clearstream
(He, Him)
@Manbearcat An amusing thought struck me that a sufficiently cunningly designed magic item could stitch the fabric of 5e as tightly together as any other version of D&D.
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D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
- Thread starter clearstream
- Start date
clearstream
(He, Him)
There's a way in which we can end up talking at cross-purposes about that, which we should probably call-out and be wary of.
PbtA and similar systems are built around one core resolution-proces. That's over-simplifying, but also kind of true. It's a design strength.
5e is not built that way. It employs multiple game systems with transactions between them. So putting a laser-focus on the ability check procedure cannot provide the whole picture. Deceptively, we can talk about a "d20 system", but see my post up-thread and hopefully you can get a hint of what is in play. As an example, what you do in combat is not the same as what you do for social interaction, or even close to the same, even though both use a d20.
Note I'm not talking about every possible PbtA game, or saying there are no meaningful subsystems, macro or micro-cycles, in such games. More that 5e cannot be interpreted through the lense of ability checks to the extent that PbtA might be interpreted through the lense of moves.
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Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
Concentrating solely on these technical implementation details does us no good. It avoids rather than furthers discussion over the actual structure of play. How do we get from scenario to resolution? How are conflicts resolved? How does the play group collectively determine what happens? How does that satisfy what we are trying to do? These are not simple questions. Design questions worth talking about are generally not simple.
Thomas Shey
Legend
That probably has to do with the pretty high level of historical hostility among parts of the gaming populace well represented in D&D to social mechanics beyond the very minimal.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Sure. But the question really was about how we establish whether a ranger knows where a dragon is, not viability of 5e hexcrawls. And I feel your old school answer and my 5e answer were very similar. There is a GM established objective world from which the PCs can gain knowledge via ability/skill rolls, the difficulty of which is being tied to the specificity of the knowledge being sought.
But regarding hexcrawls, I kinda wish 5e had more structure for travel and I have houseruled several of the "skip travelling challenges" spells and features. However, reading your descriptions of what you think proper travel focus takes, I can say with confidence that I don't want that either, and I would be highly surprised if majority of the current player base wouldn't feel the same. Frankly, a lot of that just seems like tedious micromanaging to me, and I don't find it appealing.
I don't know, I'd really like to have some sort of distilled broad strokes version of interesting travel mechanics I could insert in 5e. Something between detailed micromanaging of specific hexes and resources and the GM just making something up on a whim.
Perhaps I should have look at that AP @clearstream was talking about which had something like that. What was it? Not that it really looked exactly like the sort of thing I'm thinking.
While I've seen this too, I suspect its because in the end of the day, most players just aren't that interested in the logistical and area exploration process itself, gamist leaning or not. Its just a procedure leading to the interesting game parts and too much overhead on it (especially in bookkeeping) dosn't seem attractive.
I think I started to get things worked out as I wrote though the argument. I left it mostly because I was too lazy to rewrite the post, but it also shows my work.
That’s the important question. According to Edwards, they’re all separate. There’s causality between them, but that doesn’t mean players need to have content authority to have plot authority. He goes on to describe Trollbabe-style (and what we’d probably now more associate with PbtA because that’s what is popular now) conflict-framing as an example of a technique and suggests it’s not a required one (you don’t even have to use it in the games that do allow it).
Paul T gives an example on the second page of that discussion, which Edwards responds as being, “Your summary of Plot Authority = 100% correct. Awesome.”
This is where I was trying to go with my safe example. In my example, the GM has established as backstory that the there is incriminating evidence and that it’s in the safe. The PCs want the evidence (i.e., this is their plot authority), and so they use their situational authority to locate it. The GM would then, using their content authority, reveal the safe with the evidence.Paul T said:
This is where I was struggling to reconcile the idea of the players’ exercised plot authority with the GM’s exercised content authority. You are right to ask the questions you did. The scenario is not well-formed. It’s framing a task-oriented scene (you find a safe, what’s inside?), but what’s at stake is whether the players find the incriminating evidence. By the time the safe enters play, assuming the GM’s backstory prescribe it as the source of incriminating evidence, and the PCs won their conflict to find the evidence, it must contain what the PCs seek (the evidence). Getting it open could be another conflict (can they do it without leaving evidence of their presence?), but having it be empty (containing no evidence), and turning their win into a loss would be (presumably) unprincipled on the GM’s part.
