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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7824563" data-attributes="member: 42582">I see this as feeding into the system side of the equation. Although having typed that it also contains elements of setting.As I think I mentioned upthread, the primary PCs in my Prince Valiant game are knights. The fourth player plays a bardish type, but is only able to make it to every second session or thereabouts. In the bard's second session, the PCs had heard tell of a strong knight who was blocking a bridge to the north of the city they were in, not allowing anyone across it unless they could beat him in a joust - which so far no one had been able to do!Naturally the PC knights decided to try their hands at this, and the bard accompanied him. I don't know how I would have adjudicated an attempt by the bard PC to persuade the knight to relinquish his stand on the bridge. But it didn't come up - the player of the bard was happy to let the knights he was accompanying do their thing. He did work the crowd up into a state of excitement, but not for any particular side (to the chagrin of the other players!) - so both PCs and NPC knight got bonus dice for their jousting, from the fervour of the crowd.I don't know what lessons exactly I want to draw from that one episode, but maybe two: for any PC (including a bard) to work the setting has to give them scope to do their thing (ie the GM can't be pre-determining things against them); and the system also has to give that scope. Your example of gaining a surprise advantage is a way of doing that in the context of D&amp;D-type combat resolution.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7824563, member: 42582"] I see this as feeding into the [I]system [/I]side of the equation. Although having typed that it also contains elements of setting. As I think I mentioned upthread, the primary PCs in my Prince Valiant game are knights. The fourth player plays a bardish type, but is only able to make it to every second session or thereabouts. In the bard's second session, the PCs had heard tell of a strong knight who was blocking a bridge to the north of the city they were in, not allowing anyone across it unless they could beat him in a joust - which so far no one had been able to do! Naturally the PC knights decided to try their hands at this, and the bard accompanied him. I don't know how I would have adjudicated an attempt by the bard PC to persuade the knight to relinquish his stand on the bridge. But it didn't come up - the player of the bard was happy to let the knights he was accompanying do their thing. He did work the crowd up into a state of excitement, but not for any particular side (to the chagrin of the other players!) - so both PCs and NPC knight got bonus dice for their jousting, from the fervour of the crowd. I don't know what lessons exactly I want to draw from that one episode, but maybe two: for any PC (including a bard) to work the setting has to give them scope to do their thing (ie the GM can't be pre-determining things against them); and the system also has to give that scope. Your example of gaining a surprise advantage is a way of doing that in the context of D&D-type combat resolution. [/QUOTE]

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