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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oligopsony" data-source="post: 9102318" data-attributes="member: 56314">They are, but of course OSR principles are (by definition) prescriptive as well, and all approaches benefit from GM skill. So at that level of abstraction there’s not much difference: challenge rating is a tool to make one style of GMing more manageable, while morale and reaction rolls and hazard dice are a different set of tools to make a different style manageable.And while again skill matters in any approach, it really is helpful to have tools that function even when you’re not bringing your A-game, whether because you’re a novice or just tired. And a basic Necropraxis hazard die Just Works for its intended use case in the same way (I’m told) 4e encounter math post-Monster Vault does.Let’s say your PC has been growing in understanding of himself and the people around them, but is riven by internal conflict. His son is dying of an otherwise incurable illness, but the villain he just defeated has an artifact that when the right ritual is performed at the right place (some evil temple blah blah blah) will spare someone’s life but suck away the souls of ten random innocents around the world. He’s heading towards the temple, telling himself that it’s to destroy the thing and its fell idols and that of course he would never be seduced by the false promises of evil to save his son, you can’t trust them, but in the back of his mind he knows that it probably will work, and he’s not sure what choice he’ll make when he gets there. It’s killing him, he knows he’ll regret it either way - either choice will be terrible for him but delicious for the audience, adding up to a really interesting dramatic situation and its resolution.There’s a hostile encounter on the way there, and an opponent lays what would be a killing blow. Does the GM fudge (there, or maybe slightly earlier in the causal chain) in order to get to a much more interesting resolution than “ganked in a random encounter,” or protect the causal integrity of the world? Which choice is a violation of the implicit social contract at the table? Obviously depends on the table (and at a lot of tables there may be undiscussed disagreements here, or the difference secretly split with illusionism), but the tradeoff is real.</blockquote>

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