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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7379304" data-attributes="member: 42582">That example has zero to do with what Eero Tuovinen is talking about. [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is just wrong to think that declaring a search for a secret door, and looking for scuff marks as part of that, is the sort of thing that Tuovinen has in mind. That's not an agenda. It's a means, and a very generic one. Why does the rogue want to enter the castle? What would s/he risk to do so? If s/he is entering stealthily, what provocation would make her reveal herself? These are the sorts of things that show us who the character is, what s/he wants, what her goals are, what sort of person s/he is.This is a very narrow conception of what a PC's interest and agenda might be - after all, it seems that you can achieve it without actually having to play the meaty parts of the game (I've never yet heard of a D&D campaign where the real action was finding taverns that sell wine).But even your example actually does require the GM - if the GM asserts that no taverns have any wine (maybe a disease destroyed all the grapes? maybe they all sold out?) then you can't get drunk. Likewise if the GM declares that you meet no NPCs (they're all staying home on the occasions your PC happens to turn up in town) then you won't get to show off your dour personality.Even for what you describe, you need the right framing from the GM.First, who gets to decide that this campaign world contains northern barbarians? (Maybe the tales of their existence are all false. Maybe all the vikings in longships are really gnomes using disguise self and other illusion spells.)And once we get over the existence on the barbarians within the setting, you need scenes to be framed that actually allow going there to happen; and that allow becoming king to happen. As [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] points out, there are any number of ways this framing can fail to obtain. It might be as simple as every time you look for a boat there isn't one; every time you try to cross the mountain passes they're blocked by snow; and every time you try to teleport a strange magnetic-magical field blocks your way.This all goes back to the fact that these are fictions. They have no reality. No one can do anything in respect of them unless a story is told about them. Given the allocation of functions in a typical RPG, the players depend upon the GM to tell them certain stories (eg "OK, after struggling through the mountains you crest the pass - beneath you, you see the rolling hills of the barbarian homelands. What do you do?").It's probably a bit gauche to agree with you agreeing with me, but I'll do so anyway!All other forms of conveying fictions (novels, films, oral stories) treat detail, geographic and temporal proximity, and the like as purely elements in a narrative. Salience and "causation" is about connections that resonate through a setting, or a character, or a theme. We can make it express (like the red dotted lines in Indiana Jones films - "But what if Indie wanted to jump out of the plane to pursue the wild geese?") or implicit (I watched the fairly ordinary psychics film "Push" on TV the other night, and after a couple of introductory scenes it cuts from place to place and time to time in Hong Kong as pacing required).In a more-or-less mainstream RPG, it seems to me that the GM has the preeminent control over pacing; but most of what we're discussing in this thread at the moment is whose view about salience counts. To posit that there is some "neutral" or "objective" measure of salience, such that to start at the city gate rather than in the bazaar, or to mention the intersections but not the flagstones, is to respect causation in some fashion, just makes no sense.This is all bizarre to me.What you call "information" is just a story told to the players by the GM. If the play of the game doesn't involve the players being told such a story, what have they missed out on? It's not like they were all sitting in suspended animation in the time that might otherwise have been spent on that! They've been playing a game which involves whatever it is that the players cared about - fire giants, in this notional example, and maybe other stuff as well (what happens. for instance, when they learn that Obmi the dwarf is an advisor to the giants, but also the cousin of their patron from the dwarfhold?). While your player were writing down stuff about intersections and gems, the ones in the example were making decisions that are fundamental to the goals, relationships etc that they have established for their PCs.And this idea that it "cheapens" the Underdark to resolve travel as a skill challenge makes even less sense, if possible; likewise that this is a "reduction". I don't even know what "cheapen" and "reduction" mean here: it's cheap to declare and resolve actions, but not to mark off rations on an equipment list?Here are <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">four</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?332755-PCs-bring-destruction-down-upon-the-duergar" target="_blank">actual</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?350416-Mayhem-in-the-Shrine-of-the-Kuo-Toa" target="_blank">play</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353496-First-time-godslayers-PCs-kill-Torog" target="_blank">links</a> to skill challenge stuff involving the Underdark. Where did the cheapening happen?And what does this pertain to in the current discussion? Walking up to a giant patrol is your wording, not mine. In the real world people sometimes get seen unexpectedly. Maybe the PCs rounded a corner and - lo and behold - there was the giants' cavern, with a group of giants looking straight at them!And in my example the players didn't express any desire to be stealthy. They wanted to organise their potions, and that was resolved, and then they headed off. If the particular players I was writing about in my example had wanted to be stealthy, than I would have indicated that!I'm going to repost the example - with the "variant" included - because you are misdescribing it:The GM didn't make decisions for the players. The players decided to head off to the cavern of the fire giants. However many intersections, gemstone etc you narrate along the way, ultimately there is going to be a moment when the PCs arrive at the cavern. At that moment they are liable to be spotted if anyone is looking!As I already pointed out, these PCs didn't indicate anything about stealth - which obviously it would have been their prerogative to do. (When the PCs in my 4e game visited the Shrine of the Kuo-toa, they used a Seeming ritual to disguise their true appearance. But they didn't do that at the Soul Abattoir - on that occasion they just launched a full-frontal assault! Before entering the Shrine, they prepared magic items - a couple of Caps of Waterbreathing - to help them; they didn't perform any such preparations in anticipation of the Soul Abattoir, although they did get a boat ride there with some devils, and they extracted a promise that the vessel and crew would await their return.)What you describe here works for me. Unfortunately by-the-book 4e takes a different approach to potions and ritual components! Hence those occasional irruptions of logistics.As far as the idea of pushing the players along, I see this as part of the pacing function of the referee. As I probably posted somewhere upthread, on a few occasions in 4e and Traveller I've cut off interminable debate by using ad hoc mechanics to determine which of the two sides of the argument wins the debate. (In BW or Cortex+ Heroic, this doesn't need ad hoc mechanics - Duel of Wits can be PvP, as (in Cortex+) can a contest to inflict emotional or mental stress, or some appropriate complication.)</blockquote>

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