This is equivalent to masked stranger scenario except “the location of the evidence” takes the place of “the masked stranger’s identity”. If the location in the GM’s backstory is something other than the safe, then whatever the real location would be the necessary response on a win. A safe without the evidence would then be a possible response on a loss.
See above. I think we came to the same conclusion regarding stakes.
I think mostly the latter, and yes.
This is the important question of what kind of surgery is required to make use of an established scenario. I am particularly fond of the ones Necrotic Gnome has published for Old-School Essentials because they are situation-focused and avoid prescribing outcomes. However, they do not shy away from putting the “incriminating evidence” in with the loot procedure. For example, there is a key needed to open a device to find the Blood King’s heart. The key is hidden away in a random armoir on another floor. You can pick the lock, so it’s not the only way of getting it open. But it’s just a random thing you may find before getting it open. In spite of having a thief in the party, my players were still very determined to find the key “to avoid metagaming”.
I agree, and I think that’s where I was going with my logic. To avoid GM-as-glue, one would have to constantly doing information dumps to allow the players to exercise their plot authority.
Thank you for your responses. I’m still trying to work out the play priorities for my homebrew system. I have some goals that I’m not sure yet whether and how well I can balance them, but this helps me understand things better and gives me a framework for making decisions about what I want to do. I’m pretty sure I will need to excise the “hooks” that the generators in Worlds Without Number are designed to provide. Whether I can preserve some of my other goals (e.g., the scenario thing I mentioned above) also seems uncertain without careful consideration of how authority is distributed and what style of play I am trying to create.
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FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
This is my view as well.
5e doesn't really offer advice on how a DM can keep the story moving forward, which is one of the greatest strengths of 'story now' play. I'm not sure we can say D&D has an actual process for that. Instead, it has many different tools and techniques the GM can deploy to accomplish moving the story forward.
clearstream
(He, Him)
I was mulling this and felt we could generally observe the following difference between types of system (comparing two specific RPGs as examples)
- In 5e, rolls are oriented to supposed facts about the game world. Probabilities are strongly modified by what that aspect of the game world is supposed to be like. Frex, the distinction I indicated between the question of what was true, and what the ranger knew about what was true.
- In Stonetop, rolls are made to agree what to add or change to fiction or system. Probabilities are not strongly modified by supposed facts about the game world. Frex, rolling for Know Things sorts between alternatives for what GM is bound to tell you. There's not that distinction between what's true and what you know to be true.
- In both games, players can favour some sorts of actions by choosing to have better modifiers connected with them. Frex, in both player could choose to favour Int-based actions.
- In 5e, rolls test against a supposed external world. I can call that "Compare-roll-with-world."
- In Stonetop, rolls test for what to add to the game state. I'll call this "Use-roll-to-index-result."
In another thread I proposed the definition that a simulationist design is one whose models and rules preponderantly take inputs and produce results including fiction, correlated with references; so that we know when we say what follows that our fiction accords with the reference, and the imagined inhabitants of the world can have knowledge corresponding to its rules.
I think one can modify that in an interesting way (well, interesting for me.) A physicalist design is one whose models and rules preponderantly take inputs and produce results including fiction, correlated with a supposed world. That translates an aesthetic proposition into a metaphysical proposition.
Players could find compare-roll-with-world easy to grasp, not based on their aesthetic interests in simulating a world, but based on their intuitive assumptions about what it is like to inhabit a world. I think it is something like this that has been making it hard for me to just opt in to the HCS interepretation (even though as you can hopefully see, I can argue myself nearly there!)
Manbearcat
Legend
I don’t know if you were around for some of the conversations in the last 10 years or so, but it sounds like what you’re getting at above is what we’ve been calling “subjective DCs” (4e DCs based on the level of the heroes or PBtA spread of results) which are based on a distribution/mathematical model to ensure a spread of results and reliable protagonism (see “Whiff Factor mentioned prior) vs “objective DCs” (TB, any Process Sun game, the version of 5e DCs that are baselined off of how “in-world inhabitant with 10 ability score and no Prof would perceive the difficulty of a task”) that attempt to model the internal causality of a world.
