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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7800731" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>Okay, I've done a bit of organizing thinking on this, and here's the rub: If you're going to use goal and approach as a method, you must present a game that offers handles to the players to propose goals and approaches. In short, yes, it's part and parcel of the method that you must change how you present situations. If you're only going to call for rolls for things that are uncertain and have a risk of failure, then it's incumbent on the DM to present uncertain situations with consequences of failure. This doesn't work if you just have hallways that may or may not be trapped, as what happens is that players are now asked to do repetitive goal and approach declarations and this gets old fast. It's easier handled in an ask-for-roll approach as the entire exercise in the fiction is abstracted and pushed off onto the mechanics to get past this repetitive play and move to the bits with heft.</p><p></p><p>Goal and approach require that the DM change the presentation of the game. You have to present challenges that prompt the players into action. This is different, as most games just have the DM present the description of the room and have other information gated behind the obligatory skill checks. You either gain the information or you do not, and this affects the actions your take and if the things you did not notice affect you and now call for new checks or if you engage what you have noticed via other checks. Goal and approach, though, doesn't work at all with this presentation -- you must provide a handle on the action for the players. As such, it requires a form of framing more akin to more narrative-style games where you present a dynamic situation with a clear call to action and then say, "what do you do?"</p><p></p><p>Yes, this method misses some of the things that the ask-for-rolls does -- they are completely different styles of play. What's missed, though, are the things that no longer make sense in terms of goal and approach play. I don't miss that my players ask for rolls, fail, and give me the opportunity to create new fiction to describe their failures because my method does this well, just in a different context. My method creates consequence based on what the players express rather then what I, as DM, think. I find this preferable. I have to do a bit more work on the front end -- I have to provide a clear call to action in my scene framing and this isn't trivial -- but I offload a lot of work on the backend as I'm now just reacting to the players and following their lead through the scene. This is very different from the much more DM mediated experience of asking-for-rolls and using rolls to gate information and provide tension. Both are very valid ways to play. Neither can recreate the experiences of the other. That's actually a big selling point for me -- most of my pain points with D&D came from the heavy DM load and I find goal and approach lightens that considerably and presents play that I enjoy very much. YMMV, and that's part of the coolness of this hobby.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7800731, member: 16814"] Okay, I've done a bit of organizing thinking on this, and here's the rub: If you're going to use goal and approach as a method, you must present a game that offers handles to the players to propose goals and approaches. In short, yes, it's part and parcel of the method that you must change how you present situations. If you're only going to call for rolls for things that are uncertain and have a risk of failure, then it's incumbent on the DM to present uncertain situations with consequences of failure. This doesn't work if you just have hallways that may or may not be trapped, as what happens is that players are now asked to do repetitive goal and approach declarations and this gets old fast. It's easier handled in an ask-for-roll approach as the entire exercise in the fiction is abstracted and pushed off onto the mechanics to get past this repetitive play and move to the bits with heft. Goal and approach require that the DM change the presentation of the game. You have to present challenges that prompt the players into action. This is different, as most games just have the DM present the description of the room and have other information gated behind the obligatory skill checks. You either gain the information or you do not, and this affects the actions your take and if the things you did not notice affect you and now call for new checks or if you engage what you have noticed via other checks. Goal and approach, though, doesn't work at all with this presentation -- you must provide a handle on the action for the players. As such, it requires a form of framing more akin to more narrative-style games where you present a dynamic situation with a clear call to action and then say, "what do you do?" Yes, this method misses some of the things that the ask-for-rolls does -- they are completely different styles of play. What's missed, though, are the things that no longer make sense in terms of goal and approach play. I don't miss that my players ask for rolls, fail, and give me the opportunity to create new fiction to describe their failures because my method does this well, just in a different context. My method creates consequence based on what the players express rather then what I, as DM, think. I find this preferable. I have to do a bit more work on the front end -- I have to provide a clear call to action in my scene framing and this isn't trivial -- but I offload a lot of work on the backend as I'm now just reacting to the players and following their lead through the scene. This is very different from the much more DM mediated experience of asking-for-rolls and using rolls to gate information and provide tension. Both are very valid ways to play. Neither can recreate the experiences of the other. That's actually a big selling point for me -- most of my pain points with D&D came from the heavy DM load and I find goal and approach lightens that considerably and presents play that I enjoy very much. YMMV, and that's part of the coolness of this hobby. [/QUOTE]
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