The fiction is read off the mechanics. You don't need a translation manual - or, at least, I don't.
Whether you attack someone with a sword or with a bow is fundamental to describing the outcome. The game mechanics might just say that the creature takes 6 piercing damage, but that's not nearly enough for the DM to narrate what happened.
In a freeze-frame room, the GM's description has the PCs entering in the midst of some interesting event (the prisoner about to be tortured or sacrificed was an example in the book; the dinner scene in G1 is an example [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] gave upthread).
Because it is fun for the PCs to resolve heroic confrontations.
That's a bad reason. Or, it's a good reason if you buy into the idea that PCs are protagonists in a story, who find themselves in all sorts of improbable situations due to narrative causality. Which is a fundamental element of
Story-Telling Games, rather than
Role-Playing Games.
Of course you can. Just like Gygax and Moldvay have codified systems for moving, for searching, and for fighting.
You're right; I'm selling myself short here. I could easily come up with a table for determining how long it takes to eat lunch. It's just probably not worth the effort, when the outcome is unlikely to matter and the DM could come up with a better answer based on existing elements of the fiction.
How does the GM decide? Saying "without bias" does not describe a method for making a decision.
Imagination? The DM thinks about everything he or she knows about the world, and tries to imagine what the scene looks like. Or throw dice at a dart board. Read tea leaves. It doesn't really matter, as long as it's consistent with everything that came before, and doesn't factor in meta-game elements like if someone is a PC or where the camera is looking.
And what sort of world is it where you never bump into old acquaintances by chance, because that is never a likely thing to occur? My answer - it is a Spartan world of the sort that I have described upthread.
Fiction is constrained by plausibility, where reality is not. *shrug*
GMing involves making decisions. One important element of decision-making is to introduce dynamic elements into the game, with which the players can then (via their PCs) engage.
So say you. And I suppose, so say whatever other person may have written a book, with the goal of spreading your agenda.
If my PC is Conan, then how will I get the water spirit to give me aid? Or turn the stone to mud? I think I'll take my chances at sneaking and confronting, thanks very much!
This is a legitimate criticism of the D&D ruleset, in every edition prior to 4E. In AD&D or 3.X, the best tools that allowed for creative problem solving were always in the hands of the wizard or cleric; the fundamental criticism of the sorcerer was that, with so few spells known, they
didn't have access to the huge toolbox of highly situational abilities. And of course, physical-types were relegated to the sidelines during that aspect of play.
I'm surprised that Rituals didn't make it onto the list of favorite things about 4E, because they're a real game-changer.
For me, personally, the main point of playing RPGs is not to apply the system so as to minimise risk.
[...]
So it's all about jumping in feet first, responding to and pushing the narrative, and relying on the system design, and the many player resources that it provides, to make sure that you can meet the DCs that come your way.
Well, different rulesets promote different gameplay experiences. It just so happens that 4E is way better at promoting your style of gameplay than other editions have been.