That applies to all actions, though. The tast "Clean the basement" is dependent on numerous other things, including a lack of murder-hobos breaking in or pissed-off dragons destroying my wizard citadel. If the end result is doable by the minion, then I believe it qualifies.
All action is subject to the possiblity of external interference. But the spell description uses the phrase "open-ended" as a way of describing some, but not all, actions. Perhaps the authors of the description made a mistake - perhaps
all actions are open-ended - but it is a general principle of interpretation that one should try and give each of the terms used some work to do in contributing to overall meaning. In this context, then, the spell description obliges us to make a serious effort to distinguish between tasks which are and tasks which are not open-ended. There will probably be borderline cases - there almost always are - but that's inherent in most natural language descriptions.
Turning to your particular example, "Clean this basement" strikes me as not open-ended. "Keep this basement clean" strike me as open-ended. What happens if you give the first instruction and then, just as the bound creatures is putting the last bit of old junk onto a shelf a dragon flies through and knocks everything over with the buffeting of its wings? Does the creature have to start again? Or has it discharged it's obligation? Should the GM roll another check for the creature to choose between these options? I don't think the spell description on its own settles these questions. It's trying to set up a framework for giving mechanical effect to a classic trope - the bound demon which might turn on its binder. It's not surprising that it gives rise to edge cases whose resolution is uncertain.
I want to come back to this issue of "discretion" or "adjudication" in resolution, but via some other posts.
Story effectiveness is not mechanical
How is story effectiveness not mechanical? If the resolution mechanics are utterly circumvented and drowned out by GM fiat, then yes, the authenticity of a player's build mechanics and their strategic and tactical decisions are indeed rendered irrelevant. However, assuming that GM fiat is not the driver of outcomes, then how is story effectiveness not, at least in part (another part if the fog of fortune resolution and another part is acumen of tactical and strategic decision-making), driven mechanically?
This issue has come up on at least two other threads recently. On the L&L thread, [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] expressed the view that getting the maths right is fundamental to desiging Next. I agreed with him, but also explained that I think others have a different playstyle which makes the maths less important; [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] agreed with me.
On the multi-classing prereqs thread, I made a point similar to Manbearcat's above, that mechanical effectiveness and a character's story effectiveness are pretty tightly connected in a game that does not involve very heavy GMing and comparatively passive players. I got some disagreement, but not of the sort that makes me change my mind.
Across these threads I can see at least three playstyles being referred to, or presupposed:
* What I would call "indie-RPG" style - Manbearcat, Neonchameleon and I are all roughly in this zone - the point of PC build is to give players resources and capabilities whereby they can engage with the action resolution mechanics, and thereby impose their will on the fictional situations whose initial state is set by the GM but whose final state is not predetermined. In this playstyle, the GM's role in adjudication is to maintain the pressure on the players via their PCs, but within the constraints that are set by the players' successful action resolution checks. In adjudicating Planar Binding, for this style it is OK if the GM takes the view that the dragon's interference with the basement-cleaning operation free's the creature from control, provided that the player also has the chance to reestablish control via the action resolution mechanics. The GM's choice as to which way to go with this adjudication should be guided by considerations of what will make for fun and/or high emotional stakes at the table; provided the GM gets this call right, the player of the mage won't mind too much that his/her creature got free, because bringing the creature back under control, or failing to do so, will itself be a fun piece of RPGing. "Fail forward" is pretty crucial to this playstyle, because it means that failure is a non-game-ending option.
* What I would call "wargame" style - Cyclone_Joker seems to me to be a proponent of this style. The point of PC build is to give players resorces and capabilites whereby they can win the game by defeating challenges. Fail forward is not part of this style, and is in fact antithetical to it, because fail forward can make winners out of losers. I think this style suffers when adjudication requires open-ended judgements, because there is a very obvious conflict of interest between players (who are playing to win) and the GM (who is running the challenges in a more-or-less antagonistic fashion) - and unlike in the indie style there is no fail forward, or shared conceits about genre or about what would be a fun direction for the story to head off in, which help to cushion these conflicts of interest in the indie style.
* What I would call "storyteller" style - MJS and [MENTION=42437]Wiseblood[/MENTION] in this thread (perhaps also [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION]) seems to be a proponent of this style. In this style the numbers are of secondary importance - they tell us something about the PCs nature and place in the world (we can tell a fighter is tougher than a mage, for instance, because s/he has more hit points) - and thinking of PC build as the generation of metagame resources is probably anathema, or at least a munchkin tendency. The GM is expected to play a big role not just in framing challenges and controlling the fiction external to the PCs more generally, but negotiated understandings about where the fiction is heading - with the GM having the preeminent say, in the event of disagreement - is more important than action resolution via mechanical means ("roleplaying not rollplaying"). On this style, it is taken for granted that a spell like planar binding may require the GM to adjudicate it in play, and the player is expected to simply accept that adjudication and give voice to his/her PC's reaction to what happens. For those who play in this style, there is probably no general truth about whether fighters or wizards are more potent, because at any given table in any given campaign that is much more a consequence of how an individual player roleplays his/her PC and how the GM responds to that - purely mechanical considerations are of less (perhaps much less) significance
Although I have a clear preferred style (and there are surely other styles that I haven't mentioned, such as exploratory sandboxing) I've tried to be fair and sincere in my characterisation of all three.
That's called "Rocks fall," brah.
<snip>
Yes. You're simply not listening to reason, choosing rather to feel self-righteous because "Screw facts, y'all're coddled."
Either that or you think Rocks Fall encounters are good ideas. I'm not sure which of those is less unflattering, so I'll let you choose.
I think your comments here are a (strongly worded) response from someone who prefers "wargame" style to someone who prefers "storyteller" style. From the wargame (or indie) point of view,
all encounters in the storyteller game are in a certain sense "rocks fall" encounters, in that the role of the GM in framing them, and then adjudicating them by reference to the roleplaying responses of the players (to which mechanics may be very secondary, especially outside of combat), is the most important determinant of how they resolve.
In that play style, it may be true that a wizard player is "coddled" - that the GM does not frame and resolve situations so as to put pressure on the player of that PC to really push the limits - and it may also be true that a fighter is more powerful than a wizard - because the fighter player might engage the GM's fiction more energetically and enthusiastically than does the player of a wizard.
(The particular example Wiseblood has given also has another subtext - the collision of "storyteller" playstyle with the remnants of "wargame" mechanical design - and so there are worries that if you push the wizard player to hard in story terms, you might get an unhappy result in mechanical terms, namely of a failed Fort save or death by hp loss. From the perspective of "indie" players, eliminating these contradictions between story aspirations and mechanical possibilities is part of getting the maths right (to borrow Neonchameleon's words) and thereby reducing the role of GM force and allowing story and mechancial possiblity to become more integrated as Manbearcat has talked about.)
You really DO think you can win the Internet, don't you?
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