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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8872718" data-attributes="member: 4937">It doesn't seem much like a storyteller detail at all.  Storyteller details are like what this NPC's backstory and motivations are and what future actions are they planning that might drive the conflict and thus the plot.  Storyteller hat tends to encourage a bit of illusionism and railroading to keep the pacing of the story fast and drive toward some sort of exciting resolution.  That's not what is going on here.The question of whether the undefined traveler's kit contained gloves was settled by narration of the proposition, "I open the box" which was something like, "when you close your hand on the handle you feel an oily substance, roll a saving throw" which is not really storyteller hat either but mere referee.  The player attempted to make an argument that this adjudication was incorrect because he had traveler's clothes, but this argument in my opinion fails for lack of evidence.  Gloves aren't mentioned on the character sheet (else the player would have presumably said, but "I have gloves") and the traveller's clothes description makes no mention of gloves (unlike the description of say a climbing kit or heavy winter clothing).  Therefore, as a secret has been revealed and a GM ruling already made, the lack of evidence and the ambiguity itself does not present a case for the highly deleterious step of doing a retcon.  The GM's ruling and handling of the situation maybe could (with more context) have been more artful, but it is not wrong.  Any skillful player who had a priori suspicion that "open the box was dangerous" and who seriously considered the question of gloves as important would have glanced at his character sheet, noted the lack of gloves, noted the ambiguous meaning of what is normally just "color" with little mechanical impact in a "traveller's clothing" and would have attempted to establish the fiction by asking a question about it like, "I am wearing traveller's clothing; does this also come with gloves?"  This would have then put the GM in a position to make a ruling, which could have been informed by any combination of the hats the GM was wearing at the time and could have been any number of answers.  (Though all of them are in some sense irrelevant since that question was apparently not asked.)   But with the fiction not established, the impartial referee thing to do (and impartial referee is definitely the hat to be wearing when it comes to matters of traps and saving throws, otherwise, don't bother having them) is to narrate a simple natural proposition like "I open the box" in the simplest and most natural way possible.</blockquote>

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