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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6236852" data-attributes="member: 6681948">I don't know whether it is a bunch of work for nothing, a plotline in the making (perhaps we can locate this wizard, or alternatively maybe we should seek another buyer for our loot), future foreshadowing or something else. Just because the first idea we had fails to resolve in the exact manner we had hoped, do we toss up our hands in despair? That isn't proactive play, it's "my way or the highway" gaming.  Proactive play would be acknowledging our first approach did not work and deciding what to do next. Perhaps that’s seeking another buyer. Maybe it’s gathering info on the wizard from other sources. Or it may be moving on to some other matter the players want to investigate and checking back on occasion to see if our buyer is back.The players don’t get to decide that their buyer is available, nor that he is interested in buying this loot. It appears we have accepted, in this game, that buying and selling magical loot is not a basic, mundane event, but gets played out. So, logically, we play it out.The players want to rescue the Princess, but there’s a swamp to cross inhabited by dangerous creatures, and a labyrinth in which the Dragon who holds her captive lurks. What a major PITA. It's such a huge waste of time at the table. Why bother? Facing challenges is not an impediment to the game – it IS the game!  You seem to want to dictate the nature of each challenge faced, and the manner in which each challenge will be resolved.  How, exactly, is that superior to a GM who dictates the adventures the PC’s must undertake and rejects any possible approaches save the one he has preordained will happen?I agree they should be rewarded. I do not think “my first idea did not bring immediate and total success so I quit” is proactive play.When we point out the actual rules as written do not overpower the caster in the manner you suggest, you classify this as a heavy-handed limiting or nerfing of the caster’s power. It is not. It is limiting that power to the power the rules actually provide.  Just as the Fighter does not get to declare “I cleave the orc’s head from his shoulders with one deft swing of my sword”, but rather must roll to hit and damage, the Wizard does not get to decide that Charm Person overrides all other duties and common sense of the Chamberlain, but that it makes him Friendly as that term is defined in the rules, that the spell can be detected like any other spell, and that NPC’s react to having their free will overruled much the same way PC’s would.Your own experiences are also anecdotes, not data.  They say no more than Ahn’s experiences or my own. No less, I agree, but also no more.As a player or a GM, I have no interest in a game world that exists solely to provide whatever the PC’s find convenient today.  The obstinate chamberlain or missing wizard is as valid a challenge as the Dragon guarding the princess. It may be that the chamberlain is beyond our present ability to persuade, the wizard beyond our current ability to locate and/or the Dragon too powerful for us to defeat in combat.  If so, we must explore other approaches – that is, be proactive rather than just expect whatever we attempt to be successful because we are PC’s and thus should never fail to accomplish our goals with the first approach we think or, or even have our desired results  delayed, for any reason.See, to me, proactive players would consider what alternatives they have to seeing the Sage.  And a proactive GM would have considered other approaches the PC’s could take, rather than letting them beat their heads against a brick wall until they become so frustrated they take foolish actions out of character for savvy adventurers of whatever moral stripe these PC’s happen to be.  The sage does not have to be there, but there need to be other alternatives for the players to consider.What happened to that proactive play where the players chart their own course, and are not lead to those activities that the GM thinks they should do next?Emphasis added – and with that emphasized, I agree.  But I also find a game where the setting and NPC’s lack any colour, personality or life of their own to be a boring recipe which will also fail.  Both the players/PC’s and the setting/NPC’s are important to a good game.</blockquote>

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