Tarinaky

Anyway. I actually need to sleep and I mean it this time.

Yeah. But the serendipity made it fun for me.

If the mooks can attack from the vents, the players have to know there's vents.

The best I can explain. It's not 'fair' if it's total unknown.

I'd decided on the water elemental ages in advance because I liked the visual of a monster pouring out of a faucet.

I don't need to explain what happened next.

Another example, the party had a water elemental stuck on them after they escaped from a car chase. The party decided to hole up in motel and one of the party announced they were taking a shower.

Right, but now the Ninjas are /behind/ them

Defence in Depth is a key part of any reasonable plan.

Straw man imo

It's not the only way to run a game.

I feel like if the players plan that catastrophically the correction is to gently nudge them with "Are you sure?"

I should really go to sleep. I'm sorry.

And then the dice fall where they may.

Or at least, the broad strokes of it.

As GM, I have to come up with the NPC's attack plan before hearing the PC's defence plan.

And prepare defences accordingly.

The party theorise the most likely routes for infiltration/exfiltration.

So if the party have to protect a McGuffin from being stolen.

And giving my NPCs the power of prescience, by adjusting their plots according to information they could not have... Would be unfun.

Given I'm actually trying to beat the players, which is something most GMs are told not to do, I have to tread /very/ carefully so as to not do it in an unfun way.

It's cheating from the perspective of my goal to 'beat' the party.

Because it becomes impossible to outmaneuver or surprise the players.

But I don't like it because I can't get the same thrill out of a game using it.

So if one of the player's speculates that something is going on, or expects to find something, then they find it.

I think I heard the term a long time ago on a podcast. When, as a GM, you take anything the party speculates about the mystery and declare it to be true.

I have no idea.

It's cheating.

Because there's nothing behind the curtain

But getting back to the Mystery stuff... If I run a Sphagetti plot, it's impossible for me (through the villain as a tool) to fairly outmaneuver the players.

I have a very minimal, passing, awareness of Propp's theory, and precious little else and consequently have to get a /lot/ of milleage out of it when I try to talk about RPGs.

Which is precious little I'm sure.

Unfortunately I can only really go on what I learned in GCSE Media Studies.

Okay.

@doppelgreener I'm... not arguing...

But I might be wrong, I'm not a lit major.

@Shalvenay I think, in narrative theory, you can talk about non-anthropomorphic elements as being characters if they serve the role a character would ordinarily play in a trope.

shrugs I'm bad with words.

Which is... I think the same as saying "They beat the story by defeating the villain"

I mean thwarting the plot of the in-game villain.

Otherwise it isn't fun.

It has to be done /fairly/

But in order for it to be an outmaneuvering, there have to be rules adhered to.

By either throwing their plans wildly for a loop, killing some or all of the characters...

And my meta-narrative goal is that I, personally, get a thrill if I outmaneuver the players.

I don't see what your point/question is though?

Sure.

It's important to me that the scenario be, potentially, equally loseable as winnable.

I couldn't get into Dark Souls tbh.

@BESW It depends on the video game and what the design team were trying to do. Dark Souls memes.