GM fiat - an illustration

[robertsconley]

I think the key difference is the presence of some kind of randomizer or other input beside what the GM imagines.

“Plausibility” honestly yields such a wide range of outcomes for most cases that I don’t think it does a lot of work. It’s the GM deciding the outcome.

Now, if there’s something more to the process… a roll on a table, or a roll to see if the result is positive, negative, or some mix… then I think that’s something different.

As for Clocks and timelines… how do the timelines work? Clocks are pretty simple. What goes into your timeline process?

I want to clarify where I’m coming from when I talk about plausibility and how I handle timelines in a World in Motion campaign.

Outside of gaming, I’ve read a fair amount of alternate history fiction and created a small number of stories myself*, and that background heavily influences how I think about campaign prep. In that community, plausibility is not hand-wavy or vague, it’s a serious standard of critique. A good alternate history story doesn’t just ask “what if X happened,” it works through the logical consequences of that divergence. It’s judged based on how well the outcomes follow from the point of departure, factoring in motivations, constraints, and secondary effects.

So when I say that I use “plausible extrapolation” to update my game world, I don’t mean “whatever feels likely at the moment.” I mean I take stock of the current state of the setting, what the NPCs want, what constraints they face, what’s recently changed, and I think through how those forces would logically interact. That’s the first pass. Then I think of other plausible alternatives and do the same. That's the second pass. Where there is uncertainty, I use various randomizers. Then the final pass is a dice roll weighted by circumstance to decide which outcome becomes part of the timeline. The unused alternatives remain useful as they may describe possibilities that could be relevant depending on the choices of the PCs.
Doing this part of the fun, I have with refereeing. They help prevent me from forcing outcomes and keep me surprised at the results.

When I build a timeline, it’s basically a structured flow of “what would likely happen if no one intervenes,” based on the world as it stands. It’s not fixed, it’s not authorial destiny. The players can derail it completely, and when they do, the new state becomes the basis for further extrapolation. It’s like an evolving simulation, not a plotline.

This is why I push back on the use of “GM fiat” to describe this style. I get that, from a distance, it might seem like I’m just deciding what happens. But for me, and for many others who run games this way, it’s not about controlling the world. It’s about constructing a believable framework where outcomes emerge from prior causes, and the referee serves as the adjudicator of that framework, not its author. The creative fun for me comes from developing interesting situations given these constraints. This is not unlike the creative fun authors have when operating under the constraints of alt-history.

If anything, it’s a different kind of structure from tools like clocks. Clocks formalize change into a visible mechanic. My timelines organize change into a sequence of projected events. Both are procedural. They just express it differently.

*This two-parter is one of my favorites that I wrote. I even had people ask me if it really happened:

Travelling: an alternate vision of RPGs
Travelling continued, An alternate look at RPGs

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A few things in response to @pemerton's latest post, especially since he is trying to shift the framing of the discussion. My response is a clear comparison between two distinct approaches to adjudication, Torchbearer's procedural-first narrative vs. my World in Motion fiction-first adjudication. @pemerton's response attempts to reframe it as a discussion of "techniques" rather than "philosophy."

This attempt at reframing is a dishonest technique in a discussion like this. Techniques don’t exist in a vacuum. When a system consistently privileges one kind of resolution structure over another, that's not just a method. It's an expression of values and assumptions about play. That’s exactly what people mean when discussing a “philosophy of play.” If we pretend this is just a toolbox discussion, we obscure what we’re trying to analyze.

But you cannot escape the actual description of, and discussion about how things actually play, which UNDERGIRDS the way it feels and plays out in an agenda sense. You cannot get to your philosophy without first visiting techniques. That is, any attempt to better play will have to regard the techniques, so you better discuss them! Philosophy (agenda) is anyway largely an aesthetic matter. I will agree that you want to understand the linkage, but it seems wrong to dismiss techniques in ANY endeavor.

1. “Aetherial Premonition doesn’t alter fate.”

It may not strum the Skein like Destiny of Heroes, but its mechanics undeniably alter the probability space while the party is camping. It reduces the odds of bad outcomes via the camp event roll, and if something dangerous still occurs, it improves the odds of mitigating that danger with +1D to avert disaster.

