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Of course it does, and in those instances you do the best you can and hope it's enough. But when you can see something coming a mile away, such as the house you've placed the McGuffin in, why not prep it fully ahead of time and thus make it easier to run in the moment?

The PCs' location is set by the players. The NPCs' location is set by the GM's notes. If they happen to intersect somewhere then there's an encounter no matter what the dice say. If there's no free-roving NPCs or monsters then the GM wouldn't be using random encounter tables for that area.

For me, the process is the interesting part only when it's likely by design to produce different end-result outcomes (and-or for widely different reasons) when looked at in hindsight; because only then can one say "this process makes intuitive sense and produces intuitive results while this...

Why did I happen to run into my friend at the grocery store yesterday? Sheer random chance. Same principle applies here. For most parts of the world, I agree. There's some places (like Australia in the real world!) where everything does want to kill you, however, and there 1e-level odds of...

It wasn't? You sure about that? And had the ground been thusly described then one would think there wouldn't have been an ambush set-up there to begin with. Maybe the Orcs just charge across the open ground and remove all possibility of anyone being surprised. Maybe the Orcs have a shaman...

Extreme-Chaotic Nature Cleric + grass seed + Plant Growth = not so unusual as all that. :) There's numerous dungeons I've had characters in that have inexplicable patches of now-long-dead grass and other plants in them for just this reason. And no, none of those Nature Clerics were mine. :)

Seems a reasonable enough action declaration in any game. The difference in a more traditional game being that it's the DM who determines (by one means or another) whether any of Jonno's fishing buddies happen to be there, and then if he does find any the DM determines - again by one means or...

That would probably be dependent on how important the house is likely to be or become in play. In a case like this where the McGuffin is in the house thus in theory making it ironclad guaranteed the PCs will show up there at some point, knowing the likely* movements and locations of the...

Different player groups and types, perhaps. I've seen (and played in) adventuring parties that hared off into the field with far less info to go on than that. Doesn't mean they all succeeded in what they were trying to do, of course, but some players are simply averse to info-gathering for...

It's not a question of how far in advance it has to be made up, it's a question of what's made up remaining the same regardless of what the players roll and-or how they interact with it. If you place a cook in the kitchen between 2 am and 6 am then there's a cook in the kitchen at that time no...

I've been assuming the presence of at least some lock-picking skill beyond the typical norm on the part of the person trying to get inside, as only someone with such skill would even think of lock-picking as the fastest means of getting inside. Most normal people faced with that situation would...

Not for the first time, I find myself wishing the "like" options included a facepalm emoji... :)

The bolded is where the mistake is made, if someone's doing it like that. Ideally, in a granular resolution system, the degree of consequence to a failure would ideally be more or less in keeping with the degree of importance of the sub-task. And sure, sometimes the most logical consequence of...

I once had someone try using loaded dice in my game as a joke; it was blatantly obvious after a couple of rolls that those dice were sketchy, and the session then ground to a halt for a while because of course we all had to try them out. :) Indeed. Thanks for the explanation. I've been...

"Such a paucity of information" just means the players, in character, have to do a little work and get their fictional hands dirty searching the house. And yes, resolving this might take some time, both in the fiction and at the table. Pretty boring if you already know exactly where it is...

I like it (pardon the pun). What it saves are hundreds of posts sayng nothing but "I agree" or "Hear, hear!".

The crazy thing here is that I'm arguing a position that I don't personally hold. If it's me, that ruby's location is nailed down before the PCs get near the place. Map-and-key all the way. What I'm trying to expose for the poor design it is are rules that allow a task-plus-intent declaration...

In case it's not already clear, when it comes to games I'm not big on the whole "social contract" thing. If the game rules don't prohibit me from doing something - particularly in an RPG, a game type where the rules are in theory prohibitive rather than permissive - then it's within my purview...

Ah. I'd been assuming there was a longer time window between door attempt and deaths, in part due to my reading the original example as the house only just having caught fire.

Isn't that exactly what I'm doing (which you're calling me to task for) when I build on the known fiction "The Desert Rose ruby is somewhere in this house" by attempting to fine-tune its location with my action declaration "I pick open the safe to find the Desert Rose we're here for"? I'm...