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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9611689" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't find the notion of simulating competition very clear. That just seems to be one particular way of not engaging in competition.On your first and last points - the last time I had to think about those sorts of things in a regular and systematic way was GMing 4e D&D. I would make decisions about what my NPCs and monsters did in com bat based on a mixture of what seemed fun, what seemed likely to put pressure on the players, and what seemed to make sense for the NPC/creature at hand.I relied on the game's monster design rules and encounter building rules to give me an assurance as to the likely "heft" of my overall encounter "budget". The game worked in that respect.Your second and third points are about content introduction. When the tables in Torchbearer 2e tell me to roll to see who/what is encountered, I roll. When they tell me to decide, I decide. This is part of how the game is built. For treasure, I follow the game's instructions, which are to use a mixture of rolls and placement. (When converting a D&D module, I filter the D&D treasure through a sense of what the TB2e tables permit for like encounters/rooms.)In Burning Wheel or Prince Valiant, by comparison, I don't use rolls for content introduction. They're simply not part of those games. Except one time in Burning Wheel the players failed a roll while fleeing through the city at night, and I decided that the PCs encountered the night watch. And as I happened to have a copy of the Appendix C DMG city/town encounter matrix on me, I rolled the 3d4 (or whatever it is) to see how many members of the watch they encountered. But that was mostly for colour - there was no real prospect of the PCs undertaking an action which would depend for its success on the number of NPCs.</blockquote>

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