>>47039553
If I had to take a guess without having read the system, it'd be because it is a game more interested in telling a story than anything else. the players have to buy in as well of course, and take appropriate actions that make for a good story.

In the carriage ambush one, what's more interesting:

Traditional "it's a carrige":
>I take another step and do a spot check,
>Another step and I look around
>Ok you hang back and look around while I go further and look for an ambush or gold

Or this "there is an ambush but you don't know" with some player buy in:
>you stay back and watch, the rest of us will ride in and see what happens.

Then you get the players to both walk into the ambush, and be ready to fight their way out in a cool way.

Like I said, it's probably more interested in a cool story told cooperatively with the players,

>>47039723
Hrm. Well, I guess I can see that. Less of a traditional "game" and more of people telling a group story.

Eh. Pass.

>>47039553
It's there because a lot of indie systems do this pointless "just because games usually do something a certain way, my game must do the exact opposite, just to make a point about how avant-garde I am". This is extremely common, and has very little to do with what would actually be best for the game.

>>47039553
It is the finner point of no quantum ogres, that is, giving players agency and freedom.

When you ask yourself 'what level of freedom is appropriate for my players, and what is the level of agency that is funnier for everyone around the table', you frequently arrive to the conclusion that giving hints to your players is better for everyone.

In the given example, your players have the time to set up various countermeasures. This is more interesting and more engaging for them, and ultimately funnier and more engaging for you.

This doesn't mean you should always tell them everything, but you should tell them enough to make an informed conclusion. 'You never saw that trap, now you're dead' is not *interesting* to play.

Ultimately, it is up to you.

>>47039959
I should add that it is tried and tested, and genuinely makes more interesting games from everyone.

Let's see that example.

The players have done something stupid and then they are ambushed -> how do I signify to my players they ave done something stupid? I grunt at them? I throw an angry look at them? I 'imply'? It is more efficient to simply say:
'You should not have done that because X and X. Now an ambush is set for your characters. What have you prepared?'

Communication is primordial.

Even if the characters have done nothing wrong and are still ambushed, it is frequently better to allow the player more agency. The difference between 'you are ambushed' and 'you *will* be ambushed' is small, but the second one is usually better perceived in actual play and makes everyone happy.

Communication is the root of player agency. Player agency is at the root of happy players. You are here to make your players happy, and you, too.

This is the distilled Zen from very, very old and experienced GM.

>>47039886
How's "CoD9: Infinity Bloodkill" treating you?

>>47039723

Fuck all that, it's a good way to train your players to seperate IC from OC.

>>47040156
How's your mom's mouth treating my dick?

>>47039931
It's more likely than not just an attempt to break down the "Always Optimal" mindset some players have.

Players who abuse metagame knowledge usually do so because they think it's not quite so obvious, but when the GM directly explains what's coming up, they really can't abuse that knowledge without everyone immediately seeing that you're a bit of a douchebag.

>>47040073
> Player agency is at the root of happy players.
But to what degree. Telling your players that an area they're entering seems perfect for an ambush is one thing, but telling them there is a secret door in the room defeats the purpose of bothering to put a secret door there, and makes their discovery of it meaningless. I have found that it's best if you let the players have the opportunity to be clever and to punish them when they're not. A degree of 'player versus GM' mentality is necessary on both sides, or the game devolves into drama- and suspense-free cooperative storytelling. And stories without drama or suspense aren't very memorable.

>>47039553
Post the entire page.

>>47039959
> This is more interesting and more engaging for them

Is it, though? For me it completely ruins the immersion. I have to either act as my character would and feel like a retard for walking into a trap, or feel like I'm treating the situation as a purely mechanical exercise by following the GM's information and planning accordingly. No, being killed because you walked blindly into a trap isn't fun, but I'd argue that's the GM's fault for putting an instant-death trap into the scene, as opposed to a trap which hinders the party or creates a new, dangerous situation for them to work their way out of.

>>47039723
Pretty much this.
But also it's enhanced by the type of stories the game tries to tell.
Dogs in the Vineyard is about young men with enourmious amount of power and authority going around in fantasy wild west solving people's problems.
And those situations and problems should be hard to solve because of their nature, not because GM hides the facts.
And ultimately the choice is in player's hands, if they want to have their characters dig deeper to find the truths or do they just act on based what they initially see. But the player choice of knowing that there is something there to dig for is what enables that knowledge.

>>47039553
I've seen an alternate version of this in the game 'Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies', where you 'explain your failure'.

'You failed your perception roll. So, why didn't you notice the assassins preparing to ambush you until it was too late?'

>>47039553

To try something new.

Shocking, isn't it?

>>47040156
I wanna say "good one" but cod9 came out like five years ago man...

>>47040283
If you don't know that may be a sign of paraplegia. If not, then delusion.

>>47040374
This. It really drives home the point that this is stuff you don't actually know, and forces you to play to your character to find out, instead of sneakily working in your OOC knowledge.

It lets you identify which players have a genuine problem telling the two apart, too, and then you can help them.

>>47040156
Bretty gud. I preordered the preorder, so I got the elite sniper rifle that 360 no-scopes for me while blaring airborne and giving me "deal wid it" shades. The campaign's really good too, because it has you fight different brown people than the last game.

>>47043422
Doesn't count unless it explicitly has "Call of Duty 9" in the title, like how you can have an Assassin's Creed 3 that's the 5th game in the franchise.

>>47043234

That's a neat mechanic. We tend to do that while playing Dee Ampersand Dee, but it's not enshrined in-system.