Are you intending to suggest there is a significant difference between:
(a) “No, you cannot use diplomacy”
(b) “No sense rolling – your diplomacy cannot succeed”
(c) “OK, roll. That makes what? OK, let’s see…muttermuttercarry the onemutter nope, you failed”?
I wasn't - I was suggesting that there is a difference between telling a player when s/he builds a PC "You know that I don't use the PHB Diplomacy rules in my game", and vetoing or overriding a Diplomacy check in the course of actual play.
But there is also a difference between (a), (b) and (c) above, yes. The first is a veto. The second - at least as I would utter it at my table - is a statement of the game mechanical possibilities (and it encourages the player to look for a bonus, eg by offering the chamberlain a bribe). The third strikes me as deceit, and I tend not to prefer that in GMing.
sometimes the right answer to “it should have worked” is “sure looks like it – I wonder why it didn’t.”
This relates to what [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] said upthread - if you are playing without GM force, then deceiving or tricking the playes is tricky. I would generally avoid the sort of answer you suggest here.
If I declare my character will shoot the fly off a pig’s back from 500 yards, the GM can, in my view, tell me it fails.
That's not an instance of GM force, though - that's just applying the action resolution rules. (If the PC's weapon has a 500 yard range, of course, then it's a different matter. I don't know how 3E handles maximum ranges, but in 4e, B/X and AD&D I don't think there is any non-magical ranged weapon with this sort of range.)
Let’s take an extreme example: Player A is making a new character for the medieval fantasy game in progress. He tells the GM his concept is a laser rifle wielding cyborg. I suspect the other players, as well as the GM, will not appreciate this deviation from the campaign norm, and the GM says “make a character that fits”. I suppose that is GM force, but I suggest it is GM force applied in accordance with the group social contract. Do we really need to get all the players together and pitch the concept?
This is not GM force in action resolution, which is the principal topic of discussion in this thread. Nor, in your example, is it even GM force at all. It is group consensus.
The game also features True Blue Heroes, and Player A decides to bring in an Evil Necromancer. Should the GM allow the character, as it is allowed under the mechanics?
This also strikes me as an issue of group consensus. I don't see why it's a unilateral matter for the GM.
(a) He’s in and the PC’s must accept him because he has PC Halo?
(b) He’s in but the PC’s can decide whether or not to adventure with him
(c) He’s in and when his true colours are revealed, and he is challenged, he drops a point blank high damage spell, killing most or all of the PC’s, but the GM retcons their survival?
These examples don't really fit into my own experiences of running games. By my lights, they already suggest a high degree of group dysfunctionality. With respect to (c), in particular, we seem to have an issue that cannot be resolved by GM force. The last time in my game that one of the PCs sacrificed another on the altar of an evil god, the issue had been discussed out of game in advance by the two players.
In my game, I have two PCs who wholeheartedly serve the heavens, two are devotees of the Raven Queen, and one who is a chaos drow with an uncertain relationship to the Primordials. The tension between them is increasing. Its resolution, one way or another, is likely to be the climax of the campaign. It's not my job as GM to unilaterally step in and pick a side or veto one group of players.
I also suggest Anhehnois’ players have delegated him the authority to use GM force because it makes the game better for them.
Who is disagreeing with this. You may have forgotten, but I was the one who introduced the issue of playstyles into this discussion, in order to explain to [MENTION=29841]cyclone[/MENTION]_Jester why you and other posters may not have trouble with wizards in your games. I've never said that GM force is a bad thing that should be expunged, nor that it does not play an important and valuable role in your games
It is you and [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] and [MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION] who seem to be trying to persuade me, however, that it is a significant feature of my game also; and hence that I am wrong to look for different sorts of solutions to issues about caster/fighter balance.
Maybe Teleport is making the game less fun. Then we ban or restrict Teleport.
That is not GM force, at least as you describe it. "We" is table consensus. Also, you seem to be talking about something that happens outside the context of a particular moment of action resolution. That is very different from the assertion, upthread (from memory, by Ahnehnois) that the GM has final authority over all events in game.
What I don’t get is the same antagonism suggested on some of these posts. These strike me as competitive game play
You are the one who introduced the example of a GM vetoing a players declaration of a Diplomacy check by saying - without regard to the Diplomacy check result - that the Chamberlain sticks his fingers in his ears and says "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!" I am 100% with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] that I woul leave a game in which that happened. In my view that is antagonistic GMing of the worst sort.