@kenada
I read your post 2016. Instead of replying point-by-point, I'm going to try and set out some thoughts systematically. You will see (I hope) that what you've posted, and the Ron Edwards post, have both been given as full a consideration as I'm capable of at present! I think (or again I hope!) that you'll see we've landed on pretty much the same page.
When we refer to a participant enjoying authority that can be temporally extended ("the GM has authority over backstory") or can refer to a particular moment of play ("the GM exercised authority over backstory"). I think some of my posts upthread have been sensitive to this, but not all of them. When Paul T refers to the player exercising plot authority over revealing the masked villain, I think that is a reference to a particular moment of play - and it is a successful fortune roll that permits it. When Edwards refers to "giving up" plot authority as GM so that plot became "emergent", I think that he is talking in the extended sense. What generates the "emergence", moment to moment, will be particular exercises of authority that in a typical game are gated behind fortune resolution (be that pulling off the mask, bursting open the door, cracking the safe, etc): if the check succeeds then the player's have exercised their authority over plot, and now they (and the PCs) have the revelation; if the check fails, then the GM gets to exercise some sort of authority - eg rather than revealing the contents of the safe, the GM reveals that guards are storming the room.
Whereas I think we readily envisage plot authority being subject to fortune (as in the previous paragraph), it is less common to look at situational or content authority through that lens. But it's easy to do so. I've mentioned Circles checks in BW, which allow the player to exercise situational authority (subject to the check succeeding); wandering monster checks in classic D&D gate a GM's situational authority; Wises checks in BW can allow players to exercise content authority; wandering monster checks in classic D&D gate a GM's content authority at the same time as they gate situational authority.
Taking suggestions for content and situational authority seems fairly common. Sometimes it is filtered through a "plausibility test": eg the player asks "Can I find a scrivener in the town?" and the GM reflects that it's a big town and the PCs are in downtime and so says "yes". I think taking suggestions on content and/or situational authority independent of that sort of "plausibility test" - eg framing the PCs straight to the mouth of the dragon's cave when a player asks "is their a dragon near here" - is less typical, and often a hallmark of exposure to more "indie" styles of RPGing. I think it's not entirely easy to describe the boundary here, but it might be around higher-stakes content and higher-stakes situations?
Taking suggests for plot authority seems like it can be a bit underwhelming or anticlimactic. If the focus of the game is all about unmasking the villain, the GM just saying "yes" to the player's declaration I tear of the mask seems a bit uninspired! BW follows DitV and says, in these sorts of stake-laden situations, the dice must be rolled, even if it's an easy check (and the dice pool system means that failure on the roll is also possible). Apocalpyse World is interesting here because it doesn't say "say 'yes' or roll the dice" but rather is "if you do it, you do it" - so AW depends upon ensuring a system-level overlap between high stakes moments of play and action declarations triggering player-side moves. I think that's part of why custom moves are such a big deal in AW, and why each PbtA game needs its own set of moves.
Finally, in this list of conceptual reflections and clarifications, protagonism. I think the key here is that the players know what is at stake and hence, in their play of their PCs, can orient themselves towards the situation as they think is best. If the players exercise situational authority - as in classic D&D dungeon exploration, or via a Circles check - or if the GM takes a suggestion in respect of situational authority, then protagonism is ensured: the players have got the situation which has, at stake, whatever it is that they were hoping for.
If the GM exercises situational authority independently of the players, then it becomes necessary to communicate what is at stake. If this is not immediately implicit in the framing (eg "The masked villain crashes in through the skylight!") then it needs to be established in some other fashion - for instance, the necessary content has already been provided (eg GM: "The room you enter has a red ceiling"; Player: "Hey, remember the warning from the magic statute earlier, about the red sky presaging death from the heavens? We better be careful here - I poke the ceiling with my 10' pole").
