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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9619589" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's nothing to do with "gamer evolution". But it is about clear analysis of what is going on.If you as GM, secretly, decide that there is a group of ninjas who are doused in an elixir that makes Alarm spells fail; and then decide, again secretly, that the PCs' enemy has hired one of these ninjas; and then decide, as a result, that the PCs' Alarm spell doesn't protect them from the ninja's ambush, such that it catches them by surprise while they are camping - that is a coherent setting.And maybe the play that results is a lot of fun - that will depend on all sorts of details that are highly table-relative.But, responding to [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s posts, that doesn't mean that it was a vehicle for skilled play. What error did the players make?And responding to [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s posts, that doesn't mean that the game was any sort of simulation. The GM has imagined a group of ninjas who are "immune" to alarm spells, has imagined one of them being hired, and has imagined that hired assassin sneaking into the PCs' camp. But nothing has been "modelled" or "simulated" by the GM's imagining.The players' surprise, when the GM announced the ninja's attack, is a type of real-world correlate of their PCs' surprise at being ambushed. But that particular experience can be produced using a variety of techniques, of which the one I've described in this post is just one instance.</blockquote>

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