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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9640775" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Tagging you here [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] .It feels like this is the point where [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] 's actual play anecdote of his deployment of Folk Hero's Trait of Rustic Hospitality becomes salient.  In fact, it is the perfect analogue for the Alarm spell.  Just like with the Alarm spell, the point of the implementation of Rustic Hospitality was to generate safe haven from danger.* [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] was both relying upon the synthesis of "reliable currency and resolution scheme generating gameable space" as well as "fiction as gameable space."  He got hard vetoed by the GM.* Various GMs might rule similarly (hard veto) for myriad, black-box reasons.  One GM might determine that the game theory deployed by the peasant class vs law enforcement or the military class (LEoMC) would be to renege on promised cover to the Folk Hero should they be pressed by the LEoMC because of the "not risk their lives for you" clause and then they would black-box in the LEoMC pressing itself via some black-box decision-making/scheme); extrapolation.  Another GM might determine that the LEoMC would either have already bribed the peasant class to turn in the Folk Hero or will do so now (deploying the GM's infinite reservoir of black-box currency to facilitate this); extrapolation.  Another GM might determine that adventurers are inherently dangerous, thereby initiating the "shown yourself to be a danger to them" clause, thus unknowingly to the player crippling the Rustic Hospitality Trait at the PC build stage before play even begins (!); extrapolation.  Another GM might decide this is the perfect opportunity to mainline an encounter onto play where some essential, GM Storyteller plot node with the LEoMC is made manifest; GM Storyteller.  5 x other GMs might decide that it doesn't work by player fiat, but rather to devise varying in-situ, black-box fortune resolution mechanics to randomize the results with a spread from 20/33/50/67/85 % chance to resolve in [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] 's favor; behind-the-screen randomization with GM-decided upon odds in which neither PC build nor currency muster interacts with.  5 x other GMs might decide that it doesn't work by player fiat, but rather the PC in question has to make a Cha (Persuasion) roll with widely varying DCs; actual action resolution, but who knows what DC is being set + who knows if this player has invested any PC build resources into Cha or Persuasion to facilitate this + how is the player to know that they should save an Advantage for such black box action resolution which is almost surely on the tail-end of other action resolution to get to the farmer's barn in the first place (some form of chase or traversal/exploration challenge). This can go on...and any number of these GMs (as we saw in that thread and we see everywhere else on ENW, on the internet-at-large, and in meatspace) might feel that their particular methodology and/or decision has yielded "the good stuff."  Meanwhile, the player (in this case [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] ) is left thinking..."WTF is even happening here?"  This is where the descriptors of erratic and volatile sufficiently describe what is happening to for the player as their hypothetical gameable space (playing the fiction, playing the mechanics, mustering currency they thought would be reliable, playing the PC build game) shrinks or outright vanishes for all intents and purposes.* Circling back a hair, again this sequence at the farmer's house/barn would be on the tail-end of a decision to make a runner for that farm in the first place.  If the goal is "achieve safe haven from danger" and the initial action declaration is "let's make a run across town for the farmlands...the peasants there will shield us from the law searching for us (it says it right there in the fine print!)."  But between that decision to make that runner is however many other stages of action resolution/"playing the fiction" (who knows how many?).  Maybe players spend currency (Advantages, Spells) or gain attrition in the form of Hit Point loss and gained Exhaustion Levels...all for a plan that was either (a) a dead-end in the first place before they even set out or (b) an unknown/unknowable low % or remote possibility in the first place?  If they had actually not been working under the dynamics of a black-box, they would have made an entirely different strategic decision (!); "hey, forget the runner across town to the farmers...they'll might/most likely/definitely will give us up to the law...let's just either (i) pick a defensible position and rain hell on the LEoMC or (ii) make a runner to the forest and attempt to disappear under its dark/haunted boughs (and yet again...who knows if the GM will have them pursue into the dark/haunted forest and how that black box will resolve)."[HR][/HR]The crux of the point is the anti-black box dynamics of the game engine (which includes structure, always-on and always- stable resolution procedures, transparency, overt principles, robust currencies that are always reliable, as well as "playing the fiction") of Torchbearer fundamentally shuts down the paradigm presented above.  It has never happened (and by god have I GMed a metric eff-ton of TB) because it fundamentally_cannot_happen.  The gameable space is always robust and always stable, sequence-in sequence-out.</blockquote>

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