stop making up strawmen arguments to support your position, and actually address what is being said."
OK.
I believe my posts in this thread have been addressing what is being said, but for the sake of maximum clarity I will address the following quotes:
Not to be a killjoy, but, "makes sense" to who?
The DM. That's really the only person who
needs to know how the rules work. He or she is the one running the game, not the players.
That is a statement of playstyle that I, personally, do not agree with - in the sense that that is not how I prefer to run games, and not how I prefer games I play in to be run.
I don't think the GM is the only one who needs to know how the rules work. When I referee an RPG I expect the players to know how the rules work and engage with them. If there are action economy rules, I want the players to use them - I don't want the job of shepherding them through their turns.
If there are rules about PC building, I want the players to use them - I am happy to give a player advice around PC building, but I don't want to be the one who takes responsibility for building the character who has to be that player's vehicle through many gaming sessions.
If there are rules around resource acquisition and recovery that are relevant to decisions about pacing, resource expenditure, etc, I want the players to use them. In the context of 4e this means making sensible decisions about the use of daily powers, action points, healing surges etc. In other systems these rules can take other forms: eg in classic D&D this is mostly about managing spells and hit points; in Rolemaster it is mostly about managing spell points; etc.
I also don't agree that "makes sense to the GM" is the right way to state the litmus test. For me, the test is "makes sense to the table", and particularly to the player concerned. I can give an example from actual play that illustrates what I mean (I'll flag [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] here, because he likes it (or maybe he groans) when I pull this example out).
The player of the dwarf fighter-cleric wanted to reforge Whelm, his dwarven thrower (a one-handed hammer) as Overwhelm, a mordenkraad (a honking great two-handed hammer). He had the dwarven smiths of the town ready to help him out, as well as the party invoker-wizard. This was resolved as a simple skill challenge - 4 checks before 3 failures. There were some successful checks - Dungeoneering from the fighter-cleric (the closest that 4e has to an engineering skill) to supervise the firing up of the forges, Arcana from the invoker-wizard to handle the magical energies, Diplomacy from the fighter-cleric to keep the dwarven artisans calm and on task as the magical forces in the forges built to a near-overwhelming level. One more successful check was required. The player of the fighter-cleric decided that his PC would pray to Moradin, and made a Religion check, which failed. Moradin had not deserted the PC, but wasn't going to hand him his reforged hammer on a platter either!
At this point the player looks over his character sheet to see what else might be brought to bear, and fastens on his best skill - Endurance. I'm describing how the arcane energies are building up in the forge, making it hard for the artisans to hold the hammer down with their tongs and work its metal into shape. So the player says "I want to put my hands into the forge and hold Whelm down so the artisans can work it properly." The idea that this might happen hasn't crossed my mind, but then I think about the character - he is a mid-paragon fighter-warpriest of Moradin, already established in the fiction as the toughest dwarven cleric and warrior around, and his Endurance is about as good as you can get for a character of his level. Why can't he shove his hands into the forge and try and wrest control of the hammer despite the near-overpowering arcane forces?
So I set the DC (a Hard level-appropriate DC), and the player rolled, and made it, and Whelm was reforged as Overwhelm. The PC's hands were burned and took a week to recover (with some treatment by the invoker-wizard using Remove Affliction powered by some Fundamental Ice), which sucked up the rest of his downtime. But the player got what he wanted, and in the process also helped establish the broader tone for the campaign, setting the scene for more high-magic stuff in upper paragon and epic.
This is the sort of thing I, at least, have in mind when I talk about a "player-driven" game, or "making sense to the table", as contrasting with "makes sense to the GM". On this occasion (and not only this occasion) I was led by the player, not vice versa. Which is what I want in my game.
#1 Rule: No reasonable request should be unreasonably declined.
This invites the question - What counts as a reasonable request? Is it reasonable that a mid-paragon PC can, in virtue of his superlative Endurance bonus, be so preternaturally tough that he can do what no human being could do, and hold down a magical hammer in a super-heated arcane forge so that the artisans can rend it into the shape they want?
Different people will have different views on that, influenced by their own preferred fantasy fiction, their own interpretation of the rules, their own sense of what is cool and what is over-the-top gonzo, etc.
I don't think the GM's view on these issues is the fulcrum around which the game turns. Other participants have views that are just as important - especially when it comes to conceiving of their PCs - and the GM is a legitimate audience for those views just as the GM can legitimately express his/her view to the players. In a fairly traditional game of the sort that I run the GM has the job of chairing the discussion and mediating the group towards a consensus, but that is a procedural role. On the issue of substance the GM is first and foremost another voice at the table, not the dominant voice. The GM has something like a casting vote - if in doubt, follow the GM's lead - but I don't find that comes up all that often.
