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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6203515" data-attributes="member: 42582">I remember that being said by a few people too. My memory tells me that Wicht was one of them, but perhaps I'm misremembering.Nor is it, by default, a good playstyle. Nor is it in any real sense the default playstyle.In Gygaxian dungeon play it is common for the GM to "say no", because the GM is reasoning from secret background to fictional positioning of which the players are unaware. But another feature of Gygaxian dungeon play is that it happens in a dungeon, and the players are therefore able to take steps to uncover that secret background, and hence to change their PCs' fictional positioning.For instance, if a PC wizard tries to Detect Magic, and the GM says that nothing is registering, this might because there is no magic around, or it might be because there is lead or gold blocking the spell. In Gygaxian play, the expectation is that the players might have their PCs tear down tapestries, rip apart furnishings etc looking for possible lead or gold defeaters of their detection spells.Once we move the same sort of play into the king's palace, however, the dynamic is very different. If a PC tries to detec magic and fails, his/her player can't just choose to have the PC start ripping apart walls, furnishings etc. In other words the players' freedom to acquire the secret backstory that will then allow them to take steps to improve their PCs' fictional positioning relative to their goals is much less.In my view, this is part of why there is something of a tradition of seeing dungeon play as open-ended and non-railroady in a way that urban and social play is seen as the opposite, even though - at first blush - it might seem that there are far more many pathways to take in a city than in a dungeon. It is because of the different position in the two scenario-types of the players and their PCs relative to the unknown backstory which they need to learn if they are to succeed.Secret backstory in dungeon play is a type of default D&D playstyle. White Plume Mountain, Tomb of Horrors, any number of old White Dwarf scenarios, and (as best I know it) a more recent homage like Labyrinth of Madness, are all meant to be played in this style.But secret backstory in social, urban or intrigue play in my view has never been a default playstyle for D&D. It has always been contentious, precisely because in those different fictional settings it is so hard for the players to access the secret backstory other than by having clues parcled out by the GM, who - in playing the "natural responses" of the good and the great to having their homes burgled, their minds controlled, etc - is also playing the major role in determining from moment to moment how feasible it is for the players, via their PCs, to obtain the backstory they need. (I also think that the dynamics of this sort of play, with the GM being in control both of backstory reveals and of making moment-to-moment decisions about how hard it is to extract that backstory, in some cases contribute to the reasonably well-known phenomenon of the players relating to the setting and its inhabitants essentially in the mode of sociopaths or psychopaths rather than actually embracing and caring about them.)For the sort of game I enjoy, a GM who sets an impossibly high DC for the chamberlain on the basis of secret backstory, or who for reasons of fictional positioning derived from that secret backstory simply has the chamberlain walk away or say no, is not doing his/her job. S/he is, rather, taking the first step along a path which I know for my group at least will create intolerable tensions at the table, as the GM becomes both the hoarder and the revealer of information with no reliable way for the players to engage the game directly, and acquire the information they need, via action resolution + known fictional position.The 4e designers were clearly aware of this issue, or stuff in the neighbourhood, because when they wrote in their secret backstory that the duke can't be Intimidated, they also wrote in (i) that there is a clear mechanical way for the players to learn this (via Insight) and (ii) that this won't in itself end the players' propects of success, as up to 5 failures are permitted, and an Intimidate check won't contribute more than one of them.</blockquote>

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