Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7336717" data-attributes="member: 42582">That sounds reasonable as a general way of putting things.But it does leave it open what, exactly, an action declaration to find the item looks like at the table, and how it is resolved.Some of the recent posts from [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and me have addressed this.I am fairly relaxed with the players contributing to backstory and contributing to (what AbdulAlhazred called) "general story elements". This is generally handled fairly informally in our group, although some systems formalise some of it (eg Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel both use lifepath PC generation; and BW also formalises some other aspects of PC backgrounds, like relationships).But when it comes to the immediate situation, and the PCs attempts to deal with it, I prefer action resolution mechanics to player-side narrative fiat. (As has come out in some of the posts, others posting in this thread are more relaxed than me about the latter - eg [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION].)In my BW game, one of the PCs is dominated by a dark naga, and has been commanded to bring the naga Joachim the mage (a NPC, and the brother of one of the PCs) so that Joachim's blood can be spilled as tribute to the spirits. Unfortunately, just as the PC in question finally found Joachim (lying badly injured in a bed chamber in another mage's tower), an assassin cut Joachim's head off. (This was the result of the two PCs trying to find Joachim failing in their Speed checks to arrive their first.)The player's action declaration was "I look around for a vessel - a jug or a chamber pot - to catch the blood in!" I set a difficulty for the check - I can't remember what it was, but not too hard as the likelihood of spotting a vessel like that in the bed chamber of a recuperating mage is quite high. The player made the check, and was successful - hence his PC was able to grab a jug and catch (some of) Joachim's blood in it.Had the check failed, a range of options would be open to me as GM - from "You look around but there are no vessels" (which would require the player to think up some other way of trying to get the mage's blood) to "You see a jug, but the fleeing assassin knocks it to the ground before you can grab it, and it smashes into pieces" (which eg allows for the use of mending magic to try and get the jug back) to who-knows-what.This is an example of what I mean by letting the action declaration be resolved without having recourse to the GM's pre-authored notes/setting.The setting is being established by reference to the player's action declaration - it is because the player's action declaration succeeded that it has been established that there is a jug in the bed chamber - but the player did not have a power of fiat narration. He had to make the check.I also want to say that there are other ways that I perhaps could have resolved that situation: eg I could have just "said 'yes'" to the question "Is there a jug?" and framed the real obstacle as a physical check to catch the blood. (Last time I posted about this example, some posters suggested that alernative framing.)The reason I did it the way I did was because, as best I could judge sitting there in the moment talking to the player, what he really wanted was that there be a vessel in the room. And after we resolved that, I didn't call for any check to actually catch the blood in it. That would have been anti-climactic.</blockquote>

Verification