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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 7571291" data-attributes="member: 463">While I don't agree, I appreciate your perspective!I do agree there is a strong element of being on the same page in the 'Shared Imaginative Space'. Having some similar cultural grounding certainly helps. Eg for Primeval Thule it helps to have some familiarity with swords & sorcery tropes. OTOH part of play is exploring the world-fiction and finding out how the fictional world works. That's one reason a GM needs to be ready to justify his/her decisions.I agree that Free Kriegsspiel used for military training has an issue with referee cultural biases, so eg if the Royal Navy are running a Free Kriegsspiel in 1912 they're not going to have the RN battlecruisers explode and sink under German fire the way that happened at Jutland (and again in WW2 when Tirpitz sank The Hood). But this is much less of an issue with a fictional universe than a serious attempt to emulate the real one. Everyone accepts that the SIS is not the real world and that it operates under different laws. It only requires that the players trust the GM, and that the GM adjudication be reasonable and reasonably consistent. If the GM is running Dragonlance then the GM should be aiming to emulate high fantasy norms, but whether an NPC decides to kill a foe certainly can be decided by dice roll just as much as whether the 9th Hussars will stand against the Old Guard's advance. I generally find that if I play an NPC for a long time their internal motivations are clear, I 'feel' the NPC just as much as if they were a PC, and no roll needed. Rolls are more for morale checks for the hobgoblins I've been playing for three combat rounds, not the 20th level PC's Paladin wife I've been playing for three years.</blockquote>

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