Quote from: CRKrueger;924732Grove, what Asen is saying is that the order of events is the same, whether High, Low, or Zero prep.
1. Players are presented with the choice of North, East, or South
2. Wizard's Tower has been predetermined to be along the North road.
3. Player's choose the road, either seeing or missing the Wizard's Tower based on choice.

"Predetermined" could be 3 weeks earlier, or three seconds earlier, but it is determined before the choice.

OK, Ill bite... and if the GM already has the location of the towers locked away in his zero prep head somehow then sure, gotcha. But typically he doesn't, its the very nature of improv GMing. You wait until information is needed before you make it up. So in this case the tower probably wouldn't exist until the players went north and asked, "What do we see?" at which point the GM makes up the tower. To the players, the encounter is exactly the same.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924749Not according to who? I cant tell you the number of GMs over the years have laughed about transplanting their favorite Inn, or changing the name of an NPC, turning their Mermaids into Dryads when the players went to the woods instead of the coast, and so on and so on. There are a few here and elsewhere that for whatever reason have developed an issue with it and that's fine but there is no denying its a method used consistently across the hobby, and always has been.

Of course it is used a lot. It even has a name...

Quote from: AsenRG;924731That's BS, and we told you it is already. But it's fine, nobody expects you to read what we're saying by now, not after you repeatedly proved that you don't;).

I'm explaining for the people that actually read:
Real Zero Prep GM - "hmm, ok the party is leaving town...hold on a second, guys - by which road?"
Party: "Don't tell us...there's four of them?"
RZP GM: "Only three. Nobody bothers to go in the swamps, and you'd need a guide to do that...unless you feel like drowning."
(Proceeds to describe the general outlines of the 3 roads leading out of the city. Decides that if they leave by the North door, they meet a Wizard Tower, the East door it's bandits trying to waylay a wizard who might or might not try to have a shot at them, and if they leave by the river, it's a roll on a table from a pirate RPG.
Party: "we are heading north along the old road".
RZP GM: (Thinks) "Oh! That's Ye Olde Wizard's Tower, perfect... (Says) Ok, gang you see an old tower up ahead. The road leading to it is kinda covered with growth, though at some spots nothing grows, and the ground is black as soot*, yet hard as stone. The door guardian, which all doors in this region have, is a demon-like figure. Anyone wants to give me an "Occult"** roll? You have a +2 bonus if your character is from that region."

*I have already decided that this is the result of summoned demons traveling from and to the tower while dripping acid. If they check, they might get some idea.
**This is to see if they remember any details. I know that this is a demon nobody in their sane mind would put as a guardian figure: it might attract its attention! On a success with a raise, they know that this is indeed a demon of things that separate places: frontiers, doors, castle walls, so it's really likely to sense transgressors.
However, the wizard in the tower has a pact with it, so he doesn't care about attracting its attention - the pact means the demon would send one of his minions to investigate, actually. However, the wizard will be pissed off if that happens, and there is a fight! He owes him a sacrifice - in gold or innocent lives - whenever one of the minions gets hurt as a result of protecting his property.

I came up with the above while typing it, BTW. In fact, I was ready with the details before I had typed out the first footnote. So by now, I have the wizard's personality as well...but I'm not going to type that out in detail, just say that he's a type who started out as trying to do good, and got entangled in outwordly pacts - or else, I'll keep typing for the next few hours, and write you an adventure you can add to an existing campaign:p!
But since I have other stuff to do in the meantime, and it's more work than I'd do just for a forum post...maybe next time:D.

Nice little story, and yes I do read. Nothing there you wrote precludes moving the entire damned scene to the east road or south or whatever. You just described the roads to the players when they asked. You could have described them in any other order, they wouldn't have known or cared and still picked the one towards the tower. Again, no diff.

Quote from: Bren;924755Of course it is used a lot. It even has a name...

Zero Prepping has one too, its called "Making Shit up as you GO"....Both are negative reflection on a suitable method to play a game.

Hey, Ive to throw in here that Im not as dedicated to the whole damn Railroading thing as some might think. I play different ways at different times for different games with different players. It just pisses me off a bit when some high-brow gamers slam one style or another as "Wrong" or "Substandard" or "Ill advised". Its a crock. Im fairly certain everybody uses different methods from time to time, even briefly when it lends itself to the situation at hand.

Ive Zero Prepped when caught off guard before, for an entire session so as not to delay the game. I don't prefer it but its doable. Just because someone games that way doesn't mean they are a genius or gifted in some way as opposed to the unwashed masses that use pre-gen stuff or even published adventures. That elitist snarky crap is just infuriating.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924757Zero Prepping has one too, its called "Making Shit up as you GO"....Both are negative reflection on a suitable method to play a game.

