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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7372737" data-attributes="member: 6919838">i try and avoid the bold or giving it too much weight in my games for the following reasons:1 - A player may know nothing about climbing or hills, or may know a ton about them and in this case basing any of my decisions on the player's expertise in knowing to ask for "any sign of toxic fungus from the roots?" or "any sign the roots and plants are really mostly dead and not sturdy?" or or any number of a thousand things. to whatever degree this is given weight and  puts the onus on player knowledge and my knowledge of this "real world equivalence" then to the same degree off that character and the in-game reality.2 - Some players are better at others in the actual expressing their statements of action than others - making it clear or sound logical and complete or reasonable - again puts player ahead of character in the "results".3 - it can lead to or give the impression of need to "GM proofing" the discussion and play by working out very carefully and consistent statements not unlike how some try and "monkey paw proof" wishes. At the reverse, it opens the door for "really hinging on what was or wasn't said. Ye olde days of "you didn't say you looked up" are not fondly remembered and frankly, this very example "what kind of danger" really seems like if not in the same house as "you didn't look up" to be at least in the same zip code. if a Gm asked me "what kind of danger?" or told me i needed to tell him, my response would likely be "the kind my adventurer would know about in this circumstance based on his experiences. I am a 50+ yo overweight IT specialist in a non-magical world... I doubt either of us knows as much as my character does about this in terms of details." if that wasn't good enough... then i am in the wrong game.i am not saying these are all problems in your specific game or anything like that... but that kind of statement and that kind of approach is one i have seen produce problems along these lines and especially in the context of general statements on forums, i think they can oft run into being misunderstood.i assume the  degree of competence of the character and choices from the player to be enough for the system and game to run well and meet the expectations we all agreed on. the player's knowledge of or competence in the "task" or his ability to put together a convincing statement of effort need not factor into it.</blockquote>

Verification