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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5722001" data-attributes="member: 6668292">This is where I think it's not equivalent. You make a decision based on in-character knowledge, then use the mechanics to resolve it. For example, you'd say, "I swing my sword at the troll" when you know there's a troll, and you know he's within reach, then you use mechanics to resolve it. With the escaping villain, you'd use in-character knowledge in exactly the same way: I know this town well, I'm going to cut him off if possible, or chase him if I don't think I can, and I determine if it's successful by using mechanics.You're saying that the opponent's don't even get to make in-character decisions, which is a luxury that PCs get. In a game where I want both NPCs and PCs making decisions from an in-character point of view, this fails for me, and hard.When an NPC wants to walk across the street to a shop when the PCs are stealthily watching him, he doesn't make a check. He knows the exact route he needs to take. In a city where the NPC at hand is taking the most direct route (as was used in the example in the OP), there should be no roll to determine if that's suddenly not the case, much as there wouldn't be for a player character. That is, just like a PC can say, "I walk across the street to the shop" when he knows of the shop there, he can say, "I take the most direct route to the docks" if his character knows the most direct route there.Now, I say, "should" and so on in the above, but I want to make it very clear, this is just my play style. I'm not saying the game needs to be run this way, nor am I saying that the game is more fun in any objective sense when run this way. It's just my style, so feel free to use what works for your group, and tear it up.(1) That's not unreasonable to me if it makes sense. That is, looking at the game from a sense of internal consistency (not changing established facts, as the OP suggests be the case when the a shortcut would be created). To some groups, such as mine, this style of play is preferred, and much more rewarding than a more narrative style (and thus more fun for us).(2) Having the most direct route is not an auto-win necessarily. You can still catch up, distract, trip up, etc. the villain. I think it's unfair to paint it as "you should be able to have a chance of cutting him off or it's unreasonable." That, to me, is unreasonable.As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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