Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7352228" data-attributes="member: 82106">It is just another sort of player agenda. Why can it only be served by a GM-centered system of play? I would phrase this as "player wants to be a careful strategist." OK, so when you describe the orcs that are menacing town as part of your framing of a situation for this to be brought out, then the player can say "what about their water supply?" and either GM or player centered process can determine that there is indeed a well and where it is, and some plan can be hatched to poison it instead of trying to fight some ugly battle with the main force of the orcs. Now, my bet is, having both run and played this sort of scenario a number of times, that the well ain't going to be located and poisoned with a couple of tosses of the dice! It is going to be guarded, hard to find, inside some dungeon, cursed, poisoning it will entail also harming someone that you don't want pissed at you, or whatever. This is all well-within the realm of what I can do using my techniques. In fact it is all quite likely.My experience with GMs and playing inside THEIR agenda is that a lot of them don't like this kind of thing too much. They feel like its a cheap way to get rid of the orcs. Maybe they allow it, but they punish it or they just decide that the orcs have some other water supply or whatever. They already decided on a story arc where the orcs menace the town and there's a battle, which they're invested in. I'm not saying this GM is a 'bad' GM, just that this is VERY typical and the weakness of GM-centered play is this tendency to want to stick to their story arc because they've put a lot of work into it. Moderately good GMs will maybe give some ground, some of the orcs are poisoned, or you win the first round but more orcs come back later, although you now maybe get some other new options too as a reward. Still, things tend to get stuck in certain patterns VERY easily. I know it doesn't HAVE to be that way, the technique is not hopeless or even bad, it just has its weaknesses.</blockquote>

Verification