Now let’s look at the narrative text of the spell that @pemerton quoted:



This narrative suggests a magical early warning system, something that alerts the party when trouble is coming. But the actual mechanics do more than that. They shape what kind of trouble can arise and how hard it will be to deal with, before the danger has even been narrated. That disconnect is important. It makes no narrative sense that an alarm spell, magical or not, would lessen the severity of the danger. It warns; it doesn’t soften the blow.

If that's what the narrative is saying, I have no issue with +1D to avert disaster as a mechanical expression of readiness or preparedness. But in this case, the mechanics overreach what the fictional description supports.

Again, the key point is that mechanics shape the fictional outcome before the fiction is even established. That’s the heart of the distinction I’m making.

2. "Torchbearer’s procedures are just like classic D&D wandering monster rolls."
On the surface, yes, both involve rolling on a schedule to determine whether an encounter occurs. But the similarity ends there.

In Torchbearer, the roll happens first. Then the fiction is constructed to explain the result. The outcome is driven by mechanics, and the GM narrates backwards to fit it.

In World in Motion, the fiction comes first. Who’s nearby, what they’re doing, and why they might intersect with the PCs is already established—whether through prep notes, faction timelines, or a location-specific random table. The roll doesn’t generate the situation; it resolves uncertainty within a situation that already exists.

That’s not a cosmetic distinction. It determines where agency, coherence, and uncertainty reside in the system. In one case, the world drives the mechanics. In the other, the mechanics produce the world. That’s the fundamental difference.

I don't believe this distinction exists. No TB2e GM would fail to take into account the dangers, motivations of adversaries, etc. when narrating the outcome of a camp phase which fails. The mere fact that we know 'something happened' first and then decided what doesn't change that. In fact the standard AD&D procedure for wandering monsters has a check be made and THEN a roll on the table to see what you got, assuming the result was positive.

In either case the GM will now, taking Aethereal Premonition into account, narrate some situation relating to whatever likely danger (maybe using a table, nothing prevents this, though I don't think TB2e really envisages such) manifested.

I agree that AP causes a straight reduction in the probability of a failure to camp, whereas Alarm mitigates the severity if it happens (maybe, though probably 95% of the time it will). If I wanted to be really nit picky, or just found it interesting, I could always use a different colored die for the AP bonus and then narrate any check that passed ONLY by dint of that die as "and your alarm went off, but whatever it was hightailed out of there" or some other non-camp-failure-but-there-was-an-encounter kind of narrative.

I think, in this specific kind of case, there's less difference than you want to believe.

3. "This is a discussion about techniques, not philosophies."
That’s a rhetorical dodge.

The way a system resolves action, what gets rolled, when, and what comes first, directly expresses its philosophy of play. If the GM waits for player action, checks world state, and then rolls, that expresses one view of how outcomes emerge. If the system rolls first and builds fiction after, that’s another. We can call them techniques all day, but pretending they don’t embody fundamentally different assumptions about what RPGs are doing is very inaccurate.

I don't really agree. You have a perspective, but it is VERY VERY focused on a view of RPGs that seems to be centered on emulating causality as a central aspect. So you see a radical difference between 'fortune before' and 'fortune after' (or in the middle, there's a couple of different formulations of this). Yet there are Narrativist systems using ALL of these approaches actively in use and being developed today.

Now, maybe we'd have to go deeper here, as these various systems probably do espouse somewhat different values, and those will relate to the systems. Again, I agree with assertions that philosophy/agenda and process of play are tied together, process facilitates and supports agenda and goes together with it. But I think they're related in complex ways. A lot of factors go into any specific game playing a certain way.

4. "D&D does include mechanical effects, so Alarm could be more like Torchbearer."
Sure, it could, but it isn't. And that's the point.

Alarm works as a reactive trigger: something must happen in the fiction to activate it. In Torchbearer, the danger emerges from a roll, and then the fiction is adjusted accordingly. The current D&D implementation puts Alarm's usefulness in the hands of the GM’s world model. Torchbearer abstracts that entirely. Again, direction of causality matters.

