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<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9677646" data-attributes="member: 6690965">I don't think this is quite right; the question at stake isn't the actual play or recitation of those situations in full. It's perfectly possible and one imagines quite common that you get &quot;alright, you buy 6 days of rations and a waterskin, there aren't any arcane focuses for sale in this town&quot; as the whole of the result. The point isn't the actual amount of table time spent on the situation, so much as it is the mechanical consistency of resolving those situations. If a player asked for more details about the shopkeeper or tried to deploy an ability on them for whatever reason, the basis for interaction would be the same as it would be in a tense negotiation with a fence.I agree here, I just think this is sort of orthogonal to the nature of mechanical interaction. There's a huge difference between &quot;we're eliding this because it's obvious to all of us how it will go&quot; and &quot;we're eliding this because it doesn't merit the introduction of mechanics.&quot; The former is relying on an already re-enforced norm that interaction is consistent and that this is a case that consistency produces essentially null results, the latter does exactly the opposite, and makes it clear that interaction is variable.I think it's very funny that one criticism is that it makes failure impossible, when my objection is usually that it makes failure too uncertain to plan around consistently.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 9677646, member: 6690965"] I don't think this is quite right; the question at stake isn't the actual play or recitation of those situations in full. It's perfectly possible and one imagines quite common that you get "alright, you buy 6 days of rations and a waterskin, there aren't any arcane focuses for sale in this town" as the whole of the result. The point isn't the actual amount of table time spent on the situation, so much as it is the mechanical consistency of resolving those situations. If a player asked for more details about the shopkeeper or tried to deploy an ability on them for whatever reason, the basis for interaction would be the same as it would be in a tense negotiation with a fence. I agree here, I just think this is sort of orthogonal to the nature of mechanical interaction. There's a huge difference between "we're eliding this because it's obvious to all of us how it will go" and "we're eliding this because it doesn't merit the introduction of mechanics." The former is relying on an already re-enforced norm that interaction is consistent and that this is a case that consistency produces essentially null results, the latter does exactly the opposite, and makes it clear that interaction is variable. I think it's very funny that one criticism is that it makes failure impossible, when my objection is usually that it makes failure too uncertain to plan around consistently. [/QUOTE]

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