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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6580311" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Every game you have ever played in that you didn't walk out of in boredom was run that way. </p><p></p><p>Being an adventurer, alone, is an improbable circumstance.</p><p></p><p> Shadowrun assumes you've entered a small, short-life-expectancy, profession. The kinds of things shadowrunners do are not the kinds of things a society could accomodate a whole lot of without collapsing into anarchy - so, yeah, the game essentially forces an improbable narrative (you are a Shadowrunner, not dead, and get all the work you want and then some) in order to make the game work. Just like an author would place his protagonist in an interesting situation, and shape the narrative in interesting ways that are just barely plausible, however improbable they might be were the setting and situations real.</p><p></p><p></p><p> There's plenty of drama in a random die roll a player makes to see if he succeeds or fails (perhaps, 'forward') at something important. The drama inherent in encountering an orc patrol in a corridor, followed by a troll in a cavern, is no different for the patrol being random and the troll pre-placed, or the reverse, or both being pre-place or both being random. It's the exact same pair of encounter.</p><p></p><p>One reason I think 'players always roll' variants are kinda nice, if you can get a system robust enough to handle the implied lack of DM 'fudging.'</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6580311, member: 996"] Every game you have ever played in that you didn't walk out of in boredom was run that way. Being an adventurer, alone, is an improbable circumstance. Shadowrun assumes you've entered a small, short-life-expectancy, profession. The kinds of things shadowrunners do are not the kinds of things a society could accomodate a whole lot of without collapsing into anarchy - so, yeah, the game essentially forces an improbable narrative (you are a Shadowrunner, not dead, and get all the work you want and then some) in order to make the game work. Just like an author would place his protagonist in an interesting situation, and shape the narrative in interesting ways that are just barely plausible, however improbable they might be were the setting and situations real. There's plenty of drama in a random die roll a player makes to see if he succeeds or fails (perhaps, 'forward') at something important. The drama inherent in encountering an orc patrol in a corridor, followed by a troll in a cavern, is no different for the patrol being random and the troll pre-placed, or the reverse, or both being pre-place or both being random. It's the exact same pair of encounter. One reason I think 'players always roll' variants are kinda nice, if you can get a system robust enough to handle the implied lack of DM 'fudging.' [/QUOTE]
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