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But by that assertion, literally all possible events COULD, maybe, potentially, possibly, someday, have some kind of consequence that might be relevant. If we follow that maxim, that would mean we cannot ever elide out detail--ever. Literally everything, every breath, every drink, every morsel...

The way to escape is to get through the door of the cage, presumably. You have created something where there are no points of failure because failure is guaranteed. I am talking about a perfectly fiction-appropriate scenario, abandoned in a dungeon cell, where failure absolutely is not...

Okay...but that's something we have already addressed. There are many ways to achieve that feeling. Doing a lot of conflict-neutral, low-stakes/no-stakes situations is far from the only way to do that. I should think there would be something more specific than the feeling the action generates...

Party has been captured by bad guys. They've been left in a cell to rot. They must escape from the cell in order to accomplish any other goals (obviously, purely by the fiction). No one in the party is especially good at picking locks. Guards, if they are present, know not to let the PCs out...

I find this both very surprising and very frustrating, because I know I have said to both of you, multiple times, that the books explicitly day the opposite of what you have said here. That is, they repeatedly reiterate that it is the fiction that matters most. They repeatedly say things like...

Okay. You say this as though those things are, like...controversial. But the plain reading of their opposite is the action grinding to a halt and making no "progress". (Note that this doesn't mean "progress" in the sense of getting closer to a defined end in PbtA any more than it would mean...

Er...no? I am responding to an argument which paints things like "fail forward" as deeply, inherently problematic and wrong--often with the entirely false accusation that it destroys all possible conflict because it (somehow?) makes success guaranteed--by showing what it is for, and how it is a...

Well, I think there is a general point here, which is that pacing matters to pretty much everyone. It's a subjective thing, so different people will find different kinds of pacing valid, but that doesn't dismiss the general point that pacing matters. As a result, it's not a cost-free choice to...

The way I've generally gone about it is, if the players really want to make an event out of visiting an ordinary shopkeeper for ordinary purchases, they can, but doing so will almost never add much to the experience beyond....acted-out demonstrations that shopkeepers exist? Which at least for me...

As usual, well-said. And it doesn't even need to be H,H,H,H...; it could be HxHHxHHHxHxHxHHHHxH... or any of a million variations where a few non-highlight events are present because (as you said above) "breather" moments are quite valuable in moderation.

It depends on the context, but for some of these: Some doors can be forcibly opened that way, some can't. Many dungeon doors are made of stone or metal, for example--that's been my experience with doors in 5e, for example. Wooden ones are rarely an impediment, and stone ones aren't...

Entirely fair. I would not say that this effect happens all the time. Just that, in at least some cases, the distracting meta-thinking may arise because of differences in system. Likely, enthusiasm and prior buy-in help immensely here. After all, everyone is new to RPGing the first time they...

Agreed. Often, I find high detail does make it easier to believe the thing is grounded. But sometimes, high detail becomes distracting. That can happen by calling attention to itself, especially if it's high detail on things A/C/D and low detail on things B/E/F etc. But it can also happen even...

I'm glad I stopped to read this, rather than focusing on the original reply, as it almost certainly would have resulted in me kicking a ball I probably shouldn't. I appreciate your explanation, but I think this reflects...well, a little bit of "he who fights monsters". That is, in your desire...

And yet even if you emphasize this, several people have responded as though such comments aren't there. Consider that I wrote the following (bolding added, all other emphasis in original): As you can see, multiple times in every paragraph, I specifically reiterated that I was talking about...

"I see no reason to compromise" is an unwillingness to compromise...like...that's literally what being unwilling to compromise means. Assuming whatever agent you're looking at is rational, I mean.

If success is actually impossible, then you wouldn't roll at all. But you're doing the rather typical thing of openly taking the least-charitable possible interpretation and presuming it must be true to skewer it, rather than asking, "Wait, does that mean success is guaranteed?" Because...

I can portray evil NPCs--even quite vile ones--for the brief periods they appear. They occupy such a small portion of my attention, being only one part of the world, that I can sort of...not focus that much on how awful they are. I also have a tendency to make most villains either "Noble Demons"...

Oh dear, I certainly hope not, otherwise we'll get...