thread: 2011-02-21 : Into the Unknown?
On 2011-03-29, Vincent wrote:
David: Yep, you misread me. That's okay, I'll just go forward: it's about making every possible outcome relevant, and giving the players concrete assurance that every possible outcome will be relevant.
Imagine that you're playing draw poker and you don't know it but mixed into the deck are some Pit cards. You're like "give me 3" and you get the 6 of hearts, the king of clubs, and a barley. You'd be like "WHAT THE HELL I'M TAKING MY MONEY BACK OUT OF THE POT."
"The GM will make every possible outcome relevant, except rarely" is not concrete assurance.
Listing the possible outcomes and giving them odds is one way to give the players concrete assurance, but it's not the only way.
Have you seen my game Rock of Tahamaat? It's very good in this regard. Look at it for what we're doing in the game overall and then look at the resolution rules for characters who aren't Rock of Tahamaat. The rules provide only hunch-quality odds and intuitive outcomes, but the connection from "I hide under a tarp in the space shipyard" to "we're here to see what happens when someone defies Rock of Tahamaat's rule" is nevertheless perfectly clear.
About freeform later.
