[unipus]

Originally Posted by Lurken

In my game I am running, I am following the encounter tables religiously. Why? Because encounters are DEADLY (both ways). If I follow the encounter tables, I cannot be tainted by GM bias against or for my group. However, I try to make sense of them and use them no matter what the outcome is. My group encountered a German Large Unit south east of Kalisz and then some. How the hell did they end up there? So, I used the week to figure that out, and even found exactly what unit it should have been. And so on I continue, all travelling encounters that are to be randomly decided are woven into the world with a believable context. Another highlight was the randomly genned smugglers, and the two man Marauder gang in an OT-65 that was genned during night while the group had decided to camp out at the now vacated smuggler hidout. Why where the two men in an OT-65 there?

It is questions like that, that makes the encounter tables work.

And it is very unfair to label me as hostile. Before the release of material I was hopeful for the system, game and developer. If you go back, I tried to dissuade negativity before we knew stuff. As I own and have played a number of FL's game, and had very much fun. I knew they did the systems in a very non-granular way, but they promised me that they would adhere to the feel and spirit of T2k v.2, in setting and rules. They did not.

And are you calling me cherry picking quotes when I quote the entire bullet point where they recommend not to track NPC's water and food, or when they encourage GMs to pick on sole PCs (without even considering the fact that PCs may lack radios, hard to decide to help the lone PC, if there are no way for the lone PC to call for help).

I wasn't referring specifically to you, regarding hostility. There are far worse offenders. But I think Raellus is 100% correct... seems like a lot of people decided to circle the wagons before the Indians even went on the warpath. Personally, having read the entirety of v4 now multiple times, and re-read the entirety of v1 (and many of its supplements), I find it impossible not to see the same DNA between them in many many places.

Anyway. Here's the section that immediately follows what you posted about NPC ammo and food:

As a general rule, NPCs follow the same rules as PCs during combat unless otherwise stated. However, in order to minimize bookkeeping and avoid slowing combat down, a number of simplified rules for minor NPCs are included in chapter 4 of the Players’ Manual. These are all repeated here, for your reference.
You are never obliged to use the simplified rules – for key NPCs, it’s
often worthwhile to use the full rules, just like for PCs.

There's more on the same theme, of course, elsewhere. Posting optional rules for accelerating the game as if they were the game's sole gospel fits the very definition of cherry-picking, to me.

My opinion? A GM should absolutely be biased... towards whatever will be fun and exciting stories for the group as a whole. If totally random encounters get you there, then that's all well and good. Like I said, the beta now also includes a new solo play section that is full of very useful "oracles" -- and tools like that are a godsend for GMs. My own campaign has a couple of overarching narratives. I use the random encounters when I feel they won't be a distraction from progress or goals the players are actively seeking. If they don't fit the situation, or I think they're likely to throw the group way off track, then I simply toss them out. If the players are aggressively pursuing a particular story beat, and we're all having fun doing it, but they're running low on food? Well, guess what, I'll make sure the next encounter has some food, so that the story doesn't grind to a halt while we go fishing for an hour. Learned that lesson too many times in too many games. Other times, if things are feeling more directionless or freeform, then I'll turn up the pressure on resources and remind them that survival isn't easy, until they come up with a new objective and a new story emerges.

Am I executing bias in doing that? Absolutely, yes. That's my job: to curate an overall interesting story that isn't just a bunch of random happenings, and that is tied to what the characters (and more importantly players) are interested in exploring. A different sort of GM, yourself perhaps, could maybe do that entirely with random encounters. As you said, context is key. If you're able to weave context into these things 10 times out of 10, then fantastic. Personally I find it's more like 6/10, but nonetheless I do use the will of the dice constantly to flesh out small details, motivations, and story events. Being surprised is a great thing for GMs and players. But only if you can tie the surprise and randomness back into a coherent story somehow. The book has a number of thoughts on how to do this, how to make events personal, how to draw conflict out of happenstance. IMO, all of that is very good stuff. It is a philosophy on how to run a rewarding roleplaying game. Many of the games of the '80s lacked any such philosophy. The language and knowledge didn't exist. Here were some tables, and you're on your own. GDW T2K was a little better than most, but it was still essentially a fairly empty framework that you had to figure out how to build a house around without a lot of help.