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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8609626" data-attributes="member: 42582">Right. "Bad player" is relative to expectations.In my Torchbearer game, one of the players deliberately initiated an interaction with a NPC anticipating that it would earn him an enemy. Is that good play, or bad play? I thought it was great play - it gave me a hook for hanging a twist to a later failed Resources check (the PC's enemy had had him black-balled at the markets), it prompted a later confrontation between the two characters (initiated by the players, and shifting the terrain from scholarship (where the PC is weak) to oratory (where the PC is strong), and it gives me material for future framing and complications.At a turtling-type table I imagine it would be considered bad play.I will query your timelines here - I saw the sorts of expectations you describe here, about both setting and plot, back in the 90s, and they seemed well-entrenched then.I agree that it creates unnecessary hurdles to GMing and gameplay more generally.When I was GMing 4e, I remember a player calling me on an aspect of framing that contradicted the players' success at a skill challenge in the previous session. It was a fair call.If a GM is doing their best to frame scenes and narrate consequences, I'll let that go even if I can see flaws in what they're doing that (to my eye) seem like they could easily be remedied. I see that as an issue of manners, rather than trust. Trust implies as-yet unrevealed consequences or competencies that can be relied upon. In the case of GMing, most of the time what you see is what you get, and so trust isn't a salient concept.I mean, if the GM sets up a puzzle I guess I need to trust them not to have cocked up the solution, but even then there can be plenty of room for real-time back-and-forth between humans. (Eg one time I wrote a series of puzzles and codes for my daughter's birthday party. I did it late the evening before, and mucked up one of my Caesar shifts. So any trust the kids had in me was misplaced - but they worked it out anyway, noted the errors, and just made snide remarks about the incompetent dad!)</blockquote>

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