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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7323820" data-attributes="member: 42582">Why? As [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] has said, this is a statement of personal preference presented as if it has universal normative force. What's the basis for that univThey're not real, they're imaginary.What's real is the text. But you're not inviting your players to take your text and edit it or rewrite it or write a sequel to it. When you talk about the history, culture etc as elements of play, you're clearly referring to the fiction that they express. That that is so is illustrated by the following from your post:Let's put to one side that you're assuming, here (i) that the players have unlimited retries (even in AD&amp;D there are all sorts of limits on retries - for many thief abilities, for trying to open magically locked doors, for bending bars, for listening at doors), and (ii) that the consequence of failure will permit a retry (as opposed to be, say, that they search and it's not there to be found).The whole idea of &quot;there being nothing there to find&quot;, of the GM &quot;knowing&quot; this in advance, and of it being &quot;unrealistic&quot; for it to be otherwise, is again metaphor at best, nonsense at worst. Consider, for instance, an author who stages a competition to determine some feature of the sequel - the readers get to vote on whether the first novel's protagonist will live or die. The idea that this is &quot;unreaslistic&quot;, because either the hero dies or s/he doesn't, is obviously absurd - nothing is true about the hero until it is written.I've already mentioned the example of Great Expectations, where Dickens rewrote the ending on the advice of his editor/publisher - that's an instance of the same phenomenon.If the GM decides whether or not the map is there by using some technique in which the players participate, it's no different from what my imaginary author is doing, or what Dickens did. You may or may not want to establish your RPGing fiction in that fashion, but it's clearly not impossible, and certainly not unrealistic - it's something that has actually happened in the history of fiction-writing, and among RPGers.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7323820, member: 42582"] Why? As [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] has said, this is a statement of personal preference presented as if it has universal normative force. What's the basis for that univ They're not real, they're imaginary. What's real is the text. But you're not inviting your players to take your text and edit it or rewrite it or write a sequel to it. When you talk about the history, culture etc as elements of play, you're clearly referring to the fiction that they express. That that is so is illustrated by the following from your post: Let's put to one side that you're assuming, here (i) that the players have unlimited retries (even in AD&D there are all sorts of limits on retries - for many thief abilities, for trying to open magically locked doors, for bending bars, for listening at doors), and (ii) that the consequence of failure will permit a retry (as opposed to be, say, that they search and it's not there to be found). The whole idea of "there being nothing there to find", of the GM "knowing" this in advance, and of it being "unrealistic" for it to be otherwise, is again metaphor at best, nonsense at worst. Consider, for instance, an author who stages a competition to determine some feature of the sequel - the readers get to vote on whether the first novel's protagonist will live or die. The idea that this is "unreaslistic", because either the hero dies or s/he doesn't, is obviously absurd - nothing is true about the hero until it is written. I've already mentioned the example of Great Expectations, where Dickens rewrote the ending on the advice of his editor/publisher - that's an instance of the same phenomenon. If the GM decides whether or not the map is there by using some technique in which the players participate, it's no different from what my imaginary author is doing, or what Dickens did. You may or may not want to establish your RPGing fiction in that fashion, but it's clearly not impossible, and certainly not unrealistic - it's something that has actually happened in the history of fiction-writing, and among RPGers. [/QUOTE]

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