In general, my dislike of GM force is not connected to antagonism, however. It is because - a bit like [MENTION=6695799]ImperatorK[/MENTION] - I am at the table to play a game, in which my choices have a significant influence on the fiction. I am not there simply to emote my character and learn what the GM thinks is a fun story.
Making the Paladin’s mentor actually a disguised Demon Prince? Not so much.
For me, that depends a lot on who introduced the mentor, to what end. I could imagine situations in which that could be quite fun, but others in which it would be a dick move. I don't think there is a right answer abstrated away from questions of who introduced what bits of backstory in what context, using what resources, and for what end.
Is this not you, the GM, exerting GM force to override the consequences of the mechanical action resolution system?
No. The 4e rules leave it open to narration what happens at 0 hp - death or unconsciousness.
Same emphasis you have made the determination when and whether they can be raised.
No. The player has determined whether or not the PC will come back to life. I have adjudicated the relevant fiction. For instance, the first time the wizard died I asked the player whether or not he wanted to keep playing the PC. He said that he did want to, and that he thought there was something at the place where he had died (a ruined Nerathi watchpost) that he would be sent back by the gods to reclaim. I decided what exactly that thing was - a sceptre which, a little later in the campaign, I decided was a shard of the Rod of 7 Parts.
This was the beginning of a continuing development of that PC's relationship to the gods. At the start of the campaign we thought he was a lapsed human devotee of the Raven Queen. It now turns out that he is a multiply reincarnated Deva who has long been serving Erathis and Ioun, with the Raven Queen's role being mostly the oversight of his fate and incarnations. As well as these elements of backstory worked out in the course of play, there have also been character developments that have themselves occurred in the course of play, so that he now also serves Vecna, Bane, Levistus and Pelor.
This is a typical example, at least in my gaming experience, of shared authority over backstory, and shared authority with the players in determining what events occur within the game's fiction. I was not the "final arbiter" of this shared fiction.
WHOA THERE – didn’t you just extoll the virtues of 4e encounter math? Why, if it works so well, did you need to introduce additional forces and complications at all?
Because it's fun? As I've already indicated in posts upthread, I'm not running a Gygaxian game, or really a wargame-y game at all.
[MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION] raised the issue of TPK. I said that I avoid TPK's, on the whole, because 4e encounter building guidelines are reliable. But there can be any number of reasons why it is fun to pile on the pressure as an encounter unfolds.
Here is an example I posted about 18 months ago.
And yes, your choice to introduce more adversaries is GM force, no different from changing the opponents’ hit points in the course of the battle.
Of course it's force - it's GM authority over scene-framing. It's also very different from changing hit points in the course of a battle - it's not interference with action resolution (and thereby with the players' attempt to make it true in the fiction that a certain foe is defeated).
Do the players get to decide things are going poorly, so therefore the cavalry shows up? If not, how is it equitable that you can decide things go too well and add obstacles?
It's not a question of equality. It's a question of resources. What resources do the playes have to make the cavalry turn up? In 4e the answer to that question is "Not very many" - that's just the way the game is built. Instead they have resources - healing surges, daily powers, action points - that allow the PCs to draw on their inner reserves. And if things are going poorly, the players are entitled to deploy those resources without need my permission first.
Contrast Burning Wheel, which has fewer of those sorts of resources for players, but does have a mechanic whereby the NPCs the PCs need to help the can turn up - the Circles mechanic. And if playing BW, then the players absolutely would be entitled to make a Circles role, and I as GM would be obliged to adjudicate that within the confines of the rules.
I can’t think of an RPG I’ve played for any length of time that lacks a statement, somewhere, that advises that the rules be changed if they are not contributing to the fun.
From memory, neither Marvel Heroic RP nor HeroWars/Quest talks about changing the rules. Both The Dying Earth and Burning Wheel strongly suggest doing it the way they say, because it will help the game deliver the experience it is promising.
So, if the fighter said “I want to see the King now, and you are in my way”, then proceeded to exercise his melee skills on the Chamberlain, should that get him an audience with the King as desired, or is this a problem his skills cannot solve?
That depends a lot on other features of the situation, and the resolution mechanics. If the PC is Conan, though, the answer should be "absolutely!" - assuming that the player really does succeed on his/her skill checks. It's a weakness of 4e - to give one salient example - that it has only mediocre rules for integrating these sorts of combat actions into what is essentially a skill chalenge situation.
