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But it is not decided because of the PC capabilities unless such decision is indeed made by an NPC with such knowledge. (And there needs to be reason for them to have such information.) Furthermore, these decisions are of course made far in advance of the spell being cast, so they cannot be a...

So are you saying that instead of being an abstraction, TB method is just rules first as opposed to fiction first of D&D? That in TB it is not actually elided that there was a secret door or that the enemy was an expert on overcoming magical countermeasures, because after the diceroll such...

Yet you can be ambushed. Alarm works just as it says too, yet you can be ambushed. You had a problem with the latter, yet the former produces the same result. What gives? You probably will not learn all the factors, but you probably learn some. But I can tell you what you for certain cannot...

What? What the hell you think fictional positioning is then? It is fiction, of course it is made up! What you mean how so? It elides all sort of details. But perhaps it would be helpful if you properly explained how this roll works? What sort of factors contribute to the odds, what sort of...

It is just a bonus to a roll. So you can still roll badly and get "ambushed" result or whatever. Nonsense. The spell describes in length what it does. It is pretty clear what logically possible ways of bypassing it are. In a sense that there are modifiers to the roll. But it is still...

I am not really disagreeing, but it was @pemerton who opened the thread using the broad definition you decry here, so others have just mostly gone along with.

And in TB a dice roll can completely nullify Aetherial Premonition. It is just that in D&D bypassing relies on fictional positioning, such as number of entrances and the capabilities of the enemy. Personally I find a game where such things matter and can be learned and interacted with far more...

It is a fantasy world, that is made up, there could be unlimited consequences. Also, you arbitrarily decided that there are just two stages of hurt the giant can be, even though it probably has more than three HP! Why not include 1/8 HP gone, 1/4 HP gone etc? Why there is equal chance of every...

But certainly you must see that if you're the person setting up the possible outcomes and their probabilities, the disclaiming of the decision making is rather illusory?

Yeah, this is the thing I want from rules light design. But indeed, this is correct. A lot of rules light games are rules light in a wrong way for my liking.

Distance, travel time, pursuers speed and competence in tracking etc. "This" is fictional positioning. Time, method of entry, whether there are several entrances, possibly even the skill and identity of the enemy etc. There usually is. We are not talking about decisions made in vacuum...

What? Of course those things are fictional positioning. And yes, the GM decides them, which was the point. In TB all this is just abstracted in the roll, as is the enemy's methods (and capability?) of overcoming the countermeasures.

I'll quote myself from the previous thread on the topic: It has worked well enough for me.

So I don't have exact numbers, but I certainly have thought about how common NPCs of various levels are, and what do the level actually mean. I wanted to avoid the Faerûn effect, where there are high level NPCs hanging around every corner, and I also wanted to avoid the Warcraft effect of the...

You could. But why you think this is better? Furthermore, it is still the GM who assigns these odds and end results by fiat, so the disclaiming is only partial. Now GM obviously doesn't need to decide everything, and it is helpful to have rules and randomisers. But ultimately it is part of the...

I was thinking about this a while ago, when I read or heard people discussion about what language they think in. And that seemed weird to me. Like sure, I can think in "inner speech" and if I do it is in some language. But that is just when I am thinking about how to express something. Like when...

What the two different approaches in the OP to the alarm type spell exemplify is differing level of abstraction. Torchbearer seems to abstract several elements that in D&D would depend on fictional position. Now what level of abstraction for given matter is desirable is very much a matter of...

Yes. I agree that player shouldn't unilaterally decide not to track things. It is for GM to decide what is and isn't tracked on their campaign. But this is the sort of thing that is best to be clarified on session zero, as people come from different playing cultures and could reasonably have...

You're not making much sense. It is not an "exploit" it is just a convention one might adopt. And no, I absolutely do not think the effort is worth it for couple of unlikely to happen edge cases. Though prison break is good one, and it indeed would make sense to track arrows in a situation where...

What I am talking about is the GM not requiring tracking of ammo as there is no point. It is not a massive task to track it, but as tracking it does not lead to interesting choices it is wasted time and effort.