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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 2797635" data-attributes="member: 18253">Seems like there are two issues here. One is a matter of principle: is it ever right to have a no-win situation? There will be some who say 'no' and if you have them as players, it could cause problems. It's a matter of taste; nothing wrong with it either way but StupidSmurf seems to feel strongly about it  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> But even if you and your players like no-wins in principle, they still can be difficult to do right in practice. Fundamentally, the ref is all powerful and can always make anything a no-win. The challenge is to construct a no-win situation that felt right to the players. That is a lot harder.I've never pulled one off that was mid-game or end-game. Partly because like StupidSmurf, I like to leave some way out for the very clever players and will accept clever solutions that I hadn't thought of ahead of time. But the real reason I don't use true no-wins is that by forcing myself to make sure there is at least one solution to a problem I don't fall into the sloppy refereeing trap of throwing too much at the players. Making sure there is a possible win helps me tune my scenarios.Only thing that comes close for me is that I often start the campaign with a situation that the players have little real chance of changing, usually because they are low level or not plugged into things yet. But even then, if they were clever enough, they could extract a win.</blockquote>

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