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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7088184" data-attributes="member: 16814">No, I gave XP to billd91 for his excellent question.  You need to recalibrate what XP means -- it isn't full agreement with a post, it's a mark of appreciation for something in the post.  I give XP to people who's arguments I don't agree with if they make an excellent argument or provide an insight I hadn't considered before.  XP does not mean agreement.But, to your first line, sure, very few, but all negative.  That someone else liked that interpretation doesn't remove the fact that you provided a negative interpretation.  Further, someone liking it (or, as I've read it, trying to provide an alternative reading) doesn't validate your presentation as authoritative or even normative.  In example, I like "secret backstory", which is really just DM authored fiction that the players haven't uncovered yet.  But I do not use it as you suggest to negate player intent without their knowledge.  If the players wish to engage a King, then relevant information is provided, through rumor or framing.  If I've set up a King who's afraid of frogs, and the players are aware that there's a Royal decree for frogcatchers, and there's a large bounty on frogs in the city, and there are rumors of a mummer's troop arrested and jailed for playing 'the Princess and the Frog', then when the players show up for the masquerade ball in frog costumes, I don't feel it's too secret anymore when the King shrieks and orders their arrest.  In this way, preauthored backstory that isn't based on the player actions can frame a game nicely without engaging in your boogeyman of negating player intent without their knowledge.Similarly, snap judgement in a situation about what's present is neither secret backstory nor railroading, in and of itself.  Deciding that there are no bowls in a room is just fine without a roll, so long as the DM has done so with a reason for the lack of bowls that makes sense and could be understood in the gameworld. Not based on secret backstory, but on presented and predictable information.  Personally, it would be obvious to me that some kind of container would be available in a room, from decorative vases to a washing bowl to leftover dinner trays to chamber pots.  The need to test to determine bits of framing seems odd to me, and I've played in player-centric games.  "Is there a bowl" is a question of framing for me, not an essential test.  The essential test to me would be, upon grabbing the bowl, if I can actually catch enough blood.  That makes the test about the PC doing something in line with the player intent, and not about a piece of the background.So, then, I suppose my question here at the end, is why did you pick finding a container to be the crux of the scene instead of whether or not the PC could, with a container, actually collect sufficient blood?  It seems you made a DM judgement to "say yes" to catching blood once you finished testing for the presence of a bowl.  Would it not have been the same, and possibly even better since it's testing PC ability, to test to catch the blood after "say(ing) yes' to the presence of a bowl?it appears that there's multiple ways to skin this cat.  The 'yes bowl, test catch' method works just fine with DM judgement and secret backstory, AND with the player-centric principles you've proposed.  The 'test bowl, yes catch' seems odd, in that it's focusing on the presence of a bowl rather than PC action.</blockquote>

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