Because he quoted the definition he uses and the rule was posted upthread. If the skill makes sense to apply to a situation, it can be used. That skill makes sense to apply to just about everything. Keen insights and/or deceptions work very, very, very often in just about every circumstance
And yet… no one posting in this thread who is familiar with these kinds of games shares your concern. Why do you think that is?
Are we mistaken? Are we being dishonest?
Or do you think perhaps your understanding of the game in question, which you’ve never played, seem not to have read, have little familiarity with similar games, and for which you’re relying in the snippets shared in this thread by others to base your understanding… might not be complete?
I mean… why are you making assertions here instead of asking questions? It’s kind of amazing.
This isn't D&D. It's a game where if a skill makes sense to use in a situation, you can use it.
I just wanted to quote this because it’s awesome.
Because some of us take the player and the character to be one and the same when engaging with the fiction in situations where the required degree of abstraction is minimal or nonexistent, as it easily could be here. Actor stance.
If the player at the table caused what the runes to say what they did - regardless of how this was done - then so did the character in the fiction.
The player declared what they hoped. What caused the runes to help the PC find their way was the game’s resolution system.
If the player never voiced a hope and the GM simply narrated the result being that the runes help find a way out, either because he had predetermined this or because he decided in the moment, no one would object.
The issue, therefore, is that the player had any kind of say in the outcome at all. Never mind that there needed to be a successful die roll and so on… it’s just the fact that the player can have a say, however passive or secondary, about the outcome.
And yet the same folks who criticize this will balk and blanche at suggestions that their games don’t allow the same level of player agency as a game that allows this. They’ll scramble to make distinctions about types of agency instead of simply looking at what a player can do.
Do you think that makes any kind of difference to the playstyle objection?
I would think that it should, yes, though I don’t expect it would.
The world is created in the imaginations of the people at the table. Before the runes were encountered they literally had no meaning because you as GM had not assigned anything. After the player stated what they hoped the runes would be, the runes went from undefined to defined. The state of the world changed. Had the player failed their roll, you as GM would have changed the runes to something detrimental if I remember your explanation correctly.
In the fictional world, whatever is established in the moment of play has been true all along. Again… true all along in the fiction.
Establishing something is not changing what has been for the characters and their experiences.
Of course it doesn't make your description inaccurate. Your play is your play. But for me it absolutely does become less realistic, less sim, and more meta to play the way you do.
So what? No one is asking you to adopt these games or to try and use their methods in your own game. You can keep doing what you’re doing.
But don’t you think your persistence in pointing out your preference simply in the face of another method being described kind of proves the point of the thread title?
So in short, you gave no real limitation.
Pretty much the AD&D thieves’ skills would be the limit. Climbing walls, picking pockets, reading languages, moving silently, and so on.
It was very clear to me.
That's a railroad. "You can create the fiction, so long as you create the correct fiction that I the DM have set forth." The limitation as @pemerton put forth wasn't a limitation. D&D tropes and cunning INCLUDING the 1e thief doesn't set a limitation on the fiction, because that still applies generally to just about everything.
The player and the GM being in agreement about the character’s capabilities isn’t a railroad. Good grief.
It is what it means, though. If he's using cunning to be D&D tropes and also not just what thieves do, it's not "but actually" nonsense at all. If that's all he told me, I'd truly believe that it would be very broadly applicable to just about everything, because that's what cunning would mean in the context of D&D tropes and not just what thieves do.
It’s absolutely pedantic but acshually nonsense.
Again… no one familiar with this type of game seems confused by it. None of us seem to share your concern.
Why do you think that is?
