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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5206680" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not making assumptions about the situation.  I'm pointing out the vast differences between what may happen when you make the situation concrete and realized, rather than resorting to fiat, handwaving and abstraction.Well, that's nice of you.  One of the very earliest things we discovered as players was that random monsters or proactive villains were most dangerous when were most vulnerable - asleep, low on hitpoints, and virtually out of spells.  Hense, in all the groups I've been a player in, there was a strong emphasis on turtling up whenever we needed to find some place to rest.  Not incidently, the attack on the hero when he's asleep, the precautions taken by the hero to prevent ambush, and the heroes ability to defend himself even in this state is also a very strong element of fantasy fiction.   From the start in this thread I've tried to argue that the OP is misinterpreting his data and that the problem isn't the 'adversarial' dynamic that he precieves.  Likewise, even if it is true that you have participationism and thereby no possibility of a railroad, you are ignoring the problem that metagame exchanges may themselves be something players don't desire.Yes, but the metagame alternative isn't attractive either.  The metagame alternative is essentially to assume that no events happened between A and B, or if they did happen, to work backwords to assume what must have happened to get to B - even if that means breaking suspension of belief, having characters act out of character (the light sleeper didn't wake up, precautions weren't taken, the hotheaded guy surrendered without a fight, etc.).  There are so many problems with that.  First of all, the 'drugged meal' alternative is one of the 'assumptions' I originally mentioned.  Hense, why didn't the PC's recieve saving throws, why was there no chance to detect the poison in the meal, or to sense the motive of the innkeeper, and if the meal had been played out what if the PC's had cast detect poison on their food or neutralize poison on themselves before going to bed.  What if one of the PC's had sensed the poison before it fully took effect and hit a panic button of some sort (teleporting to a remote location, etc.)Yes, but I don't want to be 'in' on the discussion.  I don't want such discussions at all.  I want to be 'in' the gameworld, not in on a game.Because '0' happened, and because while the series of events you describe are not objectionable in themselves necessarily, the fact that they can be scripted out in advance is objectionable in and of itself.  No outcome is certain.  What's objectionable is that #0 always leads to #1 which always leads to #2.  That #2 doesn't necessarily lead to #3 or #4 is beside the point.  The point is that for some portion of this 'story' the characters have no input in the story.  Note particularly that even if the players technically have input in the story, if this input doesn't come through the agency of their characters its disruptive of the game I want to play.Your wrong.  My PC has been captured several times.  My party has allowed themselves to be captured on one occassion as part of a prison break plotline.  I've DMed various situations were a PC was captured.  What you lose isn't the capture scenario, but the DM's ability to decide when and fully control when you are going to have a capture scenario.  Your wrong.  This is the sort of Ron Edwards BS that just makes me want to scream.  I just don't even know how to address that sort of assertion.  Capture scenarios are not universal to all sword and sorcery stories in the first place.  They certainly aren't more ubiquitous than 'the hero is ambushed in his sleep but overcomes the attacker'.   I've been playing RPGs for 25 years and all sorts of things happen and all sorts of dramatic situations have occurred.  All sorts of deep themes have been developed.  There used to be a time when my understanding of the game was so weak that I was sure I knew what the best and most fun story was and by golly I was going to make it happen just like I'd imagined before hand, but experience has taught me how foolish that was and how you are just better off trusting your players and the dice than your own preconceptions.  Yes, it does take some skill to design the game such that it can survive the unexpected, but it can be done and it does work.This is not something I asserted.  This is something you asserted.  You are trying to refute yourself now and attributing your own red herrings and straw men to me.Well, yes, it certainly can be done that way.  But that approach is itself not something I enjoy and its costs the game more than it gains.Yes, it is ok for a traditional fantasy RPG to force a split between courage and self-interest.  How that violates the player's freedom of choice I'm not sure, accept that you are using really tortured ways of expressing things in order to make it sound like I'm contridicting myself.  My concern was for the player's freedom of choice being violated.  Expressing my concern in some alternate language of your own out of context doesn't sound like an honest attempt at understanding.I disagree.  I don't agree that its the most basic presupposition of standard heroic fantay, or that its the basic assumption of Tolkien, or that it's even a particularly common assumption.  Fantasy literature often contains assumptions of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, and this is maybe even particularly common in RPG inspired literature where heroic deaths are rather more common than in stories where the heroes enjoy implicit plot protection.I agree that RPGers have a strong aversion to surrender, but I don't agree with you on its basis.I didn't say that nor do I seem to be saying that.  I wouldn't run a 'Colossal Red Dragon' "surrender-or-die" scene.   Once again, that's something you brought up.  You are now arguing against your own straw man as if I was the one who brought it up.Personally, if I brought in a Colossal Red Dragon early on, it wouldn't be to get the PC's to surrender.  I've already asserted what I think is a reasonable usage and goal of such a scene.   I have a very hard time imagining why a Colossal Red Dragon would want anyone to surrender or why it would take a particular interest in seemingly ordinary humans.   Colossal Red Dragons aren't generally known for modesty, self-restraint, and respect for human life.  It's out of character to even have a dragon acting in that manner.More straw men here.LOL.  Well, you can assert it, but I'm not sure how many people are going to buy that.I suppose that there are, and I agree that its a terrible way to play, but I think you are much closer to playing in that manner than I am.  Indeed, I'm having a hard time seeing how you differ much from action-resolution mechanics together with heaps of egregious use of GM force to produce dramatic situations.Isn't that GM force?Welll at least you seem to realize that it is, even if you want to rationalize it away.   I believe that there is fundamentally no difference between what you recommend and what 2nd edition D&D recommended, and your not giving nearly enough credit to the 2nd edition D&D style and its writers/designers because it justifiied itself in the exact same way, "It's ok to use alot of DM force to produce dramatic situations, because don't players want to have that sort of game?"I still don't agree with you that systems make that much of a difference here, especially if you are talking about something other than hard nar games.  That's Ron Edwards talking again.  No one actually enjoys the way that they are playing, and only Ron Edwards understands how to have fun playing an RPG.  Frankly, I get sick and tired of that Forge evangelism.</blockquote>

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