I want to finish this post by thinking about the safe scenario in four systems. Here it is again, from Vincent Baker:
In my account of this in four systems, I'm also going to note where I have to depart from Baker's premises to get conflict resolution and hence avoid GM-as-glue and ensure protagonism:
* In Classic Traveller, breaking into a safe is task resolution (using Demolitions, or Electronics, or Mechanical, or even a weapon skill, depending on the details). If the GM has framed the presence of the safe, and the players open it hoping to find useful stuff, it's just like Baker's example of task resolution. To change this, we need to establish, prior to the opening of the safe, what's in it. In Classic Traveller, Streetwise would do this: the typical sequence would be Streetwise first to learn which safe to break into (so successful Streetwise gives the players a moment of content authority - in a 1977 RPG!), and then using the task resolution mechanics to actually break into it. But the prior establishing of the content ensures that the link of success/win is maintained. Note that the GM might still break the fail/lose nexus (because at the moment of crunch its task resolution). Also note that there is no pathway to successfully engaging with the rumour mill via Streetwise but getting a false rumour. In other words, Streetwise in Classic Traveller doesn't support a process simulation agenda. (A bonus fifth system: 4e D&D would use a skill challenge in a sequence similar to Traveller, with an earlier Streetwise check feeding into a later Thievery check; but the skill challenge framework maintains the fail/lose nexus.)
* In Marvel Heroic RP, the players are able to exercise not only plot authority when the PCs crack the safe, but content authority too (by creating an asset or establishing a resource - there are lots of different pathways to somewhat overlapping outcomes in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic). So there is no need to establish the fiction of what's in the safe in advance, in order to ensure protagonism at the point of crunch. This sort of thing has come up fairly regularly in my play of this system.
* In Burning Wheel, the players are able to exercise content authority to establish what is in the safe - a Safe-wise or Dirt-wise check, for instance - and thus ensure that the succeed/win nexus is maintained. The principles that govern GM failure narration will ensure that the fail/lose nexus is maintained too.
* In Rolemaster or AD&D 2nd ed or (I think) 5e D&D, there is no way for the players to exercise content authority at the moment of crunch (cf BW or MHRP). And there is no way to exercise prior content authority to ensure that the task resolution at the moment of crunch will preserve the win/succeed nexus (cf Classic Traveller, or BW in which the Wises check is made at an earlier time): for instance, even if the PCs shake down an informant, the GM is the one who gets to decide whether the informant's information is accurate. So the GM has to use their content authority to establish the contents of the safe, and somehow that has to be revealed to the players at an appropriate earlier time. This is where we start to see the pull towards GM-as-glue. I'm not saying it is inevitable, but the pull is definitely there.
EDIT to add a sixth system:
* AW (or similar): it's a bit like Classic Traveller, with a prior exercise of content authority carrying a lot of weight. Either the GM asks Who has the dirt?, and so takes suggestions for content authority from the players, or the players use an information-oriented move (eg Opening their Brains to the Psychic Maelstrom) to oblige the GM to exercise content authority; and thus when they tackle the safe, they know what's in it. And even if they tackle a random safe, the principles around soft moves mean that what they find in it will be interesting in some fashion.
I read your post 2016. Instead of replying point-by-point, I'm going to try and set out some thoughts systematically. You will see (I hope) that what you've posted, and the Ron Edwards post, have both been given as full a consideration as I'm capable of at present! I think (or again I hope!) that you'll see we've landed on pretty much the same page.
When we refer to a participant enjoying authority that can be temporally extended ("the GM has authority over backstory") or can refer to a particular moment of play ("the GM exercised authority over backstory"). I think some of my posts upthread have been sensitive to this, but not all of them. When Paul T refers to the player exercising plot authority over revealing the masked villain, I think that is a reference to a particular moment of play - and it is a successful fortune roll that permits it. When Edwards refers to "giving up" plot authority as GM so that plot became "emergent", I think that he is talking in the extended sense. What generates the "emergence", moment to moment, will be particular exercises of authority that in a typical game are gated behind fortune resolution (be that pulling off the mask, bursting open the door, cracking the safe, etc): if the check succeeds then the player's have exercised their authority over plot, and now they (and the PCs) have the revelation; if the check fails, then the GM gets to exercise some sort of authority - eg rather than revealing the contents of the safe, the GM reveals that guards are storming the room.
