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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8417694" data-attributes="member: 42582">Interesting. I just learned something new about FitD!I think the right balance between framing and establishing consequences in accordance with the game's rules and principles on the one hand, and railroading or just plain ballsing it up on the other, is very contextual. And can be hard to convey, especially to posters with fixed mindsets.I remember posting years ago now about a 4e episode where I described a rock formation early on in a fight in the Underdark (the PCs were upper paragon tier), and in response the player of the invoker/wizard declared a Perception check. The check succeeded and so I narrated that he had spotted a roper before it could get the drop on him! Until that point I hadn't had a roper on my encounter roster, but now I added it.Many ENworlders responded to that with outrage: "gotcha" GMing, railroading, blah blah blah. But from my point of view I was rewarding the player by (in AW terms) providing an opportunity (admittedly with a cost!). At the table it didn't cause any issues, and the player felt gratified that his proactivity had put him (in the fiction) in a position of advantage vis-a-vis the roper - even though I'm pretty sure he knew, at the table, that but for the check there would have been no roper. (And maybe at the table there were even groans from the others of "N____, what did you do that for!" - I can't remember now but it's entirely possible.)Now in 4e the opportunity is to earn XP, and to show off in the ensuing combat. If the game I was GMing was AD&D, or even maybe 3E (I don't have a good handle on that one), of course I'd handle it differently because introducing a roper into the combat isn't an opportunity at all, it's just a hosing. So there's an interplay of mechanics plus principles plus overall point/logic of play plus the mood of the table at any given moment, which make some calls reasonable or even excellent for some games in some contexts, but terrible for other games in other contexts.That digressed a bit from the scheduled topic, so I'll stop now!</blockquote>

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