5. "We both agree there's a difference in approach."
That difference runs deeper than just table technique. It shapes how risk, control, and player impact are handled at the table. If I were to silently shift from a World in Motion campaign to a Torchbearer-style camp roll resolution, my players would feel that shift immediately. That’s not a matter of just “using a different rule.” It radically shifts the feel of the campaign.

I don't think anyone has trivialized it. Why would @pemerton even start the thread if it was trivial?

Wrapping it up.

If we’re going to have an honest discussion about what these techniques produce in play, then we need to stop pretending they’re just interchangeable tools. They reflect fundamentally different answers to how RPGs should handle fiction, uncertainty, and consequence.

Yes, but you still have to discuss these techniques! I don't really understand what you are objecting to here. We say "lets discuss these techniques and how they relate to other parts of play" and someone comes and says "well, all that is important is agenda, stop yanking at that curtain!"

Furthermore, the repeated attempts to reframe this debate and nitpick language while sidestepping core points need to stop. If this conversation is going to remain productive, the evasive tactics must end. I’m well-versed in rhetoric and debate, and I will continue to call out @pemerton’s dishonest argumentative techniques when I see them. As an academic, he should know better. Frankly, it’s disappointing that after all this time, I still have to point out this pattern of behavior.

NO! There's no 'nitpicking of language', there is careful systematic discussion of actual technique. Sure, you don't feel that technique X is suitable for agenda/style of play Y, that's perfectly fine. But why then can we not put a name to X and talk about the various aspects of X? Why can't we break it down into its elements and label them? I don't get it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I want to clarify where I’m coming from when I talk about plausibility and how I handle timelines in a World in Motion campaign.

Outside of gaming, I’ve read a fair amount of alternate history fiction and created a small number of stories myself*, and that background heavily influences how I think about campaign prep. In that community, plausibility is not hand-wavy or vague, it’s a serious standard of critique. A good alternate history story doesn’t just ask “what if X happened,” it works through the logical consequences of that divergence. It’s judged based on how well the outcomes follow from the point of departure, factoring in motivations, constraints, and secondary effects.

So when I say that I use “plausible extrapolation” to update my game world, I don’t mean “whatever feels likely at the moment.” I mean I take stock of the current state of the setting, what the NPCs want, what constraints they face, what’s recently changed, and I think through how those forces would logically interact. That’s the first pass. Then I think of other plausible alternatives and do the same. That's the second pass. Where there is uncertainty, I use various randomizers. Then the final pass is a dice roll weighted by circumstance to decide which outcome becomes part of the timeline. The unused alternatives remain useful as they may describe possibilities that could be relevant depending on the choices of the PCs.
Doing this part of the fun, I have with refereeing. They help prevent me from forcing outcomes and keep me surprised at the results.

When I build a timeline, it’s basically a structured flow of “what would likely happen if no one intervenes,” based on the world as it stands. It’s not fixed, it’s not authorial destiny. The players can derail it completely, and when they do, the new state becomes the basis for further extrapolation. It’s like an evolving simulation, not a plotline.

This is why I push back on the use of “GM fiat” to describe this style. I get that, from a distance, it might seem like I’m just deciding what happens. But for me, and for many others who run games this way, it’s not about controlling the world. It’s about constructing a believable framework where outcomes emerge from prior causes, and the referee serves as the adjudicator of that framework, not its author. The creative fun for me comes from developing interesting situations given these constraints. This is not unlike the creative fun authors have when operating under the constraints of alt-history.

If anything, it’s a different kind of structure from tools like clocks. Clocks formalize change into a visible mechanic. My timelines organize change into a sequence of projected events. Both are procedural. They just express it differently.

*This two-parter is one of my favorites that I wrote. I even had people ask me if it really happened:

Travelling: an alternate vision of RPGs
Travelling continued, An alternate look at RPGs

I’m not sure I see the distinction between clocks and your timelines. But again, I’m not exactly sure what goes into your timeline. Is this like an overall calendar type thing and you mark when events may come to pass unless the PCs disrupt or alter them in some way? Or are timelines just something you keep in your head?

What are the nuts and bolts of it?

As for GM fiat… generally when I’ve been using the term, I’ve just been talking about the GM making authorial decisions. So setting details and backstory and NOCS and their goals and outlooks, as well as extrapolations from all of that stuff.

