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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 6207035" data-attributes="member: 48965">You know after reading this section I think I'm realizing the root problem that I, and possibly others, may have with the play style of [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], and others... it's the whole "discover it through play" ethos.  It feels (correctly or not) like there isn't any way to actually discover or explore anything concrete.... only make stuff up based on dice rolls... Is the king a benevolent ruler?  Let's have a skill check and determine it based on your party's success or failure.  Is tribute coming and going... who knows, let's roll some dice and let them decide.  It feels like you just make it up as you go along which I can admit may appeal to some, but I know would not appeal to my players.  they want to figure things out, and they want a basis so that they can actually be right or wrong about assumptions, guesses, etc.... They don't want a Schrodinger's cat that will only form when the dice are rolled.  For my players, rolls shouldn't be deciding whether the king is a benevolent ruler or tyrant, that should be established already and be at least somewhat communicated through what they experience and see while in the city... What that roll should determine for my players is whether they find definitive proof of him being a tyrant or a good man. Likewise whether this king sacrifices babies to a dragon shouldn't be nebulous for them until the dice are rolled. Interestingly enough I don't see how the dice deciding everything "through play" is any better or worse than if the DM had made it up beforehand.  Some will claim you are playing a game of trying to read the DM's mind... but how is that any more or less de-protagonizing than trying to guess based on random rolls?  Actually I see a few downsides to the "through play" method such as issues with coherency and already established backstory, a dis-incentive to think outside the box (as in beyond the numbers/skills/powers on your sheet) in figuring things out or exploring (since nothing is really created yet anyway), and so on.I'm curious, how the DM's who run in this style establish things where the PC's don't take the " let's find out in play" approach.  Let's say in [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s example, once they are admitted to see the king the players have made all the same assumptions that some of the posters here made (that the king is a baby sacrificing, dragon dealing, cowardly tyrant) and they slay him... were they right?  Were they wrong?  How do you fairly decide that in that moment or after it since nothing is established yet?</blockquote>

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