Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7636298" data-attributes="member: 29398">For any number of reasons, some that you might like and some you might not: - to introduce new or unexpected elements to the fiction (whether pre-authored or generated on the fly) - to give the players (as their PCs) something new or different to think about; or to get them thinking a bit more outside the box - to, in the specific example given, point out there's more than one way to achieve the same endsIt counts as a success if you leave on the rest of the GM's narration which you conveniently snipped off, where incriminating evidence is found only in a different form than the player had in mind.Otherwise the GM is very limited in what she can reply with: either yes, you find papers of the sort you're looking for (on success), or no you don't (on failure).  The GM can't introduce the seal or other incriminating evidence here on a failed roll as to do so would turn a failure into a success and thus disrespect the roll.Where I simply look at the bigger goal (to incriminate the Duke) stated in the original declaration and base the success-fail narraton on that.  The specifics - papers vs seal - aren't much more than window dressing.And irrespective of all of this, pretty much any action declaration by a player has to generate a response of some sort, almost always from the GM but occasionally from another player instead e.g. if the action declaration is "As Falstaffe has just been disarmed I try to pass him my spare mace while parrying against my own foe this round" the response would likely come - at some point - from Falstaffe's player.Easy counter-example here: instead of passing disarmed Falstaffe my spare mace my action declaration instead is "Aha!  Falstaffe is disarmed - now's my chance: I run him through while he's distracted searching for his sword".  Some GMs (who are not me) would smack this one down in a hurry...</blockquote>

Verification