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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8011327" data-attributes="member: 42582">My point is that the ostensible reason given for laying out the building and occupants of the street, but not the pie vendor or curio vendor who will engage the PCs, was that the latter can't be done because we don't know what time the PCs will arrive.Whereas in fact we can almost certainly make the time of the PCs' arrival a simple matter of framing. (The almost is there because sometimes the players will have a particular reason to want their PCs to arrive at time X rather than time Y, which makes it something to be determined by action resolution if it's not just obvious that they can do it.)In the post you quote I said the following: "Yet in much D&D play that is not treated just as a matter of framing. The travel is counted out on maps using miles-per-day charts and no one ever twists an ankle, or has a horse throw a shoe, or otherwise have their travel time be less than near-metrenomic." Do you disagree with this? What, then, are all those hex-marks and movement rates for?As far as mishaps are concerned: I've played a fair bit of D&D and I've never had a GM tell me that I've twisted my ankle, or that my horse threw a shoe. (Whereas I have had issues with being lost: this goes back to the hex-crawl origins of the outdoor travel aspect of the game.)Not too far upthread you said the following about your use of maps:I'm not 100% sure I follow the metaphor of "colouring inside the lines" but I take you to be saying that the map informs your narration. This seems similar to how in my Prince Valiant session today I Googled up a map of Romania, Bulgaria and Anatolia so that I could make sure what I described about the PCs' movements on their way across Dacia to Constantinople would make rough geographic sense.That is maps as mere colour. Nothing more. They have no significance for action resolution and impose no meaningful constraints on action declaration. (Of course a wall, say, or a forest will constrain action declaration; but you don't need maps to narrate terrain and geography and architecture.)I have not seen a single D&D module ever that proposes using maps in that sort of way. Nor have I ever seen a D&D ruleset set up to use them like that except 4e, because it an use a skill challenge to actually resolve the journey, with the colour of the map being used to inform the resulting narration. When I say that in much D&D play travel is counted out on maps I'm drawing on my own play experience, my reading of many D&D modules over the years, my reading of various D&D rulebooks (even 4e has a miles-per-day chart because the authors of the PHB didn't integrate their mechanical elements into the skill challenge resolution framework), and what I see posted online.If your approach was typical I would expect to see it reflected somewhere in the official materials. But I don't.</blockquote>

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