Most of all of that stuff is largely up to the GM. Through play, those elements may start to interact with one another. Perhaps the PCs disrupt an NPCs goals, which the GM then extrapolates that the NPC seeks aid of another faction with whom that NPC had history.

My point earlier in the thread, and I think it applies now, is that’s a lot of GM authorship directing play. People sometimes forget that. They describe it as a simulation or as organic or what have you… but it’s a bunch of GM decisions interacting with one another.

And again… there is nothing wrong with that. It simply is so. For me… my preference and what I’d try to do in that… is to offload some of those decisions to some other method than me deciding.

Now it seems like you may roll in at least some cases to see how things will go. If so, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. If not, again nothing wrong with it, but let’s call it what it is… the GM deciding.

 

[pemerton]

1. “Aetherial Premonition doesn’t alter fate.”

It may not strum the Skein like Destiny of Heroes, but its mechanics undeniably alter the probability space while the party is camping. It reduces the odds of bad outcomes via the camp event roll, and if something dangerous still occurs, it improves the odds of mitigating that danger with +1D to avert disaster.

Now let’s look at the narrative text of the spell that @pemerton quoted:



This narrative suggests a magical early warning system, something that alerts the party when trouble is coming. But the actual mechanics do more than that. They shape what kind of trouble can arise and how hard it will be to deal with, before the danger has even been narrated. That disconnect is important. It makes no narrative sense that an alarm spell, magical or not, would lessen the severity of the danger. It warns; it doesn’t soften the blow.

Have you heard the saying, forewarned is forearmed?

If the characters are warned, they are less likely to be caught unawares; they are more ready to run off threats; some threats - magical ones - may notice the presence of the effect in the Otherworld, and steer clear. The spell bundles some of all these considerations into the camp event roll. And it bundles some of then into the bonus die for actions to avert disaster.

the key point is that mechanics shape the fictional outcome before the fiction is even established.

The mechanics determine the outcome before all of the fiction is established.

This is no different from a D&D attack roll (until the dice are rolled, we don't know if the Orc is dodging, or if there is a gap in their armour) or a Gygaxian AD&D surprise roll (we don't know if the Orc is urinating, or faffing about with their armour, until we see what the surprise die says). Or consider classic D&D's roll for getting lost - we don't know which direction the PCs are walking in until a die is rolled!

This sort of technique is as old as RPGing itself.

2. "Torchbearer’s procedures are just like classic D&D wandering monster rolls."
On the surface, yes, both involve rolling on a schedule to determine whether an encounter occurs. But the similarity ends there.

In Torchbearer, the roll happens first. Then the fiction is constructed to explain the result. The outcome is driven by mechanics, and the GM narrates backwards to fit it.

In World in Motion, the fiction comes first. Who’s nearby, what they’re doing, and why they might intersect with the PCs is already established—whether through prep notes, faction timelines, or a location-specific random table. The roll doesn’t generate the situation; it resolves uncertainty within a situation that already exists.

<snip>

4. "D&D does include mechanical effects, so Alarm could be more like Torchbearer."
Sure, it could, but it isn't. And that's the point.

Alarm works as a reactive trigger: something must happen in the fiction to activate it. In Torchbearer, the danger emerges from a roll, and then the fiction is adjusted accordingly. The current D&D implementation puts Alarm's usefulness in the hands of the GM’s world model. Torchbearer abstracts that entirely. Again, direction of causality matters.

My post said nothing about "World in Motion". It talked about the wandering monster roll in classic D&D.

In classic D&D, how do we know if there is a band of Orcs in the neighbourhood? In virtue of the wandering monster roll.

Even in your articulation of "World in Motion", you refer to location-specific random tables. What are these, but ways of using rolls to determine the world? The GM doesn't have a model of where the Orcs are, beyond some vague notion that in this location there are Orcs wandering about. There is no situation - here are some Orcs threatening your camp - until the encounter dice are rolled.

A few things in response to @pemerton's latest post, especially since he is trying to shift the framing of the discussion. My response is a clear comparison between two distinct approaches to adjudication, Torchbearer's procedural-first narrative vs. my World in Motion fiction-first adjudication. @pemerton's response attempts to reframe it as a discussion of "techniques" rather than "philosophy."