For people who like Zero Prepping, "Making Shit up as you GO" is not a negative reflection on how they play the game. It is a description. They make stuff up. As they go. I don't usually GM this way. But I don't need to GM this way to recognize the description.

Other people move Ye Olde's Wizard's Tower in front of the players no matter which way they go. For reasons.* Moving the tower, like changing what's behind door number 2 is called Illusionism. I don't' GM this way . But I recognize the description. Illusionism is a kind of shell game. Some people like shell games, but for some reason, they often get upset when it is pointed out that a shell game is, in fact, what is going on.


* Some of the reasons GMs have for playing a shell game include;

• The GM just can't stand the thought of his players NOT encountering the kewl wizard's tower he created. Because it's kewl. Really, really kewl. This is a qualitative argument that the design of the tower mandates it's appearance.
• The GM feels entitled to move the tower because of all the work they've done. He doesn't want his work "wasted." This is really the same as 1. but it side steps any question of the quality of the creation by appealing to the "hard work" as a way of entitling the GM to display his creation, no matter what and without regard to any question of quality.
• The GM has envisioned a scene that can only occur at the wizard's tower and so the players must encounter the tower so the GM's scene will occur. This is different than 1 and 2 where the tower's appearance, i.e. displaying the GM's work or effort is an end in itself. Here the tower's appearance is the means to the end of trying to enable or force a certain scene to occur. This one gets used a lot in adventure paths where the designer may even include boxed dialog for the GM to read during the scene.
  
• Similar to 3. is the predetermined encounter as part of some elaborate balancing of threat levels. This also gets used a lot in adventure path, especially in D&D 3E, 4E, and Pathfinder where there is an expectation of x number of encounters, and a need for encounters to ablate certain buff spells so that the final (and often scripted) confrontation with the Big Bad is sufficiently (but not overly) challenging.
• A possible 5th reason would be the GM just can't think of anything except the tower for the players to encounter. That seems like a weird reason to me since creativity is effectively infinite, random encounter tables are a dime a dozen, and every GM I've ever seen can generate more than one idea at a time. So I don't think this one get's used a lot, but it is at least theoretically possible.

Quote from: Bren;924680They aren't identical though they may look identical to the naive or the clueless. And some players won't complain or comment on the difference because they just don't care that they are on an amusement park roller-coaster where all the ups, downs, and turns are preordained by the GM.

But some players do care.

Also, some players spot it easily. I tried it couple of days ago with my most regular group, and decided to see how long it would be before anyone spots it.
My wife spotted it in less than 30 minutes. As she puts it, "I've been using illusionism myself, it's easy to spot in others".
I've been using it too long myself.

Quote from: Omega;9247122: You might bet wrong then. But placing your encounter and then moving it is not the way to go.

Except according to rgrove, there's no difference:). I suspect he can't spot it when others do that, or simply doesn't care. Or maybe he doesn't play often.

Quote from: CRKrueger;924732Grove, what Asen is saying is that the order of events is the same, whether High, Low, or Zero prep.
1. Players are presented with the choice of North, East, or South
2. Wizard's Tower has been predetermined to be along the North road.
3. Player's choose the road, either seeing or missing the Wizard's Tower based on choice.

"Predetermined" could be 3 weeks earlier, or three seconds earlier, but it is determined before the choice.

That is what I was saying, indeed. Thank you, green one...not that it stood a chance to work, and we can see already that it didn't work, but thanks nonetheless:D!

Quote from: Omega;924741This is one of the pitfalls of high to medium prep and I've heard it as an excuse way too often. "Well I worked on the wizards tower and it would be a waste if the players choice made them miss it. So I'll just move it over here in their path and they'll never know."

I've heard it myself. And it's still an excuse.
In a way, I respect rgrove's "it makes no difference to me" position more, because he doesn't make excuses. That's how he's running his game, take it or leave it:).

Quote from: rgrove0172;924745Exactly my point. There is no difference whatsoever, I decide now or I decided a week ago and change my mind now. Same dang thing. People can call it whatever they want. Its GM improv and its a well used and perfectly effective way to run a game.

No, Bren's examples are far from identical.
The difference is whether you change your mind before or after the information becomes relevant, whether the players' choice where to go would matter, and so on.
If you can't see a difference between "GMing improvisation" and "GM imposing what's going to happen"...well, I don't think there's any point in continuing that debate with you.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924747GM fiat in the way of plot elements and narrative is not a shell game. There is no 'fooling' being done. No more fooling than telling a player they are headed for a kingdom that wont actually exist until they get there.

