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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5396603" data-attributes="member: 18280">Well, I'm not 100% certain where our thoughts differ here.No, they don't.  In fact, if you go back to my post you initially responded to, you will see that this must be true.I said, more than once, that there are two factors involved:  (1) How obvious optimal choices are, or rather, options that have "good" results over "bad" results, and (2) How the choices made change the game.By focusing the game only on choices you consider meaningful, you are strongly driving (2) at the expense of (1).  It is equally possible to strongly drive (1) at the expense of (2), and produce an equally satisfying game.  Most GMs, IMHO and IME, drive both to some degree, and may or may not be strongly favouring either.  So long as some form of balance is achieved, choices can still be meaningful.It is only a game where the intended options are obvious, and the game results are the same regardless of what is chosen, that meaningful choice becomes impossible.So, I hope you can see, my post was not an attack against your playstyle, but rather a response to the idea that removing "irrelevant" detail from the campaign milieu is necessarily a good idea.  So-called "irrelevant" detail performs a function.  It is not a necessary function, depending upon your playstyle and goals in playing, but neither is it an unnecessary function, in that (1) it is impossible to force the players to accept every detail as relevant and (2) it is generally undesireable to respond to player requests for more detail with "That's irrelevant!  Why don't you deal with the barkeep cultist instead?".  How, exactly, is "if his PC just walks into the bar and kills the barkeep, the PC'll be judged as a pretty merciless individual by onlookers, and perhaps also by the player's fellow players and/or their PCs" less about the ingame state than "if his PC just walks into the garden and is killed by the wisc, the PC'll be judged as a pretty foolish individual by onlookers, and perhaps also by the player's fellow players and/or their PCs"?Really, this is an artificial divide.I'll go you one further.  Except as they relate to a goal or desired outcome, no choice is meaningful based on reason.  Reason is a tool to get to the desired state, but does not tell you in any way whatsoever what the desired state should be.  That is purely based on emotion.The idea, therefore, that either meaning must be based on "a cost-benefit analysis" is one I reject utterly.  However, you may be certain that some level of analysis -- even if on the "gut feeling" level -- occurs when trying to reach the state that is seen to have meaning.Again, any refutation of my post that relies on "optimal" meaning "mechanically optimal" is doomed to fail, because (probably through my own fault as a writer) it fails to understand the point.In order to lead the PCs by the nose, it is necessary to tell them what is important.  Regardless of the amount of extra detail a milieu might contain, ensuring that the players have some means to know what the GM considers important is paramount.  You cannot lead without some form of reins, after all.Consequently, while removing "extraneous" detail doesn't mandate that you lead the PCs by the nose, it is a good first step, and is certainly liable to lead many inexperienced GMs in that direction.RC</blockquote>

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