Author: Ганс Андроид (Guns-n-Droids)

Another question I sometimes come up with: where’re boundaries of MC’s ‘setting injection’? (That is more or less general *W question, but still)

Players playing X are supposed to be the ones with main knowledge about X, but is there any place for MC to inject their ‘theme’ and basis of the game, and if so – to what extent? If you see this as ‘each game group makes their choice’ – please, at least give your personal view.

Examples:

– I want to state a couple of key Fae NPCs into the picture, and one of the players plays Fae – can I use my ideas at all, should I mould them to what player chooses to describe as ‘what your fae court politics are like?’ or can I just inject it as ‘So, John, you want to play Fae. Main setup for the Fae court is like this: … Where you sit in such picture?’

Should I also first hear other PCs about their relationships with the Wyld? I assume when there’re no players for Fae I have somewhat more freedom with this.

– I want, say, have daemons to be somewhat different (for example, inject setting element from nWoD Daemon, where demons and angels are ‘cogs in the machine’). Can I do that only if no player wants to play Tainted, or do I set this as base for Tainted player, or I should never try to do that because players are creating setting, not me?

– I want to introduce new type of creatures into the story, which I view as belonging to a Fraction (let’s say Night). Can I do that? (or it is assumed that only players can do that) If so, does everyone else in the Night faction have to know that those creatures exist and how they operate?

I feel that there is a sliding scale, on which at one end MC gets to be the usual mostly all-knowing GM, and on other end MC has very little chance to actually affect how world works.

I may be getting stupid, but when I read Vamp’s description of being ‘pure muscle, terrifying and feral when trapped’ somewhat strange. Besides having Blood +1 he does not seem to have anything that even closely resembles ‘terrifying’. Yes, he can manipulate people, can persuade and manipulate, can get what he wants, but in the end, when he pushed in the corner, he has zero offense beyond not all that powerful +1 Blood and some fictional positioning for Let It Out (which relies on his weak Spirit)

So what am I missing?