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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6570016" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Going to give my thinking on this right quick.  Couple things:1)  My M.O. for establishing stakes and the adversary/danger interposing itself between a player and their goals stems from GMing Dogs in the Vineyard (I think...it might predate 2004, but that is when it was crystallized).  In the above conflict I am playing "the vulnerability of the children" and the "danger that keeps them unsafe and unsecured."  I may have just as easily invoked one of the children having a fit of terror (putting pressure on Saerie to have to figure out how to calm/comfort him/her or remove the terror...or deal with the consequences...this would be a "soft move" in Dungeon World).2)  The player in question has a strong maternal instinct.  Inevitably, her characters reveal this virtue in play.  She will inevitably become emotionally attached to the vulnerable, to the meek, so putting her in such spots resonates emotionally.3)  Given 1 above, shelter is the conduit for guaranteed safety and security.  Denying it presently (but not removing it permanently from the table) and putting the children in a spot that highlights their vulnerability and amplifies the danger to them (as the ultimate resolution to the SC) does a few things:a)  It intensifies the moment and escalates the conflict (vulnerability and threat level heightened RIGHT NOW) that the PC is trying to mitigate. b)  It potentially brings some new immediate narrative fallout to deal with (that the PC cares about - eg the death of one or more of the children). c)  It provides the player (through the PC) a legitimate decision-point to attempt to continue to pursue a safe and secure location to secure the children.  If it is overtly expressed by me that such prospects of a safe and secure shelter for the children are now completely closed out, the player's decision-points narrow.  The action declaration now inevitably becomes "alright, I guess the kids are coming with me while I look for a river, follow it down the mountain, and hopefully find a settlement/village."  Further, as I charge a healing surge (just an open-descriptor resource for heroic mojo/luck, etc) for every failure (and all the PCs a failure on a failed SC), she also has the metagame vector of strategic resource consideration.  If things went poorly there, she may have been down 4-5 healing surges (and possibly 1 or more daily) after a failed SC and a combat.  Consequently, not only would the children remain vulnerable, but the PC herself would now become vulnerable.  That feeds back onto (a) above. I think what you're saying here is just the inevitability of a game with a GM.  Any game where there is a GM who bears primary responsibility for framing situations and responding to player action declarations and evolving the fiction post-resolution, is going to be vulnerable to poor GMing.  I mean that is just an inevitability.  What is important is how obvious the poor GMing is and/or how transparently manifest the bad faith is.  A system with clarity in play procedures (primarily composed of explicit GMing principles/techniques and coherent resolution mechanics) will crank up the obvious and crank up the transparently manifest (hence less vulnerable to illusionism).  If the players don't care...well, again, then you're in the realm of "participationism".  And if so, then so be it because if we're all in on it then our table agenda is aligned.Finally, a system that cranks up the obvious and cranks up the transparently manifest (Dungeon World and all of the Power By Apocalypse games do this even better than 4e) will typically yield a lower entry level for sound/good GMing.I'm sure you could.  I know I could as well.  And I'm certain it would be a great game for people who are "participationists" at heart (they're looking for GM force/illusionism to move the game along and they just want to press an attack button here or say a witty one liner there or rescue a few damsels in distress).  However, the real question is (as I framed it above), is how easily could we get away with it from players who are specifically looking for the antithesis of that experience.  If I used illusionism/GM force as the primary technique for moving myself (eg me GMing myself and another me - scary - playing a PC), or any other number of folks on this thread yourself included, though a 4e game....well, the jig would be up rather quickly!  I'll do a Dungeon World conflict here when I'm next able (social conflict).  I would really be curious about your thoughts on the system...especially in relation to 4e GMing principles (of which I feel are very much inspired by Vincent Baker - who wrote Dogs and Apocalypse World).  Perhaps you could take a look at the SRD and just maybe read the section on Gamesmastering.  It would be a good primer for when I post the DW conflict.You bet mate!I agree!I apologize, but I don't have time to address the entirety of your post.  I think that much of what I wrote above addresses the meat of your post however.  Perhaps the only addendum (that specifically goes to your post) is that I tend to like to focus the adversarial elements down a bit so I tend to not run long SCs.  I would say that perhaps only 1 in 20 of the hundreds of SCs that I've run has been a C4 or C5 (perhaps less).  Further, the majority of those other 19 are C2 with C1 and C3 making up the smaller percentage.  There are a few reasons for that:1)  Dramatic pacing - you can only get so much mileage out of one thematic conflict and the snowballing thereof toward climax/denouement.2)  More, but shorter bursts of conflict lets me focus in more tightly on the conflict's premise and make more coherent the adversarial elements.3)  Each action declaration and subsequent resolution carries more mechanical heft.Finally, this was literally only the third conflict of the game.  Regarding that particular character, we were still feeling her out.  Regarding the setting, it was basically no myth (we had established very little prior to play - you can check out the thread to see the tiny bit that was established) so we were more or less both finding out about this world and its relevant players and history as we went.  I want to say the opening conflicts went like this:Follow spectral stag through shimmering portal under the Feywild moonlight and wind up on rain-soaked, alpine mountain with bloodcurdling screams just beyond sight.  Stumble upon some terrible ritual.  Then:1)  Rescue the children/disrupt the ritual2)  Locate a secured shelter for the children3)  Transition scene investigation of lore in the cave and conversation with the children4)  Locate a village on the mountain's river (featured a nested combat encounter with marauders and a nested chase)5)  Combat a vile tentacle monster and save a (soldier) boatman and his (minion) daughter who belong to the island settlement6)  Parley with the settlement's eldersThen things snowballed as a result of things up till that point and the parley's result.</blockquote>

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