts and ratios of different elements can vary wildly, but on the level of moment-to-moment decision making, it really shouldn't be hard for a game master to identify which kind of process they are using. That's what I called Cheesegear out on: they were acting as if what a game master should do to achieve emergent game is obscure, yet immediately after they described two diametrically opposed methods of responding to unexpected player action.

Classifying entire games according to authored/emergent dichtomy may be fruitless; it's much more useful when it comes to looking at what a game master is doing to produce individual game elements.

Concur. Too bad this wasn't post number 2 in the thread, but I think we had to have the old "what does that mean?" wrangle to get from there to here.

[Talakeal]

Sorry it took me a week to respond to this. Been very busy at work, but I didn't want to let such long responses go ignored.

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.

Well, my players and my professors sure seem to think so!

Lot's of people prefer action and drama to lore and character exploration.

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.

Of course.

But you can acknowledge that it is a spectrum, right?

If you come upon someone during a dramatic event, that does greatly enhance both the excitement of the situation and one's ability to influence it, right?

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...

In most fiction there is at least one unlikely coincidence to serve as an inciting incident. In real life, most people who change history appear to do so by being in the right place at the right time.

As Stonehead said in another thread, you can either be The Chosen One or you can be Bilbo.

As I have said in previous threads; the greatest heroes will need to be competent, driven, brave, clever, and lucky. Because if they aren't, someone else will be, and they will be left behind. As I have said before, it always hurts my immersion and ability to take the world seriously when a group of PCs who aren't played especially smart or heroic are rewarded and treated like heroes for coming up with solutions that any group of average folk could also think up and accomplish.

In an authored story, the GM (or the mechanics of the game I suppose) can help weigh the scale in the PCs favor so it doesn't break disbelief quite so hard.

I suppose you could also say the players are natural prodigies who are just better than everyone else, but isn't there 4-6 once in a generation prodigies all being in the same time and the same place and happening to have similar goals like a medieval Justice League also a sort of GM FIAT?

You need some plausible in universe explanation for why the PC's have Gandalf's ear or how they can come up with the idea for a Macguffin that nobody else could, lest the scenario is still running on GM FIAT.

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".

And I have trouble imagining a game where the players wouldn't be allowed to do such things.

I feel like a lot of the confusion in this thread comes from the fact that most people play games that are pretty close to the middle of the authored / emergent divide, and see anything that deviates significantly looks like a ridiculous straw-man.

Now, of course, the main plot is still happening. Unless the players and the DM have a talk about it, they will still need to factor Voldimort into all of their plans.

For example, in my current campaign the earth mage and the time mage have talked about pooling their powers to avert the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Old Empire a century before. This is a great and extremely ambitious plan, except that the main plot of the campaign is about someone in the far future (a PC from a previous campaign in fact) becoming omniscient and pruning any time lines where they do not come to power, so those two are directly at odds and the conflict needs to be resolved somehow either in or out of character.

Which is something that my more emergent campaigns have always kind of failed at; the players are really bad at taking a hint or reading clues, so the main plot always comes crashing down on them unawares and it looks like a screw job out of nowhere coming to spoil their fun.

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.

My games do tend to run more toward the linear side, and everyone in my group prefers it that way.

Getting lost and bored is a much bigger risk than feeling railroaded imo.

Maybe if we were still in school when we could stay up all night and game all weekend, but right now nobody really has the time or inclination to design entire sandbox worlds and simply free form RP for hours and see if something fun emerges.

But yeah, those are totally goals that my players could engage with, and I would absolutely work with them to generate "authored" plots that give them the opportunity to do it and to explore the consequences and ramifications after the fact.

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:


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

Ok, if it isn't a new character, then we just go back to square one.

Most campaigns don't last that long in my experience, and those that do have long since dealt with the whole meaningful decisions conundrum.

Realism, maybe, fairness, not so much. Fairness depends on how much a game favors or disfavors strategies available to players, keeping track of time can influence that any which way.

Your statements about exponents are false. How are you even quantifying these? I'll attempt some proof sketches to show how and why you are wrong:

Effort for running the game: imagine a simple hex-based campaign. Each hex has a turn limit to reach them to get event A, with players getting event B otherwise. You are at most doubling your work if you place equal effort to detail A and B events, less than doubling if B events are less detailed than A events. This is a linear increase for every new hex and for any C, D etc. events you wish to write down. During play, you are simply keeping track of one, incremental turn counter that only ever goes up, and checking a simple if-then.

Chance of finding something interesting: for the above sample game, you can (try to) count possible paths through the game. This gives a distribution of possible event sequences (from all As to all Bs). Such a distribution is capable of being modeled by a probabilistic method, such as a coin flip, drawing cards or rolling dice - which is one thing wandering monster and random encounter rolls were originally used for. The difference isn't exponential, it can be mathematically close to non-existent, with overall chance of finding something interesting only dependent on event density on the hex map or event frequency on the random generator. The actual difference is that non-random encounters based on position in time and space allow for player choice of path to matter, where as a randomized method reduces the exercise to Snakes & Ladders.

The one thing that does grow exponentially is number of different sequences you can get out of the game - but this doesn't increase game master effort, because they are generated through gameplay, from the material they already prepared. If a game master is willing to reuse their material, they are actually getting more game for same amount of prepwork.

I use "lazy" in the same way "greedy algorithm" uses "greedy": going through least effort for immediate goals. This becomes bad when there are long-term goals you just cannot reach by being lazy. In case of scripting events, if you always script events to happen when player characters first arrive, entire genres of scenarios are out of reach. Also, just to make it explicit: being lazy can lead to more work in the long term, just like a greedy algorithm can end up with non-optimal or even worst possible overall solution.

The error is in thinking that quality of content is predetermined before a game even starts - as opposed to both you and players actively making choices about and generating content through play. It's entirely possible to set a scenario like the sample above so that both A events and B events have appeal to the game master - the actual question of interest then becomes which events the players prioritize and find interesting. The preparation that goes into mutually exclusive events is not needless, it is very specifically needed to facilitate actual choice and actual consequences for flow of time.

Random chance need not enter into it at all. You can as well play in a way that the only unpredictable thing is what the players choose. Of course, if you use a rule-set which constantly gambles on life and death of characters, the entire complaint is rather hollow.

In a living world, things constantly change. New quests arise, old quests get completed or forgotten. Monsters die or move on. Dungeons get looted or lost. Rival heroes wander the world. Events in one region effect those in other regions, which will then affect those in further regions...

Most sandbox games present a static world where the locations, NPCs, treasures, and motivations are tied to a location (or placed randomly) and then left more or less static without direct intervention from the PCs.

In my opinion, such a world is no more realistic or free of GM bias than one that makes use of "scripted events", at least when done in moderation.

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I apologize for calling you rude; I was having a lot of arguments with a lot of very condescending people last week and it was really weighing on me.

That being said, I am not sure how you expect me to argue from anything but my own perspective, nor do I see the wisdom in ignoring my experiences just because they are different than yours.

If I can just sum up my points:

1: An active GM can actually increase player agency by working with them to allow them opportunities to influence the game world rather than a wholly impartial simulation run by realism or random chance. This is an advantage of authored games.

2: Sandbox campaigns are often derailed by players who lack motivation as well as a lack of communication and agreement between one player or another, as well as between the players and a GM. This is a weakness of sandbox games.

3: Apples to apples comparisons are best when explaining a concept. Pointing out games that are both a different genre and a different medium is significantly less helpful than it would be to point out modules (or preferably APs) of tabletop games with strong emergent or authored properties, or even than computer RPGs or even non rpg action adventure games with such elements.