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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9232359" data-attributes="member: 82106">Lets back up a bit here: What is your goal? Mine is to present a series of situations which address the premise inherent in the play of the particular game in question. It's not a test of cleverness or an exercise in exploration, though skill and imagination may be significant factors in play at some level (see, for example BitD where these are definitely significant). So, to me, it's unusual for wandering about testing different hypotheses about where the GM hid the will to be a productive form of play. I mean, MAYBE in a very specific form of game focused on puzzle-solving and written very carefully in those terms MIGHT find that useful, but very rarely!So, the GM wants to focus on the premise, which may be explication of the PCs character, beliefs, etc. It could be more specific too, or limited to the context of a very specific milieu, etc. These parts are not so central to play though, what I want to do is give the players the information they need in order to allow the fiction to evolve dramatically in the direction addressing that premise and agenda. So, if there's a focus on finding a document in a safe, then that goal is in service of the above objectives. Having the PCs go through some elaborate scenario only to find nothing and end up right back where they started is USUALLY NOT going to be productive! So, we don't generally do that. The documents might NOT be in the safe, but if the players achieve success in respect to the mechanics, then the game will express fiction which includes accomplishing at least part of their goals, not ALL of them, as noted in some of [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] 's posts where he noted the DitV directive to 'scale down'. We thus begin to see the overall shape of play that is being advocated by VB/RE/JH/etc. 'Myth' serves as context, and generates constraints and obstacles which challenge the PCs and carry play in the direction of addressing the premise of play. Certain 'rules' govern how and what the GM can present, the players are given some sort of mechanism by which they can specify how they address the premise, and usually at some level mechanics address intent (though not always in terms of the atomic task resolution mechanic directly).</blockquote>

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