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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8146847" data-attributes="member: 82106">Because if you don't ever stake anything, then the game will grind to a halt! If the characters in [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER]'s Traveller campaign simply want to be ordinary boring paper pushing civilians someplace, then sure, they can just go get 9-5 jobs and never ever stake anything on anything. That would be 'realistic' I guess, in some way, but utterly pointless. Remember the joke about "Paper & Pencils" back in the 1e DMG? Why was it funny? Obviously because nobody would ever play such a game!This is because you approach the subject from the perspective of a classic DM. In your mental paradigm NOTHING is ever locked in. If I take some fantastic treasure from the dungeon, you'd feel perfectly willing to have somebody else steal it from me. Heck, maybe even without I ever know such a move is coming or have a chance to prepare! Whereas Pemerton would not do that. He would instead frame a situation where the player has a chance to decide to put up those stakes (maybe by taking on the interests of the infamous thief's guild that is known for stealing heavily guarded treasures). Now, if instead the PC put up NO STAKES and just got this fantastic treasure in the first place (IE no check took place, nothing was risked) then Pemerton might well simply take the thing away again. I would say THAT would be a form of framing a situation where the PC could THEN take risks (IE is it worth taking on these villains to get the thing back). But remember, in this case the treasure was basically dropped in the PC's lap, and the player NEVER EXPRESSED ANY INTEREST IN HAVING IT. So why would they care? The player certainly cannot complain that anything here is a 'railroad'.It is the same with Lady Askol. She appears to have accepted the lie without anyone declaring an intent or making a check. So, now the PC "has the treasure" but "never paid for it" and if the GM suddenly decrees that she was snowing him down the road, he's got nothing to complain about. There IS no finality, its just an ongoing framed piece of the fictional state. The player can risk his certainty that the lie was believed later on, and THEN the results of tossing the dice will decide this matter, but the form of such a risk taking has yet to be decided, maybe never will be decided in theory.</blockquote>

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