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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6105708" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Quite a good post but I can't xp.  I just wanted to take a second to comment on this bit here that I highlighted in orange and how it applies to the techniques outlined above, "implicit player signals", the question of "do players always want control over, or even interaction with, all game minutiae?" There is a lot of "Indiana Jones" and "Pulp Western" in the genetic mashup of our genre preference for our D&D play.  My players expect (demand) chase scenes, on foot or in carts or with horses and wagons/carriages, in our games.  Sometimes this is made explicit before we play; "A chase scene tonight would be fun".  Sometimes I will overtly ask players to provide me with a scene-opener that I will fit into play in the following week.  The 3 PCs in my game all have "Athletics", "Nature", "Perception".  They either have martial practices or rituals to bulwark their interaction with animals, their skill in the wild, and/or their ability to ride.  Two of them have encounter skill powers that are built for chases and one of them has a great attack At-Will that works in chases (We use a Nature check for it as its a Druid Primal Spell).They want chases.  In default D&D exploratory play, these are very difficult to set up well and (borderline) ensure that a dynamic chase will organically emerge.  As such, a player authored bang for a chase or a scene-framed chase does the trick nicely.  Its the same thing as setting up a combat encounter.In the situation above, they had to secure an idol from a temple of evil snake-men.  The Rogue in this game is an expert infiltrator.  He could likely have pulled off the pilfering of the idol without much ado.  However, two sessions before that, he was able to strut his stuff as "master infiltrator" by having a scene that allowed for just that.  In the session in question, I had these thiings at work:Signal 1 - The players overtly want chases.  It is in their genre preference DNA.  Signal 2 - The players have built their PCs to be proficient protagonists in the elements of chases.Signal 3 - The Rogue was able to play out his "Master Infiltrator" shtick just a few sessions before.So, in this case, I just assumed the success of the Rogue in pilfering the item and set up a situation where his horse (hidden in a copse of trees) is being set upon by a whooping hyena pack.  This basically works as an alarm bell.  The Rogue "Instinct" of "Master Infiltrator" (his insurance that I won't frame a scene around him being a "sneakthief" failure) is not violated.  Its actually assumed in this scenario.  We don't play it out.  He's automatically successful.  The first order of business in the chase scene is the pressure of the whooping hyena pack desceneding on his horse (his means of egress).  Snake-men are alerted and chase ensues!  The PCs are (i) trying to avoid getting skewered by arrows/javelins/spells, (ii) navigating the very treacherous terrain so as to not injure their horses, (iii) follow the scant trail signs for their charted course, (iv) and stay on their galloping horses.  Those 4 are the context through which I am interpreting in and all task resolution.  At some point, one of them barely fails a Ride check.  They could be unmounted, their horse could go lame by tearing a tendon while hitting an impediment/hole after being steered poorly, their saddle strap could get torn by struck by one of the snake-men (or the horse could), they could slow down allowing the snake-men to catch up, and on and on.  These are expert horsemen.  And the other ones seemed stale and didn't produce something interesting in the fiction.  I chose the path of them losing their ability to maintain their concentration on (iii).  Instead of taking the right path, a gorge manifests as an adverse obstacle as the 3 PCs gallop over a rise.  Now they have to deal with this giant obstacle as the bad guys (in overwhelming numbers) bear down on them!</blockquote>

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