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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7597691" data-attributes="member: 6801228">You are right I could.My answer is that labeling player approaches as "good" or "bad" is tone deaf at best and a practice I refuse to engage in. If I ever tell a player "That was a bad approach, so now X" in response to their declared actions, then I will have hit my lowest point as a DM. Which is why I was advocating that those terms are actually unhelpful in refuting a point. Which you should understand from reading the multiple posts on this subject. Very true, but in the practice of illusions, it is best to present things in the best possible angle. If we appear inhumanly impartial, then at least it makes it seem more likely (I don't play that way, I'm constantly "bemoaning" the fate of my monsters and the successes of my players, most of them seem to enjoy the act, especially since I let them know it is all an act on top of it. I'm very silly at times) I think this is a point we will never agree on, because it is style and philosophy. I'm an amateur writer, and there are somethings which do not need "resolved" in a scene, they follow logically and I don't need to really put forth the same effort that other sections require to even make progress in. The same with the game, things which follow naturally with no question do not get resolved, they simply follow naturally. Resolving would require a serious effort of thought, because they are uncertain.  I'm skipping a lot of your post, but I feel like this is a point worth addressing. Having not read Hitchcock's essay, I may only assume, but my guess is that he was more referencing a light touch of information rather than a blatant telling of all information. I'm going to talk about mystery writing to clarify my point. In a mystery novel, if the entire plot twists upon knowing about the Evil Twin of the Uncle, and you never reference or hint at it until the final reveal, you have written a poor mystery. For the reader to get the most enjoyment, you generally need to add clues and allusions to the story, things that subtly point in the direction of the hidden information. Because it should be possible for the reader to solve the mystery before the main character does. However, if the main character gets shot at in the dark of night, and they and the reader have no idea who attacked them, this does not a bad mystery make. This is hidden information, this is something that the character "couldn't know", the identity of their attacker. And yet, it does not by it's nature take away from the mystery and tension, because there is a question to be answered. And even if that question is answered ten minutes later after a car chase, it still provides exactly the tension I am speaking about. We have entered a realm of uncertainty, which means we must imagine what the outcome will be, and that can be highly exciting. Additionally, remember that Hitchcock was not talking about gaming, either video game design or tabletop game design. Hitchcock's model is for a separate audience watching the character move through the world. In the world of gaming, the audience is the character moving through the world, which is an entirely different type of engagement. I do not approach playing DnD in the same mindset that I approach watching a movie, and people who direct games might find the some of the techniques used in directing movies to be a poor fit.  The only negative you give for not telling them seems to be the player protesting "If I'd known I wouldn't have done it". And that is something that has only happened to me once, and that was when I misunderstood a player and had them enter a building they had not actually wanted to enter. I'm not hiding everything from them, I'm not even hiding most things from them, but sometimes it is more fun when there are things they don't know. And while I could contrive any scenario so that the players had perfect awareness of every aspect of the environment and the NPCs within that environment and all their motivations... sometimes it is more fun not to know. Sometimes it is fun to make a decision with limited information, and find out that it was a poor decision in retrospect. It grounds things for me and my players. Seeing the discussion of my chandelier example, let me try to make sure things are entirely clear. Player chooses to swing from the chandelier and fails the roll I called for. This means they did not successfully swing across to the otherside by use of the chandelier. This most likely means they fall. Instead of just saying they missed the jump, or they fall, I decided to spice it up by saying they landed heavily on the chandelier and it broke and fell. If I really got challenged by a player on why the chandelier broke, I'd inform them that it had been up for a few years, and their landing put too much shearing pressure on the screws holding it in the rafter, causing them to snap, which left too few screws in the wood to hold the weight of the chandelier plus a person standing on it, causing them to rip free and fall. Of course, I doubt that conversation takes place, because they knew as soon as the roll failed that they were probably going to fall, and they are more concerned with what they do next than arguing what just happened.</blockquote>

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