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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6198577" data-attributes="member: 42582">It is my firm belief that every RPG gameworld has elements that may or may not exist.For instance, the PCs are in a generic tavern. There is a brawl. One of the players ask "Are their potted plants on a windowsill for me to throw?" Or "Are there coins on the counter for me to steal?" Or "Do the tables have nails and screws of wood or of metal - if metal, I want to pull one out to pick the lock to the backroom while everyone else is brawling?" These questions have to be answered. In Burning Wheel these are sometimes answered by a skill check (for instance, Furniture-Making Wise: "Everyone knows that tables in these parts have metal rather than wooden fittings because the local furniture makers aren't very skilld), and otherwise by GM fiat (which can include a random roll). In D&D the default is GM fiat (which could include a random roll).It is standard practice in D&D, too, to determine the presence of an NPC via random roll (eg Does this village have an apothecary? Roll for it). At least, that was the classic approach - I don't have a good handle on how 3E expects these sorts of questions to be answered if they come up in play. (Contrast BW, which answers these questions primarily via the Circles skill that I described upthread.)The idea of "Shcroedinger's NPC", as it has been labelled, is that the GM fills in the details of the NPC's personality - or, if the PCs are trying to locate an NPC of the relevant sort then perhaps even the details of his/her existence - not in advance of pla,y nor via mere fiat or random roll in the course of play, but rather in the course of play in response to action resolution attempts by the players. I quoted Paul Czege on this upthread. I have linked upthread to the Kas example from my own game. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?309950-Actual-play-my-first-quot-social-only-quot-session" target="_blank">Here is another example</a>, involving the PCs at a dinner party with a Baron and his family and advisors. The Baron's personality was not determined by me in advance accept in the broadest of outlines - he cares for his niece, trusts his advisor and is proud of his family. (All pretty stock-standard stuff.) The details emerged in playFor instance, at one point - in response to some player's check giving effect to what their PC was doing in the fiction, I had the Baron reply "I am a man of action!" The player of the fighter then took the opportunity to reply to this by emphasising that he, too, was a man (well, dwarf) of action - and thereby got to make an Athletics check (one of his better skills) to establish it as true in the fiction that the Baron did recognise the dwarf as a like-minded, action-oriented individual. That's an example of how authoring the details during rather than in advance of play creates scope for the players to push things one way or another, and for the GM to push back against the players, with the resulting changes in fictional position of the PCs closing some options down but opening other options up.A secondary effect, but for me also quite desirable, of this sort of play is that it discourages excessive time spent on planning and preparation, and encourages players to achieve their goals by engaging and shaping the scenes that are framed. So more of playtime is spent actually resolving things than planning how to resolve things. I think this is one significant difference between Gygaxian and "indie" play. (Not the only one, obviously.)Yes. I explained upthread why, for my playstyle, this is a terrible mechanic - because it forces me simply to fiat whether or not the player suffers a huge (-10) check penalty; and why I therefore prefer a skill challenge approach, where my choice as to present the chamberlain as impatient and leavning, or impatient but listening, changes the fiction - in the way just explained with respect to "Schroedinger's NPC" but doesn't change the prospects of success for the player.At this point you're just theorycrafting. Look at any of my actual-play 4e posts. Or my <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?339757-GMed-first-MHRP-session-on-Sunday" target="_blank">actual-play MHRP post</a>. Or the quote from Paul Czege upthread. Or, if you want theory, <a href="http://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">read this blog</a>.The player is playing his/her PC. S/he is responsible for the PC's personality and agenda. And for expressing the former, and pushing towards the latter, in play. It's not coopeative storytelling - that's the whole point of having one party responsible for scene framing, another set of parties responsible for the protagonists, and action resolution rules to determine what happens when the protagonists encouter antagonism.I agree with this.In HeroWars/Quest and in Marvel Heroic RP, the "discussion about the goals of the game" is framed as a credibility test. That is, as part of action declaration a player has to explain what exactly it is that his/her PC is trying to achieve, and before we actually proceed to resolution