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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8436921" data-attributes="member: 6785785">The inclusion of mechanics doesn't replace standard narration. It's typically in addition to the narration. The GM's still going to describe the events of play, they're just going to add in the meaningful and relevant mechanical bits. I quoted this bit, because I think there's a useful bit in here. Why would the players not see the GM's rolls? To me, that's a really basic summary of the larger discussion about player facing mechanics. Why hide rolls? There may be more than one reason, but the relevant one is so that the players don't know the result of the roll....which will allow a GM to decide the result as he likes without their knowledge. Rolling in the open means he cannot do that (or at least it becomes much more difficult to do it) without the players knowing. This is the advantage of player facing mechanics/processes at the most fundamental. Do things in the open, and you can't hide them.I don't quite see it that way. The PCs see the father and daughter struggling on the boat, they see the kraken's tentacles attacking, they see kraken in the distance, an obviously enormous creature with just a part of it breaking the surface. In seeing these things, the characters would have a sense of the danger and the scope of the creature and the capabilities of the father and the traits that the little girl would have. Do the characters know them precisely? No. But sharing that information with the players informs the players of information that the characters would know. Is it more precise than what the characters know? At times, it may be, yes. Does that make it "meta"? My guess would be that for you it would be. And yet my counter would be that me having to rely on someone else's imprecise language to describe the scene would render me much less informed than the character would be, and therefore is far more meta.No, he was described as a soldier. Clearly, he appears to be a soldier, and likely has a weapon that he's using, and the PCs see how he wields it. There absolutely is a way of telling.Oh stop it. That could be true of everything all the time, so therefore nothing is certain!!! Such exteme hypotheticals are useless.Somebody's, I suppose.This insistence that folks keep putting forth that they know when they're being railroaded is interesting. I agree that at times it can be incredibly easy to notice. Some railroading is very obvious. But some is not. Some is very subtle, and more a product of the system working as designed than as anything the GM is actively doing. I'm less concerned about the obvious stuff, because in most cases it's obvious (obviously!) but also because typically that's an example of poor GMing (except in those cases where the players may be aware of it and have accepted it). But in cases where maybe a GM has an idea in his head about how things should go, and then everything goes that way largely because there's nothing about the rules or processes that act as a check against that.....those are more what I'm on guard for, as a GM and as a player. I don't want to do that to my players, and I generally don't want that going on when I'm playing. Hence the preference for player facing rules and procedures. If a GM rolls openly, if they openly share DCs and similar game elements, then I am more comfortable that they are not forcing things towards some preconceived idea. It's not so much that it's an either/or as it just lessens the chance.</blockquote>

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