Fuck you Shlominus. Just, fuck you.
For you to even make that claim means that you have no idea what *World is or how it works. Confrontations do not work the way you think they work. NPCs do not work the way you think they work. Actions and plotting does not work the way you think it works.
I
think that your fundamental problem is that your mind is just refusing to accept how fucking dumb the narrative flow in *World actually is. Those bodyguards outside weren't "already there" until the declaration. They
became "already there" when the declaration occurs. Because such things are declared retroactively when elements are introduced and elements are specifically forbidden from being planned before their introduction. The dice are rolled and the MC makes up the bodyguards on the spot, and their previous existence is retroactively written into continuity. Yeah, a lot of people who claim that they "like" or even "play" *World don't do that, because it's obviously insane, but that really is what the book says and the book explicitly and repeatedly says that if you aren't doing this you are playing the game wrong.
The second thing you are refusing to understand is how conflict is resolved. *World
does not have a difficulty slider. Full stop. Combat is resolved by you making the exact same roll whether you are stomping on an uppity child or facing down a squad of hunter killer droids. Different situations don't have different roll modifiers, the MC simply declares different results for the three levels of failure. Against easy opposition a "success" means that you get to win, while against overwhelming opposition the same "success" means that you perform a fighting retreat with less losses than you otherwise might have gotten. Really. That's really how it works.
So within that context, when the player gets an unmitigated success on a perception test and they are told that the opposition they were previously concerned about doesn't count because there is now an arbitrarily bigger threat and their best bet is to try to get into a hostage situation and bargain their way out of the building - that means that:
- The MC made up new opponents at that moment.
- The stakes of the conflict were changed such that simple victory was no longer possible on subsequent Act Under Fire tests.
- This was all in response to player succeeding at a roll.[b/]
Really. That's really how it works. It really is that fucking bad. A successful perception test made the party fail the mission. For reals. This is the last fucking time I'm walking your ass through this shit. If you continue to refuse to understand this shit, I'm putting your ass on ignore.
-Username17