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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6102810" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's not an assumption. It's a presupposition of some people's preferred approach to play.Because once in the castle the key stakes - assassinating the duke - are in play. As [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, there is no mechanical rule here - it's a matter of taste and judgement, a bit like editing.Yes. That would be equally frustrating.You are assuming here that whether or not something takes time at the table should be determined by whether or not it is hard in the gameworld. That is one way to RPG, but not the only one. Hussar and I are articulating a different approach - as Hussar said upthread, it is non-simulationist.If there are no salient stakes, then the player does know its trivial (by the sort of measure that Hussar and I are putting forward).No. City B, the Duke's castle, the grell, are situations - ie NPCs and PCs in some sort of confrontation over something at stake with which the players are engaged.I said simply overcoming challenges. The relevant difference is, what are the stakes of the challenge? Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain involve challenges, but I have zero interest in playing or GMing either, because there are no interesting stakes.Disregarding the "useless", that's what colour is - description that adds flavour and vibe to the game. (I don't know why you'd think it's useless - description and flavour are part of being immersed in play.)First, why will the game play out identically? To cross the desert, for instance, the PCs might cross off their "heat resistance" potions, whereas going through a forest wouldn't have the same impact on resources.Second, why is description and immesion not an end in itself? Apart from anything else, it plays a role in setting the fictional stakes.In 4e, for instance, a thief in leather armour and a paladin in full plate have much the same AC, but the difference in colour is hardly irrelevant - it gives the two characters very different fictional positions.I'm not sure how that would be. How would it come about that a player-created goal would be simply a plot device for propelling the action along? Can you give an example?Then I think you may be mishearing. There is a pretty big difference between framing an obstacle/challenge within the context of an engaging situation, and framing a completely different situation.To go back to the grell example, for instance: there's a pretty big difference between turning up to a rematch with the grell and finding it's recruited a gauth ally (a complication within the context of the grell situation), and spending 90 minutes of play recruiting hirelings to fight the grell (which is not a complication with the context of the grell situation, but a completely different, and also in context rather low stakes, situation).No one has said that. There are any number of ways to introduce consequences of failure or less than full success without framing things into tedious and low-stakes scenes. Marking of resources is one of the most straightforward, but there are more story-related options as well. I've already indicated with the grell example, for instance: a hireling shows his/her cowardice, or tendency towards aberration-worship, when the group confronts the grell.That's a caricatured framing of things, but take out the caricature and yes, you are a bad GM for me or Hussar.</blockquote>

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