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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9735029" data-attributes="member: 6790260">There really doesn't. Especially since you're exploiting two different senses of the term here. One sense is "most likely" as a clear, unequivocal majority decision--what almost everyone does. The other sense is "most likely" as "well, technically, it's statistically almost certain that some choice will be chosen by at least one more person than any other choice". Pretending that these two are the same is an equivocation.So, yes: I grant you the extremely limited notion that there will, most likely, be one choice which is chosen at least 1 time more than any other choice. I deny that this tells us much of anything, and emphatically deny that this means that the vast majority of choices are going to fall along the same lines consistently for all groups.I thrive on situations where people have to make real value judgments. Where they need to decide who and what they are, and why they are, and what they truly want. Situations where it needs to be the case that a single person, put on the spot, has to decide for themselves what they value most--and it could genuinely go either way. Accepting a deal with a devil to get the information you need in order to stop a serial killer. Taking fiendish power into yourself to save a culture you've come to see as your extended family. Navigating a tricky political situation where a wrong move could mean war--or worse, trade embargoes. ("Worse" from a certain point of view, of course.) Deciding whether to trust someone who might be the victim of a horrible manipulation....or might be a horrible manipulator themselves.All of these have actually happened in the game I run. All of them were--intentionally--framed to be scenes where I as GM could not know which answer is more "probable" than another, because I want them to be genuine temptations, genuine moral quandaries, genuine unknowns that only the player(s) can actually resolve. Because that is where the characters, articulated through scenes of calm and conflict, are truly tested, truly pushed to manifest who and what they really are.And it is glorious, every time, whatever the player ends up choosing.Again, I think the issue here is that your presentation makes it sound a hell of a lot more than "guesstimating". It sounds like there's either one singular path, and everything else is irrelevant because it wasn't the single top probability result, or the GM simply presumes that the thing they think is most reasonable is obviously the thing every player will do. Neither of which I consider to be particularly valid or reasonable.If all we're talking about is navigating maps or spelunking the sewers of a fallen civilization or dealing with some trumped-up "priest" putting on airs and getting stroppy, sure, those things are pretty liable to have a singular, obvious, correct answer. Those things are the canvas, the bass line, the stage.The subject, the melody, the play? Those come from the decisions that have no "right" answer--except the answer right for this person, in this place, in this moment.</blockquote>

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