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="pemerton" data-source="post: 8004699" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is why the notion of "meaningful choice" is in my view inapt. This approach to play requires the players to work out - by guesswork or inference - what the GM has in mind in order to have their PCs succeed at their actions. It's RPGIng as a type of puzzle-solving.This is how we work out whether or not a PC beats an orc in a duel. Why is it acceptable there but objectionable in determining whether or not the steely glare and cutting words of a PC cow a NPC. In LotR Aragorn wresteld with Sauron via a palantir and drove him to strike earlier than he intended, with fatal consequences for the latter. How would you do this in a RPG? Woudl the GM have to decide whether or not it is consistent with Sauron's character to feel threatened by Aragorn?It's not atypical in D&D for the referee to use a dice roll to find out how a NPC reacts. For over a decade the published rules included a reaction table and morale rules. (In D&D these were a semi-integrated system, although I suspect many players did not use all the elements of it, which seem to have been written up more on a conceputal basis than with an eye towards actual play.)As for the comparison to players: the role of the players and the GM is not the same. To give just one example: If a player wants his/her PC to have a sword, s/he (at a minimum) has to change the number in the GP box on his/her PC sheet. A GM can just add a sword to his/her NPC's equpment list. It's seems absurd to me to express some sort of surprise that the two participant roles might operate under different constraints.</blockquote>

Verification