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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7559718" data-attributes="member: 42582">Fair enough. I see the roles of the GM and of NPCs, and see the nature of the GM's relationship to NPCs, as being rather different from the roles of the players and the PCs, and from the relationship between these latter things.One obvious difference in most systems is that players are under very different constraints in allocating mechanical capabilities to their PCs than are GMs. (This comes out in your actual play example in which the players don't want to pick a fight with the giants.) But it's not the only difference.But whether or not one likes it as an approach to RPGing, I think that gating the success of players' actions behind a GM's opinions about what a certain NPC might or might not reasonably do seems clearly to be the sort of thing the OP is wishing to avoid.Which system?4e D&D does not support NPC-to-PC social influence mechanics. Classic Traveller does for morale, but nothing else. Burning Wheel does. Marvel Herioc RP/Cortex+ Heroic does. Prince Valiant does.This is also a system issue. A good system, in my view, establishes ranges of DCs that I trust have been established as appropriate by a combination of mathematical analysis and play-testing.For instance, in Classic Traveller the roll required (on 2d6) to avoid close scrutiny of documents by officials is 5+ (or 5 in 6) for a character with Admin-1, but 10+ (or 1 in 6) for a character with no Admin skill. I don't think there's any objective test for appropriate prospects of success, but that's probably getting towards the outer limits of workable DCs.A system like 4e D&D or BW has widely varying DCs (much more so than Classic Traveller) but also has many player-side options for modifying and augmenting checks, so that the GM setting the DC is only the beginning of the process of establishing the chance of success. (This is one of the reasons I've described Classic Traveller as a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?605171-Classic-Traveller-a-dice-driven-game" target="_blank">"dice-driven game"</a>.)I'm not sure which "mainstream RPGs" you have in mind but Classic Traveller is not that obscure and has a very wide variety of subsystems that set DCs for various action declarations. In my current campaign we've resolved: dealing with bureaucracy and with police: assaulting a base on foot; assaulting a base from vehicles; starship combat; small group combat; starship infiltration; EVAs; tracking down a satellite in orbit; curing disease; searching for the Psionics Institute; evading orbital fire in ATVs; hacking computers; engaging in interstellar travel and interstellar trade; seducing an agent to obtain information; and seeking something out on the surface of an alien world. Maybe other stuff as well I'm not recalling at present. The only one which didn't have a workable mechanic for resolving the action, either expressly provided or easily extrapolated from what has been provided, was the last one. Which is a pity, because exploring alien worlds is an important aspect of sci-fi play.I've already mentioned how BW and 4e handle the issue of establishing odds of success. In the case of MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, every check is an opposed one, and the system has elaborate rules for establishing and maintaining the Doom Pool which is the default source of opposition if nothing else applies.Prince Valiant plays somewhat between Traveller and Cortex+ Heroic in this respect - many checks are opposed; where they are not, the system for setting DCs compared to the system for determining the size of player dice pools tends to mean that initial chances are rarely less than 1 in 4 (ie 2 successes on 2 dice), although the complex resolution system can exhibit a death-spiral effect, which is a reason to use it with caution.Perhaps all the systems I play count as "specific/niche game engines"?I don't think that [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] has even indicated what system he is playing, let alone how action declarations work in that system, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at here.Are you posting an account of how it happened at your table? All my discussion is taking for granted that the people at the table are interested in playing the system that is being used, including making action declarations in the way the system expects.</blockquote>

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