Quote:
Originally Posted by Lurken
I think it upsets people because it locks people into a hard and fixed future. Nothing you could do would affect the future in any meaningful way.
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I understand what you mean, I have seen examples of this myself. When I first started as a GM, I worried about things happening in games that would change the world setting and I tried to prevent them from happening. Then a few years later and some decent experience as a GM and Player I realised that it was "our" game world. Once we started running adventures in that world, it did not belong to the company that made it, it did not belong to the authors of the various sourcebooks, it belonged to my game group. We could do whatever we wanted with it.
I think it was Ed Greenwood who said, basically, use what you want from what I've written but I've left a whole lot of the Forgotten Realms empty so that you can carve your own stories from the world.
Unfortunately too many gamers let themselves get locked into the notion that they are locked into a fixed future. I argue that if that's the case, the problem is with the GM & Players and not the game. That's because there's many gamers who simply do not push beyond the book in front of them.
For example, many many years ago, I bought the Myth Drannor boxed set for the D&D Forgotten Realms setting. It was second-hand but still in brand new condition.
I was friends with the shop manager so I asked her what was the deal with it being so new for a second-hand item. She told me that the original buyer came in on a Friday, ran it for his group through the weekend and then traded it back to the store on the Monday. When asked why, he replied that he had gamed through everything in the boxed set.
This was blatantly incorrect. There was a small adventure in the set, designed to get PCs into Myth Drannor. His group played through it and stopped there.
However there were books in the set detailing the history, the magic, the various factions,who was fighting for control of the ruins, treasure that could be found there, spells that could be learnt there and so on.
All of it could have been used to make new adventures. But he never used it, he just ran that single adventure included in the box and did nothing else.
Gods of Gaming help him if he ever tried to run Undermountain with that mentality!
That seems to be the case with many players, they simply take what's in the book and never think beyond that.
Some RPGs actively encourage you to make your own adventures and if they conflict with what's in the book, the writers encourage you to ignore the book because at the end of the day, it's YOUR game and it's meant to be fun for you and your players.
Keep what you like, throw out what you don't and don't be afraid to actually do a little work for it to make sense to your Players.