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Sick burn, Max. I’m not gonna lie… that stings. This is my point. @AlViking said that a Burglary skill wouldn’t work for him because it bundles too many skills together, and that such design was more “about the story rather than the adventure” (whatever the hell that means) and he would...

Well, no. Players don’t have the ability to change the fiction beyond what their characters may be able to do to change things in their world. This isn't accurate at all. I ran a Stonetop campaign for two years. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by the “in character actions aren’t connecting...

Sure, but there isn't even a Lock Picking skill... it's a subset of Tool Proficiency with Thieves Tools. Was he good at disarming traps? Or did you just ignore that? That's fine. But you asked "Why should the game rules tell us why or how we fail a climb check?" so I explained why, per...

Interestingly, many of the skills in 5e do exactly what you're describing in regard to a "burglary skill". I mean, Move Silently and Hide in Shadows used to be separate skills... now they're all covered by Stealth. Apparently, so would picking a lock quietly... Listen and Spot used to be...

A fool of myself? Okay, sparky. I don't think so. What's happening is that you are all criticizing the method by attacking the flawed example. If you are not attacking the valid example... the one you call "fixed"... then you're acknowledging that the method works perfectly fine. Of course...

But the same can happen in trad games. Godzilla pops out of a closet! Therefore, trad gaming is not verisimilitudinous! Therefore, it cannot work for you.

Uncaged: Faces of Sigil Just a great example of how to provide an entire campaign worth of material using nothing more than NPCs. This book has a bunch of rich NPCs, with different connections to one another, which can draw PCs into their situations. It also provides relationship maps and...

By the sound made by the lockpicking. It is not necessarily unlikely that a cook could hear such an attempt. We’ve already suggested many ways that it could in fact be likely. As a GM, you can choose to incorporate likely things or unlikely things. Choosing unlikely things that may seem...

See, then the problem with this is that I consider my games of Stonetop and Spire and Blades in the Dark to be just as verisimilitudinous as the trad games I play, if not more so... and I don't really care about simulation at all. I mean, as a player, if my character breaks into a rich home...

Do I see how it's different? Yes. I'm not sure if this helps reveal anything, and I think it continues to kind of misconstrue things. Specifically, I find "on a failure the cook is alerted, and a success they are not present" to be odd. It's more along the lines of "on a failure the cook is...

I have no idea what this has to do with anything. The original example was… as has been pointed out many times… flawed. The consequence should follow logically from what’s been established. A kitchen implies a cook. The failed roll means the cook has been alerted to the lock picking. A...

All the comments I keep seeing are about the cook’s presence in the kitchen. That she’s “be there either way” and the like. Her existence is implied by the kitchen, no? No, I’m explaining why I consider this kind of play to be very GM-driven, and why I expect @pemerton does as well. That...

Bad things happening more often to the unskilled?!?! What kind of insanity is that?!?! Sure… because attracting attention is a risk of picking a lock. What if they were applying a related skill? Something like Wilderness or Survival? Unless of course the attempt to lock pick attracts...

See I would read @pemerton post as either there or not there. Which seems different from both there and not there.

Okay, so the roll isn’t what triggers the encounter, but rather the PCs being in the area triggers it? But then how can you claim that the NPCs are still in the same location whether the roll says encounter or no encounter? If they were, and the trigger is the PCs also being there… then how...

Isn’t the wandering monster roll only made once they enter the area? Or once they linger too long or spend time searching an area? But then why would you make a roll? Well, this is seemingly a different process from what @Maxperson said. I am not worried about fixed encounters. I am only...

Well, I don’t mean in regard to a story. And while yes there are many games that focus on premise and character goals and the like, I just mean that anything we do in play… and I mean any game for anyone… barring some rare cases or one offs… involves the characters and the world interacting...

Honestly… I think maybe the core bit of disagreement is that I don’t think the world should be independent.

Well, it depends. If I’m actually playing a PbtA game like Stonetop… one I’ve recently played a long campaign of… then no, I wouldn’t have a map and key style inventory of who’s exactly where at what times. Instead i’d have a general idea of the kinds of people or creatures that might be...