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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8137051" data-attributes="member: 85870">This exchange speaks to some of the thoughts I've had while reading through this thread, namely that much of what we perceive as "player agency" is directly tied to the GM's willingness + ability to correctly "frame the fiction" and offer clear information around what's at stake with any given test of skill/ability.It's interesting to me that the opposition to "success with complication" is described as denying some inherent measure of player expectation --- "As defined by the rules, my dice roll plus modifiers was high enough to succeeded at my action declaration, and should therefore succeed."For RPG play, the nature of success is ALWAYS constrained/framed by the fictional state in which the action is attempted. From where I sit, it seems a bit . . . odd, I guess, to complain about a rule system that specifically indicates that complications will be introduced. A GM is given full ability to introduce complications ad hoc, at any time . . . but having it hard-coded in the rules is somehow badwrong?I'd guess some of that stems from the super-old-school dungeon-crawler mindset, where as a player one of the primary goals of play is to be a "smart" player and completely eliminate any and all possible means of failure before attempting anything risky. *Edit --- this isn't necessarily limited to old school dungeon-crawling; in my experience with GURPS, it can also happen when system lethality is very high and the threat of character death is ever-present.For example, in some groups I've played with, [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] 's example of more guards stepping from the shadows with drawn swords would be decried as a "foul", because the GM should have allowed the players/PCs to make an attempt at noticing those guards first. It's a specific type of group social contract, where the GM is only ever allowed to introduce risk in a fashion such that the players have some ability to mitigate it. If you're coming from that narrow view of play, I could see how introducing complications feels like a GM "cheat code", because old-school dungeon crawling is all about "smart" play allowing the player to eliminate risks.Apocalypse World / Blades in the Dark and their respective offspring very much work against the idea that a key goal of play is to eliminate risks.</blockquote>

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