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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9229525" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER]Helping scale down stakes - from "She tells us everything" to "She trusts us on this one thing" - isn't saying no or even putting things off. It is scaling down.It needs to be read concurrently with the other principles and the expositions of them - which I've quoted at some length.The point of prep, in DitV, is not to create a basis for vetoing, or separating the relationship between task success and goal achievement; it's to provide material for confronting the players (via their PCs), for coordinating various elements of the fiction (eg who is connected to whom, who knows what about whom, etc).In a CoC-type approach, the GM calls for checks to decide whether or not to reveal this information (be that information about what's in safes, where safes are located, who knows whom, etc). In general, information is "hoarded" or "gated". A significant aspect of play is for the players to identify the possibility of this information (eg that there might be a safe) and then to learn more about its details (eg the safe might have dirt in it) and then to find out if those suppositions, formed by a mix of guess and inference, are sound (eg "We crack the safe!").In DitV, the GM is actively revealing the town in play, is following the players' lead about what's important and is driving play towards conflict by, at every moment of play, either saying 'yes' or framing a conflict (which will be either vs another person, or vs demonic influence). So suppose the GM has prepared a town, and part of the prep is that the sinners meet in a particular hall, and some virtuous young person has title to that hall in virtue of inheritance from their aunt, but the sinners have hidden the title and testamentary instruments in a safe, so they can keep their meeting place which has become imbued with their sinful essence. The players start poking around, and as per Baker's examples (pp 137, 139)Present the PCs with choices — by which I mean, have your NPCs come to them and ask them to do things, fix things, take care of things, make it right, make it better, tell them it’s not their fault, tell them they’re in the right, tell them not to worry - then back waaay off. “Sister Abigail comes to you and asks you to marry her to her lover, Brother Ezekiel. Yes, they’ve been having an illicit affair and he’s already married. What do you do?” Provoke the players to have their characters take action, then: react! Whatever the PCs do, your NPCs have to adjust to it. Figure out what they want now - it should be easy, they want what they always wanted _ and have ’em work toward it. . . . I have the NPC launch into his or her tirade. “Things are awful! This person’s sleeping with this other person not with me, they murdered the schoolteacher, blood pours down the meeting house walls every night!”So the players learn there's a meeting hall. And something or someone - as portrayed by the GM, engaging in active revelation and provocation - brings the issue of uncertain or disputed titles to the players' attention. And so the GM follows that lead, and the safe becomes a component of the action.This is different from CoC. It doesn't involve "saying 'no'" to action declarations, or breaking the relationship between success at the task and achieving the goal, based on secret backstory. Nor does it require no myth. It requires application of the relevant principles - saying 'yes', driving play towards conflict, actively revealing the town in play.Of course the DitV version depends on the overall framing of the game - the PCs are religious authority figures. Different RPGs use different technical methods, different framings, etc.</blockquote>

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