Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
What I am trying to say, regardless of the wording, is that there is a fundamental difference between coming to a bad conclusion because you incorrectly analyzed accurate data and coming to a bad conclusion because you correctly analyzed inaccurate date.

Letting the players fail because the GM failed to accurately convey information to the PCs in a way they can comprehend is a bad thing.

Letting the players fail because they came to their own conclusion based on an accurate understanding of the information that was presented to them is ok; and to an extent necessary to prevent railroading.

Again, within reason, these are general principles, not absolutes.
Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
Man but those chonked text walls are whacked. Skippy skip skip. But something stood out


My current game is the second run of these players through a setting. Their first run resulted in seven doom clocks. I also write a 'news bulletin' for every couple weeks in-game time (interstellar travel is 10+1d5 days warp time from beyond the outermost planet so adding a minimum of another 10+ days of hard burn in-system). The news is about 25% doom clocks, one result of whatever they did last that made the news, and some random stuff fleshing out the setting or just flavoring.

They've made massively incorrect assumptions about some stuff in the news. I correct things where their characters have direct experience or facts, but otherwise let them run wild. Its possible they'll soon run into a major doom clock that's hitting its catastrophy point. There's three of those getting into the final stages now.

They've been so busy chasing loot, vanity projects, and personal vendettas that they haven't asked any questions about anything. And they're going to blindly walk into absolute meat grinders chewing up whole star systems. Tak, you're nicer to your players than I am to mine. Mine just get fact corrections and tabloid news unless they start asking questions and actually using their contacts. They've barely registered that two or three fleets of warships have been wiped out and the incidents are coming closer.
I, too, only correct facts, not conclusions. OTOH, IIRC, 2 of the WoD GMs I've had corrected reasonable but false conclusions, but didn't correct facts. So if the character reasonably could have come to that conclusion, it was corrected; if it was completely unreasonable for someone living that life to believe that, it wasn't. That was... pretty terrible.