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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9616119" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I said, you can assert this.But what is an actual concrete example? How is this to be done?In the examples of my own play that I'm referencing, the PCs are active in the City of Greyhawk, which canonically has 10s of thousands of inhabitants; active thief and assassin guilds' a magical university, a college of magic and a society of magi; representatives of multiple other powerful factions; etc.When the fiction strongly suggests that some enemy of the PCs might retain an assassin to hunt them down, how is a "causal chain of events" established, that will tell us whether or not that assassin has +80 or +40 as their Perception bonus; whether or not the assassin is hung over; whether or not the assassin is impatient (which actually benefits them, in the context of an Alarm-type spell); etc?I am not aware of any method to do this, that is, to establish the relevant causal chain of events. No method for documenting every salient character in the milieu, every factor that might affect their skill bonuses, their personality which will in turn affect how they respond when they encounter their quarry, etc.I'm aware of methods for deciding what happens vis-a-vis ambushes, but the ones I'm aware of - beginning with wandering monster rules from classic D&D - elide some elements of the casual chain. Eg with wandering monster rolls, the causal explanation for where the wanderers came from and why they are here, now, is worked out in response to the roll. Not as a precursor to it.</blockquote>

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