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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 7557157">I am not going to participate in this thread like I told you in the Original, but I will respond here since you quoted me and started a thread with it. I think we just have a fundamental disagreement about what an RPG is trying to do and how much it can feel like a real world experience. Obviously the GM isn't a going to run a simulation of reality, but a GM can emulate the physics of reality, genre, etc. Different GMs will be using different logic and be emulating different concepts. But there is nothing in the GM fielding players going to a tea house looking for people that needs to be different than me going to a tea house looking for people in real life (or different from characters in a movie going to a tea house looking for people). You are insisting on the primacy of the GM weighing the suggestion. The GM isn't under an obligation to do so. A GM might simply ask him or herself "what is reasonably at the teahouse". It doesn't have to connect to the player's suggested course of action. It can, but it doesn't have to. My issue is you are making a very binary, yes or no, proposition. And you are failing to capture the full nuance and immersion of this style of play, while reducing it to the pejorative label "Mother may I". And my point wasn't about reality simulation. It was just that the tea house example isn't any more mother may I, than a person going to a teahouse and not finding what they are looking for is mother may I. A good GM is trying to create a world that feels authentic and real, or that feels like it sufficiently emulates the genre that he setting is set in. You are focusing on why the players want to go to the teahouse, but another way to describe what is going on is "Players go to the teahouse and the GM decides what is there". That isn't like a game of mother may I. Especially if the GM populates the teahouse with all kinds of possibilities (which often happens). Framing it as 'request, permission and decision' just doesn't reflect what this style is about. Again, you make good arguments, but nothing you say at all matches what I see at the table. Not really. The GM just decides what is at the Tea House. He isn't necessarily weighing what the players suggest at all. The players are not really suggesting anything either. That is just their reason for going to the tea house. Just like in real life. When I go to the store because I am hoping to run into my friend Marco, doesn't mean I won't bump into something equally engaging that I wasn't expecting, or bump into Marco's wife instead and hear news that he is in the hospital. I think you are assuming I am there to try to meet dramatic expectations that the players have in their minds, and that anytime they suggest something, that is what I am considering. But I am not. I don't shy away from drama. I just don't look to the players for the dramatic suggestions in that way. Note: not going to respond any further to this one.EDIT: Also just want to note, while a game world isn't physical like the real world, part of world building is developing the geography, the institutions, etc. So there is still a sense of movement through physical space and a sense of people being connected to various things. In the tea house example one of the first things I am going to consider when I decide what is in the teahouse is what groups and organizations are active nearby. That will give me an idea of who is likely to be present. It might not be someone from Bone Breaker sect like the players want, but there is a reasonable chance someone useful will be there. Again though, the guiding factor is going to be who is in the region. Sometimes I will consider dramatic reasons as well. But I am more sparing with those.</blockquote>

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