Whereas I think we readily envisage plot authority being subject to fortune (as in the previous paragraph), it is less common to look at situational or content authority through that lens. But it's easy to do so. I've mentioned Circles checks in BW, which allow the player to exercise situational authority (subject to the check succeeding); wandering monster checks in classic D&D gate a GM's situational authority; Wises checks in BW can allow players to exercise content authority; wandering monster checks in classic D&D gate a GM's content authority at the same time as they gate situational authority.
Taking suggestions for content and situational authority seems fairly common. Sometimes it is filtered through a "plausibility test": eg the player asks "Can I find a scrivener in the town?" and the GM reflects that it's a big town and the PCs are in downtime and so says "yes". I think taking suggestions on content and/or situational authority independent of that sort of "plausibility test" - eg framing the PCs straight to the mouth of the dragon's cave when a player asks "is their a dragon near here" - is less typical, and often a hallmark of exposure to more "indie" styles of RPGing. I think it's not entirely easy to describe the boundary here, but it might be around higher-stakes content and higher-stakes situations?
Taking suggests for plot authority seems like it can be a bit underwhelming or anticlimactic. If the focus of the game is all about unmasking the villain, the GM just saying "yes" to the player's declaration I tear of the mask seems a bit uninspired! BW follows DitV and says, in these sorts of stake-laden situations, the dice must be rolled, even if it's an easy check (and the dice pool system means that failure on the roll is also possible). Apocalpyse World is interesting here because it doesn't say "say 'yes' or roll the dice" but rather is "if you do it, you do it" - so AW depends upon ensuring a system-level overlap between high stakes moments of play and action declarations triggering player-side moves. I think that's part of why custom moves are such a big deal in AW, and why each PbtA game needs its own set of moves.
Finally, in this list of conceptual reflections and clarifications, protagonism. I think the key here is that the players know what is at stake and hence, in their play of their PCs, can orient themselves towards the situation as they think is best. If the players exercise situational authority - as in classic D&D dungeon exploration, or via a Circles check - or if the GM takes a suggestion in respect of situational authority, then protagonism is ensured: the players have got the situation which has, at stake, whatever it is that they were hoping for.
If the GM exercises situational authority independently of the players, then it becomes necessary to communicate what is at stake. If this is not immediately implicit in the framing (eg "The masked villain crashes in through the skylight!") then it needs to be established in some other fashion - for instance, the necessary content has already been provided (eg GM: "The room you enter has a red ceiling"; Player: "Hey, remember the warning from the magic statute earlier, about the red sky presaging death from the heavens? We better be careful here - I poke the ceiling with my 10' pole").
I want to finish this post by thinking about the safe scenario in four systems. Here it is again, from Vincent Baker:
In task resolution, what's at stake is the task itself. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you crack the safe?
In conflict resolution, what's at stake is why you're doing the task. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?
Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting the dirt? That's how you tell whether it's task resolution or conflict resolution.
Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You can succeed but lose, fail but win.
In conventional rpgs, success=winning and failure=losing only provided the GM constantly maintains that relationship - by (eg) making the safe contain the relevant piece of information after you've cracked it. It's possible and common for a GM to break the relationship instead, turning a string of successes into a loss, or a failure at a key moment into a win anyway.
Let's assume that we haven't yet established what's in the safe.
"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Success!
"You crack the safe, but there's no dirt in there, just a bunch of in-order papers."
"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Failure!
"The safe's too tough, but as you're turning away from it, you see a piece of paper in the wastebasket..."
(Those examples show how, using task resolution, the GM can break success=winning, failure=losing.)
That's, if you ask me, the big problem with task resolution: whether you succeed or fail, the GM's the one who actually resolves the conflict. The dice don't, the rules don't; you're depending on the GM's mood and your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are supposed to even out.
Task resolution, in short, puts the GM in a position of priviledged authorship.
In conflict resolution, what's at stake is why you're doing the task. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?
Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting the dirt? That's how you tell whether it's task resolution or conflict resolution.
Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You can succeed but lose, fail but win.
In conventional rpgs, success=winning and failure=losing only provided the GM constantly maintains that relationship - by (eg) making the safe contain the relevant piece of information after you've cracked it. It's possible and common for a GM to break the relationship instead, turning a string of successes into a loss, or a failure at a key moment into a win anyway.
Let's assume that we haven't yet established what's in the safe.
"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Success!
"You crack the safe, but there's no dirt in there, just a bunch of in-order papers."
"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Failure!
"The safe's too tough, but as you're turning away from it, you see a piece of paper in the wastebasket..."
(Those examples show how, using task resolution, the GM can break success=winning, failure=losing.)
That's, if you ask me, the big problem with task resolution: whether you succeed or fail, the GM's the one who actually resolves the conflict. The dice don't, the rules don't; you're depending on the GM's mood and your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are supposed to even out.
Task resolution, in short, puts the GM in a position of priviledged authorship.
In my account of this in four systems, I'm also going to note where I have to depart from Baker's premises to get conflict resolution and hence avoid GM-as-glue and ensure protagonism:
* In Classic Traveller, breaking into a safe is task resolution (using Demolitions, or Electronics, or Mechanical, or even a weapon skill, depending on the details). If the GM has framed the presence of the safe, and the players open it hoping to find useful stuff, it's just like Baker's example of task resolution. To change this, we need to establish, prior to the opening of the safe, what's in it. In Classic Traveller, Streetwise would do this: the typical sequence would be Streetwise first to learn which safe to break into (so successful Streetwise gives the players a moment of content authority - in a 1977 RPG!), and then using the task resolution mechanics to actually break into it. But the prior establishing of the content ensures that the link of success/win is maintained. Note that the GM might still break the fail/lose nexus (because at the moment of crunch its task resolution). Also note that there is no pathway to successfully engaging with the rumour mill via Streetwise but getting a false rumour. In other words, Streetwise in Classic Traveller doesn't support a process simulation agenda. (A bonus fifth system: 4e D&D would use a skill challenge in a sequence similar to Traveller, with an earlier Streetwise check feeding into a later Thievery check; but the skill challenge framework maintains the fail/lose nexus.)
* In Marvel Heroic RP, the players are able to exercise not only plot authority when the PCs crack the safe, but content authority too (by creating an asset or establishing a resource - there are lots of different pathways to somewhat overlapping outcomes in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic). So there is no need to establish the fiction of what's in the safe in advance, in order to ensure protagonism at the point of crunch. This sort of thing has come up fairly regularly in my play of this system.
* In Burning Wheel, the players are able to exercise content authority to establish what is in the safe - a Safe-wise or Dirt-wise check, for instance - and thus ensure that the succeed/win nexus is maintained. The principles that govern GM failure narration will ensure that the fail/lose nexus is maintained too.
* In Rolemaster or AD&D 2nd ed or (I think) 5e D&D, there is no way for the players to exercise content authority at the moment of crunch (cf BW or MHRP). And there is no way to exercise prior content authority to ensure that the task resolution at the moment of crunch will preserve the win/succeed nexus (cf Classic Traveller, or BW in which the Wises check is made at an earlier time): for instance, even if the PCs shake down an informant, the GM is the one who gets to decide whether the informant's information is accurate. So the GM has to use their content authority to establish the contents of the safe, and somehow that has to be revealed to the players at an appropriate earlier time. This is where we start to see the pull towards GM-as-glue. I'm not saying it is inevitable, but the pull is definitely there.
EDIT to add a sixth system:
* AW (or similar): it's a bit like Classic Traveller, with a prior exercise of content authority carrying a lot of weight. Either the GM asks Who has the dirt?, and so takes suggestions for content authority from the players, or the players use an information-oriented move (eg Opening their Brains to the Psychic Maelstrom) to oblige the GM to exercise content authority; and thus when they tackle the safe, they know what's in it. And even if they tackle a random safe, the principles around soft moves mean that what they find in it will be interesting in some fashion.
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