This recent, brilliant (as usual) post of Phlox's references a setting's animating conflict. It's the first time I recall seeing it on a blog, though I could swear it was in the zeitgeist before then. This is proving an increasingly useful concept for me. If I had to define it, an animating conflict is a conflict so essential to a setting it's impossible to describe it without its mention, and that any arbitrary dungeon game problem might be plausibly blamed on- this is in the service of crea...| sunderedshillings.blogspot.com