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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7387767" data-attributes="member: 42582">I already discussed this c 200 posts upthread. I sketched the example in 4e. 4e doesn't have generic surprise rules. The players could have declared stealth. They didn't.Maybe when they are spotted by the giants, they want to attack with an initiative bonus. There are various warlord and other powers that permit this. Maybe they want to use one of those. I don't know - it's a made-up example, and I didn't write that bit yet.But those risks and hazards are nothing more than stuff the GM made up. So wanting to see what their effects are is nothing different from wanting to find out what happens when the GM tells the players about this stuff s/he made up in his/her worldbuilding.I think everyone posting in this thread knows that you have that preference. But I don't see what bearing it has on the possibility of other ways of RPGing. It does reinforce what was clear from very early in this thread, though, that one purpose of worldbuilding is to give the GM stuff to tell the players.The first quetion in "story now" play is, does the GM call for a check or simply "say 'yes'". This is a decision about drama, pacing, what's at stake.Much of the time there is no reason not to just say "yes". In my MHRP game, no one was interested in the question of whether or not the Stark Corp private jet had been tampered with by rivals. They wanted to find out what happened at the Yashida headquarters in Tokyo. So that was the next scene I framed.There is nothing unrealistic about having an uneventful flight from DC to Tokyo. Many hundreds of people are doing it every day!For someone who's into realism, that's not very realistic! In the real world, money gets lost, unexpected or forgotten debts fall due, credit is granted or refused, etc.But in any event, in Cortex+ Heroic, hiring porters is either pure colour - so it just gets narrated by the player - or else is the creation of a resource, which requires the expenditure of a plot point. Nothing in that system involves adding or subtracting numbers to a running tally except earning and spending XP.Well obviously it's far less realistic than White Plume Mountain, The Ghost Tower of Inverness, and Zuggtmoy the Demoness Lady of Fungi!But in any event, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy! Eg many heroes in fact do not pay for their food, but are billetted by those they are helping (see eg The Seven Samurai). Some people are able to acquire horses on board a ship (eg by buying one from the captain, or another passenger).As far as iron spikes are concerned, they're not going to come up very often (I think it must be 20 years or more since I've thought about iron spikes, except maybe running one AD&D session a year or two ago). But suppose that a player wants to create a Door Spiked Shut asset (eg to impede the actions of some threatening monster) - that would be a check against the Doom Pool. If it fails, there are a number of possible narrations - one might be "You're out of iron spikes!"Actually, I think you missed my point.Maybe the weather across the continent is magical? Maybe last year's rainstorm was caused by a druid the PCs never knew anything about (go "living, breathing world"!)?And if the trip to the east becomes more challenging, well that's what happens when you establish fiction. It has consequences for play. That's the point.</blockquote>

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