Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6673531" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] already replied to this, though. Most of the time the GM won't have thought about whether or not there is a box, or broken furniture, or mould on the ceiling, or whatever it is that the player is asking about, until the player asks.So making a decision does depend on whether or not the player asks.If the content of the decision is shaped by the player asking, how does that undermine the illusion of an objective reality? From the point of view of the PC, the world simply is what it is.You, Saelorn, may have a preference that the GM dice in such situations, rather than choose, but that is a fact about you. My own experience tells me that it doesn't generalise universally. I'm not even sure that it is typical.I don't really see why I, as a GM, would want to maintain neutrality as you define it. In particular, I typically am looking for ways to "empower" the players ie to frame them into challenges that they have (via their PCs) the resources and inclination to meaningfully confront.I also don't agree that letting the PCs find the boxes that the players hope will be present significantly "empowers" the players. That depends upon particular assumptions both about how action resolution works, and how scenes are framed.In a skill challenge-style system, for instance, finding the boxes changes the fiction, and hence the permissible action declarations, but doesn't of itself change the need to achieve N successes before 3 failures. And even if finding the boxes does overcome the challenge at hand, nothing stops the GM framing some new challenge downstream of the box episode.No. For instance, requiring a skill check with no retries is a form of rationing that doesn't invoke metagame resources. This is how Burning Wheel does most of its rationing.The other device that BW uses is GM framing: the consequences of failure have to be clear (either stated by the GM, or implicit in the situation). So once the player makes the check, if it fails there is (i) no retry, and (ii) the consequences of failure are now part of the fiction with which the player (and his/her PC) must deal.An exception to this, in BW, is in combat - where, much like D&D, action economy is used for rationing purposes. Eg declaring a Perception check in order to find a chink in your opponent's armour requires spending an action that might otherwise be spent on something else - so if the check fails, you are worse off because there is no chink and you spent an action simply to confirm the status quo.</blockquote>

Verification