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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8147428" data-attributes="member: 82106">Remember 'Wrath of Khan'? "Two dimensional thinking, captain!" It is a 'mistake' in classic Gygaxian play to simply let the PCs bypass a 'locked door' (any obstacle). This smacks of going soft on them and letting play progress past some obstacle without testing the players ability against it. In this form of play such a thing is akin to the 'softballing' you describe earlier, and undermines the whole point of that mode of play. Later, when play progressed into 'story telling' the process had to evolve. Because there were no longer necessarily specific obstacles on the map to be overcome, instead a structure of "the obvious course of the fiction" had to be imagined. So a sort of mythology grew out of the original GM referee role, that the GM could be a 'fair arbiter' of ANYTHING and that there was some definitive set of possibilities that could be discerned by the perspicacious GM that were "the logical possibilities." These became substitutes for the walls and doors and branches of corridor in the original model. Thus the ethos is that [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] has concluded that you have 'bypassed an obstacle' which he has determined MUST exist within the fiction, and thus you have committed an error of GMing. The logic of narrative play is not being applied, at least not consistently. It takes play and a bit of practice and study for people steeped in 'classic' and 'story teller' modes to 'get' the narrative fiction-driven approach. Frankly, there are no real 'right answers' in terms of what MUST be chosen as obstacles in this mode of play. That choice is made simply on aesthetic grounds, and for the sake of interest in exploring particular possibilities. This is not 'skilled play' which demands each challenge be met, nor DM-directed story telling play which demands that a set of narrative options developed exclusively by the GM for her own reasons be presented and treated as obstacles. Playing would dissolve these mismatches of conceptual framework, although I'm guessing that is unlikely to ever happen. More is the pity.And this is of course the point of very highest salience. The game was played in accordance to its principles and all participants explicitly got to have a say in what took place (or in this case didn't take place). There cannot be a question of 'force' or 'illusionism', nor of 'railroading' or 'fudging' since none of these things happened. Everyone agreed on what would (not) follow and at least one player had a chance to weigh in on it and make a check if they'd wished. Since "avoiding an obstacle" is not some sort of 'softballing' or failure of GMing in this type of game, necessarily, there's no abandonment of anyone's role at the table.What is germane here is that THIS IS ALL A COHERENT SET OF TECHNIQUES. Despite repeated attempts to debunk it, nobody is going to be able to do so. Its all been proven out over many years of play! I don't understand why every single discussion we have on this topic has to be an endless repetition of futile attempts to deny what is factually so. That narrative play is a functioning and comprehensive set of techniques (generally speaking, admittedly there isn't one single universal approach that exists in all games) cannot be refuted at this point. Why do posters continue to try to do that, instead of moving on to the central topic and sticking to that. There is NO need to have these discussions!</blockquote>

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