This attempt at reframing is a dishonest technique in a discussion like this. Techniques don’t exist in a vacuum. When a system consistently privileges one kind of resolution structure over another, that's not just a method. It's an expression of values and assumptions about play. That’s exactly what people mean when discussing a “philosophy of play.” If we pretend this is just a toolbox discussion, we obscure what we’re trying to analyze.

<snip>

3. "This is a discussion about techniques, not philosophies."
That’s a rhetorical dodge.

The way a system resolves action, what gets rolled, when, and what comes first, directly expresses its philosophy of play. If the GM waits for player action, checks world state, and then rolls, that expresses one view of how outcomes emerge. If the system rolls first and builds fiction after, that’s another. We can call them techniques all day, but pretending they don’t embody fundamentally different assumptions about what RPGs are doing is very inaccurate.

Your accusations of dishonesty and dodging are unwelcome. Who am I lying to? What am I lying about? Why are my opinions dishonest, but yours truthful?

Utterly bizarre.

The techniques that Torchbearer 2e uses are, as I have posted (and illustrated) as old as RPGing itself. Classic D&D is replete with them - in its combat mechanics, in its rules for surprise and evasion, in its rules for wandering monsters. I also pointed out how Rolemaster combines the use of evasive and stealthy manoeuvres into the encounter roll - just as Aetherial Premonition does - and you appear to have ignored that example.

If we’re going to have an honest discussion about what these techniques produce in play, then we need to stop pretending they’re just interchangeable tools.

Who is engaged in this pretence? What does it even mean to say that RPGing techniques are interchangeable - beyond the obvious, commonplace point that they can all be used in RPGing.

the repeated attempts to reframe this debate and nitpick language while sidestepping core points need to stop. If this conversation is going to remain productive, the evasive tactics must end. I’m well-versed in rhetoric and debate, and I will continue to call out @pemerton’s dishonest argumentative techniques when I see them. As an academic, he should know better. Frankly, it’s disappointing that after all this time, I still have to point out this pattern of behavior.

This, again, is all bizarre. Who made you the police of what other posters are allowed to say?

 

[Faolyn]

Yes, this is basically correct.

So, OK, is there that much of a difference between the two games? At least in this particular instance? I imagine that in Torchbearer, the GM still gets to decide what form the danger takes, right? Or do the PCs in Torchbearer get to say "welp, that roll sucked, guess we're being attacked by hungry goblins tonight."

Of course, that is what Alarm could do. As I posted upthread, it's not as if D&D eschews the incorporation of mechanical effects into spell resolution:

(just as an FYI, the quote you're responding to was misattributed to me.) But re: the difference in wording between the 5.14 and, I'm assuming, the 5.24 version of pass without trace, I personally wouldn't consider either "a veil of shadows or silence" or "a concealing aura" to be mechanics. Those are both purely descriptive, and I can easily see ignoring that in favor of a player-granted description. Say, a druid saying that targets magical, shifting camouflage. The mechanics is the +10 bonus to Stealth.

Presumably some potential intruders - especially assassins, mage-hunters and the like - would have the ability to detect and analyse magic. And might be very stealthy - using invisibility, pass without trace and the like.

Well, some, but nowhere near all. Unintelligent monsters, opportunistic but low-magic bandits, a bear (or owlbear) because the PCs forgot to hang their food from a tree...

Well, I think the notion of "better" doesn't have much purpose until we ask "better for what" or "better for whom"?

In terms of "which spell does the better job of making a night-time attack more interesting and/or fun." One where the players determine if there's an attack or one where the GM does?

Like, OK, another question. In Torchbearer, assume that the players succeed on their camping roll. No attacks in the middle of the night. I can imagine this means that the camp is suitably concealed or built into a safe location. (I'm not even going to ask if there are different modifiers for "dense, hilly forest with lots of hidey-holes" and "wide-open plains"). Can I, as the GM, describe an intruder poking around looking for, but failing to find/enter the camp? Or say the PCs find footprints nearby the next morning?

