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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8282410" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Oh, ok, that makes sense.Cool, gotcha.Right, so the bolded statement is precisely my problem with this method. That what “actually prevents it” isn’t something in the fiction that makes it impossible for him to do, but a rules conceit (which I would describe as arbitrary) that says once you’ve tried and failed, you aren’t allowed to try again the same way.That’s what it means in a game that employs “single-roll resolution” or whatever we called it, yes. I simply cannot accept this conceit, because if there are 18 possible higher numbers I could have rolled, there was objectively a 90% chance I could have been better at picking this lock.As I said earlier, maybe I’m the crazy one. Maybe this is exactly like those people who get hung up on the words “hit” and “damage” and can’t accept abstract HP because of it. But you can’t tell me a 2 represents my best attempt and expect me to just accept that the other 90% of the numbers I could have rolled are meaningless. Words are malleable, they can mean a lot of things depending on how they’re used, but numbers mean what they mean no matter what you call them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8282410, member: 6779196"] Oh, ok, that makes sense. Cool, gotcha. Right, so the bolded statement is precisely my problem with this method. That what “actually prevents it” isn’t something in the fiction that makes it impossible for him to do, but a rules conceit (which I would describe as arbitrary) that says once you’ve tried and failed, you aren’t allowed to try again the same way. That’s what it means in a game that employs “single-roll resolution” or whatever we called it, yes. I simply cannot accept this conceit, because if there are 18 possible higher numbers I could have rolled, there was objectively a 90% chance I could have been better at picking [I]this[/I] lock. As I said earlier, maybe I’m the crazy one. Maybe this is exactly like those people who get hung up on the words “hit” and “damage” and can’t accept abstract HP because of it. But you can’t tell me a 2 represents my best attempt and expect me to just accept that the other 90% of the numbers I could have rolled are meaningless. Words are malleable, they can mean a lot of things depending on how they’re used, but numbers mean what they mean no matter what you call them. [/QUOTE]

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