NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9694259" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Nope. They are, in effect, the same thing, because the meaning of the runes was not established ahead of time.If you, the GM, had decided that the runes meant "exit thataway -->" and a PC said "boy I hope that these runes will show us the way out," then rolled well enough to translate the runes, that would be one thing.Instead, what happened is that you, the GM, put the runes there to be "fun and interesting." They had no other meaning or translation. A PC said "boy I hope that these runes will show us the way out," then rolled well enough, and they were. From a mechanical standpoint, this is the same thing as the player wishing the meaning into existence. From an in-fiction standpoint, it also doesn't make much sense to me as anything other than a suspiciously lucky guess--considering there were likely hundreds of other logical translations, some of which were probably even more logical for the location.Except that people do, all the time. In D&D and its -alikes, you can usually decide if you kill the orc or if you knock them unconscious. And, of course, you can choose to not strike at all.Also, unlike your runes, an adversary like an orc has established characteristics. There is a certain amount of harm you can inflict before one of these characteristics--the hit points--run out, at which point its dead. Then how is it credible that the exact runes the player hopes mean "exit thataway" do, in fact, mean "exit thataway"?  Did the PC have any reason to believe that they would mean that? And yet, you seem to think that most or all games work like the ones you play with, and get affronted when people push back.</blockquote>

Verification