NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8647974" data-attributes="member: 71699">[USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER]  it feels to some extent like there is a conflation of SN concerns with all other doubts. Again, to be really clear, I am not discussing SN play. I am talking about DM constraints. I do not describe 5e resolution as conflict-resolution, but as consequences-resolution. The conflicts are resolved, or not, in view of player intents that are not strongly represented in the mechanics (maybe only in TIBFs, alignment, inspiration.)It's then up to each group how they play it. One group might conduct a kind of objective-free, exploratory play (some sort of setting-tourism). Another might conduct a railroad (characters may have presumed objectives, but players don't get to say what those are). A third still might play as I advocate, where we reached this safe because it matters to the players' objectives.I can imagine scenarios where a random empty safe could be found. Say the characters are on a spree, knocking over banks. The safe contents are not really at stake. Going in, what players have most on their minds is the time taken to get in and out. That's the consequence we're then resolving. I think a principled, constrained GM call if the check fails (assuming no Knock spell) might be something like this: system's say is a failed roll can be success-with-complication, stakes declared up front is guards turn up, and that turns out to not be avoided. That's the vanilla version, because there also can be fair and constraining stakes that are known up front, but not as it happens by the players... or that are overlooked by them.If one doesn't play a lot of 5e, it's easy to miss something that's actually there in plain sight. The rule that you only call for a roll when there are meaningful consequences means that you must decide on those consequences before the roll. It's not - fail the roll and make whatever up - it's what are we rolling for?</blockquote>

Verification