It is a shell game, of course. You present an option, and you know the player always gets X, no matter what he chooses.


The kingdom existed the moment I told him it did. What was in the kingdom would be the way it is the moment I tell him it's there. They can't head to it without me confirming it exists, so it clearly does.
And that's if we're not using a detailed setting to begin with.

Quote from: Bren;924748Of course it is a shell game. It's not the usual shell game where there is no pea under any of the cups. Its the variant where the pea is always under whatever cup the rube chooses.

• They ran into Ye Olde Wizard's tower because they went north.

• They ran into Ye Olde Wizard's tower because the GM wanted the next thing they encountered to be Ye Olde Wizard's tower.

Are you really saying you see no difference between the two different types of causation? Seriously?

You know how shell games go? First, the crook makes sure you win, possibly raising the bets.
Then you start losing, and before long, you've lost much more than you gained:).

Hmm, the similarities are striking, now that I think of it:p!

Quote from: rgrove0172;924756Nice little story, and yes I do read. Nothing there you wrote precludes moving the entire damned scene to the east road or south or whatever. You just described the roads to the players when they asked. You could have described them in any other order, they wouldn't have known or cared and still picked the one towards the tower. Again, no diff.

Of course something I wrote precludes it. You just didn't pay attention, as usual.
Do I need to quote it and bold the part? Well, obviously I do...here you go.

Quote from: AsenRG;924731That's BS, and we told you it is already. But it's fine, nobody expects you to read what we're saying by now, not after you repeatedly proved that you don't;).

I'm explaining for the people that actually read:
Real Zero Prep GM - "hmm, ok the party is leaving town...hold on a second, guys - by which road?"
Party: "Don't tell us...there's four of them?"
RZP GM: "Only three. Nobody bothers to go in the swamps, and you'd need a guide to do that...unless you feel like drowning."
(Proceeds to describe the general outlines of the 3 roads leading out of the city. Decides that if they leave by the North door, they meet a Wizard Tower, the East door it's bandits trying to waylay a wizard who might or might not try to have a shot at them, and if they leave by the river, it's a roll on a table from a pirate RPG.)[/B]
Party: "we are heading north along the old road".
RZP GM: (Thinks) "Oh! That's Ye Olde Wizard's Tower, perfect... (Says) Ok, gang you see an old tower up ahead. The road leading to it is kinda covered with growth, though at some spots nothing grows, and the ground is black as soot*, yet hard as stone. The door guardian, which all doors in this region have, is a demon-like figure. Anyone wants to give me an "Occult"** roll? You have a +2 bonus if your character is from that region."

*I have already decided that this is the result of summoned demons traveling from and to the tower while dripping acid. If they check, they might get some idea.
**This is to see if they remember any details. I know that this is a demon nobody in their sane mind would put as a guardian figure: it might attract its attention! On a success with a raise, they know that this is indeed a demon of things that separate places: frontiers, doors, castle walls, so it's really likely to sense transgressors.
However, the wizard in the tower has a pact with it, so he doesn't care about attracting its attention - the pact means the demon would send one of his minions to investigate, actually. However, the wizard will be pissed off if that happens, and there is a fight! He owes him a sacrifice - in gold or innocent lives - whenever one of the minions gets hurt as a result of protecting his property.

I came up with the above while typing it, BTW. In fact, I was ready with the details before I had typed out the first footnote. So by now, I have the wizard's personality as well...but I'm not going to type that out in detail, just say that he's a type who started out as trying to do good, and got entangled in outwordly pacts - or else, I'll keep typing for the next few hours, and write you an adventure you can add to an existing campaign:p!
But since I have other stuff to do in the meantime, and it's more work than I'd do just for a forum post...maybe next time:D.

There. Hope that helps your comprehension.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924757Zero Prepping has one too, its called "Making Shit up as you GO"....Both are negative reflection on a suitable method to play a game.

Illusionism is, almost by definition, not a suitable method to play the game. (The sane option where the players know and don't care is called "participationism", FYI).
"Making shit up as you go" is not a negative name in my book. It's exactly what I'm doing. I also call it "Lazy GMing", because I don't need to spend out-of-game time to do it.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924758Hey, Ive to throw in here that Im not as dedicated to the whole damn Railroading thing as some might think. I play different ways at different times for different games with different players. It just pisses me off a bit when some high-brow gamers slam one style or another as "Wrong" or "Substandard" or "Ill advised". Its a crock. Im fairly certain everybody uses different methods from time to time, even briefly when it lends itself to the situation at hand.

In my case, no, except to test a theory.

