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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6197883" data-attributes="member: 42582">I am also curious about this idea of "earning" things.In Gygaxian play, as described by Gygax in his PHB and DMG, and as further evidenced by other game texts from around that time (I think Lewis Pulsipher is the key exponent of Gygaxian play in British gaming circles back at that time), the players have to earn things.They earn treasure by playing their PCs with skill. They earn magic items by playing their PCs with skill. They earn XP - mostly on the basis of this treasure gained - by playing their PCs with skill. The reward for these things - XP, treasure - is a greater capability to affect the campaign world, measured in part through sheer mechanical effectiveness (more hp, better AC and damage, etc) and in part through the capacity to acquire henchmen, hirelings, build castles, etc.But none of that seems apposite to the example of a king and his chamberlain. Meeting the king doesn't, as such, increase a player's mechanical effectivenss or strengthen their "position" in the gameworld. It doesn't per se give them hirelings or henchment or magic items. So in Gygaxian play it doesn't, as such, seem like something that needs earning. It's not a reward.I can see two possible bases for assuming that meeting the king is a reward. One is within a completely "immersion"-oriented, explore-the-gameworld style of play: because meeting the king is a reward for the PC, it is also a reward for the player. Within this sort of approach, then, the player is entitled to have his/her PC meet the king whenever, in the game, the PC has earned that reward. But in that case the GM has no reason to impose a "shutdown" of the king by interposing an unhelpful chamberlain. If we're talking about purely exploration-oriented play, all that matters is that there is ingame causal logic to support the PC meeting the king. Persuading the chamberlain by Diplomacy or Charm Person would tick that box.Here is a second possibility: meeting the king is a story reward - it's a dramatic climax of play, to which the players are not entitled until the GM decides its time. The players have to earn their climax by "playing" through the first few hundred pages of build-up. To meet the king early would be like reading LotR without having read the Hobbit first. I think this is a sense of "earning" it in which it could make sense for the GM to interpose the chamberlain to keep the PCs from meeting the king "too soon". But it is also utterly an example of a game with the GM having preconceived notions of how events will unfold, and using force to give effect to that. I think this would be an example of what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] had in mind by talking about the GM taking steps to keep the players (and their PCs) "on script".Agreed. This also relates to the idea of "earning" story events. I can always come up with new story elements and situations to engage my players. They don't have to "earn" the dramatic climaxes.(I've been following some threads about the Murder in Baldur's Gate scenario. It seems to suffer extremely badly from this - one dramatically significant event per session, then a whole lot of pointless, fetch-quest style filler. The whole notion of sidequest or fetch-quests is in my view pernicious from the point of view of player-driven play. There is no "side", because there is no "centre" independent of what the players are actually having their PCs do.)What does Gygax mean by this? I think it is connected to the idea of "skilled play". Gygaxian skilled play relies very heavily on fictional positioning as a key factor within action resolution - that is, freeform negotiation between players and GM as to what the PCs can accomplish, given the state of the gameworld and the ingame resources available to the PCs. I think Gygax is cautioning that, if players become free to establish the parameters and contents of the fiction, they will establish their PCs with ingame resource that render them able to overcome all the challenges of the game simply in virtue of their fictional positioning.I think this is closely related to LostSoul's idea of "impartial GMing" - the GM, having no immediate interest in whether the PC has few or many resources, and whether the PC succeeds or fails, is more reliable than the players as the final authority in respect of fictional position for the PCs.I think that this mode of play is highly vulnerable to "balance of power" problems between players and GM, but I don't have a lot of experience with it, especially at the campaign level (adjudicating fictional position in some local situational context eg "Is there a candle nearby that we can use to burn the secret note?" doesn't raise the same sorts of systematic issues, it seems to me). But [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] would be better able than me to comment on that.What I don't think Gygax is intending, here, is to advocate the use of GM force as a general tool in action resolution. I think it's