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Decided in what way? Written down in some way? Included in some boxed text? Statted out as full fledged NPC? Is it not enough to simply imagine that a manor house or castle or similar dwelling would have servants, and that one of the most common types of servants would be a cook? Do we also...

Then I'm not sure why you'd object to a failed roll alerting her. She's involved. No, it doesn't. Success or failure... good outcome or bad outcome... is what depends on the rolls. But beyond that, there are plenty of factors to consider which may make a choice between picking a lock on the...

Sure, but why? It's a dice roll that tells us the cook is there, which is something that you said you're fine with. Prefer, actually.

But wouldn't it be up to the GM to simply make that connection and narrate it accordingly? As I said, the cook's existence isn't contingent on the roll, it's her presence. So what brought her here? The GM can decide that. It's about the outcome, though, isn't it? They failed the roll... so...

The better way to look at it is on a successful roll, things go well, on an unsuccessful roll, things go poorly.

In older editions of D&D, attempting to pick a lock would absolutely involve a random encounter roll. As would searching a room or X amount of time spent moving about a dangerous area like a dungeon. Also, I've always looked at random encounter tables as a list of people/creatures that can be...

I think that skill at lockpicking also includes how fast and how quietly you can pick a lock... these things are an important component of lockpicking precisely to avoid encountering anyone in the midst of it. Earlier in the thread there was a lot of hullabaloo about repurposing terms. When I...

Is the cook a quantum if the GM decides that’s where she is? She’s never actually in the kitchen until the GM tells the player she is. Many of the folks who advocate for heavy prep said that they, at times, still have to come up with material on the fly. So what if the GM decides that, based...

My goal is not to bash on anything. It's to look at what D&D does, and what it has done traditionally, and to see where/how it may change. D&D is not beyond critique. Citing a criticism of the design is not "bashing on" anything. This thread is about discussion of how D&D and its fans may be...

Absolutely! I played in a 2d20 game of Star Trek Adventures for a bit. I'm not a big Trek fan, so I wasn't crazy about the game... but I did like the way it handled initiative. Essentially, it grants initiative to the PC side of the conflict, and then they can select who of their characters...

The comment I responded to wasn't about causation. It was about the lockpicking attempt having "nothing to do with the cook". Here is the comment: I don't see how when picking a lock, being discovered by someone who may be on the other side has "nothing to do" with picking the lock. Of course...

I don't think that @pemerton is using a different definition of fail forward. I think that it can be used in a variety of ways, and you're not really getting it. As the bolded bit above shows. You've been told several times that's not how it works. The complication or the consequence used in...

Because no one is challenging the preference. Please seethe bolded below. This is what’s getting push back. He’s not just stating a preference. It’s a description of a GMing method that he admits to not being familiar with that conflicts with how those familiar with it would describe it. It...

So there are a few ways to look at this. First, have all those factors actually been set already? The weather and the location of people within the location and all that? In some games... even some games of D&D... that very likely may not be the case. Second, even if all those factors have...

Stop acting like you meant “like we do” to mean something I’d never have claimed.

Who says it often doesn't happen? Have you been on many overland expeditions? I haven't. My experience with them, such as it is, comes mostly from fiction. And in fiction, when people travel great distances by foot or horse or wagon, they tend to hunt and forage along the way. No. We're...

No protagonists? Do you just mean characters? So a cook is very likely to be found in a kitchen, right? But the cook will not spend their entire day there. The cook needs to sleep and use the privy and maybe go down to the stables and chat with the farrier. Possibly something else entirely...

Because why not? The characters are traveling. We should assume all sorts of things they do while traveling. Foraging and hunting would be logical things to expect. No, pretending is an acknowledgment of the similarity to the two things, versus timing which is the only difference. I never...

I didn’t say anything about it being bad play. Do you really not see my point?

Yes! You are saying you’d rather spend time on the herb gathering on the off-chance that something interesting happens. I’m saying I’d skip past that to something that I’m certain the players will find interesting! And if it turns out someone would have wanted to try and gather herbs while...