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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9686787" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Then you cannot simply wish the ruby to be there simply because you know it's a safe and it's in the correct house.Because...people don't normally hide things in easily-accessible places? Because context matters?Play is a conversation. Sometimes that conversation is going to include context that will make some things more reasonable and other things less reasonable. Is that a problem?Because the prompt is malformed. It was wrong from the start, and thus cannot be worked with directly. It would be like saying "I perform the calculation, in order to determine the number which is greater than seven and less than three." No such number exists--it doesn't matter how much you might want one, it simply isn't there.Because the stated intention is unacceptable from the outset, in the absence of further established fiction or the conversation-of-play resulting in agreement from the other participants that that direction makes sense in this context.What: Has it been said? Does it rationally, with reasonable directness, follow from established fiction?Knowing that the ruby is SOMEWHERE in a given house, and that this safe is in the house, does not seem like enough justification to me. But we are speaking with such high generality, with so little context, that I cannot rule out the possibility that the conversation that is play would have given reasonable context. The example is so decontextualized, it can't meaningfully be addressed. You have, more than once, explicitly said that I should assume that only the bare minimum of fiction has been established, more or less that the ONLY things the player knows are that the ruby is in the house somewhere, and that there is at least one locked safe. If I am to presume that absolutely nothing else has been established, and that the conversation that is play provides absolutely nothing else that would make further extension reasonable, then no, it is not valid. The very fact that it strikes you and others as unreasonable is why it isn't valid.I'm not sure where I actually said that that is it? Like I genuinely don't recall ever using the phrase "only known safe in a house where the valuable object is known to exist". In part because that's a pretty weak bit of "knowledge". As you say, it is trivially easy to come up with other locked places the ruby could plausibly be--which is, itself, the very reason why this incredibly thin bit of established fiction simply isn't enough. You DON'T have a "good well-founded reason to believe" it. But, in context, it might still be fine for play to go in that direction for a wide variety of reasons. Maybe the GM knows the session is about five minutes from ending, so going on a wild goose chase to find the ruby would be really annoying, un-fun, and not particularly productive in any way other than to show off that this is a challenge. That would be a contextual (but not within-the-world) reason for why the GM might go along with something that isn't necessarily very well-established, but is still at least somewhat reasonable. Or, maybe the GM knows that this specific player has had a really bad day, and has been rolling poorly all night, and has been showing some admirable stiff-upper-lip tendencies, and could really really just use a break this once. Or, maybe the GM knows that the BBEG who stole the ruby (or whomever happens to possess it right now) is really lazy, and so a basic hiding place makes a lot of sense, even though the PCs don't actually know of this BBEG's laziness yet. Or...This is why I say the conversation that is play may provide context outside of the establishing fiction, which can shape play in a direction that is 100% fully compatible with known information, and thus enable a path that is only weakly justified through established fiction. If there simply isn't any relevant context from the conversation that is play, and LITERALLY the only two things the PC knows are "the ruby is in this house" and "this is a safe inside this house", then no, this simply is not a good well-founded reason to believe that the ruby ABSOLUTELY IS in this specific place and no other.No. Because, as said, I don't see this as enough when stripped of anything but the two pieces of information you've agreed are established and when zero further context is permitted. The intent simply isn't acceptable, from the beginning, and thus the whole example is a false start, not actually descriptive of any game I've ever played or even heard of.I'm...honestly not sure what you mean by this. Perhaps the above has clarified?</blockquote>

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