Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5653673" data-attributes="member: 8835">Pemerton's example looks like the playrs get more control over what happens next.  Probably to expedite play by post.Folks on the track of Is D&D a story, are in the wrong thread <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />While I like me some story, it's not actually what I'm driving at.The illusion is that what happens next being purely rational and unbiased.  While good GMs strive for that, as in life, it is not entirely true that if X happens then Y is the consequence.In pem's example, why did initiative get rolled for combat at the end of dinner?  While it may seem a natural consequence that the party just called out the villain, and the fight starts.  However, it's also possible that he might prevaricate.  After all, what proof does the party have?  Or that he migh have actually changed his robes (who goes to a fancy dinner wearing the same robes that he dungeon crawled in)Ultimately, somebody thought it made sense to do a fight scene next.  But it didn't have to be that way.  and the choice for that was arbitrary.For DMs who deny this phenomenon isn't occurring in their game, I hope you'll reconsider.  The point is to reveal it happens, demonstrate it happens, and a better aware DM knows to use it to good effect, and to not abuse it.Most of the stories of bad GMing (or disputes of bad GMing) are caused by this effect.  a GM makes a call, that is ultimately arbitrary on its impact on the players, and the GM refuses to acknowledge that point and devise a fairer resolution.Which brings us to back to nethack.  if we were coding Pem's dinner scene in the FancyDinnerAccusation() function, we'd hopefully realize there's a number of ways it could go, and randomly determine which path is next (does the Villain draw his gun, run, or deny everything, or turn the accusation back on the party). I suspect, there are some GMs who roll NPC reactions, and roll for "what happens next".  Its still has human bias (it can only result in that which a human has thought of), but the actual decision is taken out of the human's hands.In the original case of the crappy GM with the PCs Lacking a Pass, he had options for give them a warning, take them to get their papers because 'obviously the gate guards forgot", or haul them to a judge.  he chose one extreme outcome, but there were others available.</blockquote>

Verification