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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5395464" data-attributes="member: 42582">Raven Crowking, I'll quote but with some snippage and rearrangement. I think you are right that there has been some miscommunication, but I also think there is an element of disagreement (resulting at least in part, I think, from a difference of emphasis - what I describe upthread as a difference of playstyle).I don't agree that "a real choice being offered is impinged upon in direct proportion to the degree to which the optimal choice is clear to the players", because it presupposes that there is an optimal choice. And I therefore don't agree with your conclusion about relevance/irrelevance. The point of interesting NPCs, for example, is not that optimal choices are obscured, but that interacting with them will give rise to multiple courses of action that are viable and exciting relative to the game me and my players want to play. So evil cultists make interesting NPCs (they can be killed, bargained with, converted, or gain converts, all of which have exciting implications for a game in which multiple PCs are priests or paladins, even the non-clergy PCs have strong religious commitments, and this is not just because the players wanted a PC with healing but because they enjoy exploring the mythic/religious dimension of the gameworld and of game play). Barkeeps, as a general rule, do not.Thus if I mention a barkeep to my players they are likely to infer that s/he is an evil cultist, or otherwise of potential interest to them. For some playstyles (eg where it is supposed to be a mystery as to who the cultists are) this wouldn't work. But that's not the sort of game I'm genrally GMing. I will try to explain in more detail below, but in brief, the way I prevent choices from being obvious is not by concealing the optimal choice through inclusiong of camouflaging detail, but by elminating the notion of optimal choice. Once the players know that the barkeep is a cultist, what is the optimal choice for them to make? There isn't one. How they respond depends on where they want the game, and the story of their PCs, to go.As I said above, I think this is a playstyle thing. I believe (from past posts of yours) that your playstyle is at least somewhat Gygaxian (based on 1st ed PHB notions of "good play"). Anyway, that's the way in which I'm reading your posts. My playstyle is fairly different.See, my preferred solution to this particular conundrum is to assign the Wolf-in-Sheep's Clothing a Stealth score, and to only mention it under one of two conditions: a PC succeeds on a perception check, in which case I mention that they notice a carnivorous plant disguised as a rabbit on a stump; or no PC succeeds on a percpetion check, at least one PC comes within range of the monster, and I mention that the PC is a victim of a surprise round from a carnivorous plant disguised as a rabbit on a stump.This is not the only way of doing it, obviously, and from your posts I gather not your preferred way. As I said, it's a playstyle thing. No one in my game is interested in descriptions of ingame forest landscapes to the requisite degree of detail to do it otherwise. I would not therefore say that my gameworld lacks colour or texture. But the description of that colour and texture is focused elsewhere, on the things (like statues of Orcus) that are salient given my best guess at player interests as manifested through their PC builds and backstories and their prior play of those PCs.I don't fully agree with your (2) - the reason that the optimal choice is not obvious is because there is no optimal choice. Is it optimal for a paladin of the Raven Queen to betray his mistress and throw in his lot with Orcus? Or to remain faitfhul, but in cowardly fashion leave the statue undisturbed because he fears he can't deal with it at his current level of power? Or to try and cleanse it, even though this risks corruption? Or to . . .?There is no answer to this question. From the metagame point of view, any is a possible route to XP (whether combat XP, skill challenge XP, quest XP or more than one of the above). Also from the metagame point of view, any is likely to produce an interesting game, although each is obviously interesting in a different sort of way.From the ingame point of view, some choices are obviously more optimal than others relative to a given set of PC goals, but the whole point of the example is that the choices invovle, to an extent at least, setting the PC's goals.Furthermore, as a GM, I couldn't predetermine an optimal choice because the range of options isn't known to me. It is created by the player in question. As a GM I respond to the possibilities raised or actions undertaken as best I can, using the encounter-building and action-resolution rules the game gives me. (I should add - this example is a slightly pared-down example of something that actually happened in the course of play. The player ended up choosing to try and cleanse the statue. I resolved the attempt using the rules on page 42 of the 4e DMG, and awarded XP for completing a minor quest. This was only a minor piece of action, but it helped set the overall scene for further undead-related developments in the campaign.)As to the move to (3), which you say is a non-sequitur - I had taken you to suggest that the notion of only including "relevant" details is pernicious, because it leads to the GM signalling the optimal choice and thereby depriving the players of the opportunity to choose. If I misunderstood you in so taking you, I apologise. But what I tried to do with the Orcus statue example was to provide an example where including only relevant details, so far from being pernicious because a way of signalling optimal choices, is in fact the very way in which the possibility of genuine player choice is opened up. But the choice in question is not a game-mechanical or tactical choice. It is a thematic or aesthetic choice.This is not the only sort of choice that comes up in my games - once combat starts, for example, I resolve it using the standard 4e rules and this opens up the space for many tactical choices by players, which can be more or less optimal. Even in respect of these choices, however, I don't think it hurts to focus primarily on relevant (ie thematically salient) features of the ingame situation. In a recent combat I ran, for example, the PCs had to stop a ritual and rescue the prisoners being used as sacrifices in the ritual. Their were two main ways to fight the battle: stay in a defensible position near the entry to the ritual room, beat the guards, and then deal with the enemy ritualists; or, go immediately to the ritual circle on the other side of the room and try and stop the ritual, but then have to fight more foes simultaneously from a much more vulnerable position. My players took the first option, and found the combat quite a bit easier than I had anticipated, but failed to save one of the prisoners, because they didn't stop the ritual in time. A meangingful choice was made, with obvious ingame ramficiations (as well as resulting in fewer than maximum quest XP). It wasn't thwarted by a failure to desribe non-relevant details of the situation. Nor did I telegraph matters - indeed, in designing the encounter it hadn't occurred to me that the players would adopt the course of action they actually took. I assumed that they would try to rescue the prisoners straight away.But this is also a case where the notion of "optimal choice" has no real purchase. What is optimal - to rescue both prisoner via a more risky strategy, or to increase the risk to the prisoners by adopting a safer strategy? It's rather a question of the players settling their own priorities, and the goals of their PCs.I don't quite follow. If the statue is mentioned and the players don't pick up on it, then as a GM I have made a minor mistake - insofar as I have included an element in my description that I had expected to be of interest to one or more players, given my best guess as to what they're looking for from the game, and my expectation has turned out to be mistaken. Given that the players haven't picked up on it, nothing is likely to come of it. If, subsequently, the players do pick up on it (eg "I remember something about an Orcus statue back there - maybe we should see if by cleansing that we can reduce the undeads' strength") then it has become relevant (and suppose they go and cleanse it, succeeding in a quick skill challenge, they can all have a +2 on their next attack roll against undead, or some similar modest benefit, as well as XP for the skill challenge itself and perhaps a minor quest).I don't follow this. If the existence of the statue is mentioned, then it is there. If not, it is not. I don't quite see how the next campaign is relevant - is the concern that another group of PCs might enter the same dungeon? I don't design campaign worlds or dungeons in that sort of way, as environs to be explored independent of any particular set of PCs/players. I design them (or, more often, adapt them from modules) with particular PCs and players in mind, and I continue to tweak them up until the moment I run them in order to maximise their relevance (in the sense I've been describing) to those particular players. This is not a full-fledged <a href="http://inky.org/rpg/no-myth.html" target="_blank">"no myth"</a> style of play, because I do prepare in advance (I find that 4e demands a degree of advanced preparation if it is to give its best), but it tends at least somewhat in that direction.</blockquote>

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