NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6398102" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that drilling down is the way that RPG designers can write useful guidance manuals, rather than (i)make assumptions about how to play, (ii) give advice on the basis of that, and (iii) have that advice turn out to be useless for half their customers.Maybe it wasn't clear what I meant by "secret backstory" - I don't mean that the GM has ideas about the backstory that the players don't know; but rather that the GM relies on that secret backstory to adjudicate outcomes of action resolution (as in your example of play). I think an RPG absolutely can work without the GM relying on secret backstory to adjudicate outcomes. I know that from experience.There are a range of ways to adjudicate an RPG, which straddle rules techniques and approaches, and a good DGM will discuss them.I don't fully get your first example - but if the PCs are already in a trapped room and have triggered the trap then I don't think I'd be mucking around with Perception checks. I'd be narrating the threat posed by the trap.As for your second example, what's illogical or implausible about finding a blood drops, or a dropped neckerchief, or something else on a cobblestone road? There are things to be said for and against "fake changes" (although that's not a neutral description of the technique), but verisimilitude, or plausibility vs contrivance, in my view Isn't a very helpful way to talk about it, because nearly everyone treats verisimilitude as a constraint on narration. Someone who, in response to a successful track check on the cobblestones, narrates a dropped neckerchief doesn't regard that as lacking in verisimilitude - the narration of a dropped neckerchief as opposed to (say) a dropped gilt-handled dagger is precisely intended to preserve verisimilitude.</blockquote>

Verification