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<blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9679020" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Perhaps ironically, the bolded bit is actually the most realistic and plausible way to go. In real life, we can make educated guesses by drawing on our past experiences. But in RPGs, especially D&amp;D, GMs are usually strongly encouraged to shake things up because having similar things happen too often is boring and leads to players getting complacent. In one particularly obvious example, it's why there's so many different varieties of monsters in D&amp;D. Is this slime mold monster the one that dies when its exposed to fire, or the one that aggressively grows and becomes more dangerous? That dragon is green and brown; is it evil, and what does it breathe? Ditto for just about everything else: new interpretations of standard races and adversaries, innovative ways to build your adventure locales, new and different types of traps, and other new twists on old tropes. In other words, unless the GM has a very curated, and above all short list of things the players may encounter, there's not going to be much of a way for a typical party to know the consequences. So &quot;making the players commit to actions without knowable consequences&quot; is, in fact, logical. They've never been in this situation before; how would they know the consequences?However, in most games, either (a) the players are allowed to make knowledge rolls ahead of time or during the encounter or (b) in games that don't rely on skill checks, the GM is allowed or even encouraged to give the players knowledge based on information written on their sheets or backgrounds. &quot;I have the 'Arcane Botanist' trait. What do I know about that plant-monster?&quot; And that means the players aren't going to go in blind nearly as much as you might think--even if they've never been in this situation before, they probably some knowledge that can help them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Faolyn, post: 9679020, member: 6915329"] Perhaps ironically, the bolded bit is actually the most realistic and plausible way to go. In real life, we can make educated guesses by drawing on our past experiences. But in RPGs, especially D&D, GMs are usually strongly encouraged to shake things up because having similar things happen too often is boring and leads to players getting complacent. In one particularly obvious example, it's why there's so many different varieties of monsters in D&D. Is [I]this [/I]slime mold monster the one that dies when its exposed to fire, or the one that aggressively grows and becomes more dangerous? That dragon is green [I]and [/I]brown; is it evil, and what does it breathe? Ditto for just about everything else: new interpretations of standard races and adversaries, innovative ways to build your adventure locales, new and different types of traps, and other new twists on old tropes. In other words, unless the GM has a very curated, and above all [I]short[/I] list of things the players may encounter, there's not going to be much of a way for a typical party to know the consequences. So "making the players commit to actions without knowable consequences" is, in fact, logical. They've never been in this situation before; how [I]would [/I]they know the consequences? [I]However, [/I]in most games, either (a) the players are allowed to make knowledge rolls ahead of time or during the encounter or (b) in games that don't rely on skill checks, the GM is allowed or even encouraged to give the players knowledge based on information written on their sheets or backgrounds. "I have the 'Arcane Botanist' trait. What do I know about that plant-monster?" And [I]that [/I]means the players aren't going to go in blind nearly as much as you might think--even if they've never been in this situation before, they probably [I]some [/I]knowledge that can help them. [/QUOTE]

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