I think the reason this keeps coming up is due to the example itself. I admit to not recalling if there were more details when this example was first put forth, but whenever it has been brought up since, it’s boiled down to “the PCs need a map, a player searches the stoudy for the needed map, the presence of the map is determined by the success or failure of the relevant check.”
So finding the map had been positioned as a goal, and the player’s skill check determines whether the goal is achieved.
To me, the example seems too simple to really tell us much. What’s the point of making the map hidden unless a search for it can result?
I agree with your rhetorical question, but I don't think that - on it's own - that settles the approach to resolution.
And should a search for the map, if intended to be a goal involving any kind f challenge, be resolved with one check? If finding the map is a goal of the party, then allowing a skill check to determine its presence does imply that the player can control obstacle resolution through action declaration.
I think your last sentence
may have misfired a little bit - I think we agree that players sometimes at least sometimes can "control obstacle resolution" - eg if the obstacle is an orc, player action declaration can result in removal of the obstacle.
As to whether the goal is resolved with one check - well, that depends a bit on system. In 4e, I could imagine the whole thing being a skill challenge: in the early stage of the challenge the PCs make contact with a sage and learn that there is a map that will show them the way to [whatever it is they care about]; and then subsequent checks bring them to a house, and a study; and then the final check determines whether or not the map is in the study (skill challenge success) or not (skill challenge failure - we'd have to imagine there have been two earlier failures - but it's plausible that one of them could have been a failure to learn at some earlier stage exactly which room of the house the map is hidden in!).
In BW, that sort of goal ultimately does get resolved with one check, as it has no generic complex resolution system. Of course, there may well have been earlier checks leading up to the framing of that final check. In my BW game, the attempt to find the mace in the ruined tower turned on a single check, but the return to the tower by way of a trek across the Bright Desert had itself involved other checks.
If the character’s stated goal is to find the presence of alien life, then does he simply ask to search for signs of alien life every time he enters a room? Or are there other parameters at play not addressed in the map example?
I think some of [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s posts have been really helpful for trying to convey what I feel is a fairly straightforward spirit of play, but which seems less intuitive to some posters. (I'm not saying that you're one of those posters - nor denying that you are, as I'm not sure and I don't think it matters!) What I'm trying to get at is the sense of when a particular goal is at issue, or up for grabs, in a particular situation.
So in my Traveller game - to go with the
alien life example - there is no "every time he enters a room". To elaborate on that: of course, in the fiction, the character comes and goes from rooms, vehicles, etc. But at the table, when we're playing the game, we don't worry about that (eg he's been staying at the Travellers Aid Society - at least up to date, that has mattered only as a way of establishing his weekly living expenses). When I present the ingame situation to the players - when I present the
framing, that is - my goal is that something they care about is already at issue in the situation, which will motivate some sort of action declaration.
To give an example: when the PCs arrived on Byron, they had to offload medical gear from their ship to be picked up by bioweapons conspirators. They were expecting this gear to be loaded onto another vessel (that was what the patron who briefed them had said would happen), but instead (as I told the players) the alien-life PC noticed that the gear was loaded onto an ATV and carried out of the city dome into the largely uninhabited desert.
Around the same time, the PC I talked about in a post not far upthread was introduced into the game, which established - as part of the shared fiction - a warehouse in the domed city with (it seemed) experimental subjects inside cold sleep berths.
Now, if - in response to that - the player of the alien life PC declares "I search my room at the TAS for signs of alien life", then my framing has completely misfired. Because from the point of view of the established fiction, and the course of play so far, the TAS room is competely irrelevant to anything. I'm not saying I would veto that action declaration - what I am saying is that it would be a sign of something going wrong, and I can't really say in the abstract how I might respond to it.
Whereas, had that PC tracked down the bioweapons warehouse and looked for signs of alien biology, that would be a completely different kettle of fish - that would be just the sort of thing one might anticipate in response to the framing, and a check would have to be framed etc. (As I've already posted, Traveller isn't perfect for this as written, so I'm still experimenting with ways to handle it.) As it turns out, though, the PCs got the police to sort out the warehouse, and then hired an ATV driver (another late-introduction PC) to go out from the dome also in pursuit of the NPCs with the high tech medical gear. And it was in the upshot of that that one of the NPC scientists they captured at the NPC's outpost told the alien life PC about what he had noticed in scanning the DNA of some of the exprimental subjects.
To relate this back to the map example: I'm assuming that the framing has largely been successful, and so it is salient to everyone at the table that the map may, indeed, be hidden in the study.
(This is also the answer to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s question, why won't the players just scavenge up diamonds or Hammers of Thunderbolts or whatever? Of course if a player has that as an evinced goal for his/her PC then it is fair game, subject to system conventions like 1st level D&D PCs simply don't get Hammers of Thunderbolts. But otherwise, it is a sign of play going wrong in some way if the GM is trying to present situations that speak to the evinced goals/motivations/themes of the PCs, and the players are hunting everywhere for spare loot.)
I’d like to offer another example that perhaps will help.
A character has fallen from a cliff. This may be diring the course of battle, or it may be due to some mishap while exploring. At this point, the character’s goal is to not die.
So the player indicates that they’d like to make a check or a saving throw or whatever relevant roll the game mechanics call for the PC to avoid falling to his doom.
Would a classic GM driven game simply say “the cliff face is sheer and there is nothing to grab....you die”? Meaning the GM had determined this prior and consults his notes and that’s that? I would not expect most games to play out that way. Only the most extreme version of such a style.
I would expect that the result of the check would determine the fiction, so that a successful check indicates the presence of a root that the character manages to grab. I’d kind of expect this approach in either tyle of game. Or at least in most games using eother style.
There are posters on ENworld (one of them has me blocked, so I can't invite him into the conversation) who think that the method you describe - ie narrating the root - is impermissible in a true RPG.
But it is the default in Gygax's DMG in the entry on saving throws.
But I don't think it establishes a very robust pressure point for distinguishing approaches, because most D&D players probably use the saving throw rules, and if they do then you're forced either to allow the narration of the root, or to adopt a theory of hit points as "uber-meat" that many people find implausible. And the root is not in itself an interesting element of play, generating signficant emotional investment and player activity. (Obviously a saving throw can be exciting, but I think it's rare for the players to care whether it's a root or a vine or a ledge or a pond at the bottom of the cliff or . . . etc.)
The reason I think the map example is clearer for present purposes is because it invites us to directly tackle the question - when the players (through the play of their PCs) have indicated a real hope that the fiction is
X, but it is not self-evident that it should be so, then how do we work out whether that hope is realised or not?