QuoteIve Zero Prepped when caught off guard before, for an entire session so as not to delay the game. I don't prefer it but its doable.

Given that you don't make a difference between illusionism and zero prep, we don't really know what you were doing.

QuoteJust because someone games that way doesn't mean they are a genius or gifted in some way as opposed to the unwashed masses that use pre-gen stuff or even published adventures. That elitist snarky crap is just infuriating.

That, however, is totally true! I'm not a genius or gifted in any way, or at least not because I can improvise faster:D!
Seriously, I can do it simply because I know how to do it. Then it's easily doable, and teachable.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924758Hey, Ive to throw in here that Im not as dedicated to the whole damn Railroading thing as some might think. I play different ways at different times for different games with different players. It just pisses me off a bit when some high-brow gamers slam one style or another as "Wrong" or "Substandard" or "Ill advised". Its a crock. Im fairly certain everybody uses different methods from time to time, even briefly when it lends itself to the situation at hand.

Ive Zero Prepped when caught off guard before, for an entire session so as not to delay the game. I don't prefer it but its doable. Just because someone games that way doesn't mean they are a genius or gifted in some way as opposed to the unwashed masses that use pre-gen stuff or even published adventures. That elitist snarky crap is just infuriating.

You will use any and every method to keep the players engaged and the session moving?

Is that what you are saying?


Silly of you to think this has anything to do with keeping players engaged and the session moving, this is all about ideals.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924667Ill take another stab at this and see if it rings true with anyone.

Zero Prep GM - "hmm, ok the party is leaving town and heading north along the old road. Oh! I know what would be cool! Maybe Ye Olde Wizard's Tower, perfect. Ok, gang you see an old tower up ahead."

Railroading GM - "hmm, ok the party is leaving town and heading north along the old road. What do I have in this area? Oh yeah, Ye Olde Wizard's Tower, that would work but wait, its on the south road. What does it matter? They don't know where it is, Ill just move it. Ok gang, you see an old tower up ahead."

Seriously, some of you guys really see the two as all that different? The first approach is fine, even considered innovative and superior while the latter is a crime?

From a player's stand point they are identical and frankly, the reason each is used is the same as well. TO SAVE TIME on prep. The only real difference is that Ill lay my money on the railroaded pre-planned encounter being more thorough, detailed and well thought out.

Honestly, if you have no trouble whipping up the world in front of the players at a moments notice, you shouldn't have any trouble modifying the world in same way.

For a certain level of apathy and thoughtlessness, you have a valid point.

And as you say, the GM who teleports a prepared tower will have a more prepped tower than the tower that was just invented a second ago. The prepped GM's tower has the advantage of the prep. However some GM's may do better with the unprepped tower just because of how their creativity works.

But both options omit major things that I like both as GM and player. I would prefer to have the location of a major wizard's tower, one which affects and is affected by local conditions, to have an established location. I prefer there to also be an established map around it and for as much distance as feasible in all directions, including terrain, habitations, populations, armies, and as many other details as may be interesting to the GM and players. That way, things in the world actually make some sense geographically, and so exploring the world and noticing what is where and what's going on, also makes sense and behaves according to fairly logical cause and effect, so paying attention to details and working with situations in creative and intelligent ways is supported by a consistent world that includes a consistent map where everything has to travel, eat, sleep, etc like the players do. As opposed to an improv or illusion world where it's more like being in a dream or nightmare or JJ Abrams TV/movie where the GM makes up or changes the world for convenience without caring about many things that could be interesting to work with if they weren't arbitrary and being forcibly reshuffled by a GM who doesn't care about consistency or scale or rationality as much as some of the players might.

I'd rather that the wizard's tower actually teleport and be steered by someone using a crystal ball tracking the players, if it's going to pop around, so it has an in-world reason for doing that.

Quote from: Skarg;924777I would prefer to have the location of a major wizard's tower, one which affects and is affected by local conditions, to have an established location. I prefer there to also be an established map around it and for as much distance as feasible in all directions, including terrain, habitations, populations, armies, and as many other details as may be interesting to the GM and players. That way, things in the world actually make some sense geographically, and so exploring the world and noticing what is where and what's going on, also makes sense and behaves according to fairly logical cause and effect, so paying attention to details and working with situations in creative and intelligent ways is supported by a consistent world that includes a consistent map where everything has to travel, eat, sleep, etc like the players do.

Apart from the map, which of these do you think wouldn't be there when I'm improvising it;)?

Quote from: AsenRG;924779Apart from the map, which of these do you think wouldn't be there when I'm improvising it;)?