Upthread some posters have talked about the game getting bogged down in rules debates. But when what is at stake is the capabilities of a player character, and what is or is not a feasible action declaration for that character, I don't see this as getting "bogged down". Working out these things - the content of the shared fiction, and its possible implications - is one part of playing the game. If it takes five minutes of discussion to get everyone on the same page as to what the situation is, how the PC is going to engage it, and what the consequences might be, from my point of view that is time well-spent.
I did say the game is the DM's because it's the DM who is running it. It also states this directly in the rulebooks (supposedly you're super into following the rules, right?) that this is the case, and while I don't have the 3e or 4e book in front of me, I know it's been that way for at least the first 25 years of the game--not some afterthought.
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the intended style of play is something that isn't in dispute because it's explicitly defined for us.
Also, there's some pretty significant historical precedence that shows that the game can easily be played this way.
Gygax also said that the aim of play, for players, is to cultivate player
skill. But, at least judging from these boards as well as the tone of the material that WotC has been publishing for the last 15 years, only a minority of contemporary D&D players play in that Gygaxian style.
Gygax certainly never says anything about the importance of the GM's
story. In Gygaxian play, the function of the fiction is to be part of the arena in which the players prove their skill ("Are there doors? Cool, we listen at them." "Ear seekers!" "Ah, but we have ear-trumpets with wire mesh to protect our ears!"). There is no sense or suggestion that the function of the fiction is to be, or to yield, a cool story.
Gygax does emphasise the role of the GM in adjudicating fictional positioning and its consequences. I think he tends to underestimate the difficulty of this in a high fantasy game, in which crazy magical stuff is part-and-parcel of what is expected. The reforging of Whelm is an example of this; in classic D&D it mostly arises in disputes about the capabilities of spells. If the GM tries to be too unilateral in respect of the limits of the fantastic in the campaign, I think there is a risk of losing the players. At least based on my experience, I think it is preferable to proceed by way of table consensus.
(An alternative is to replace "rulings" with the sort of petifogging detail found in the AD&D and 3E fireball spells, which contrasts so unfavourably, in my view, with the clean presentations of original D&D, Moldvay Basic and 4e. Simply list the spell as doing fire damage, and leave it to adjudication - "rulings" - to work out what damage that might do to gold, paper, ships etc.)
let me instead offer you a practical reason why the DM shouldn't acquiesce to that sort of complaint:
You said that you "accidentally" put the manticore there. If it hadn't been an accident, if there was a plot-centric reason for it being there, you wouldn't have changed it then, right?
Well, if you start making that sort of decision based on whether something is plot-centric, you've just informed everyone at the table whether a monster is "important" or not. "Okay, Hussar changed it to a wyvern last time but not this time? There must be a plot-related reason for it."
Sure, it's OOC vs. IC knowledge. Doesn't matter. It can way too easily influence behavior
This may be a reason that would have been important for you. That doesn't mean that it is a good reason for everyone else.
For instance, I tend to prefer that my players distinguish between "mere colour" and "important stuff". So I don't mind signalling to them the difference between the two. More generally, I tend to prefer that the players draw upon OOC knowledge to influence their choices for their PCs. In the Over the Edge rulebook, Jonathan Tweet and Robin Laws present differing views on and approaches to this - my general play preference these days is closer to Laws than Tweet.
Also, if I intended a manticore to be important, but then for some reason - including perhaps a terrain error - change it to a wyvern instead, that needn't be a big deal. It's unlikely that it was crucial to my conception of what was "important" about the encounter that it be a manticore rather than a wyvern.
Just for the sake of clarity, let me explain my basic position.
There's a bare minimum of trust currency--to use GMfPG's term--that I always offer my DMs
<snip>
The decision of what monsters to use and where to place them falls below that bare minimum threshold. I may not always like or agree with the DM's decisions on such matters, but I won't challenge them (at least during the game).
In my view this is running together two issues.
There is the issue of "table manners" - under what circumstances is it polite to query a GM's decision about some facet of the game, be that a decision about encounter framing or an adjudication of an action declaration or whatever. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] hasn't suggested that his player was particularly rude or out of line, and I have no independent handle on what the standard of courtesy was that prevailed at Hussar's table at the time - so on this issue I pass no judgement.
Then there is what I take to be the real point Hussar is making - that "what made sense to the GM" was, in this example, not the same as "what is the best decision for the game" or "what is the decision that the GM should have made".
On this second issue I agree with Hussar.
heheheh. [Seliousry though, nice chart. 
