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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9813260" data-attributes="member: 42582">When I think of my experiences GMing Rolemaster (at first weekly, and then fortnightly, for 19 years), I don't think that avoidance of narrative contrivance was at the core of it. After all, I made decisions about situations and scenarios that were replete with narrative contrivance (eg recurring meetings with NPCs; a PC's mentor is kidnapped; there just happens to be a challenge set before the PCs which they have a reasonable chance of dealing with; etc).I think one important part of the procedures of a game like RM is to disclaim decision-making: the dice (and associated tables, algorithms, etc) tell us what happens. And I think that is why the same sort of techniques can be used in a system like Torchbearer (which relies heavily on random events tables at many points in play): they disclaim decision-making.Vincent Baker had an interesting discussion of a related issue here <<a href="http://www.lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/427" target="_blank">anyway: 3 Resolution Systems</a>>, and the resulting aesthetic experience:Case 1: 1. When you want to describe the weather where the characters are, roll. On a success, say what the weather's like there. (On a failure, it's 76°, few clouds, with a pleasant little breeze.) 2. When your character's taking strenuous action, if it's oppressively hot where your character is, you get -2 to your roll. . . . Case 2: 1. When you want to give another player a die penalty, make a roll. On a success, a) say what's making life hard for their character, and b) give them a -2 to their roll. . . . In case 1, the more time and conceptual space between those two rules' applications, the more real the oppressive heat will seem. For instance: you make a weather roll at the beginning of the session, declare that it's oppressively hot, and so for the entire session all the players roll -2 for all their characters' strenuous actions.The gap of time and conceptual space between declaring that it's hot and a player suffering a penalty to their character's roll separates (i) the decision to author bad weather from (ii) the consequence for the player. This is how it is a type of disclaiming of decision-making.And one way to establish the "conceptual" space that Baker describes is to vary case 1: instead of getting to choose on a success (with the weather being mild on a failure), simply roll on a table to see what the weather is.</blockquote>

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