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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5727013" data-attributes="member: 26473">The bridge is out. The adventurers can jump the gap, on foot or on horseback. The relevant skills are Acrobatics and Horsemanship.They can try to span the gap with a log. Strength check to move it into place without if falling into the chasm; if they have a horse they can probably do something creative with that as well.They can try to lasso a piling on the other side with a rope. Deterity check, then Strength (modified by Acrobatics) to cross it.Are you suggesting it's arbitrary to say Seduction or Etiquette or Bribery won't get them across the chasm?If the adventurers decide to seek aid, or suss out another route, then those skills may play a role. They won't get them over the gap, however, arbitrary as you may consider that to be.From the Augustinian convent on the Quay des Augustins to the Louvre, there is one direct route: across Pont-Neuf. Crossing the Pont au Change instead, or taking the ferry downstream, both require that the traveller go far out of his way.This is not arbitrary. This is a fact of the setting.If the players are spending time on something, it's because it's interesting to them, so I can safely assume they're not bored or they'd be doing something else.They may find their deliberations interrupted by a random encounter, and I will remind them about time passing if it's in some way relevant to their planning, but otherwise, I don't see any reason to hurry them along for my own amusement.There are many things that can be, and often quite dramatically are, influenced by the players and their characters; that doesn't mean they can change everything at any time.I do my best to avoid using the word 'hate' to describe anything related to something as banal as gaming, but there's probably nothing I dislike more profoundly than this approach to roleplaying games. If I did hate anything in gaming, this would be it.Sometimes the best dramatic effect is achieved by an actual race against the clock.I've been able to use contemporary maps of Paris to locate features in the 1660s map, and vice-versa. It's actually quite remarkable how accurate this map, or the Cassini maps of France from the mid-1700s when overlaid on GoogleMaps, are even today.Speaking as a geography student who took every cartography class my university offered, then produced maps and managed geographic databases professionally, I think you're wrong.And yet people also navigate by plane and boat across empty oceans to tiny islands, or hike through wildernesses without trails and arrive at their exact destinations.The only thing you've demonstrated is that some people don't know how to read maps.Horses for courses, as always.</blockquote>

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