Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 5181319" data-attributes="member: 3887">Well, I was assuming the player had to overcome an in-game challenge for the sword, that actual game play was involved, but I think I understand your point. It still seems like a strange thing to damage a player's suspension of disbelief -- or, rather, it suggests a person who's mindset is stuck in the conventions of AD&D, rather than in more primary sources, or in the fiction of the game.If it happened to one of my PC's, they'd think "I was destined to find this sword!", not "this is highly unusual given the treasure distribution guidelines in Appendix IV. I suspect the DM is trying to undercut my sense of accomplishment".  Reasonable, but it seems like an argument against valuable random treasure as well. Against any reward the player doesn't specifically and proactively seek.  I agree this the best course of action for significant items. In other words, build an adventure out of it -- again, good idea. I guess what I'm getting at it is 1) hard illusionism is bad and 2) soft illusionism isn't worth defining.   This sounds an awful lot like sophistry (though the funny kind --I'm tempting to create the Ambush Tavern and spring it --literally- on my group). Once the players encounter a place it becomes a fixed part of the game world. But before then, what does it matter?This describes the bulk of every campaign world I've ever built... ideas in a state of flux that don't get fixed in place until I share them w/others (ie, the get observed in play). The whole thing is illusionsim. Note that wasn't exactly what I said: I meant players would encounter it, not necessarily step inside and engage w/the NPC's.  Yes, in fact I did mean that <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. Yes, being mindful of the implications surrounding an NPC you create is important, but that in no way implies the need nor desire to force a particular course of action on the PC's who encounter them. There's a leap of logic I'm missing here...</blockquote>

Verification