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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1187102" data-attributes="member: 151">My experience with Castle Falkenstein was truly a mixed one.  On the one hand, I loved the setting beyond words.  The game inspired me to start a new campaign and sell my players on it.  We loved it.  But it soon became apparent that the core mechanic was, IMHO, flawed.  I, as the GM, could determine when and where to call a contest, and cycled through my cards 4-6 times faster than the players.  I almost ALWAYS had a card in hand to win a contest, and since I called when contests occured, I could always manipulate the situation to my choosing, if I so desired.  This left me in the unenviable position of always having to choose whether or not a contest suceeded or failed and therefore robbing the players of any real potential to affect the game. In essence, the mechanic pulled me out of the game and into the metagame, and I didn't like that.  Will the villain succeed?  Of course he will, since I'll hold that King of Hearts until I need it, knowing that the battle is coming.  I'll let this NPC fail, because he's just a thug, and not a part of the greater story...hence, he was always destined to fail.  Leading rats through a maze to gather cheese bothers me, as much as you.  I consider the game to be a dynamic environment, and the randomness of the dice ensures that none of us, player or DM, are quite sure what the outcome will be.  Everybody rolls a 1, sometime.  In Falkenstein, I had to censor myself, or I'd always win...and my players can sense when I'm hedging.  Nobody likes overcoming a challenge when they've figured out that you let them.  It robs the experience of any sense of victory. You could reasonably argue that random dice rolls can rob a player of a just victory, as well, and I wouldn't disagree.  But for my group (and I'd wager, most players of the game) the randomization that dice provides allows us the level of uncertainty to ensure that the challenges are real, while at the same time still creating a certain degree of predictability.</blockquote>

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