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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6107174" data-attributes="member: 42582">My only disagreement with the way you put it is that I don't agree that a non-simulationist approach has to threaten verisimilitude. Verisimilitude can be preserved via consistent and judicious free narration. That's part of the rationale for summoning the huge centipede to cross the desert - it provides the veneer of verismilitude for free narrating an easy crossing.Nice. Once again, plenty of veneer of verisimilitude for a free narration of succesful hiring!Only if your measure of relevance is ingame geography.If you measure of relevance is stuff that the players are invested in, then a siege of the city in which their destination temple is located strikes me as quite a bit more relevant than the surrounding desert.That relation is purely procedural - I have to cross the desert to get to the city. Without more, it is not an emotional or thematic relationship.Sure. Part of good GMing, in the absence of resolution mechanics like BW's Circles, is making a sensible choice of which way to go with this sort of stuff.I can envisage the possibility. But not for me. And not for Hussar either, given that he has actually lived through the experience and returned with his testimony!The cardboard cutouts, if that means we can cut more quickly to the stuff I care about!I don't know the books you're referring to. The Seven Samurai, though, read through RPG lenses, isn't about recruitment of NPC mercenaries. The samurai are the PCs, the peasants are NPC patrons.In any event, I don't play RPGs to experience the GM's narration of his/her gripping stories and NPC personalities, nor do I have that sort of goal in mind when I GM. (This is another version of [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s "fanfic" comments upthread.)I don't think the GM has a vested interest in boring anyone to tears. As I indicated in a post upthread, I think there is a certain approach to GMing, and to RPG play, that emphasises GM narration and the players "immersing" in that experience - like your refrence above to "welll written mercenaries" - which I personally have little interest in. A GM who wants to run that sort of game is going to bore me to tears, yes.This way of looking at the situation is very foreign to me. If it's the players' goal to kill the grell, by way of vengeance, then that's their goal. If I as GM want to link that in some way to a bigger picture, or some other - perhaps more profound - player gaoal, then the onus is on me to do that without getting in the way of the players. And frankly there are dozens of ways to do that, some involving the mercenaries, some not, but none of which involves free narration in 90-minute detail of the hiring process. [MENTION=37609]Jameson[/MENTION] Courage and I are far from identical in playstyle, but look at his description upthread of his "mercenary's widow" complication: he didn't divert play for 90 minutes onto stuff the players weren't engaged with and weren't interested in. He introduced the complication as an immediate and integrated component of resolving the actions that the players had declared for their PCs; and then followed the players' leads in developing it. That's the sort of GMing that I admire and enjoy and try to learn from.Excellent analysis, and fits my experience 100%. The sort of consquences you describe are inherent in Rolemaster as a system - it makes it very hard to handle pacing other than via exhaustive mechanical resolution of any action that might have ingame causal significance - which is one of the reasons why my dissatsifaction with it grew over many years of GMing it.Newsflash: In my 4e game I also don't make the player of the archer track his ammunition. Life's too short!</blockquote>

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