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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6726833" data-attributes="member: 27160">I'm glad this thread has been separated from the previous one, where I think it was essentially threadcrapping somewhat. I worry slightly that the same, time-worn rabbit holes will be plummeted down as we have seen before, but it's an intriguing topic, so let's have another go...I'm going to nitpick a bit, here , because I think there is an essence to what Musson was trying to get at that is often not recognised - in fact, I'm not at all sure it was recognised at the time, either.Placing pre-planned challenges before the characters has an important difference from placing pre-planned rewards that relates to player behaviour. A more analogous pairing might be placing (prepared) rewards for things you, as GM, like and placing additional challenges or increasing difficulty for things you don't like. As soon as the players realise that either of these is going on, it may change their behaviour from engaging with the game-world to engaging with the GM in a toadying and sycophantic manner (in ther sense that they start trying to please the GM by whatever route works, not that they begin making comic-book addresses of adulation).I think this is the essence of what Musson was getting at with the "never let the players find out" comment. What is important is that the players continue to engage with the game world, not with the GM. Whatever techniques are used must not compromise that position.I am rather more sympathetic to [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]'s general point on this one. Code-breaking, at least in the pre-computer age, was about divining what the user of the code was trying to communicate in some language. Informed reasoning about their intent and situation was thus part of the "code-breaking". The entire enterprise of science is, in a similar sense, "code-breaking"; it is an attempt to work out what is going on "behind the screen". If certain assumptions about (NPC) motivations and intentions cause other observations in the game to "make sense", then it is not unlike looking at a coded message and finding that assuming a certian sequence of letters to represent a particular port makes other things in the code fall into place. "Decoding" people's motivations is indeed, I would say, a form of "code-breaking". The problem may arise, as I mentioned above, when it ceases to be the NPC's motivations that are being decoded and becomes the GM's motivations that are the topic of investigation.I left these together since I think they are both, at root, examples of the same failing in RPG setup. That failing is cultural code assumtion. In other words, they assume that particular trigger terms or concepts hold specific meanings to those trying to decode the situation; specifically, they expect (or even require) that the GM and players have the same cultural associations and assumptions about particular concepts.The first assumes that the players have a specific set of assumptions about what "a tomb/shrine built by an ancient culture" might be expected to include. Why such assumptions, based as they will almost certainly be on the history of this human-inhabited world, should predetermine the valid assumptions in a world with a myriad of fantasy races is anyone's guess.The second assumes that "friction" (and, indeed, "frictionless") have implications understood by those educated in the modern western scientific paradigm - again, in a fantasy world in which "magic" is assumed to be a valid part of the workings of the universe.These are a bit like puzzles commonly referred to as "cryptic crosswords". They only really work as valid puzzles if you happen to know a cute little set of code phrases and assumptions concerning how these particular puzzles work. They are, in a sense, "code-breaking", but it is assumed that the basic ruleset underlying the code is known to the person attempting the breaking. If it is not, then they will find the patterns of the code meaningless (not to mention, most likely, totally uninteresting).</blockquote>

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