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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7087948" data-attributes="member: 42582">This doesn't make sense.You're not a character in a game. Your "story" is not being authored by anyone. (Not in any literal sense, at least.)When playing a RPG, though, how do we know that the shop has no milk? One way is for the GM to stipulate. Another is for the player to make an appropriate check, and if the check fails then perhaps the narration of that failure is that the shop is out of milk.That is why this issue has nothing to do with realism. "Realism" is a property of the fiction - do people sometimes fail to find the goods they're looking for? But what this discussion is about is the process, at a table of RPG players, for determining when such an event might occur. (1) Things like this don't need to be pre-determined. It can be worked out any number of other ways:* The GM might make something up on the spot; * The GM might roll on a random table (AD&D used to be big on these; so is Classic Traveller); * A player might says "Haven't I heard rumour of war in Calimshan" and then roll some appropriate skill (say, History in 4e; or Calimshan-wise or Campaign-wise in BW); * Etc.(2) I have not said a single thing about bad GMing. That is a concept that you,  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] have used.I am talking about various techniques, and why I do or don't like them in my RPGing.</blockquote>