Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8135605" data-attributes="member: 42582">They are not "plot hooks". There's no plot. They don't hook anyone onto anything.In the shared fiction, there is the master. That's it. In the real world, no one knows who the master is, what his motivations are, why Rufus serves him, why he wants wine.This is not a superficial difference from H3 Pyramids of Shadow. It's a fundamental one.Who denies that? We're talking about who makes the decision, at what point during play, under what constraints, following what principles? The answers to those questions tell us whether or not the players have agency.In H3 Pyramid of Shadows, the GM/module author has decided who the NPCs are, what their motivations are, what actions they will take in relation to the PCs and even (as per my quote upthread what the PCs will do.In the example of play I posted, I the player decided that Rufus was a salient NPC. The GM was then obliged to bring Rufus onto the stage because I succeeded on a Circles check. Consistent with the established backstory (ie that Rufus was Thurgon's ineffectual older brother still living in Auxol as "puppet" count), Rufus referred to "the master". Rufus's interactions then followed the outcomes of action resolution: Aramina shamed him (successful Ugly Truth, failed Steel); Thurgon failed to push him from shame to action (failed Command check to negate the Hestitation resulting from the failed Steel check); Aramina failed to get any concession of coins from him (failed Command check to have him hand over some coins).Some of what happened was authored by me (the player), some by the GM. None of it was authored in advance; it was determined via play.RPG action resolution mechanics are not mere mathematical constructs. They are processes for determining the content of a shared fiction.I, playing Thurgon's sidekick Aramina, declare a Great Masters-wise check: Isn't the tower of Evard the black somewhere around here? (I may have been reading Heroes of Shadow (I think it is), a 4e supplement that discusses Evard, around that time.) The GM set the difficulty in accordance with the rules for setting the difficulty of a Wises check. I succeeded, and so Aramina does indeed have a correct recollection of the matter.You have also mis-stated the Traveller mechanic. Here it is, from Classic Traveller Book 1 (1977):The referee should set the throw required to obtain any item specified by the players (for ex-ample, the name of an official willing to issue li-censes without hassle = 5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price = 9+). DMs based on streetwise should be allowed at +1 per level. No expertise DM = −5.The referee doesn't first decide whether or not success is even possible. The player specifies the item, the referee sets the throw. If the throw succeeds the player finds the item.Upthread you criticised dogma. Now you're trotting it out. You shift between "perspective" (a type of mental state, I guess), "stance" (a type of orientation in action) and "power" (a type of capacity) as if they're synonyms, and assert that it is "unimmersive" for players to have an impact on the fiction that is something beyond their character doing XYZ here and now.If that were true, why is immersion not ruined by the players "to hit" roll determining what the Orc does or doesn't do with it's shield?An attack by a demon is not a "plot hook". What's the plot? What's the hook.I mean, it's your prerogative to use "plot hook" as a synonym for establishing an element of the shared fiction to which the players might respond, but that's not the standard use, that's not how it's used in modules like H3, nor when posters on these boards say players have a duty to follow GM plot hooks.</blockquote>

Verification