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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6629322" data-attributes="member: 97077">In my experience, there's something to saying it out loud that makes it a good way of double-checking that rolling in a given situation makes sense. For some DMs, there is this reflex of "action = check" without due consideration of whether the situation calls for one. This is one way of checking oneself.Lack-Toes stated he was going to swim over and "defend" her. I think the fiction in the stakes follows - by getting to her in time, the shark will break off its attack. Failure indicates whatever the DM wants it to indicate because the DM, per the basic conversation of the game, narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.By definition, if players buy into the stakes (or to follow a plot or whatever), then railroading is not occurring as there is no coercion - instead there is consent. That we skip over that which is a given - the party being unable to avoid capture - in our estimation (the players', not just mine) just means we advance to a new, interesting scene rather than play out a scene to which we feel we already know the answer to the dramatic question.I get uncertainty and suspense in other ways, chiefly from foreshadowing and other storytelling methods. I want the results of rolls to be clear and to change the situation meaningfully in some way.Being captured and brought before the Great Abomination also opens the door to new player decisions. It's just the context that is different. So really, as long as we are playing, the door to new player decisions is always open.Yes, as the "lead storyteller" among a group of storytellers, the rules are tools to help us achieve the goals of play, those being, to have a good time and to create an exciting, memorable story in the doing. This doesn't mean there is any pre-planned plot, of course, or that any "railroading" is going on. It just means that for any given action, we consider the most interesting results that will take the story in new, interesting directions and dice come into play to resolve uncertainty. If that means skipping over playing out a skirmish that will lead to an inevitable capture in everyone's eyes (or everyone agrees that capture is going to be a desirable result anyway - for the players if not the characters), then that's what happens.If you check out my actual play transcripts (linked in the original post), you can see this a lot of this in play in the context of an actual game.Thanks for reading - and for the good questions and feedback!</blockquote>

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