Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7758924" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me, this drives home the bigger issue of the context of framing in the example. What I mean is that the drow isn't really anywhere, so that (except in the tightest version of classic dungeoncrawling, in which the precise location of everything on all the dungeon squares is known at all time) the issue of where the PCs are, in relation to what they can see in the room, in relation to where the drow is and what s/he can see of them, is all up to the GM's narration.So when is it fair for a GM to say (DW &quot;hard move&quot; style) &quot;Suckers, what's your AC?&quot; and when is it fair for a GM to say (DW &quot;soft move&quot; style) &quot;You see a many-columned room with pooling shadows&quot; and follow up with &quot;What do you do?&quot;For clarity's sake, I don't think there's any single answer to that question probably even for a single table, given how varied the context, momentum, mood, etc of play can get; let alone a single answer that would work for all DW GMs or all 5e GMs.At the risk of being controversial, I feel that some approaches to using a WIS/Perception check as a type of &quot;save vs ambush&quot; and some approaches to using a WIS/Perception check as a type of &quot;Am I going to tell you about the missing gauntlets or not?&quot; can seem like the GM not wanting to take responsibility for framing and its consequences. I say &quot;some cases&quot; because I think that a pretty classic dungeoncrawl might be a different case, with it's highly procedural play in a maze that gets re-run many times (a bit video-gamey, that!) and with players having player-side options to try and manage those throws (recruit a ranger or an elf; listen at doors; etc) while GMs are governed by conventions about not having all the &quot;placed&quot; monsters just gang up on and slaughter the PCs.But in games that depart even a modest amount from that paradigm, I'm less sure about what this random determination of content (I mean, sure, in the GM's imagination the gauntlets are missing even if s/he never tells the players, but that's unilateral content that's not part of actual play) and random determination of stakes (who gets the drop - us or the drow?) is for.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7758924, member: 42582"] To me, this drives home the bigger issue of the context of framing in the example. What I mean is that the drow isn't [I]really[/I] anywhere, so that (except in the tightest version of classic dungeoncrawling, in which the precise location of everything on all the dungeon squares is known at all time) the issue of where the PCs are, in relation to what they can see in the room, in relation to where the drow is and what s/he can see of them, is all up to the GM's narration. So when is it fair for a GM to say (DW "hard move" style) "Suckers, what's your AC?" and when is it fair for a GM to say (DW "soft move" style) "You see a many-columned room with pooling shadows" and follow up with "What do you do?" For clarity's sake, I don't think there's any single answer to that question probably even for a single table, given how varied the context, momentum, mood, etc of play can get; let alone a single answer that would work for all DW GMs or all 5e GMs. At the risk of being controversial, I feel that some approaches to using a WIS/Perception check as a type of "save vs ambush" and some approaches to using a WIS/Perception check as a type of "Am I going to tell you about the missing gauntlets or not?" can seem like the GM not wanting to take responsibility for framing and its consequences. I say "some cases" because I think that a pretty classic dungeoncrawl might be a different case, with it's highly procedural play in a maze that gets re-run many times (a bit video-gamey, that!) and with players having player-side options to try and manage those throws (recruit a ranger or an elf; listen at doors; etc) while GMs are governed by conventions about not having all the "placed" monsters just gang up on and slaughter the PCs. But in games that depart even a modest amount from that paradigm, I'm less sure about what this random determination of content (I mean, sure, in the GM's imagination the gauntlets are missing even if s/he never tells the players, but that's unilateral content that's not part of actual play) and random determination of stakes (who gets the drop - us or the drow?) is for. [/QUOTE]

Verification