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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7085141" data-attributes="member: 42582">Interestingly, when I suggested that [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] was making a category error, in attributing real causal power to NPCs, he (? I believe - please accept my apologies if I'm misremembering), Ovinomancer accused me (more-or-less) of engaging in ridicule, or deliberate distortion of what had been said.But here we see Maxperson making exactly that claim!And I will re-assert that it is a category error. NPCs do not "author themselves", and that sort of talk by authors is loose metaphor at best.In having an NPC do X rather than Y, a GM is making a choice. In extrapolating one way rather than another from established fiction, the GM is making a choice. Every day, all over the world, real people makes choices that no one would readily foresee based on a passing familiarity with their previous history and behaviour. A RPG doesn't become less verisimilitudinous because it has NPCs with similar degrees of unpredicatability!Three things.(1) I know perfectly well that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] doesn't adjudicate finality in resolution the same way that I do. But that doesn't mean that Maxperson is correct to say that, in my game, using the system (4e) that I was using, I was wrong to agree with my player that - as GM - I had made a bad call, and needed to wind back and remake it.(2) You ask Have you given us any reason to believe the advisor's agendas, whatever they are, are permanently and conclusively foiled other than to say the players passed some mechanical test that exposed the advisor? As I've already mentioned upthread, I find this an especially strange question from D&D players.In D&D combat, what reason do we have to believe that the ogre is dead, except that a player passed some mechanical test that reduced it to zero hp? Answer: none. The health of beings in D&D combat is not determined via fictional positioning and following the logic of the fiction; it's determined via an abstract mechanical process, to which - by the rules of the game - the fiction must then conform.The same is true of traditional encounter reaction checks: when reaction checks are being used, we don't first know the mood of the NPC/monster, and thereby determine it's reaction; rather a mechanical test - the reaction roll - tells us what their mood is (hostile, indifferent or friendly being the 3 traditional options).A skill challenge in 4e, or a Duel of Wits in BW, works the same way as these other tried-and-true D&D mechanics: the content of the fiction unfolds in a way that conforms to certain mechanical processes. If the players succeed at the challenge, the resulting fiction includes the elements that make up their success. In this case, that means the baron holds the breakdown of the situation against the advisor - revealed as a traitor - and not against the PCs.(3) I've posted upthread about some of the circumstances in which successes might be re-opened. I see this as one application of a more general "no retries" rule. AD&D has no general prohibition on retries, but lots of particular ones: a retry is never permitted when it comes to bending bars or lifting a gate, nor when it comes to finding or removing a trap; but a retry is permitted with a level gained, in the case of opening a lock.I think it is not compatible with a game being player-driven that the GM is permitted to reopen some matter willy-nilly, regardless of previous successes at action resolution.</blockquote>

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