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Path: utzoo!utcsri!west
From: west@utcsri.UUCP (Thomas L. West)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Re: Extension of gripe
Message-ID: <858@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Mar-85 16:18:13 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.858
Posted: Sat Mar  9 16:18:13 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 20:20:47 EST
References: <11691@watmath.UUCP> <4940@ukc.UUCP> <844@utcsri.UUCP> <134@ucbcad.UUCP>
Reply-To: west@utcsri.UUCP (Thomas L. West)
Distribution: net
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 71
Summary: 

faustus@ucbcad writes:
>Making up rules as you go along isn't that good of an idea, because the
>players tend to know that you are doing it and get annoyed. What I like
>to do is to tell the players that I have a lot of stuff prepared in great
>detail when I really don't have much at all, and then whenever I want
>something to happen, I just make it happen in a "something is going on
>here but YOU don't know what" sort of way... Then later on I can figure
>out why it happened. This tends to make things a lot more interesting,
>because it keeps both the players and the GM guessing, and it makes
>it easy to avoid dull situations...

  You must either (1) be incredibly quick on your feet or (2) have PCs who
don't counter-check previous rulings and incidents very often.

  I don't feel this works particularily well most of the time.  What happens is
that it requires *incredible* contortions on the part of the NPCs to have 
motives for their actions.  Often arbitrary rulings have a very nasty way of
cropping back half a year later in an unconnected situation.

For example, the players find out that Wizard X is a member of a secret council
of mages.  But hold on, X blasted a high level mage on the coucil about 2
years ago.  Aha, the council must have been divided among itself!  But no, if
it had, about 6 months ago, X's faction would have intervened to help save a
certain castle involved in a war with the supposed other side of the council.
What now?  Well, there must be the *meta-council* that actually controls the
council, causing this strange and illogical behaviour.  But if THAT had been,
then when the entire council was being trashed 4 years ago, why didn't the
*meta-council* intervene.... and so on and so on.

  As long as one's universe is fairly simplistic, making things up as one
goes along is okay, but as soon as the campaign gets complicated, one runs
into deep trouble.  You can see the incredible difficulty that sf authors
have in trying to keep their future histories consistent, and they spend tons
of time thinking each little thing out.  I really can't see the players not
catching on to the fact of ill-preparation in a year's worth of playing.  
The affairs of 10 kingdoms, with independent powers, the Gods, the structure of
the universe, secret councils and such is enough to make the universe *so*
complicated that unless you have optical-disks for memory, your ruling won't
be consistent, and you'll have to add yet another kludge factor, which, if
done properly, will take days to figure out all the effects on all the other
different power groups.

  And heaven help the day that the players *do* find out.  It will dawn on them
that all the adventuring they have done, their successes and failures have
depended not on *their* achievements, but *your* whim.  This sort of thing can
destroy a campaign (and has nearly destroyed one I adventure in).

  Of course none of this applies if one runs a world without complicated
politics, but if you ask me, that's where all the fun lies.  It's an
amazing feeling as a player when you unlock a small piece of information
that suddenly explains some rather mysterious incidents that have occured
over the last 3 or 4 years.  It's like the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
When things are made up as one goes along, this almost never happens, since
it is pretty difficult to figure out the influence of a mysterious power group
over possibly hundreds of events without hours if not days of forethought.

  Of course this means one tends to have several binders of material for a
campaign, but such is the cost of preparation.  Besides, the best thing to do
is to write up the campaign while coasting through high-school so that one
doesn't immolate[:-)] oneself during university.  My campaign has lasted about
5 years with no major rewrites except where the PCs have done something
significant enough to force a total rewrite of the event-calendar on their
world.
  The only other time consuming factor is when PCs wait a game year of two.
Then one is forced to update all hundred or so NPCs that they know.  (Yes, I
*do* kludge it.  NPCs that players have not met do not, for the most part,
go up levels or die when time passes.  I use the "NPCs don't activate until
they would affect a PC" rule most of the time.)

          Tom West                aka Feanor the Arch-mage ELF!
                                      (approx. 600 wish spells to go...)