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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6568700" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Careful, my emoticon fu is strong!Alright, I decided to go with a different one because it is shorter!  Sblocked the quoted text below for quick reference.  Hopefully it makes sense.  [sblock][/sblock]Alright so we have the Feywild PC here who has just followed a spectral stag through a portal under the moonlight to who-knows-where?  In the pouring rain and darkness, she immediately stumbled upon some terrible ritual.  In the end, the infernal ritualists were slain or run off and the PC was saddled with seeing to a terrified collection of children.She wants to get help from a local village (so they can take in the children and tell her where the hell she is), but she  deems the first order of business to find a secured shelter, safe from the elements and predators, where she can stow the children (and leave her Bear companion behind to protect them) while she goes and looks for a village.Not a terribly dramatic conflict in and of itself, but the safe-keeping of the children is important to her both emotionally and from a utility perspective.  Some interesting gameplay can come out of this, possibly some trouble, possibly some heartache.  So she initiates the conflict and I adjudicate the parameters that I think would best fit the challenge.  My thinking:1)  While there certainly are some interesting things that could arise from this, there is a relative dearth of them compared to other opportunities for adventure.2)  The stakes are not low, but they aren't terribly high.3)  It isn't absolutely central to the thematic premise of the game.From that, I go with complexity 1 SC to resolve:4 success before 3 failures.  1 secondary skill (because complexity 1).  0 hard DCs (and 0 advantages - they come into play @ comp 3 and above).\At the table, this would be overtly established in conversation including markers for the various parts (tokens for SS and counter dice for success and failures).[HR][/HR]As you can see, her first two action declarations are in her lead post.  If this was done at the table, the conversation would intersect more intimately and I would have presented a complication between her Ritual deployment and Nature usage.  However, it almost assuredly would have been geographically related (and she probably knew that having gamed a lot with me...and it is pretty intuitive), so fair enough.She masks the presence of their movements with Pass Without Trace (spending the requisite gold for the ritual), earning her 1 success.She then uses her Nature skill to track down the sound of running water, extrapolating that the runoff must collect in a basin/reservoir somewhere.  She is expecting to find caves there near this water.  Due to her successful check, the following happens:So she successfully navigates the runoff to a collecting pool, at the top of some cliffs, which falls into a larger drainage basin.  The cliff face has the sort of natural shelters that she is looking for but there will be a decision-point in which she chooses for shelter.  More imminent however, is a potential encounter with a ravenous mountain lion (who likely has cubs to protect), possibly stirring up more trouble with all the racket/noise (and putting the children in danger).She decides that the best course of action is to send her Bear down to scare off the hyenas, who have claimed the lion's hard-earned kill, and hopefully the lion will reclaim her kill rather than pursuing her current course.  Using her own Intimidate check (later he will be a full-fledged companion character with his own Initimidate check), we resolve this action declaration.She succeeds.  Now we are right at the cusp of an earned success in the challenge, which would mean a secure and safe shelter for the children to hole up in while she looks for a village.  So it is time for a decision between a few prospects:She decides to check out the cave at ground level due to the following reasoning:She goes inside and finds some mysterious stuff that could be threatening or not.  This stuff includes some remains.  She inspects the entirety of the cave, securing it in the process, thus cementing her success in the challenge and binding the my own "move" as affirmation of her goals; safe, secured shelter to house the children while she explores for a village.[HR][/HR]Alright.  Now we didn't have any micro-failures in this that would have resulted in failing forward.  Those would have resulted in Healing Surges lost and immediate fallout that would need to be overcome.  What we did have was a run of successes which require the fiction changing in interesting ways that either outright complicate the PC's attainment of her objective or force a strategic (typically aimed at setting up the fiction toward her resource wheel-house or a SS buff) and dramatic decision-point.  Couple if-thens to relate what might have happened (all assuming that they don't cement the SC as failure):- if she would have failed that Nature check, then she would have lost an HS and I might have introduced some sort of geographical hazard;  eg mud-slide.- if she would have failed that Intimidate check, then she would have lost an HS and I might have had the hyenas be indifferent to the bear's threats and have kept the hungry mountain lion on her present track, heading straight for the bear-less Saerie and her group of children that she is trying to protect.- if she failed in her efforts at securing the cave, then she would have lost an HS and I might have turned it into the temple in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade whereby she accidentally just triggered a trap...or a den with something lurking...rather than a fortified, defensible natural shelter.Finally, it is hard to say where things have gone if she would have failed throughout the course of it.  The fiction would have changed pretty considerably.  However, I'm pretty certain that if she would have failed the SC outright with those hyenas or the mountain lion being the relevant threat at the moment, I would have charged her an HS and we would have begun a combat encounter whereby all of the children are one-hit-kill minions (with some kind of attack - like throwing rocks - and utility power defense each) and she has to control/kill the bad guys and keep them off of the kids.  Then, down several resources and possibly some kids, she could attempt to start anew (a C1 SC).[HR][/HR]So why is that not vulnerable to illusionism.  In no particular order:1)  The resolution mechanics are codified and explicit.2)  The GM's job and principles are clear.3)  The PC build mechanics are properly synthesized with the resolution mechanics to achieve coherency between the two.4)  The GM's latitude is tightly and overtly constrained.  If they attempt to break those constraints, such as deny the player the earned, secure shelter for the children (despite the SC victory and the explicated stakes), their bad faith will be utterly apparent.So we have interesting, dynamic gameplay.  We have strategic and/or dramatic decision-points.  We have transparent, coherent play procedures.  We have the guarantee of above-board, good-faith GMing.[HR][/HR]Now let us take a look at how AD&D handles this and compare it with 1-4 above.In AD&D, the handling procedure is to consult the Natural Shelter table for the given terrain/locale, roll percentile dice, determine success/failure.  So here I would be rolling vs 40 % (Natural Shelter - Mountain).  If they fail and they want to try again, it is 3 turns worth of searching so I’m rolling 1 or more times for random encounters.  Those random encounters could be stock from the DMG or of my own devising (both type/kind and frequency). Now an interesting intersection of the rules is how do nonproficiencies play into this?  There are lots of them that would seem applicable; eg Alertness, Athletics, Direction Sense, Geography, Mountaineering.  However, none of these NWPs are actually synthesized with the conflict resolution mechanics of % to find Natural Shelter.  So if the player is going to have any agency, any decision-points at all (and the resultant fiction being anything resembling interesting or dynamic), I'm going to have to wing the synthesis of PC build resources > resolution mechanics entirely.  Unless, of course, they deploy a spell...Outside of the latitude of rule 0 and hiding percentage chance to succeed (and hiding rolls behind screens), this is probably the major issue with AD&D and illusionism.  Either the rules outright do not canvass very central aspects of mundane noncombat resolution that are key to functional play…or, where they do, the intersection of PC build mechanics and conflict resolution mechanics are a tangled mess of incoherency.  This is a goldmine for illusionism GMing.</blockquote>

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