NOW LIVE! X Marks the Spot: Piratical Resources for your 5E game

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7628617" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think it sounds bad! Not quite my cup of tea, but that's a different less interesting matter.A little while ago now I started a thread which tooks as its premise that there is a key puzzle-solving/learning-what-the-GM-is-thinking aspect in the sort of approach to fiction-creation you are (if I've understood you) describing here. I think this sort of play, which seems very prevalent, is under-analysed.I think another avenue of exploration is around what sorts of descriptions are up for grabs when checks are made - who gets to decide what they are, and how do we choose between them? Many traditional combat systems offer fairly precise and sometimes fairly rigid answers to these questions, which I think may be what you're getting at here.I think the issue of "invalidation", or as I sometimes put it in the affirmative honouring player successes in checks is a very interesting phenomenon. In my experience in quite few systems it is this principle which helps establish wider/richer descriptions, extrapolating from players' thinner descriptions plus (sometimes quite amorphous) hopes/expectations.When that principle isn't applied (and I think there are some well-established approaches to some systems - at least D&D and CoC that I'm familiar with - where it often isn't applied) then players can't establish much beyond those thin descriptions.When that principle is applied I think it's interesting to consider how we should think about who is driving the wider descriptions - eg even if the GM is doing it in a formal sense where are they getting their material from, what constraints do they apply to themselves, etc.EDIT to add a reply to this:I was leaving it open, though in the second of the middle paras (the safe example) I was imagining that we are using a check to establish the success of an action.For instance, here is one way to set up a resolution system: player posits a description; GM counter-posits a description; a check is made; on a success player's posit is true in the fiction, on a fail the GM's is. (I'm taking it for granted that posited descriptions are genre and context appropriate; if that's up for grabs at the table then it will need to be sorted out before resolution can proceed.)Burning Wheel played canonically works like this. Much of AD&D, played canonically, differs from this (some combat-ish elements might be partial exceptions if looked at in the right way).So I think the relationship between resolution and establishing true descriptions of PC actions can be quite variable across actual and conceivable systems. And there are other things besides resolution that this is true of: eg what is the relationship between stuff the GM writes down in advance of play and establishing true descriptions of PC actions. In Cortex+ Heroic, not a lot; in classic AD&D, the relationship can be very tight (again with some combat-ish elements perhaps being exceptions); in PbtA the relationship is different again; etc.</blockquote>

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