more about a very high degree of GM authority over scene-framing, over backstory (including particularly what treasures are available in any given location) and over the adjudication of the consequences of fictional positioning. This last thing is relevant to action resolution, but that's a very specific tool for a very specific approach, and you are right to note that Gygax is cautious.Is the presence of a reluctant chamberlain, in a hall guarded by NPC magic detectors, fair game in Gygaxian play? I think so, though for many groups it might be getting close to raising those balance of power issues. (In a dungeon - a known dangerous and high-stakes environment - it would be more acceptable.) But that is scene-framing, not action resolution. When the PCs come up with a plan for circumvention - say, a player-researched variant of Cloudkill to silently take out the detectors trapped in their spyholes, followed by Neutralise Poison to bring the chamberlain back to life, Forget so he doesn't remember the spell, and then Charm Person to get him onside so he will take him to the king - I think the Gygaxian GM has to go along with this. It's hardly exploitative or abusive of the PCs' fictional position - it's just the sort of the utilisation of fictional position that Gygaxian skilled play is all about. Suddenly introducing an additional vector of antagonism to thwart the PCs' efforts, just so they can't get to the king yet, would in my view not be the sort of thing Gygax is enjoining in his writings.I'm curious as to what you think of my reading - that he is concerned primarily (not exclusively, given the comments on fudging in certain circumstances) with GM authority over backstory and scene-framing, and therefore with GM authority over the PCs default fictional positioning - and not primarily concerned with massaging action resolution (again, comments on fudging being an exception but a pretty heavily hedge one).Also, for clarity - my goal here isn't to defend Gygax as a paradigm of GMing. I dont' really enjoy Gygaxian play except in pretty small doses, and am not very good at GMing it. It's just that I think Gygaxian play has some pretty distinct features, including its distinctive reliance upon fictional positioning for action resolution, and I think Gygax is dealing with those features (even though he doesn't use modern Forge-y terminology to describe them) and not with the very different concerns of 2nd ed-style storytelling play.I don't think that's what was intended, and when you read columns in old Dragon mags about Monty Haul and friends, it's not how their play comes across. But I do think this may have been the textual seed out of which 2nd ed era illusionism grew.This is not my experience - some combat encounters can be surprisingly easy, others surprisingly hard, depending on dice rolls, player choices, GM choices, unexpected effects of terrain and the like.But your question also perhaps rests on a presupposition, namely that the players will have their PCs attack the NPCs or monsters and resolve the combat in that way. Whereas part of the idea of "no preconceptions" is that the GM doesn't know what approach the players will take. They might negotiate. They might take prisoners. They might start out doing one thing then end up doing another. Upthread I linked to the example of the players in my game having their PCs <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?313724-Actual-play-the-PCs-successfully-negotiated-with-Kas" target="_blank">negotiate with Kas.</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?301282-Actual-play-examples-balance-between-fiction-and-mechanics" target="_blank">Here is another link</a>, to them taming rather than fighting a cave bear. In the second session of 4e I ever ran, one player let one of the NPCs surrender on pain of servitude and tamed rather than fought a different bear. The bear followed him around for a bit, the servant for a bit longer - until she was killed fighting alongside the PC inside a necrotic zone, came back immediately as a wight to get vengeance on the PC, was killed again (by him this time), and was later summoned again as a mad wraith by a goblin shaman. Around 6th level the PCs negotiated with rather than fought some duergar slavers they met; having negoiated a ransom for the slaves they then delivered the amount due within the deadline (and by that time were early paragon); and then, in upper paragon, they were able to call on the friendship with the duergar to gain <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">help in the Underdark</a>. Until the dealings of one of the PCs with Pazuzu <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?332755-PCs-bring-destruction-down-upon-the-duergar" target="_blank">brought down ruin upon the duergar citadel</a>.This is the sort of thing I mean by running a game without preconceptions of how events will unfold. Who knew that the duergar would be an important part of the campaign, indeed, on balance, the PCs' best friends and most reliable allies?</blockquote>

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