At a minimum, the tower "which affects ... local conditions." Since the tower is created after the local conditions that the players have already experienced in the game, the tower logically cannot have affected those prior conditions while they were experienced. However it may affect subsequent conditions.

Quote from: rgrove0172;924752OK, Ill bite... and if the GM already has the location of the towers locked away in his zero prep head somehow then sure, gotcha. But typically he doesn't, its the very nature of improv GMing. You wait until information is needed before you make it up. So in this case the tower probably wouldn't exist until the players went north and asked, "What do we see?" at which point the GM makes up the tower. To the players, the encounter is exactly the same.

The difference is in the zero prep game the tower appears because of a choice the players made, even something as trivial as "going north."

In a heavy scripted pre gen game the DM decides what they are going to meet before they even show up.

I think the Zero prep guys have some stuff going on in the back ground they aren't saying.  For instance and unwritten random encounter table.  A living world which they inhabit and their players do as well.  So the players don't wander blindly out the North Gate.  They players (& charcters) have a sense of what's out there, they have some insight into the unwritten random encounter table.  They went north cause they want to meet something that they thought might be up that way.  Or maybe they didn't have time to fuck with the bandits they suspect are in the east woods.  

For me it comes down to player agency.  Pure randomness and pure rail road both destroy it.

As for me if I prep a wizard tower and I want the to go there, I send them to the wisards tower.  They don't get a choice.  If they don't want to, ok.  Now you guys need to bring the adventure.  You don't want what I made for dinner, you fuckin' cook then.

Quote from: Bren;924748Of course it is a shell game. It's not the usual shell game where there is no pea under any of the cups. Its the variant where the pea is always under whatever cup the rube chooses.

• They ran into Ye Olde Wizard's tower because they went north.

• They ran into Ye Olde Wizard's tower because the GM wanted the next thing they encountered to be Ye Olde Wizard's tower.

Are you really saying you see no difference between the two different types of causation? Seriously?

Functionally, pretty much the same. The GM decided to put the Tower in the North, or the GM decided now would be a good time for a wizards tower. Who cares? As long as the GM is operating in good faith, I trust their ability to factor in rumors the PCs may have heard, what makes sense in the setting, what decisions the players are making and their motivations, pacing concerns, difficulty concerns, all of it. Not only do I trust the GM to make those decisions inn the fly, in a game that supports no prep or low prep GMing, I prefer that the GM excercise the power to alter their creation when they think it would result in the best experience, rather than rigidly sticking to their own arbitrary prep which was based on decisions made in the absence of player decisions. I trust them not to undermine my decisions as a player while revising their decisions as a GM, and I want them doing just that. It's their stuff. If they don't like it, they should change it before making me wade through it. I find just as much enjoyment exploring the things the GM comes up with on the fly as I do things they came up with before. In fact, I enjoy it more if it's done well, because it's hard.

Quote from: Bren;924783At a minimum, the tower "which affects ... local conditions." Since the tower is created after the local conditions that the players have already experienced in the game, the tower logically cannot have affected those prior conditions while they were experienced. However it may affect subsequent conditions.

The example assumed there would be some travel before they reached the tower. At some point, they have entered the area influenced by the tower.
Go back and see my example: the road is described differently because of it...because that's the only difference they're likely to immediately spot.
They might have found others, were they looking. (But since these were "virtual players" - no, I've never used that specific encounter in a game - they did the thing that involved the least writing from me:p).
Conversely, if I haven't described its influence so far, that's because its influence doesn't extend back to where they were. If it looks like the wizard is too powerful not to have any...well, rest assured that there's a reason for that, too. Care to find it out;)?

Quote from: Headless;924784The difference is in the zero prep game the tower appears because of a choice the players made, even something as trivial as "going north."

In a heavy scripted pre gen game the DM decides what they are going to meet before they even show up.

I think the Zero prep guys have some stuff going on in the back ground they aren't saying.  For instance and unwritten random encounter table.  A living world which they inhabit and their players do as well. So the players don't wander blindly out the North Gate.  They players (& charcters) have a sense of what's out there, they have some insight into the unwritten random encounter table.  They went north cause they want to meet something that they thought might be up that way.  Or maybe they didn't have time to fuck with the bandits they suspect are in the east woods.  

Yes, the "living world" part is spot-on. I thought it was clear without saying?

Quote from: Headless;924784As for me if I prep a wizard tower and I want the to go there, I send them to the wisards tower.  They don't get a choice.  If they don't want to, ok.  Now you guys need to bring the adventure.  You don't want what I made for dinner, you fuckin' cook then.

Choo choo, Mr. Conductor. Do your players eat this up, or do they often gag when you force-feed them this swill?