I
had a few minutes to look through some old files on one of my
computers yesterday and found the old Swords & Wizardry Quick
Start by Michael Shorten. As I was rereading it, a passage in the
Players section stuck out to me:
When you play, you describe what you're
doing and the Game Referee tells you what happens. In almost all
cases, the Game Referee gives you one of two answers: "Yes"
or "I think you have a chance of doing that - roll dice and tell
me what you get."
That got me thinking about all of the
games I've played where the characters' actions were too quickly
limited by the DM saying “no.” I've experienced it both playing
and running games. And I don't really want to do it anymore. I want
all of my games to default toward permission rather than exclusion of
player action.
That doesn't mean that the characters'
actions shouldn't have consequences, but I want characters to have
the chance to try anything and do crazy things without any kind of
automatic restriction.
Most definitely. So long as the players have the information the characters would reasonably have on possible effects, it works for me.
ReplyDeleteI always try to describe as much as possible when I'm running games, because I hate being surprised by what should be obvious information when I'm a player. Lately I've also started asking lots of questions to get as much info as possible so I can make an informed decision for my character
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