It's All Connected
Oct. 26th, 2002 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ralphmeltonI've been working on backstory for my D&D game for the PCs to discover, since they've just earned a visit from the Exposition Fairy (who, I guess, leaves records of the Cataclysm under one's pillow).
I had intended to let there be some coincidences here. But as I let my mind play over matters, I keep having this experience of seeing how various things could be connected, and deciding that it would be more nifty for them actually to be connected.
In the same vein, it's easy for me to follow one connection to another, so I make up background information that's all connected. It's harder for me to make up random-coincidence background information.
Both of these tendencies combine to make my campaign very low on coincidences. In a way, I think this is very nifty, because it suggests that the world makes sense, if only you can understand it all. Particularly for a fictional world, this is nice. (For a "real" world, I might feel differently--the real world sometimes fails to make sense in disappointing ways.)
On the other hand, I keep having this lurking fear that some day and I'll need to say "no, that apparent connection was just a coincidence", and my PCs will say "Coincidence? We've never seen a coincidence before, we see no reason to believe in one now." :)
I had intended to let there be some coincidences here. But as I let my mind play over matters, I keep having this experience of seeing how various things could be connected, and deciding that it would be more nifty for them actually to be connected.
In the same vein, it's easy for me to follow one connection to another, so I make up background information that's all connected. It's harder for me to make up random-coincidence background information.
Both of these tendencies combine to make my campaign very low on coincidences. In a way, I think this is very nifty, because it suggests that the world makes sense, if only you can understand it all. Particularly for a fictional world, this is nice. (For a "real" world, I might feel differently--the real world sometimes fails to make sense in disappointing ways.)
On the other hand, I keep having this lurking fear that some day and I'll need to say "no, that apparent connection was just a coincidence", and my PCs will say "Coincidence? We've never seen a coincidence before, we see no reason to believe in one now." :)
