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<blockquote data-quote="The Choice" data-source="post: 6019915" data-attributes="member: 90669">Being a protagonist has nothing to do with success or failure (or the expectation of success), but everything to do with having a certain degree of control over your own action, to be the driving force behind the things happening to you, be they good or ill.&nbsp; You might not think of your players as protagonists, but they are as long as the decisions they make have an impact and result in consequences.&nbsp; Monsters and NPCs on the other hand are at your mercy as a DM: the orcs of the Bloodstorm clan want to rampage through the village of Quietburg?&nbsp; Why not?&nbsp; Do you need to roll each individual attack the raiders make on the town's defenders?&nbsp; No (doesn't mean you shouldn't, could be fun).&nbsp; If the corrupt duke wants to seduce the now-orphaned princess to gain control of the land, do you need to roll up stats for both those NPCs and roll a series of pointless checks to see if he can woo her?&nbsp; I don't think the game needs to waste precious space to include that when you can just say: yea or nay.I've never had a problem with that in any edition: demons want to rampage across the land, devils plot to gather more corrupt souls, dragons have vast schemes that span centuries, giants raid the borderlands and have internicine clan rivalries, goblin tribes war against each other over territory, etc.&nbsp; I never needed to roll a skills check, or to have The specific spell or even the right alignment to replicate a specific antagonist's impact on the world.&nbsp; I made the decision on what happened or, when I felt it could be interesting either way, simply tossed a coin.&nbsp; Heck I'm not even constrained by the game's binary nature of success/failure, I can nuance it better without having specific mechanics.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Choice, post: 6019915, member: 90669"] Being a protagonist has [I]nothing[/I] to do with success or failure (or the expectation of success), but everything to do with having a certain degree of control over your own action, to be the driving force behind the things happening to you, be they good or ill. You might not think of your players as protagonists, but they are as long as the decisions they make have an impact and result in consequences. Monsters and NPCs on the other hand are at your mercy as a DM: the orcs of the Bloodstorm clan want to rampage through the village of Quietburg? Why not? Do you [I]need[/I] to roll each individual attack the raiders make on the town's defenders? No (doesn't mean you shouldn't, could be fun). If the corrupt duke wants to seduce the now-orphaned princess to gain control of the land, do you need to roll up stats for both those NPCs and roll a series of pointless checks to see if he can woo her? I don't think the game needs to waste precious space to include that when you can just say: yea or nay. I've never had a problem with that in any edition: demons want to rampage across the land, devils plot to gather more corrupt souls, dragons have vast schemes that span centuries, giants raid the borderlands and have internicine clan rivalries, goblin tribes war against each other over territory, etc. I [I]never[/I] needed to roll a skills check, or to have [B]The [/B]specific spell or even the right alignment to replicate a specific antagonist's impact on the world. I made the decision on what happened or, when I felt it could be interesting either way, simply tossed a coin. Heck I'm not even constrained by the game's binary nature of success/failure, I can nuance it better without having specific mechanics. [/QUOTE]

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