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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7757295" data-attributes="member: 42582">If the game is low or no prep, then discovering information that is useful for extrapolation isn't really part of the game. (I don't think.)To elaborate: in the fiction, the PCs might discover stuff from which they can extrapolate; but at the table, if the game is low or no prep, then "discovering stuff" is just more fiction that shape the direction of the unfolding story.For instance, in the no prep Cthulhu Dark game I GMed on the weekend, at one point the players (as their PCs) learned that the sailors on board a ship were all being ordered to stay down below decks. Having this information provided the PCs with a basis for extrapolating that something interesting was happening about the loading of the boat (which the captain didn't want the sailors to see). And at the table it was one part of the shaping of the way the session ended up. But had it not come up - eg because the players never had their PCs go to a waterside bar where they were able to talk to some sailors - then something else would have happened at the table, and a different series of events would have unfolded.There are obvious solutions to this: (i) take suggestions - that's part of the function of some of those game features that the Burning THACO author points to; (ii) if, as GM, you say "OK, now it's XYZ" and a player says "Oi, what about ABC that I hadn't done yet" then resolve ABC before moving onto XYZ.(ii) has to be used with some caution, because if a player is trying to use ABC to turtle or to generate insurance against anything happening to his/her PC then the game will lose its pacing. This is another respect in which system comes into it, because turtling and generating insurance against consequences can't even happen in some systems (eg Cortex+ Heroic) while they're the very essence of some other systems (eg classic D&D).But if players are prepared to send signals and make suggestions, and the system facilitates this (both by whatever affirmative means, and perhaps more importantly by an absence of burdens on this), then I think a lot of worries about pacing and interest go away.</blockquote>

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