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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6569768" data-attributes="member: 6696971">[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], would you care to comment on what I wrote in the above post (I'll just sblock the relevant bit below for easy reference rather than linking).  [sblock]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.[/sblock]A fair bit (ok almost all of it) of your commentary leaves me wondering just how much you have actually GMed AD&D.  Your version of content generation and how play procedures manifest during noncombat resolution (and the feel those procedures engender at the table) doesn't remotely comport with my own.  Take the above scenario, for instance.  I ran a large amount of wilderness exploration in AD&D (well, in all versions of the game to be honest), so this situation was one that I was very familiar with.  What exactly does the Natural Shelter Table mean?  We have a percentage chance for the PCs to locate a Natural Shelter (or the means to construct one) for every 3 turns (30 minutes) of exploration.  This percentage is dependent upon geographic locale.  The play procedure is literally for the players to declare this is what they are doing and then the GM rolls the % dice (rather than the players...) to find out if they find shelter.  As I note in the above example, the resolution mechanics run aground of synthesizing the PC build mechanics of NWPs.  If they did, it would allow players to (begin to) approach the OODA Loop of the character actually exploring the fantasy world...enabling something remotely resembling the kind of serial decision-making/action-declaration one would be undertaking in such a scenario.  But they don't.  So If you want to include them (as a % augment for example), it is basically left up to the GM to fiat or for the table to negotiate in-situ (or house rule out of game.  What the rules and play procedures here do not connote:* Wilderness exploration via process-sim > micro action declaration  > micro-task resolution.  * High resolution wilderness settings in which the tight-zoom, on-screen details are prepped before play, and thus independent of player action declaration and subsequent resolution.* Highly detailed maps of mountainsides and a key that indicates where on this slope or that slope are the materials for natural shelter or the caves (etc)What the rules and play procedures here do connote:* Wilderness exploration via abstract conflict resolution of which the zoomed-in task resolution/PC build mechanics of the system is completely unsynched, thus irrelevant RAW.* Zoomed out, low resolution wilderness setting with spontaneous content generation based on on-screen action declarations and subsequent mechanical resolution (or subsequent illusionism!).  * Low resolution wilderness maps featuring named mountain ranges, or perhaps a mount, that might say ELVES or TROLLS or RUINS OF BURGLEY MCDURGLERSON or METEOR PEAK or any other number of adventure-relevant mush.  In my 31 years of running games (half of those running AD&D), I certainly never prepared anything beyond megadungeons at a high level of zoom (where the resolution mechanics and expectant play procedures actually become more fine...in some places).  Cities were typically prepped at an average zoom while the wildnerness was always quite abstracted.</blockquote>

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