Notice here that you are describing exactly what I've described above: you are not reasoning by reference to in-fiction causal paths, but rather making a roll. Take the same approach to everything else - how drunk or sober the assassin is, whether they attack from near or far, etc - and you end up with some version of a camp event roll!
GM fiat - an illustration
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
Really? I thought you mostly play D&D.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
I don't mostly play it, though I currently run it. Why? Is it a term I should be familiar with from D&D?
I'm curious if you agree with me that there are some sorts of resolution methods that don't work very well for situation-based play.
I look, for instance, at your descriptions of Jackson and Bellow. I can see how that would feed into resolution in Burning Wheel. Or Prince Valiant. I assume that you have in mind Sorcerer. I can imagine how that could also support resolution in HeroWars/Quest. Even in Marvel Heroic RP. And to make this statement, of what seems possible to me, a bit more concrete, here are some examples of how this might play out, for a system broadly in the realm of the ones I've named:
Suppose that the players (as their PCs) know that it is Bellow who is determined that they be hunted down. So they need to counter wealth and boasting. So they spread rumours among all the valets and up-market innkeepers that they are under the protection of a golden dragon. And now maybe we test (say) the PCs Upper-class connections + Decption vs Bellow's Wealth modified by his Easily Impressed flaw; or (in a different system) vs the assassin's Boasting + Prowess modified by his Undiligent flaw.
Suppose, rather, that it is Jackson's assassin who is pursuing them; and so the players have their PCs hide in a warehouse with an Alarm spell readied so that they can take down the assassin as soon as the latter triggers the Alarm. And so we frame a contest of the PCs' Diligent Preparation + Magical Wardings vs the assassin's Patient + Deadly, with the upshot of that contest then rolling into the resolution of the next contest (either the assassin has the advantage vs the PCs, or the PCs' trap has worked and they have the advantage vs the assassin).
But now consider a system like AD&D or Rolemaster. I don't see how your descriptions of Jackson and Bellow, and the extrapolations to the assassins they might hire, will provide much help with resolution in . Because the resolution - of Alarm or Waiting Illusion or other defensive measures - depends so much on details (minutiae pertaining to time, distance, architecture, who speaks to whom, etc) that are not part of the situation, that we don't really care about in the situation, and that the facts about Bellow and Jackson really don't bear upon.
We need detailed maps of the warehouse - where do these come from? Who decides if the warehouse is really suitable for the PCs' trap? How is it decided what path Jackson's assassin takes to and through the warehouse?
We need to know details about all the valets and inn-keepers. Who decides what their attitude is to the PCs, to the PCs' lie about their dragon protector, to Bellow's assassin who is trying to hunt them down. And what affect does that lie have on Bellow's assassin?
The features of resolution systems that don't work for situation-based play might be summed up thus: (i) they require the input of information that is not part of the situations that the game has established, and (ii) they generate a focus on, and make salient, elements of the fiction that are not really significant in the situations.
(ii) can be related to (i), but need not be.
No. See my post just upthread. I don't see how any version of D&D, other than 4e, is remotely suitable for situation-based play. Burning Wheel is: but BW is much closer to Torchbearer than to D&D in how it handles resolution, and in this thread you seem to be sceptical of Torchbearer.
Your use of the word "error" is interesting.
Everything you describe here - the issue of scale, the need for the GM to make decisions which then determine whether the Alarm spell does or doesn't protect the PCs as the players wanted it to, the challenges that these things pose for a GM trying to make decision in good faith - fits with my own experience in GMing Rolemaster that I've already referred to upthread. I was not setting out to be a "jerk" - quite the opposite. I was trying to diligently portray the setting, in all its verisimilitudinous glory.
But that intention doesn't, in itself, provide me with the tools and information necessary to identify and follow in-fiction causal paths. I just had to invent stuff. I found it hard, and ultimately quite unsatisfying.
Whether I would say it led me into error is a further thing. Probably on one occasion I made a scry-teleport-ambush style call for the NPCs that I ought not to have; but the "ought" there is not the "ought" of breaking the rules, or breaking the fiction, but rather producing unsatisfying play that didn't really feel fair to the players. Is that what you have in mind by "error"?
The myth can be as "high" as you like. It won't tell you every pathway through a city into a library, and through a library to where a PC is sitting, reading ancient lore while warded by their Waiting Illusion.
Fictional position is about a player's/participant's actual position. It depends upon their being some constraining fiction.