In D&D, I know I can do that. In fact, I've done something similar--a pesky fey who decided to leave a note on their tiny hut. But since the player's "decide" if there's an encounter or other trouble during the night, would I as GM be allowed to take over that way? Like I said, I know nothing of TB.

 

[pemerton]

(just as an FYI, the quote you're responding to was misattributed to me.)

Apologies, and fixed.

But re: the difference in wording between the 5.14 and, I'm assuming, the 5.24 version of pass without trace, I personally wouldn't consider either "a veil of shadows or silence" or "a concealing aura" to be mechanics. Those are both purely descriptive, and I can easily see ignoring that in favor of a player-granted description. Say, a druid saying that targets magical, shifting camouflage. The mechanics is the +10 bonus to Stealth.

Right. So imagine if Alarm penalised Stealth checks of those approaching the camp, and/or modified surprise rolls (in some versions of D&D - eg 5e and AD&D rangers - these are the same thing; in other versions they are not, but one might feed into the other).

Then the stuff about mental "pings" or ringing bells would become flavour text, just like that stuff in the Pass Without Trace spell.

In my view, it's not hard to imagine an "alternative history" of D&D where the Alarm spell was written like that, just as the AD&D ranger's stealth ability is written in such a way as to directly interact with the surprise rules.

So, OK, is there that much of a difference between the two games? At least in this particular instance? I imagine that in Torchbearer, the GM still gets to decide what form the danger takes, right? Or do the PCs in Torchbearer get to say "welp, that roll sucked, guess we're being attacked by hungry goblins tonight."

<snip>

Like, OK, another question. In Torchbearer, assume that the players succeed on their camping roll. No attacks in the middle of the night. I can imagine this means that the camp is suitably concealed or built into a safe location. (I'm not even going to ask if there are different modifiers for "dense, hilly forest with lots of hidey-holes" and "wide-open plains"). Can I, as the GM, describe an intruder poking around looking for, but failing to find/enter the camp? Or say the PCs find footprints nearby the next morning?

In D&D, I know I can do that. In fact, I've done something similar--a pesky fey who decided to leave a note on their tiny hut. But since the player's "decide" if there's an encounter or other trouble during the night, would I as GM be allowed to take over that way? Like I said, I know nothing of TB.

The Camp Event roll is made on the appropriate one of six tables (Wilderness, Caverns, Ancient Ruins, Dungeons, Near Town, and Squatting in Town). The result determines what happens - basically, the lower the roll the worse.

In terms of GM embellishment, the principle is stated on pp 94 and 264 of the Scholar's Guide:

The individual camp events leave a lot of room for interpretation. When something odd comes up, roll with it. It’s the game master’s job to call for tests or single out victims of calamity and sort through the chaos. . . .

Camp events are sketches. They’re small, flavorful elements to add to the game that are designed to give the world a dimension
that is larger than the needs and wants of the characters. Sometimes these elements are cruel; sometimes they are kind.

The game master should incorporate camp events with a critical eye. Bend them, break them and bind them into the ongoing story. Modify them to suit, but never let the adventurers off easy - and never deny them a lucky break.​

Once the Camp Event roll has been made, and any consequent action/tests have been resolved, then players are able to declare actions for their PCs, in accordance with an action economy called "camp checks". (These are earned in the Adventure Phase.)

If a test made during camp fails, then the GM is able to narrate a consequence for that failed roll as usual - either the character succeeds, but suffers a condition in the process (because it was harder, or unluckier, than hoped for); or the character fails, and the GM narrates a twist. As part of a twist, the GM may declare that camp is ended. From the Scholar's Guide, p 96:

Camp Twists
During camp, the players drive the action. The game master does not present new problems unless the players fail a roll for an activity better undertaken in the adventure phase. If that happens, the game master may introduce a twist as the result of a failed roll. Said twist could be severe enough to cause camp to break prematurely.

