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<blockquote data-quote="Mad_Jack" data-source="post: 8825181" data-attributes="member: 6750306">&quot;Well, unfortunately, the party just killed the only guy who had the answer to that question...&quot;&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Honestly, though, I've never really had any of my various players over the years seriously take issue with why some NPC could do something they couldn't... They're generally satisfied with &quot;Well, I didn't bother to make up reasons beyond the fact it seemed cool.&quot; A lot of them have been folks who've run their own games, sometimes more than I have, and they're well aware that sometimes it's more fun if you don't know how the magician did the trick and willing to just run with &quot;A wizard did it.&quot; or &quot;Well if my character was a lich who'd spent 100 years standing on their head in a monastery in Limbo, I could do that too, but I'd rather be out adventuring&quot;.If and when the issue does come up and someone requires a more concrete answer, I give them an answer entirely dependent on what the thing in question is in that one specific instance. It could be a spell that the party's not aware of. It could be a magic item. Maybe the person or monster had an innate ability. And maybe the party just doesn't have an answer to the question at this particular time, and if they decide to look into it they might discover it could take years of research to learn how to do it themselves. One time years ago the party's necromancer wizard became obsessed with how one of the bad guys was able to command so many undead, and I decided her ongoing research over her next couple character levels attracted the notice of the demonic entity that the bad guy had sold his soul to - which ended up with me retconning my overarching plotline to make that entity the one behind a bunch of previously unrelated stuff that had happened.Obviously, I'm firmly in the camp of not necessarily needing to have a pre-established according-to-rules mechanical justification for everything that narratively happens in the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mad_Jack, post: 8825181, member: 6750306"] "Well, unfortunately, the party just killed the only guy who had the answer to that question..." :p Honestly, though, I've never really had any of my various players over the years seriously take issue with why some NPC could do something they couldn't... They're generally satisfied with "Well, I didn't bother to make up reasons beyond the fact it seemed cool." A lot of them have been folks who've run their own games, sometimes more than I have, and they're well aware that sometimes it's more fun if you don't know how the magician did the trick and willing to just run with "A wizard did it." or "Well if my character was a lich who'd spent 100 years standing on their head in a monastery in Limbo, I could do that too, but I'd rather be out adventuring". If and when the issue does come up and someone requires a more concrete answer, I give them an answer entirely dependent on what the thing in question is in that one specific instance. It could be a spell that the party's not aware of. It could be a magic item. Maybe the person or monster had an innate ability. And maybe the party just doesn't have an answer to the question at this particular time, and if they decide to look into it they might discover it could take years of research to learn how to do it themselves. One time years ago the party's necromancer wizard became obsessed with how one of the bad guys was able to command so many undead, and I decided her ongoing research over her next couple character levels attracted the notice of the demonic entity that the bad guy had sold his soul to - which ended up with me retconning my overarching plotline to make that entity the one behind a bunch of previously unrelated stuff that had happened. Obviously, I'm firmly in the camp of not necessarily needing to have a pre-established according-to-rules mechanical justification for everything that narratively happens in the game. [/QUOTE]

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