In the context of the Alarm spell, there is no constraining fiction as to when the assassin arrives, how patiently they wait, whether they attack from near or far, etc. Not in any version of D&D that I'm aware of. This all has to be either decided by the GM - that is, made up - or else the GM makes rolls - which, I as I've said, has at one natural endpoint the camp event roll modified by the Alarm spell.
(In a dungeon that is fully mapped and keyed, there may be fictional positioning established. But my RM experience, which is what informed my example in the OP, did not involve dungeons. It involved cities and towns and occasionally wilderness camps.)
Crimson Longinus
Legend
Yes, we just probably disagree on what those are.
I guess that is one way to handle it. I don't see how this is significantly different than using persuasion in 5e with the DC based on Bellow's gullibility intersected with the claim's plausibility, perhaps with an advantage if some of the characters can help with some upper class connections.
Is there only one warehouse in this city? Presumably there are several, and PCs choose one that is suitable. Or perhaps they don't, and that's their mistake but an actual choice about the place the characters get to make in game.
We know they're a diligent and skilled professional. This helps us answer the question.
I just do not see this as a major issue. A lot of it can be extrapolated from the initial situation and the established setting. And sure, there is not one "objectively" correct answer, but it is good enough. Furthermore, you probably see initial situation in more limited sense than I do. @thefutilist mentioned people, things and places. Whilst I obviously do not expect prepping the situation entail mapping every building in the city or personality of each valet, I suspect I'd prep quite bit more than you, so when I'm extrapolating, I've got more solid basis. Things like "what sort of attitudes different groups of people in this location have towards each other" and prepping some representative "face" NPCs for different groups even though these would be just side characters and not major players is something I often do. I also have more gneral guidelines regarding the whole setting, and certain principles about the logic by which fictional concepts and rule concepts are associated.
I see. Mechanics that I would find unhelpful, are ones that require the situation to be fuzzy so that the mechanic can determine it. And that's exactly the sort of mechanics the games you mention seem to have a lot.
In any case, what I found familiar in Futilist's description, was prepping the situation, and sorta nailing down the initial conditions from which we then proceed. Certain things are in certain way. NPCs have set motivations, set capabilities. Then the GM just plays the situation with integrity, the players interact with it, and we see what happens.
Pedantic
Legend
I'm sorry? You seem to have just randomly appropriated a term someone else defined to make a specific point?
The whole point of that example was demonstrating that it would be unsatisfying and unpleasant to abstract the specifics of the two proposed situations down to a die roll, and instead they needed to have different methods and points of resolution to make them meaningfully different. You seem to have done some kind of mental operation, where you put everything that was not described directly in the example outside of the "situation" when it seems very clear to me that no such subtraction is occurring. Extrapolating the nature of the assassin does not free you from needing to extrapolate the "minutiae pertaining to time, distance, architecture, who speaks to whom, etc" you mentioned. Those details are as constituent of the "situation" at play, as the identity of the assassin.
Perhaps we're both reading entirely different intent into what @thefutilist as written than was intended, but your proposed method of resolution would seem entirely opposed to the goal of play as I understood it from that post.
I've never met players with this extra sensory ability. Though I'm also a Master Manipulator too...
I can say plenty of players have "commented on how great my games are" too.
Right, but how do the know?
So, in your game, the Ogre would "officially" say "if you PCs kill me my brother will seek revenge!". Then the players will go "Okay-Day, the DM has established in the fiction". So the PCs kill the Ogre...and some time later get attacked by the brother Ogre and just happily say "Okay-Day, we approve!"
Or do the Buddy DM way, where you as the DM just do a "cut scene " and say "ok, just so you know this Ogre has a brother out looking for revenge!"
These are great for simple, casual games.....but not really so great for most other types of games. I your just playing a short game for simple fun....playing an RPG in the same way people play board games....then it does not matter. The DM rolls out the Red Carpet for the players to make the game fun and exciting.....the game would be too hard for most players otherwise.
So what about the rolls and rules that don't feel fair to the players? Does the GM just hold up the rulebook like a shield and say "it was not me, it was this rule here!" ?
Or do you pick games with only very slight "set backs" that can effect the characters? Like the worst thing you can get from the game for a "critical setback" is "oh, no your character bumped their head for one point of damage!".
Or does the game...."technically" have real "critical setbacks" like "your character is obliterated!" but they are supper rare...like you have to make a lot of rolls to get to one.
Sure. Now tell me how this method applies to a PC sitting inside a library, protected by an Alarm spell.