there has to be agreement that what the PC is attempting is feasible in genre terms. This is why, in MHRP, Captain America with super-soldier strength can't simply build a dice pool to beat The Thing in an arm wrestle. If Cap wants to use his strength to defeat The Thing, the player is going to have to declare an action that makes sense - say, using his strength to knock down a pillar, which then means that the buidling collapses on The Thing before Thing can brace himself to hold it up.Who is in charge of the "credibility test"? - which, I cannot emphasise enough, is an issue of genre credibiity (a literary/critical notion), not ingame causal credibility (a scientific/physical notion). The table as a whole should have a shared understanding about genre;  the player is free to make their case; in the end, the GM - as custodian of scene-framing - has to make the final call, as part of the GM's general role in ensuring that players aren't forced to take responsibility for providing their own antagonism (an intolerable conflict of interest given their responsibility for playing their PCs).I don't quite know on what principled basis you are condemnatory of Schroedinger's NPC but happy with Schroedinger's teleport wards - but anyway, this is a good illustration of a difference between the "credibility test" approach and a "GM force" approach. Instead of discussing with the player whether or not the framing of his/her PC's action confilcts with the genre expectations for the game, and helping the player work out an alternative framing (both HeroQuest revised and the BW Adventure Burner have nices discussions of this) prior to then proceeding to resolution and finding out what happens to the shared fiction, the GM is fiating a failure of the declared action resolution, thereby unilaterally determining the content of the fiction.In my view, and in my personal play experience, the contrast is pretty stark.This is an issue of credibility test. It depends on genre. In D&D or MHRP? The jump is absolutely feasible, yes - and so is the conversion, for a slick enough talker or telepath.In 4e levels and especially tiers help with this. They set genre expectations. A heroic PC should be able to cause a village priest or goblin shaman to question his/her faith. A paragon PC should be able to do the same to the pope. And an epic PC should be able to challenge the convictions of Vecna, Asmodeus or the greatest saints of both earth and heaven. (It becomes a bit different when you move out of the default setting expectations. I don't have a good sense, for instance, of how Heroic, Paragon and Epic map onto Darksun play, but I'm sure me and my group would be able to get the hang of it if we were to play 4e Darksun.)Unless the PC is very very dense s/he will be on top of the lava. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">When this came up</a> in my 4e campaign, here is how I handled it:The lava itself is difficult terrain, and inflicts 20 fire damage, plus prone and dazed, when you enter it, plus 20 ongong fire damage and dazed (save ends once you get off the lava), plus a DC 17 End check to avoid falling prone if you start your turn on it.That seemed to work OK. The only PC to end up on the lava was the tiefling paladin of the Raven Queen, who tried but failed on a jump. With his fire resistance he withstood the damage but spent some time crawling, dazed across the lava. This is genre rather than credibility. In a fantasy game I wouldn't expect my players to want to go there - part of the point of a gonzo fantasy game is that you build crossbows, magic arbelests etc rather than muskets, cannons etc. If the players were very keen I guess I could roll with it - in 4e that would require taking the Alchemist feat, and the recipes would be modelled on the existing rules for alchemist's fire and the like.This is also a genre issue. The same considerations apply.The real issue, it seems to me here, is what is the difference between a credibility or genre constraint on action declaration, and GM force in action resolution? I personally think the difference is fairly clear - genre is settled in broad terms ahead of time (and with a game like D&D, via choosing the ruleset in the first place), and emerges over the course of play via table consensus: you find out what the players think fits with the genre to a signficant extent by their action declarations, and they get a sense of the GM's expectations by the scenes that the GM frames. (Can the PCs start a pie fight to inflitrate an area a la Blazing Saddles? By default I'd assume not, but if the GM has already introduced farcical comedy elements into play, then maybe . . .)If the chamberlain who won't listen is being presented as a genre or credibility issue, then fine: but in that case what has gone wrong such that the player has declared the action at all? I think this is at least part of what is going on when [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] is emphasising the importance of giving the players the requisite information (though he has not framed the issue by reference to genre credibility).</blockquote>

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