Search results

Indeed, it doesn't, and in the extremely unlikely event that two characters try picking different locks at the exact same time each with the same intent (to find the Desert Rose) then some sort of one-off resolution would have to be invoked to determine which of them in fact found it. I...

All this tells me is that we have different ideas of what can be fun in the game. And don't get me wrong - it doesn't have to become an endless cycle and IME never does. Eventually, one or both of the feuding characters either leaves that party or perma-dies, and the rivalry ends. That said...

To me, that's completely counterintuitive.

One could argue that it's the GM's job to set the stage and the players' job to make things happen, to which the GM as the "stage" then responds.

Given how I've had some systems described to me, his leaps are perfectly logical. If a game is based around resolving intent rather than task, declaring "I pick the safe open in order to steal the Desert Rose ruby" is, on success, going to put that ruby in the safe to be stolen unless...

The problem with asking permission is that a) it gives people far too much opportunity to deny said permission and b) ruins the surprise of whatever you're cooking up. Not me. I'm in the camp of do it till something makes you stop. And depending on the action in question, why wouldn't it be...

In a situation like that I might try a different approach such as booting the door in.

No, however my means of gaining entry to my house are - for the time being - no longer going to involve the front door. I might try getting in through the garage, or an open window, or go to the neighbour's and ask for my emergency key I left with them years ago. That the house is on fire...

Sure. Your milk example is a stripped-down version of the "butterfly effect" where one minor thing leads to another until something major happens. "The lock doesn't open and that's it" isn't the only possible consequence but by itself it should be a possible consequence, where nothing else...

I'd like to think we're playing people who could be real in a world that could be real given the parameters under which the setting was designed. In other words, I'm playing a real Elf in that Elf's real world. With the prevalence of healing in most settings the terrible scars and permanent...

Which could be reflective of their characters' feelings - some want to keep trying, others want to give up. Eventually it might take those who want to give up actually walking away (in the fiction) and leaving the others to it. This is one of those instances, though, where my go-to response is...

I expressly don't look at it from the perspective of the story, because for these purposes I don't care about the story. Instead,I look at it from the perspective of the characters in the fiction (and by extension, the players at the table) and whether or not they are making progress toward...

For me, if stalling out would sometimes happen were these characters real people then stalling out happening sometimes in the fiction is perfectly OK. I'm not that bothered by fail sideways or fail backward, i.e. the task is still failed and something tangential happens as well be it due to the...

They don't? How dare they market these games without including the friends they promised in the advertising! :)

To a point. The placement of oceans, islands, volcanoes, rivers, and other geography doesn't give a flip about the rule-set you're using; nor does the astronomy or calendar or weather. It's only when you get into populating that world with species and cultures etc. and then tacking on a...

I guess I'd better repeat: that riddle-door situation only happened once. Most of the time we solve puzzles pretty fast (sometimes disappointingly fast for the DM!). :) When I'm the DM I'll put puzzles in, for sure, but they're usually either a) hard-to-solve mazes involving teleporters or b)...

The agency to play my character in the way I want to play it is the only type of player agency that matters. Without that, no other types of player agency (if indeed there are any, I'm not sure on that) can functionally occur. It depends, also, on how attached one is to playing the character...

Depends. If one approaches the whole game as more or less a puzzle of exploration, trial and error, and discovery (in both the immediate and long term), then it fits right in. The situation I have in mind is that the other PCs would be waiting, as instructed by the scout, for the scout to...

I thought there'd be several, but no luck.

I'm playing a character - or maybe more than one, depending on situation - and that's it. That character is, I hope, an individual free-thinking inhabitant of its setting who maybe does or maybe doesn't consider itself bound by the internal laws of that setting or elements within it (e.g...