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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7508445" data-attributes="member: 42582">And I think a game in which it matters what security devices I have on my motorbike is a lame one. Just as I would think a game that keeps track of how often my PC urinates is lame.As it happens I both play in and run games with horses. In my Prince Valiant game yesterday horses came up a few times: the PCs won combats that allowed them to take their defeated foes' horses as prizes, and thus got to upgrade from riding horses to warhorses (+1 die in combat). And at one point, when they were helping some ladies in distress, one of the PCs examined their horses to see if there were any injuries that might need treating etc.But I didn't make a check for random horse-thieves.In Burning Wheel I play a knight who has a horse. In the first session of the campaign I had tethered my horse to a railing while inspecting an abandoned farmhouse. When orcs attacked, I had to run back to my horse before they cut me off from it. That's completely fair game - the horse has been put at stake in the situation.But the idea that the horse might just be stolen while I look around the house, independent of any framing by the GM and failed check on my part, is for me the mark of terrible GMing.And this has nothing to do with "meta-game resolutions". Every RPG invovles choosing what bits of the fiction to pay attention to, and what bits to disregard. My goto example in this therad has been PC urination. I am saying that a GM who can't think of anything more interesting than to have a PC's horse or motorcycle when it had not been put at stake in the situation is a poor GM. If I was writing a book of GM advice, avoiding that sort of thing would be on page 1 or 2. It's uninteresting fiction, it creates absolutely needless friction at the table (I've paid PC build points for this thing and now the GM has arbitrarily taken it away!) and it smacks of a desire for GM control over all facets of the fiction, which is a huge flag for other issues down the line.</blockquote>

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