“Ref could have just said ‘okay, it’s NOT actually Sam, but she looks just like her’, though revealing a secret twin is a risky play.
Remember the whole point of this is to make the world feel real and not to undermine the players’ previous choices.”
1- why would a secret twin be any more riskier than a herbalist that is made out of thin air?
2- how is announcing your players that the NPC with a broken leg was healed miraculously overnight less ‘undermining’ than coming up with a doppelganger?
This was really just a very poorly constructed example for an OK argument. Neither of the options presented are superior to one another. It’s about the delivery.
> As with other moments of improvisation, it’s best to keep the improvised content as something neither overtly beneficial or harmful to the players. Players accept that improvisation happens, but moments with significant positive or negative impact are best when they feel like part of the impartial mechanisms of the game, rather than something implemented at the whims of the Referee.
This is an interesting opinion to me, since both as a GM and a player I would say that usually at least 80% of the game is improvised, but the paragraph implies that it would be a more uncommon thing.
This is great. I had a situation the other day running Gradient Descent. The PCs were following an NPC who was trying to get away from them. He goes into a room and the PCs follow, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I only then realise the room does not have any other exits according to the map - ‘weird, huh?’ It’s like he just vanished. My improv is there is a service hatch connecting back to another part of the structure. ‘Maybe he went through there...’
“Ref could have just said ‘okay, it’s NOT actually Sam, but she looks just like her’, though revealing a secret twin is a risky play.
Remember the whole point of this is to make the world feel real and not to undermine the players’ previous choices.”
1- why would a secret twin be any more riskier than a herbalist that is made out of thin air?
2- how is announcing your players that the NPC with a broken leg was healed miraculously overnight less ‘undermining’ than coming up with a doppelganger?
This was really just a very poorly constructed example for an OK argument. Neither of the options presented are superior to one another. It’s about the delivery.
> As with other moments of improvisation, it’s best to keep the improvised content as something neither overtly beneficial or harmful to the players. Players accept that improvisation happens, but moments with significant positive or negative impact are best when they feel like part of the impartial mechanisms of the game, rather than something implemented at the whims of the Referee.
This is an interesting opinion to me, since both as a GM and a player I would say that usually at least 80% of the game is improvised, but the paragraph implies that it would be a more uncommon thing.
This is great. I had a situation the other day running Gradient Descent. The PCs were following an NPC who was trying to get away from them. He goes into a room and the PCs follow, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I only then realise the room does not have any other exits according to the map - ‘weird, huh?’ It’s like he just vanished. My improv is there is a service hatch connecting back to another part of the structure. ‘Maybe he went through there...’
This has long been my favourite tactic when characters get interrupted in EXUVIAE — "huh, how weird" brings a lot of horror potential