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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8134799" data-attributes="member: 29398">This is where I run aground to some extent: the inferred disallowance of unforeseen consequences or knock-on effects irregardless of the success-failure state of any given action: the GM isn't allowed to weave a behind-the-scenes backstory into things such as to explain what happens within the PCs' awareness.This gets brought up in two ways, here paraphrased:1. All consequences of both success and failure should be known before the player makes a roll.2. Successes must be absolute.I disagree with 1 in terms of it being an inviolate rule.  Sure, often times the immediate consequences of a proposed action's success or failure are fairly obvious.  "I climb the wall so I can scope out the ground behind" has a pretty clear success-fail state: you either climb the wall or you don't.But other times, there's going to be unseen effects no matter what you do; the only difference perhaps being what those unseen effects will consist of.  These are the purview of the GM.  Problem is, in a situation where there is no backstory or setting she can't factor these sort of unforeseen things in (or if she tries it risks being awkward or unwieldy) because she doesn't yet know what they might be.  It also works against any kind of mystery-solving game.  "I talk to the Baroness to see if she knows anything about the missing jewels".  In a simple situation, either she knows something or she doesn't, regardless of whether this is pre-known through prep or determined on the spot by action resolution.  But the advantage of a pre-prepped setting is that if the GM has in her background notes that the Baroness is a spy for a local Thieves' guild, an unforeseen consequence of the PCs speaking to her here (and successfully determining that she legitimately has no knowledge of the missing jewels) is that if she didn't know about the missing jewels before she does now, and can report that to her guild...which alerts the guild that someone's operating freelance in their territory; and consequences of this might rear up as suspicion or distrust the next time the party's Rogue approaches that guild for something. I think this sort of thing is completely within the GM's purview and that the GM shouldn't be constrained from using these type of elements.As for 2, even outright successes ought to be able to lead to headaches later.  For example, a party of thief-y PCs plans a theft and executes it flawlessly - successes all round, not a failure to be seen.  Does this mean there may never be consequences later, particularly in a game world with any kind of reliable divination magics?  I sure hope not... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />And there's a bizarre corollary people sometimes apply to 2 above: successes must be absolute but failures need not be.  Why not go the other way around - failure is absolute but success isn't always - and thus make things a little harder on the players/PCs?</blockquote>

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