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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7754586" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>To build on what you've posted: I think it's directly connected to the question of whether the game is a wargame, or something else in which story and character are more prominent.</p><p></p><p>In a wargame, 30% success rates, and hard failures, are acceptable. If you lose, then you lose - and reset the board and try again, using the experience you've gained to improve your odds by playing the ficton better, using better tactics, etc.</p><p></p><p>But if the focus of play is character and/or story, then 30% success rates and hard failures lead to total fiasco, as story fails to develop, characters are not heroes we might admire but hopeless bumblers, etc.</p><p></p><p>One mode of mitigation is to change the success rates: 4e does this by reworking the maths. Another is to eliminate hard failures: Burning Wheel does this, via "fail forward". Another is just to punt it all to the GM, who manipulates outcomes and consequences as necessary to generate story, appropriately foreground the PCs, etc - 2nd ed AD&D does this, as do many other games of that era and played in that style.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The notion of "the privileged role of GM", and also of "the GM saving the game from itself" because "the rules fail", are symptomatic (in my view) of a certain approach to D&D, and especially AD&D, that - whenver it first began (I would guess in the mid-through-late 70s) - had become mainstream, perhaps predominant, by the early 80s.</p><p></p><p>The <em>privileged role of GM</em> in a dungeoneering, "skilled play" wargame of the sort set out (incompletely) in the original D&D books, and then set out and advocated for by Gygax in the AD&D books, is in <em>establishing the fiction</em> (ie the players have no authority over the dungeon map or its contents), <em>adjudicating the fiction</em> (ie the GM is the one who decides whether you can surf doors removed from their hinges down the frictionless corridor in WPM, thereby avoiding the super-tetanus pits) and - if necessary - <em>establishing the die roll needed for success where the rules themselves provide no obvious or applicable answer</em> (eg maybe the answer to the door-surfing question is "Yes, provided you roll less than 20+3*DEX on percentile dice"). A further thing which is really a combination of the second and third is imposing adjustments to rule-mandated checks where the fiction suggests they should apply (eg if a Ring of Fire Resistance grants +4 to save vs fireballs and the like, then standing chin-deep in water should give at least a +2).</p><p></p><p>But when the focus turns to story/character, this extent control over the fiction fairly naturally bleeds into a control over scene-framing, over outcomes (you can't pre-plan scene framing if you don't control outcomes to some extent), etc. That leads to a "golden rule"-style imperative to fudge.</p><p></p><p>At the same time, there is a reasonable expectation that in a character-focused game characters won't die too often. But the wargame rules produce quite a bit of PC death, especially at low levels. So we get the need to "save the game from itself" - again, we see a "golden rule"-style imperative to fudge.</p><p></p><p>None of this is part of any "natural" theory of the role of the GM. I think it's the result of a widespread, perhaps predominant mode of play within the context of the dominant ruleset.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7754586, member: 42582"] To build on what you've posted: I think it's directly connected to the question of whether the game is a wargame, or something else in which story and character are more prominent. In a wargame, 30% success rates, and hard failures, are acceptable. If you lose, then you lose - and reset the board and try again, using the experience you've gained to improve your odds by playing the ficton better, using better tactics, etc. But if the focus of play is character and/or story, then 30% success rates and hard failures lead to total fiasco, as story fails to develop, characters are not heroes we might admire but hopeless bumblers, etc. One mode of mitigation is to change the success rates: 4e does this by reworking the maths. Another is to eliminate hard failures: Burning Wheel does this, via "fail forward". Another is just to punt it all to the GM, who manipulates outcomes and consequences as necessary to generate story, appropriately foreground the PCs, etc - 2nd ed AD&D does this, as do many other games of that era and played in that style. The notion of "the privileged role of GM", and also of "the GM saving the game from itself" because "the rules fail", are symptomatic (in my view) of a certain approach to D&D, and especially AD&D, that - whenver it first began (I would guess in the mid-through-late 70s) - had become mainstream, perhaps predominant, by the early 80s. The [I]privileged role of GM[/I] in a dungeoneering, "skilled play" wargame of the sort set out (incompletely) in the original D&D books, and then set out and advocated for by Gygax in the AD&D books, is in [I]establishing the fiction[/I] (ie the players have no authority over the dungeon map or its contents), [I]adjudicating the fiction[/I] (ie the GM is the one who decides whether you can surf doors removed from their hinges down the frictionless corridor in WPM, thereby avoiding the super-tetanus pits) and - if necessary - [I]establishing the die roll needed for success where the rules themselves provide no obvious or applicable answer[/I] (eg maybe the answer to the door-surfing question is "Yes, provided you roll less than 20+3*DEX on percentile dice"). A further thing which is really a combination of the second and third is imposing adjustments to rule-mandated checks where the fiction suggests they should apply (eg if a Ring of Fire Resistance grants +4 to save vs fireballs and the like, then standing chin-deep in water should give at least a +2). But when the focus turns to story/character, this extent control over the fiction fairly naturally bleeds into a control over scene-framing, over outcomes (you can't pre-plan scene framing if you don't control outcomes to some extent), etc. That leads to a "golden rule"-style imperative to fudge. At the same time, there is a reasonable expectation that in a character-focused game characters won't die too often. But the wargame rules produce quite a bit of PC death, especially at low levels. So we get the need to "save the game from itself" - again, we see a "golden rule"-style imperative to fudge. None of this is part of any "natural" theory of the role of the GM. I think it's the result of a widespread, perhaps predominant mode of play within the context of the dominant ruleset. [/QUOTE]
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