While Camping in a storeroom in the turtloid lair, Myrgan the thief and Ban the Magician have two checks between them. They decide to pry open a locked chest they found, but they now must take great care as they’re surrounded by lurking enemies. Dro fails the health check to pry open the stubborn container. Luke, the game master, describes the wrenching noise that echoes through the dungeon. A pair of turtloids soon arrive to investigate, ending camp before Ban can spend his remaining check.​

An intruder poking around the camp but failing to enter it could be part of the narration of success with a condition - eg, to riff on the rulebook's example, instead of narrating the twist Luke could have opted for success with a condition: "You gently pry the chest open. As you lift the lid, your heart is racing. You can hear turtloids moving just outside the storeroom. You get the chest open without making any noise, but the anxiety is almost overwhelming - take the Afraid condition!"

The narration of footprints nearby the next morning would more likely be a bit of free narration, used by the GM to signal potential future consequences (like the soft move => hard move dynamic of Apocalypse World) - eg if the GM narrates Dire Wolf footprints, then if the players fail a Pathfinder test as their PCs try to move off through the woods, a fair twist would be an ambush by Dire Wolves.

 

[pemerton]

@hawkeyefan

In case it's of interest, I'm attaching/uploading some photographs of old timeline and event notes that I made and (sometimes/partially) used when GMing a "living world"-type Rolemaster campaign in the 90s. I pulled out my box of old notes, ferreted through the manila folders, and took photos of a few representative examples.

You will see that they are not especially sophisticated in the way they are organised or presented - all are handwritten, and some would have been written by me sitting in carrels in the university library between lectures. They are all 30 to 35 years old, so my memory now for the meaning of any details/references/allusions is pretty hazy. Some of them I generated using random event tables (I had tables from the original AD&D OA, and also various Rolemaster books, and may be other places too); others I planned out based on "logical" extrapolation from some combination of setting details and events that had occurred, or at least been narrated, in play.

My experience with this sort of game was very similar to what @AbdulAlhazred has described - keeping track of all the moving parts, and integrating them into play, is a lot of work and to me it was not clear what the payoff was. I was doing this because RPG manuals that I'd read told me it was the "right" way to GM a campaign, but I became increasingly doubtful of the utility.

I'll call out two of the pages for particular comment:

The one written in red pen is an attempt to plan out the capacity of NPCs to perform a "scry and fry"-style raid on the PCs, based on GM decision-making (informed by setting details and implicit setting conventions) as to the details of those NPCs. My recollection is that it left something of a sour taste in the players' mouths.

The one in purple pen is the most recent in time (probably 1995 or thereabouts, rather than 1991 or thereabouts for the blue pen ones). It may not be very legible, but if you can read it, you'll see that it is getting closer to a "fronts" style account of motivations and possible happenings that would flow from those. My own approach to prep and to GMing continued more in that direction as I continued to GM RM for another 13-odd years.

 

[FrogReaver]

On the camp roll from TB and wandering monster checks in D&D.

In a D&D wandering monster check the roll determines 1 thing, which if any monsters the PCs encounter. (This can also be more generalized to a random event table.)

Before the fiction of exactly which monster at the PCs location is generated the GM has pre generated a list of possible monsters that could be present at this location. Then after the random monster check the GM then extrapolates further details about the monsters from the setting, the genre, his notes, etc.

This appears different than the TB camp roll (someone correct me if I’m wrong). The TB camp roll doesn’t determine what specific monster comes to camp, this is dm decision. Instead the camp roll determines whether something threatens the PCs in camp and how dangerous it is. Then based on those constraints and possibly the fictional plausibility the GM in TB decides what actual monster is present and its behavior/motivations etc.

In terms of fiat, it looks to me like the d&d dm has a clear process established before play. That process can answer the questions of which monsters and their particular behaviors so that how they would interact with the alarm spell is then extrapolated (or if any aspect is uncertain a roll can be employed to lock that down).

In TB, the specific monster is left for the dm to decide. Because of that TB could not have a spell that worked just like the d&d alarm spell without it relying completely on DM fiat in TB. But just because it would rely on dm fiat to employ such a spell in TB doesn’t mean it relies on DM fiat in d&d to do so.

 

[pemerton]

The TB camp roll doesn’t determine what specific monster comes to camp, this is dm decision.

<snip>

In TB, the specific monster is left for the dm to decide.

I can't comment on the first edition, but this isn't correct for TB2e.

 

[FrogReaver]

I can't comment on the first edition, but this isn't correct for TB2e.

Sorry, I was talking about TB2e.
Can you elaborate?