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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5608458" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think the answer to this is yes.In the sort of playstyle LostSoul is talking about, I think the big issue is communication - that is, overcoming the information asymmetry that Janx referred to upthread. It's not enough that the GM know what is plausible, but a serious effort has to be made to communicate that to the players.One way that I *think* LostSoul does this is to very expressly permit metagaming, so that information about the setting and its parameters is steadily built up among the player body out of the ongoing trials and errors of a variety of PCs. I think that at least some classic "Gygaxian" play worked like this - ie the second time you went into the Tomb of Horrors you didn't make the same mistakes as the first time, even though there's no way ingame that your new PC could have that information!I'm a DM, and I've explained how I think the PCs should respond to, and hence overcome, the GM's "real diplomat" complication!My personal feeling is not so much that the discussion shows an express anti-player bias, but that it shows a pro-gritty, anti-gonzo bias, which in the end tends to work against the PCs because they have the most to gain from gonzo (being the protagonists!) whereas gritty costs the GM nothing (s/he always has more NPCs, copper pieces and gruel where those other ones came from).In a gritty game, bribing guards is hard. In a gonzo game, it's all about convincing them the world will come to an end - or at least the king - unless they let the PCs through RIGHT NOW! Personally, I prefer gonzo - it's why I play fantasy RPGs rather than something else. (And for clarity - "gonzo" here doesn't have to mean "wacky" or "light-hearted" - there can be gonzo melodrama and pathos - see LotR, the X-Men, John Boorman's Excalibur, etc.)</blockquote>

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